Search the archive.

Trauma Stored in the Body: Black Radical thinkers, as ancestors and elders who promoted psychological Practices Psychotherapist Resmaa Menakem, in his book My Grandmother’s Hands, notes the wide array of physical illnesses that result from racialized intergenerational trauma: As many researchers now believe, the ongoing violations of the Black body and heart have resulted in widespread trauma. This racialized trauma shows up as an array of adaptive but dysfunctional behaviors, including hypervigilance, heightened anxiety and suspicion, ADD/ADHD, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and addiction. It can also appear as dysfunctional and non-adaptive behavior such as disordered thinking, difficulty concentrating, panic attacks, learned helplessness, self-hatred, hopelessness, depression, and a survival reflex that tends to involve violence. As Joy DeGruy and others have noted, all of these are common symptoms of a pervasive and persistent stress disorder. In many African American bodies, this trauma has led to a variety of physical problems, the most common of which are high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, compromised immune systems, heart problems, digestive disorders, chronic inflammation, and musculoskeletal disorders. . . . For anyone to genuinely address these health issues, the person needs to address the trauma that fuels them. Without that foundational healing, all other healing becomes difficult or impossible, because the body is still stuck in the trauma. 90

A plethora of research illuminates how trauma becomes stored in the body. Several influential studies detailed by psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk in his book The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma demonstrate that after traumatic experiences, bodies reexperience terror, rage, helplessness, and the urge to fight or take flight. 91 Van der Kolk notes that all trauma is preverbal and therefore is akin to the experience of a stroke when it is difficult to speak. He notes that the brain captures images that return as nightmares and flashbacks. Unprocessed sense fragments from the traumatic experience—such as sounds, smells, physical sensations— register separately from the story itself. Time, then, does not matter: the trauma can be experienced one day as if it had happened the prior day, even if the actual experience took place in the previous decade.

**Avidyā is a Buddhist concept of ignorance and blindness to the ultimate truth**

WAYS OUT OF WHITE DELUSION?

It is my contention that Foucault’s “post-Marxist” insights about the intrinsic link between productive practices of power and forms of the subject must remain central in our critical analyses of the neoliberal turn. While in many Marxist accounts neoliberalism is understood simply as an intensification of capitalist exploitation, which is heightening the fundamental class antagonism between capitalists and laborers, from a Foucauldian perspective it must be understood as a new configuration of power relations that produces new forms of the subject. We have to recognize the historically specific ways that the instability and the persistent crises of capitalism have been negotiated in recent decades through neoliberal forms of governmentality – new political technologies of power and social regulation. Many socialist writers have lamented that the retreat from class analysis in the academy in the eighties and nineties was one of neoliberalism’s most effective weapons because it prevented class-consciousness from developing as the appropriate response to the rise of neoliberalism. While the spread of neoliberalism is clearly inseparable from the structural logic of capitalist accumulation, to view the subjects it produces simply as class subjects who lack the appropriate consciousness of their situation is nevertheless problematic in my view. While it is important to acknowledge that in his lectures on neoliberalism, The Birth of Biopolitics(2008), Foucault describes technologies and rationalities rather than their actual empirical outcomes, empirical and experiential evidence gives weight to the theoretical claim that the neoliberal reorganization of Western societies has resulted in new forms of the subject – a new understanding of ourselves. Social volatility and economic risks have become increasingly central for profit making and the financialization of everyday life requires new kinds of subjects and social networks (Floyd 2009, 196). Neoliberal governmentality has dramatically extended the reach of the markets and market rationality and thereby produced the corresponding subjects who are compelled to behave as market actors – consumers, individual investors and entrepreneurs – across several dimensions of their lives. As Foucault shows, neoliberal techniques scramble the traditional opposition between capitalists and workers in the sense that subjects are increasingly conceived and conceive themselves as entrepreneurs of the self, who attempt to maximize their “human capital.” Whether we focus on the reforms of pension plans and healthcare, revisions of copyright laws or the restructuring of universities, we are increasingly required to view ourselves as market-actors and to behave accordingly. These new forms of governmentality and social regulation are misrecognized insofar as they are identified as “merely” cultural or superstructural. The historically specific practices of power in which we must engage daily in order to go about our lives are not just symbolic, cultural or discursive practices as Foucault’s Marxist critics sometimes claim. They are essentially material, social and economic practices that are organized through neoliberal rationality and embedded in law and political institutions, but also in everyday social relationships. Hence, we are not confronted merely with ideological fiction that could be dispelled through the development of appropriate class-consciousness; we are confronted with a new kind of social reality. What the Foucauldian analysis of neoliberalism downplays in my view, however, is the necessary “failures” of neoliberal governmentality to constitute entrepreneurial subjects – the neoliberal constitution of others.” The obstacles in the way of developing class consciousness are also “objective” in the second sense that we are witnessing other, radically new forms of subjectivation that are brought about by the global, neoliberal turn: the unemployed and the undocumented subjects, as well as the neocolonial, disposable subjects of the global South. It is widely acknowledged by numerous socialist writers that the composition of the workforce has dramatically changed in the last decades due to the globalization and neoliberalization of our economies. The industrial working class has been shrinking in all Western countries at a rapid rate, and has been largely replaced by post-industrial, service-sector workers, who are largely female and in part-time or precarious employment. Instead of social relations based on relatively stable forms of wage-labor, the growth of insecurity and negative flexibilization have come to increasingly characterize all work. Moreover, the majority of the poorest and the most oppressed people in the world today are not wage-laborers. They are people who have to eke out a precarious existence in the informal economy because capitalism appears to have no use for them at all. In other words, the forms of exploitation have not only assumed radically new forms, but it has become increasingly unclear what the class relations are and how we are situated in their intersections. It is imperative to also theorize these new forms of the subject and the political potential they hold for radical social transformation. That requires acknowledging the limits of both Foucault’s analysis of neoliberalism, as well as traditional Marxist class analysis, and moving beyond them.

