Hypervelocity

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

Cool to have Nick White with me on today's podcast. Nick is a genetic engineer with an interest, amongst many things, in nootropics. I'm an average guy and I often question my right and ability to study at PhD level, and so with Nick's interest in brain science I wanted to discuss the idea of IQ with him. First up we discussed and critiqued the idea of IQ, before touching on techniques for raising one's self-esteem when experiencing imposter syndrome. We then segued into a more general discussion and about potential gene therapy developments in cancer care, Chinese CRISPR babies, and the legacy of the legendary self-proclaimed "dumbass genius", Rick Rosner. Ultimately, Nick and I concluded that what counts in a person is character and heart, not how smart they are. Hope you enjoy the show.

Nicholas White is a genetic engineer at Ginkgo Bioworks and the founder of Flux Odyssey. At 18 he was diagnosed with ADD and cyclothymia, a form of bipolar disorder, and told he’d never be able to graduate college without taking medication like Ritalin and Lithium. Despite dropping out of college twice (while taking those fancy medications the psychiatrists were so fond of), he eventually graduated with a BS in Chemistry and a minor in Neuroscience without taking prescription stimulants. On the side, he co-founded the Fencing Club of Asheville, completed undergraduate research on the signaling protein Gα13 and its role in cancer, and co-founded UNCA’s first iGEM team to compete in a genetic engineering competition. Nick discovered how to solve his own health complications with supplements, nootropics and natural products. He now works as a genetic engineer at a synthetic biology company on the cutting edge of science and has 4+ years experience as a molecular biologist. One of his current projects at work is helping with the strain engineering and process development of a covid19 RNA vaccine, a collaboration between Ginkgo Bioworks and Moderna Therapeutics.

Nick's Twitter account https://twitter.com/nicholasfwhite

Nick's podcast https://open.spotify.com/show/7pG6iNPsdNoNANvmH2Vaym?si=p9OvPpcNSz2ZiTKNA1Uj8A

Nick's nootropics company https://flux-odyssey.com/

I was delighted to have had David Gornoski with me for this episode of Primitive Accumulation, particularly as David was my first guest whom I did not know beforehand. I just emailed David out of the blue and he said yes. David was also very generous with his time, talking with me for nearly two hours.

As a libertarian Christian, David draws on his Christian faith to advocate for non-violent solutions to social problems. For David, this means that just as Jesus did not use violence to convince people of the correct moral course of action, so too, modern society and political institutions should not resort to coercion to address social problems, no matter how worthy such courses of action might be. David is very much in favour of collective efforts to address inequality and other social issues, it's just that he believes they should be addressed through the actions of free individuals coming together themselves, rather than through the state apparatus, which he believes to be coercive. To this end, David is also very passionate about the abolition of prison sentences for victimless crimes.

David's worldview is also underpinned by his reading of French Philosopher Rene Girard's concept of Mimesis, which is where society bonds itself together by casting out a scapegoat. David takes Girard's mimesis and argues that the modern state is also a manifestation of this scapegoating tendency in human society. Drawing on Girard, with the coming of Christ, David argues, this cycle of scapegoating can end, and true respect for the individual can begin. In general, David favours solutions to social problems developed by the plucky individual and sees states and giant corporations as crowding these opportunities out.

As a democratic socialist, I tend to believe that redistributive progressive taxation coupled with large-scale state-sponsored projects are an important tool for reducing poverty and maximising opportunity in society. I also went to a Christian primary school and the two main messages I take from Christianity are a concern for the disadvantaged and the importance of forgiveness. I was therefore intrigued to learn about how David articulated his Christian concern for the disadvantaged outside of states and corporations.

David and I had a very cordial chat and it was interesting to learn more about his worldview.

David Gornoski is an entrepreneur, speaker, and writer. He is also the founder of a project called A Neighbor's Choice which seeks to introduce Jesus’ culture of nonviolence to both Christians and the broader public. A Neighbor's Choice is also the name of his weekly show on state violence and alternative solutions to it.  David's website, A Neighbor's Choice https://aneighborschoice.com/  David's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJueQt-WKvL9CYDy2U7tfbQ  David's podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/david-gornoski/id1481399105