Hypervelocity

Owain Leyshon⁠ (Raymond K Hessel) is a philosopher and writer based in Ireland. He focuses primarily on the phenomenology of technology and political philosophy, with a special interest in the ancient Greeks. Owain blogs regularly on Substack and a number of his essays have been published in the collection called Notes from the Pod.

⁠Joshua Hansen⁠ is a US-based cultural theorist focused on hypermodernity and the rise of digital religion. His work aims to demystify contemporary technoculture and operates at the intersection of Academia, Science & the Internet. Hansen published his first book, Tractatus Anti-Academicus, in 2023.

It's been a while in coming but it was great to finally

2. Endo-colonisation: an a-national military class opposed to its own civilian population colonises its own territory, leading to the non-development of civilian economies. Q. How are the militaries of the great powers a greater threat to their own populations than their supposed enemies

3. Nuclear Monarchy: nuclear weapons gives us a new humanism founded on destruction. The weapon present by "divine right" at the heart of our society. Yet the military man is not an intersessionist priest, he is an executioner because he does not care about death, only killing. Can Virilio's thought be used to counter nuclear annihilation?

4. Holy War: Nuclear war is Just War with technological characteristics, encouraging the complete release of apocalypse level violence. As Christians, can Virilio's fear that belief in an afterlife encourages war and Girard's notion that war arises from a mimetic spiral of violence due to lack of a belief in the Christ scapegoat, be reconciled?

Antoine Bousquet is Associate Professor at the Swedish Defence University, Stockholm. He is the author of The Eye of War: Military Perception from the Telescope to the Drone (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) and The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity (Hurst, 2009). He has contributed an array of peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on subjects that include nuclear war, the revolution in military affairs, jihadist networks, complexity theory, violent aesthetics, nihilism, and the conceptualisation of war.

00:02 Introduction to the Eye of War

01:11 Understanding the Concept of the Eye of War

03:22 The Evolution of Military Perception

04:39 The Role of Linear Perspective in Modern Military Technologies

14:11 The Impact of Laser Technology on Military Perception

26:37 The Influence of Digitized Mapping and GIS on Military Strategy

41:05 The Emergence of Hyper Camouflaged Warfare

50:16 The Future of Autonomous Drones in Warfare

58:38 Conclusion: The Changing Landscape of Military Perception

1. What does the Eye of War refer to within the context of your book?

2. How did the development of linear perspective

3. By "marshalling photons into a lethal beam", does the laser represent the fulfilment of the "martial gaze"; the Gorgon's stare that at once completes the "alignment of perspective with annihilation" while threatening to blind the very eye that gave rise to it?

4. Contra Borges, with the emergence of digitised mapping and geographic information systems (GIS), can the map now exceed the territory?

5. Has the success of global surveillance given rise to the "hyper-camouflaged" suicide bomber, whose "fluid military concealment" in plain clothes right at the heart of civil society leads to the "endo-militarisation of peace", dissolving any delineation between military and civilian space?

6. With the rise of autonomous drones, do we face the total alienation of all human agency from military perception?

Dr Becky Alexis-Martin is a pacifist academic at the University of Bradford. Her work explores nuclear warfare, social justice, humanitarian and environmental issues, and human rights. Her expertise is focused on nuclear geographies and decolonising disarmament policy in the Pacific. She has authored over sixty-five news articles, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles. Her first book, “Disarming Doomsday: The Human Impact of Nuclear Weapons Since Hiroshima”, critically considers the social, cultural, ​and spatial harms perpetuated by nuclear warfare and was the recipient of the 2020 L.H.M. Ling Outstanding

Dr. Becky Alexis Martin explains how geographers identified isolated spaces for nuclear testing, often disregarding the presence of indigenous communities.

Dr. Martin also delves into the geotechnologies used in nuclear warfare, highlighting the military origins of technologies like GPS and satellite imaging. She discusses the use of cartography in public safety nuclear preparedness initiatives, pointing out how it was used to downplay the destructiveness of nuclear weapons.

