Cogs of War

Armies run on more than what happens at the front. Behind every operation is a vast amount of coordination, administration, logistics, and judgment. Bill Pessin, senior vice president of national security at Salesforce and a former U.S. Army logistics officer, joins Jonathan to discuss how military organizations can use AI agents, what makes these tools different from ordinary software, and why safety and accountability matter when new technology enters national security work. They also discuss what Pessin learned early in his Army career about the gap between plans, systems, and the people who have to make them work.

Congress rarely moves fast, but Reps. Rob Wittman and Pat Ryan are trying to change that. The two lawmakers founded the bipartisan House Defense Modernization Caucus in 2024 and have driven reforms through two consecutive defense authorization acts, targeting acquisitions and other bottlenecks. Jonathan sits down with both congressmen to discuss their initiatives, how a caucus without markup power actually moves legislation, and whether bipartisan cooperation on defense can last.

Is it too late to stop criminals and American adversaries from exploiting AI to conduct cyberattacks or design novel pathogens? Has regulation kept pace with the threat civilian drones pose to critical infrastructure? AI researcher Lennart Heim, Army drone strategist Paul Lushenko, and CEO of Sentinel Bio Claire Qureshi join Jonathan to discuss the trade-offs between protecting the public and letting the private sector forge ahead. The conversation gets into synthetic DNA, the risk of drones at the FIFA World Cup, and whether the U.S. government should get early access to Silicon Valley's newest large language models.

Ryan sits down at the Cogs of War mic for the last time to introduce Jonathan Panter, the new host and executive editor of Cogs of War. Jonathan shares his background, from naval officer to scholar. They discuss major defense tech issues, and Jonathan shares what he hopes to accomplish at the helm of Cogs of War.

What happens when one of the defense industry's leading technology integrators partners with one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture firms? Bryce Pippert of Booz Allen and Matt Cronin of Andreessen Horowitz join Ryan to unpack their new partnership and discuss how the United States is trying to tap into the tech ecosystem. The conversation gets into venture capital's growing role in national security, how this partnership is supposed to work in practice, and why getting real technology into government hands is still harder than it should be.