
Guns for Hire
The Guns for Hire podcast is a production of the Atlantic Council’s North Africa Initiative. Taking Libya as its starting point, it explores the causes and implications of the growing use of mercenaries in armed conflict. The podcast features guests from many walks of life, from ethicists and historians to former mercenary fighters. It seeks to understand what the normalisation of private warfare tells us about the world as we currently find it, but also about the future of the international system and about what war could look like in the coming decades. Written and hosted by Dr Alia Brahimi.
Podcasting since 2023 • 20 episodes
Guns for Hire
Latest Episodes
“No, really”: American PMCs in Gaza
Alia chats with modern warfare expert Dr Andreas Krieg about the sudden deployment of three private military companies to the Netzarim corridor in the Gaza Strip. Andreas examines the risks and opportunities in outsourcing a key task of sta...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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45:45

A mercenary client collapses
Alia sits down with acclaimed author and former CIA analyst, David McCloskey, to discuss the spectacular collapse of a major mercenary client in Syria. They discuss why, despite their notorious brutality, Bashar Al-Assad’s forces proved so brit...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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35:01

Air force for hire
Alia is joined by the mercenaries expert Alessandro Arduino, who is also a top China analyst. They discuss recent seismic leaps in UAV technology and how the cost of drone defence is a magnitude greater than drone offense. They explore the way ...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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1:02:19

Sledgehammer: The Wagner cult in Syria
Host and Nonresident Senior Fellow Alia Brahimi chats with the defence researcher Jack Margolin about his new book on the Wagner Group. They focus on its operations in support of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and the central place of Syria w...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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54:52

"Borrowed servants"? PMCs and sadism at Abu Ghraib
Alia is joined by the international criminal lawyer Katherine Gallagher to explore her litigation against a prominent PMC for war crimes at Abu Ghraib. Katherine talks us through the sixteen-year legal fight on behalf of former Iraqi detainees,...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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1:02:30

Fan Mail
Great episode once again - interesting to hear his perspective on the motivations and perhaps feeling there’s less exploitation going on. Are you going to look at the recruitment channels and paths for mercenaries?
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland