Bill Conley was a DARPA Program Manager, then the US Department of Defense's expert on electronic warfare for four years, and is now Chief Technology Officer at Mercury Systems. Our topic is a comparison of the 19th Century's Concert of Europe vs Modern Day's communication and methods of deterrence. Cold Star Project host Jason Kanigan asks Bill Conley:

• What is effective communication, especially in context of diplomacy and deterrence of conflict?
• Why doesn’t the Behavioralist/Rational Economics approach work in practice when it comes to national conflicts?
• Do you believe the match-up of 2020s China-US is similar to the 1910s UK-German? Are there historical correlations?
• The WWI era was about the disintegration of the old order, and paradigm shifts. Are there indicators of a similar instability of the existing order today?
• As a nation’s capabilities increase, so do its ambitions. Many of these ambitions seem to end up with the idea of autarky. Do you believe we’re close to experiencing another such outbreak of these ideas today?
• How could a modern day China-US conflict proceed?  

USEFUL LINKS:  

"Mitchell Hour: State of Electronic Warfare in the DOD" [Dr. Conley lecture]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR_PPGDnejo 

"What Is Eurasia?" [Dr. Stephen Kotkin lecture]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ghn1X7sRFs 

Mercury Systems website: https://www.mrcy.com/ 

OpEx Society: https://www.opexsociety.org 

America's Future Series: https://www.americas-fs.org/ 

Talk to Cold Star: https://coldstartech.com/talktous