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.

Guns for Hire is a science podcast hosted by Atlantic Council, with 27 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Atlantic Council hosts Guns for Hire, a science show with 27 episodes published.

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  Episode #16

  “Shoot everybody”: US contractors in San Diego court

  May 26, 202639 minS2

  <p>Send Alia a Text Message</p><p>Alia is joined by Daniel McLaughlin, an international lawyer and Legal Director of the Centre for Justice and Accountability (CJA), a California-based legal nonprofit working on behalf of victims of torture and other atrocity crimes. Daniel and CJA are leading a civil suit in San Diego against a Delaware-registered PMC for war crimes in Yemen. They represent the Yemeni parliamentarian Anssaf Ali Mayo, who was one of the targets of an alleged hit-squad in Yemen. Daniel talks us through the explosive facts of the case, how it ended up in a California...

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  Episode #15

  Fighting mercenaries: A Ukrainian soldier’s perspective

  Mar 5, 202651 minS2

  <p>Send Alia a Text Message</p><p>Alia sits down with Dimko Zhluktenko, a Ukrainian drone pilot and analyst within the Unmanned Systems Forces of the Ukrainian military. They discuss the realities of drone warfare in Ukraine, as well as the ways in which mercenary forces change the nature and tempo of battle. Dimko describes how he and his comrades are combatting Shahed drones, the psychological mechanisms necessary to keep fighting an army which uses waves of expendable manpower, and the need for NATO to start thinking of drones as bullets. Dimko also talks about how procurement and innovation...

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  Episode #14

  Narco noir: Drugs, gangs and mercenaries in Latin America

  Feb 1, 20261h 2mS2

  <p>Send Alia a Text Message</p><p>Alia is joined by Dr Vanda Felbab-Brown, a renowned expert on non-state armed groups and organised crime. They begin by discussing the escalation of gang violence in Haiti over the last year, despite the arrival of the American PMC, Vectus Global, which is led by the Blackwater founder Erik Prince. They go on to explore the bunkering of fuel by colectivos in Venezuela, Hizballah’s continuing narcotics operations across Latin America, the IRGC’s role in drug trafficking, and how the regime in Iran ends. </p><p>The Guns for Hire podcast is wr...

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  Episode #13

  “Youth as merchandise”: Iraqi mercenaries in Ukraine

  Dec 6, 20251 hourS2

  <p>Send Alia a Text Message</p><p>Alia is joined by the Iraqi political analyst Mohammed Salih to discuss the legion of Iraqi men turning up on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine. They explore how poverty and political dysfunction in Iraq have been weaponised by mercenary recruitment networks – and how death in Europe has been packaged as an economic opportunity. They consider the possible complicity of prominent Iran-backed militias in Iraq, or even parts of the Iraqi state itself, and the ways in which Iraq’s recent history has made the sale of martial services a normalised part...

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  Episode #12

  Death is our business

  Jul 8, 20251 hourS2

  <p>Send Alia a Text Message</p><p>Alia is joined by John Lechner to discuss his new book, Death is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare. They chat about the Wagner Group’s soft power strategy in Africa including films and beauty pageants, and its corresponding popularity in places like the Central African Republic, its patterns of recruitment, and how its mercenaries are already “bringing the war home” to Russia. John also reflects on his own experiences interviewing dozens of Russian mercenaries and on being seized and interrogated for two days in Mali. John argues...

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