Algorithmic war: everyday geographies of the war on terror

Amoore, L.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8330.2008.00655.x

Algorithmic war: everyday geographies of the war on terror

Amoore, L.

Authors

Professor Louise Amoore louise.amoore@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Technologies that deploy algorithmic calculation are becoming ubiquitous to the homeland securitization of the war on terror. From the surveillance networks of the city subway to the biometric identifiers of new forms of border control, the possibility to identify "association rules" between people, places, objects and events has brought the logic of pre-emption into the most mundane and prosaic spaces. Yet, it is not the case that the turn to algorithmic calculation simply militarizes society, nor even that we are witnessing strictly a commercialization of security. Rather, algorithmic war is one form of Foucault's sense of a "continuation of war by other means", where the war-like architectures of self/other, here/there, safe/risky, normal/suspicious are played out in the politics of daily life. This paper explores the situated interplay of algorithmic practices across commercial, security, and military spheres, revealing the violent geographies that are concealed in the glossy techno-science of algorithmic calculation.

Citation

Amoore, L. (2009). Algorithmic war: everyday geographies of the war on terror. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 41(1), 49-69. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2008.00655.x

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	Jan 1, 2009
Deposit Date	May 18, 2010
Publicly Available Date	May 3, 2011
Journal	Antipode
Print ISSN	0066-4812
Electronic ISSN	1467-8330
Publisher	Wiley
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	41
Issue	1
Pages	49-69
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2008.00655.x
Keywords	Algorithm, Risk, Security, War on terror, Data.