Welcome back to another episode of the Modern War Institute podcast. I'm John Amble,

editorial director at MWI, and this is a special year-end episode that has a little different format

from the interviews with experts, scholars, and experienced practitioners that you

normally hear. I was thinking about how we could maybe produce a sort of year in review,

because we're the Modern War Institute kind of taking stock of modern war as we flip the calendar

from 2021 to 2022. The challenge with that, of course, is that modern war is this really nebulous,

conceptually complex and multifaceted thing. So how do you structure that? How do you create a year in review that looks at something so difficult, really even to define?

The answer that I hit on is really a function of our organization, MWI, and the way that it has evolved.

We have several projects that are each dedicated to developing a better understanding of

one particular aspect of modern war.

Each of these has taken shape organically, but the one thing they have in common is that

they are all really market driven.

In each case, there is an aspect of modern war that seem to have some growing interest

across the U.S. military,

the broader defense and security community, and within allies and partners.

So if those are some of the issues around which there's so much discussion,

why not focus on those as we use the end of the year as an opportunity to sort of take stock?

What are the events in 2021 that we learn the most from?

What specific topics were at the center of the most pressing conversations?

And importantly, based on the answers to those questions, what do we expect in 2022?

That's what you'll hear in this episode as I talk to the people who lead those programs for MWI.

As always, what you hear in this episode are the views of the participants and don't represent

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