The conversation also touches on the connection between Cold War nuclear strategy, game theory, and modern post-apocalyptic computer games, highlighting the tendency to abstract war to a game.

Dr. Martin emphasizes the importance of geography in understanding and addressing the impacts of nuclear weapons and the role of geographers in contributing to a nuclear-free world.

She also shares her experience as a delegate and speaker at the United Nations for the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, underscoring the significance of the treaty in promoting nuclear disarmament and supporting affected communities.

00:00 Introduction to Dr. Becky Alexis Martin

00:14 Exploring Nuclear Geographies and Decolonizing Disarmament Policy

00:27 Discussion on Dr. Martin's Book 'Disarming Doomsday'

01:07 The Role of Geography in Nuclear Warfare

03:08 Impact of Nuclear Tests on Indigenous Communities

04:23 The Role of Geotechnologies in Nuclear Warfare

05:11 The Dehumanization in Nuclear Test Locations

06:12 The Class Character of Nuclear Testing

07:32 The 2021 Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

09:47 The Role of Geotechnologies in Modern Warfare

12:01 The Use of Cartography in Masking the Destructiveness of Nuclear Weapons

18:47 The Connection Between Cold War Nuclear Strategists and Modern Computer Games

32:53 The Role of Geography in a Nuclear Free World

34:51 Dr. Martin's Experience at the United Nations

39:55 The Importance of Geography in Understanding and Resolving Conflict

46:40 Conclusion: The Future of Geography in a Nuclear Free World

In this episode, my guest Italo Brandimarte discussed his journal article 'Breathless war: martial bodies, aerial experiences and the atmosphere of empire.' Italo's article covers the use of poison gas by the Italian air force in the Abyssinian War. We covered the following questions:

Italo Brandimarte is a PhD Candidate in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. His research is broadly concerned with the relations between the techno-scientific and the bodily dimensions of war and security, particularly with reference to racial and colonial violence. In his current project – provisionally titled ‘The Technology of Empire: War Experience and the Embodied Production of the International’ - Italo develops a theory of war experience that takes seriously the role of technology in the imperial history of world politics. Some of the findings from this research have been published in the European Journal of International Relations. His previous work on the politics of measurement in global counterterrorist surveillance has appeared in International Political Sociology.

In this interview we discussed Andrew's book, Hacking the Bomb: Cyber Threats and Nuclear Weapons, which covers how "the increasing sophistication of hacking and cyber weapons, information warfare capabilities, and other dynamics of the cyber age are challenging the management, safeguards, and warning systems for nuclear weapons."

2. Why is the human being still the weakest link in nuclear cyber security?

3. You mention Peggy Morse, the Director of ICBM systems at Boeing, saying that the age of some nuclear command and control systems, such as 8-inch floppy discs, could actually protect the US nuclear deterrent from cyber threats. Do you think archaic computer systems could actually be being used by nuclear proliferators such as North Korea to prevent cyber infiltration by the US and others?

4. By using commercial Windows operating systems rather than more secure Linux based systems on its Vanguard class submarines, is the UK's nuclear deterrent at risk of cyber disablement?

5. How might the ever increasing sophistication of ballistic missile defences and cyber operations constitute a serious threat to assured retaliation or even be viewed as facilitating a nonnuclear first-strike capability, thereby ushering in a third nuclear age?

Dr Michael Mulvihill is a Research Associate at the University of Newcastle's. His recent project, 'Turning Fylingdales Inside Out: making practice visible at the UK’s ballistic missile early warning and space monitoring station' was a multimedia art project intending to demystify nuclear weapons through showing that they are made of everyday materials: the original panel sections of the geodesic domes covering RAF Fylingdales were made of laminated cardboard, for example.

In our discussion, Michael explained that the pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear sides often mirror each other in their rhetoric by showing powerful images of nuclear weapons. Whereas by revealing the mundanity of nuclear construction through his audio-visual and very tactile artwork, Michael's work helps to break this spell and remind us that nuclear weapons are human created things that we control, not some godlike structure that rules over us. We built them, so we can take them apart too.

