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 there was a lot of interest in skilling up in that regard.

The Americans as well, they

Say they've been putting more resources into countering jihadist online propaganda.

That's something that has become a real ugbear, particularly that there is this evidence and and a sense that a lot of this has also been amplified by the Russians.

So that's become a key priority.

And so for the first time, local social media influencers were invited.

So all of this to me seemed in a way as, you know

like a something of a relic of a kind of bygone era of American led multilateralism.

It's mere existence, t certainly.

But also I mean, elements of the exercise that were emphasized to me by American officers included, you know, training local armies in human rights, the rule of law, for example.

There was one American officer who gushed about the work they were doing to engage with local communities.

Another one

mentioned to me that this was an opportunity to get 30 plus countries into a room to talk to each other.

Sounding rather like the UN, not really like a member of Trump's so-called Department of War.

So in that respect as well, I think it felt a little bit out of sync with the times.

Well, I mean, the short answer is they have not been massively effective.

I mean, if you consider that these exercises began in two thousand and five, and over the subsequent two decades, a huge amount of resources and money had been invested by the US and other Western allies, particularly the French, in counterterror, in training.

But at the same time, over that period

Jihadism has continued to spread, not just in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali, which are really fragile these days, but also some of the coastal nations, including Ivory Coast, which has experienced attacks on its northern border, Togo, Benin as well.

So I think the evidence today is that this approach has not worked quite as well as America had hoped.

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