Tom Gardner

speaker

61 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 20 May

Tom Gardner’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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The Intelligence from The Economist · Bibi, one more time? Israel’s election launches · 20 May 2026 podcast

So whether it continues long into the future, given NATO rivalries and the general pullback from much of the African continent on the Americans' part, remains to be seen.

But for now, it was certainly built.

To me by the officials and officers I spoke to as an opportunity for America to continue to demonstrate its strength as a security partner, particularly in comparison to rivals such as Russia and China.

Well, there's about 1,500 soldiers.

What was interesting for me, covering the crisis in West Africa and the Sahel region, where

jihadist groups have been running a mock for sort of best part of a decade now.

The three countries most affected by jihadism: Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger.

They declined to participate.

And that's despite recent American efforts to restore s security cooperation with their ruling military government.

So they were invited.

They chose not to attend.

Well, starting from twenty twenty, these three countries cut ties with Western governments.

So they booted out in particular French troops who'd been aiding the fight against uh jihadism, but also American ones, also UN peacekeepers.

So there's a lot of frankly bad blood really between these three governments who've drawn much closer to Russia in recent years and

And in general the West and Western aligned countries.

Well, Flintlock has evolved over the years.

This year, a course on using drones through surveillance and reconnaissance was introduced.

That was definitely a big thing.

Apparently it was very popular with the African militaries that were present.

Drones are currently being used by jihadist militant groups to great effect.

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