We also talked about the BBC Arena documentary, A British Guide to the End of the World, based on Michael's PhD thesis, which covered British nuclear testing at Christmas Island and the effects it had on British forces participants who were there at the time.

Questions

In this first episode of Hypervelocity I was delighted to speak with Dr Matthew Ford and Professor Andrew Hoskins about their new book, Radical War: Data, Attention and Control in the Twenty-First Century. In Radical War, Matthew and Andrew recount how the smartphone, social media and big data are revolutionising the conduct and experience of war to the point that the battlefield is now everywhere. We began our discussion by defining the concept of 'radical war', finding it to differ from earlier definitions of war due to the interpenetrated nature of conflict in the modern era where everyone with a smartphone can view and participate in real time combat. Next, we explored whether Baudrillard's claim that 'the Gulf War did not take place' is only amplified in an era of Radical War, finding that whereas Baudrillard pointed to hyperreal warfare as a highly polished and sanitised spectacle by legacy media, instead 'radical war' represents a splintering of realities with as many different interpretations of a conflict as there are subscribers to social media platforms. We then clarified how the concepts of data, attention and control in Radical War stand in contention with Clausewitz's trinity of warfare consisting of state, people and armed forces, particularly through the way in which the smartphone disintermediates combatants and citizens. Finally, we discussed whether the European wars of religion caused by the invention of the printing press prefigure potential future conflicts brought about by the retreat of opposing groups into social media echo-chambers (the audio for this last question can be accessed by subscribing to tier three of the Hypervelocity Patreon).

Radical War is available from: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/radical-war/

Dr Matthew Ford is Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Sussex; founding editor of the British Journal for Military History; and author of Weapons of Choice. His research interests focus on military innovation, socio-technical change, the epistemology of battle and strategy. Matthew has written extensively about military-technical change, especially as it relates to the infantry and their experience of battle. 

Publications: https://sussex.academia.edu/MatthewFord

Twitter: https://twitter.com/warmatters

Professor Andrew Hoskins is Professor of Global Security, University of Glasgow; and founding editor of the journals Digital War; Memory, Mind & Media; and Memory Studies. His research and teaching furthers interdisciplinary understanding of how and why human society is being transformed by digital tech and media, and the consequences for forgetting, memory, privacy, security, and the nature, experience and effects of contemporary warfare. 

Publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andrew-Hoskins

Blog: https://www.andrewhoskins.net/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/andrewhoskins

Thank you kindly for listening to the Hypervelocity podcast. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing below so that the impact of military technology on strategy can be explored further

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hypervelocity

Blog: https://www.microliberations.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/microliberation

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8d_gG_2lTBIFK7Xl1ism5A

Hypervelocity: a podcast about the impact of military technology on strategy.

Lovely to have Timothy on the show. Quite fittingly, there was a really nice narrative thread running through our chat linking British Romanticism, cognitive dissonance and negative capability, favourite books, the impact of the internet on narrative in works of fiction, and Timothy's upcoming literature study course built around the theme of the sea. I had never heard of the concept of negative capability before and so I was fascinated to learn about it. Likewise, I also enjoyed learning about British Romanticism, even though I'm English I didn't know that much about the movement.  

Timothy Wilcox has a Ph.D. in English from Stony Brook University, where he taught literature for five years. He studies British Romanticism, digital literature, and imagination.  

Timothy's new course 'Literature at Sea: A Brief History of Existence' is available here. Registration closes on 9 November 2020 in advance of the first reading and discussion on 14th November: https://hyperlink.academy/discount?discount=9f6cd281-f93a-402b-b0bc-f5e3fc497651

Timothy's Twitter: https://twitter.com/PreCursorPoets

Timothy's Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0qk9W4w-6hLBiY18g4dElQ

Timothy's webpage: https://www.precursorpoets.com/ 

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A quick little audio chapter for you all. A recording of an article I wrote some months ago. You can check the written article out on https://medium.com/@jsimpkin/novacene-for-the-soul-a-review-of-james-lovelocks-novacene-the-coming-age-of-hyperintelligence-56e398c0c1e6