Imagining the Security of Innovation: Technological Innovation, National Security, and the American Way of Life (original) (raw)
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Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 2021
The Socio-Technical Imaginaries (STI) approach in Science and Technology Studies (STS) has illuminated the central role of social imaginaries in shaping the politics of technology. Its emphasis on the multilinear forms of socio-technical development is a useful corrective to universalist explanations of technological change. However, STI lacks a clear account of how inter-societal interaction shapes the imaginaries of any given political community. Synthesising STI with the theory of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD) can correct this shortcoming. UCD offers an ontology of universals and accompanying methodology of incorporated comparison, enabling STI to integrate inter-societal causality into its theoretical framework. A combined UCD and STI framework is examined in this paper through a focus on imaginaries of technological innovation in contemporary American foreign policy. Responding to the 'whip of external necessity', US foreign policy seeks to upend technological diffusion and impose global regulatory evenness on national forms of technological innovation.
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In this text, I will try to convince you of the vanity of critique. The argument is simple: there is no world without war, and neoliberal capitalism is a weaponized economy. This is a version of the larger argument that claims resistance is futile. You will be commodified. The first section will theorize ‘technology’ as consisting in the integration of a series of ‘tests,’ which is nothing but ‘nature in disguise.’ The second section provides a theory of ‘weaponization’ as the purposeful utilization of ‘failure’ qua ‘destruction.’ It will be shown how ‘weaponization’ is living within technology. Consequentially, there is no technology without arms. We will argue for the metaphysical inevitability of war. The third and last section will show how, along these lines, neoliberal capitalism, understood on a global scale, is a weapon in the sense defined. Consequentially, we are at war—globally and tacitly. And as it stands, no force can stop it. It will be much more convenient to acquiesce to defeat than to waste time and energy in critique and resistance. Welcome to the future of compliance.
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