Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: Information as a Political ProblematizationThe classified intelligence documents exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed not only the technological tactics of contemporary mass surveillance but also some of the core strategic ideas underwriting its operation.One brief, anonymously authored sentence drawn from the leaked cache concisely expressed a key conditioning assumption of contemporary intelligence agencies: "in the future, superpowers will be made or broken based on the strength of their cryptanalytic programs." 1 Enigmatic sentences like this are significant because of both what they assert and what they fail to state.What this prediction clearly asserts is that state power now hinges in part on information sciences, data analytics, and cryptographic technology.A recent social media campaign waged against suspected terrorist groups by the United States Department of State under the leadership of Richard Stengel, former Managing Editor of Time, indicates that information wars are already entrenched in the realm of official state conduct. 2 In a speech on the multi-faceted campaign of which Stengel's project was a part, then-President Barack Obama noted that the strategy was one of "contesting the space that terrorists occupyincluding the Internet and social media." 3 Such international informational espionage is not the province of the United States alone.Over the past few years, a Russian organization called the Internet Research Agency has allegedly sought to conduct, in its words, "information warfare against the United States of America," including using stolen identity data to mount social media campaigns designed to tilt the outcome of the 2016 United States presidential election in favor of the candidate who in fact ended up winning the election.4 A similar situation characterizes the landscape of contemporary corporate enterprise.From the multi-billion-dollar market capitalization of 103
DOI: 10.5840/gfpj20183914
Author: Colin Koopman
Language: English
Topic: Foucault, Power, and Ethics
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2887994181