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Podcast

The Hand Behind Unmanned

About

The Hand Behind Unmanned is a podcast about the people who design, direct, and deploy America’s arsenal of unmanned weapons. The limited series podcast tells stories about their beliefs, identities, and the ways in which human ideas about warfare created and continue to shape today’s drone revolution. It is a history of US investment in mines, torpedoes, missiles, satellites, bombs, and drones from the point of view of the generals, admirals, career bureaucrats, academicians, politicians, and entrepreneurs that guided, dictated, and sometimes manipulated technology to create autonomous systems.

Episodes document the rise of autonomy in the US military from floating mines and tethered torpedoes to unmanned planes dropped from WW2 bombers; rockets, ballistic and cruise missiles to laser-guided bombs and satellites; and finally the dominance of remotely piloted aircraft over two decades of a war on terror. Throughout, the series traces the origins and pathways of ideas behind revolutions in military technologies, risk mitigation strategies, the effects of the 24-7 news cycle, and the power of armed service and occupational identities to explain not just what the US chose to put on the battlefield, but why it did so.  

Host
Jacquelyn Schneider

Jacquelyn Schneider

Hargrove Hoover Fellow

Jacquelyn Schneider is the Hargrove Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative, and an affiliate with Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology, national security, and political psychology with a special interest in cybersecurity, autonomous technologies, wargames, and Northeast Asia. She was previously an Assistant Professor at the Naval War College as well as a senior policy advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

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