The Precision-Guided Podcast

Amid President-elect Donald Trump’s recent pledge to impose a 25% tariff on Mexican products, if Mexico does not curb the flow of fentanyl, this episode dives deep into the complexities of U.S.-Mexico relations and the fight against organized crime. Join host Nelly Hernandez Valdez and policy expert Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown as they explore: Fentanyl and the Cartels: How Mexican criminal groups have become key players in the U.S. fentanyl epidemic and their strategies for controlling local economies and territories. China's Role: The connection between Chinese criminal groups and Mexico’s illegal economies and its implications for global security. Bi-national Cooperation: Why has the Bicentennial Framework between the Biden and Lopez Obrador administrations seen limited progress, and what can we expect under President Claudia Sheinbaum and President-elect Donald Trump as they inherit this complex relationship. Weapons Trafficking: The U.S. gun industry’s impact on cartel firepower and whether reforming firearm policies could disrupt organized crime. Policy Proposals: The effectiveness of proposed measures, such as designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations or employing military force, and what policymakers can do to achieve real results. Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She is the director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors and of the Brookings series "The Fentanyl Crisis in North America and the Global Reach of Synthetic Opioids. She is also the co-director of the Africa Security Initiative. Previously, she was the co-director of the Brookings projects “The Opioid Crisis in America: Domestic and International Dimension," “Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives Beyond UNGASS 2016,” and “Reconstituting Local Orders.” Dr. Felbab-Brown is an expert on international and internal conflicts and nontraditional security threats, including insurgency, terrorism, organized crime, urban violence, and illicit economies. Her fieldwork and research have covered, among others, Afghanistan, South Asia, Burma, Indonesia, the Andean region, Mexico, Iraq and other parts of the Middle East, and various parts of Africa. She was a senior advisor to the congressionally-mandated Afghanistan Peace Process Study Group. A frequent commentator in international and U.S. media, Dr. Felbab-Brown regularly provides testimonies to the U.S. Congress. She also hosts the podcast show “The Killing Drugs: Synthetic Opioids Around the World. ”

Thomas Woodside and Sunny Gandhi  worked on SB1047, a California bill focused on national security and public safety risks from advanced AI systems. We discussed their experiences advocating for the bill, speaking to legislators and industry experts, amending the bill in response to feedback, and reflecting on lessons learned for future AI policy efforts. Thomas Woodside is a policy analyst at the Center for AI Safety Action Fund, one of the co-sponsors of SB 1047. Before that, he was a junior fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown, where he wrote technical explainers for policy audiences and did some grantmaking. He did his undergraduate in computer science at Yale. Sunny Gandhi is the Vice President of Political Affairs at Encode Justice, an organization advocating for safe and responsible artificial intelligence where he has experience working in AI governance at both federal and state levels. Sunny has previously held technical roles at Deloitte and NASA and has worked with the US State Department and the law firm Mayer Brown. He graduated from Indiana University this past May.

In this episode of the Precision-Guided Podcast, University of Georgia and Georgetown University alumna Stephanie Cannon interviews Dr. Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor Emeritus of Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia, to discuss the relationship between Congress and the intelligence community. Loch K. Johnson is Regents Professor Emeritus of Public and International Affairs in the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) at the University of Georgia.  He received the Ph.D. degree in Political Science at the University of California, Riverside.  The author of over thirty books, among his most recent are The Third Option: Covert Action and American Foreign Policy (Oxford, 2022); Advanced Introduction to American Foreign Policy (Elgar, 2021); Spy Watching: Intelligence Accountability in the United States (Oxford, 2018); National Security Intelligence: Secret Operations in the Defense of the Democracies (Polity, 2017); and A Season of Inquiry Revisited: The Church Committee Confronts America’s Spy Agencies (University Press of Kansas, 2015).  He has been an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow; a Visiting Fellow at Yale and Oxford Universities; a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar; and, for eighteen years (2001-2019), editor-in-chief of the international journal Intelligence and National Security.  He also served in the U.S. government as the senior aide to the chairman of the Church Committee on Intelligence in the Senate, as well as the chairman of the Aspin-Brown Commission on Intelligence in the White House.  He was the first staff director of the Subcommittee on Oversight in the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.  At the University of Georgia he led the founding of SPIA, established in 2001.  The consortium of universities that comprise the Southeast Conference (SEC) in the United States selected Professor Johnson as its inaugural “Professor of the Year” in 2012; and the University presented him with its Presidential Medal in 2022.

On this episode of the Precision Guided Podcast, Max Caplan sits down with three experts on civil-military relations: Dr. Alice Friend, Dr. Michal Robinson, and Dr. Heidi Urben. We discuss what civil-military relations is and the origins of American civilian control of the military. We touch on key topics including how our polarized political climate affects civil-military relations and what to look out for during this election cycle. Finally, our panelists discuss the state of the field and give reading recommendations for those who are interested in furthering their knowledge of civil-military relations.  **The views represented in this podcast belong to each individual and do not represent the views of Georgetown, the Georgetown Security Studies Review, the Department of Defense or any other institution.