The association of hacking with computer software is gradually changing, as new walks of life are being explored with a hacker mind-set. The creation of ‘‘hackerspaces’’ or ‘‘makerspaces’’ in cities around the world has facilitated the spread of hacker practices to new fields of engagement, such as open hardware development and do-it-yourself (DIY) biology. This evolution brings with it a renewed need to analyze the significance of hacking from a historical angle and in relation to its role in industrial and institutional innovation. The works that compose this special section of Science, Technology, & Human Values draw on the idea of recuperation and suggest that such a theoretical framework is a productive tool for analyzing the life cycles of digital innovation. Three papers examine the process of recuperation following a red thread that runs through many recent works on hacking. ‘‘Recuperation from below’’ captures the essential meaning and promise of hacking, which is to use technology to serve ends other than those originally intended, starting with the computer (which is itself a product of the military–industrial complex). This evokes the emancipatory promises that are invested in reverse engineering and the repurposing of tools and technology. Our proposition, and that of the contributing authors, is that the job is only half done if we rest content with restating this promise (Troxler and Maxigas 2014). As the saying goes, ‘‘two can play that game,’’ and hacking can be hacked. Hacker practices and innovations are adopted, adapted, and repurposed by corporate and state institutions on a regular basis, thus made to serve other ends than the (emancipatory) ones claimed at the outset. By saying this, we do not deny that there is a potential in hacking, only that this promise must be weighed against the likelihood of a future recuperation of the same practices.

This book has applied what I believe is the immensely powerful idea of a mission to solving the ‘wicked’ problems we face today. In it, I have argued that tackling grand challenges will only happen if we reimagine government as a prerequisite for restructuring capitalism in a way that is inclusive, sustainable and driven by innovation.

First and foremost, this means reinventing government for the twenty-first century – equipping it with the tools, organization and culture it needs to drive a mission-oriented approach. It also means bringing purpose to the core of corporate governance and taking a very broad stakeholder position across the economy. It means changing the relationship between public and private sectors, and between them and civil society, so they all work symbiotically for a common goal. The reason for the emphasis on rethinking government is simple: only government has the capacity to bring about transformation on the scale needed. The relationship between economic actors and civil society shows our problems at their most profound, and this is what we must unravel.

Among critical infrastructure sectors in the U.S., energy is perhaps the most crucial of the 16 sectors defined by the Department of Homeland Security. This sector is so vital because it provides the energy necessary to run every other critical infrastructure sector. However, the U.S. power grid, the backbone of the energy sector, is built upon an aging skeleton that is becoming increasingly vulnerable every day. Whether from terrorists or nation-states like Russia and China, the power grid is susceptible to not just physical attacks, but also to cyber intrusion as well. However, much of this threat can be mitigated if the U.S. takes the appropriate steps to safeguard the power grid and avoid a potential catastrophe in the future.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism on U.S. soil has been at the forefront of American consciousness. Critical infrastructure provides an appealing target because of the disproportionally large impact even a small attack can have on the sectors. In particular, the power grid represents a particularly lucrative target, both in terms of the ease of access and the large impact it can make. The National Research Council stated that the U.S. power grid is “vulnerable to intelligent multi-site attacks by knowledgeable attackers intent on causing maximum physical damage to key components on a wide geographical scale.” Additionally, the physical security of transmission and distribution systems is difficult due to the dispersed nature of these key components, which in turn is advantageous to attackers as it reduces the likelihood of their capture. From 2002-2012, approximately 2,500 physical attacks occurred against transmission lines and towers worldwide and approximately 500 attacks against transformer substations. Terrorists have the motivation to attack the U.S. power grid but the very nature of the grid makes it highly vulnerable. The power grid is not only at risk from physical attacks, but also nation-state cyberattacks.

If a non-state group realized that the possession of nuclear weapons could trigger a total catalytic war between two or more major nuclear-armed states, what possible situations might set these dynamics in motion? The potential success of a catalytic nuclear detonation by a terrorist group during a crisis between two nuclear-armed states (i.e., the original target of the nefarious attack and the victim of a subsequent inadvertent retaliatory strike), when tensions are running high, and a heightened state of alert is in place – at a nuclear or sub-nuclear level – would likely be amplified. That is, a broader nuclear exchange would likely occur. Moreover, a non-state actor might exploit a tense situation by making provocative false claims that its attack had been sanctioned by the state with which the victim of the attack was already in a crisis, or worse still, nuclear brinkmanship. Against the backdrop of fear, acrimony, and paranoia – when decision-makers are more susceptible to misperception and misunderstanding – any denials or assurances would fall on deaf ears.24 If a repeat of the 1999 Kargil crisis or the more recent Indian-Pakistani stand-off in 2019, a non-state nuclear detonation (or the credible threat of one) could spark an accidental or inadvertent nuclear exchange. 25 Thus, any confidence Indian or Pakistani has in their ability to manage a conflict below the nuclear-level would likely be unreliable in the event of a non-state nuclear attack. Absent unambiguous and incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, an unprovoked non-state attack may compound mutual suspicions about the other side’s intentions and behavior, and in turn, confirm worst-case scenario assessments. 26

In this paper, we suggest that the foremost threat of cyberattacks is not necessarily their first-order consequences—such as the degradation of physical systems, data theft, or loss of access. While these outcomes remain a cause for concern, the fixation on direct effects obscures the more insidious consequences of long-term psychological harm and societal damage. This perspective acknowledges the human dimension of cyberattacks that target individual well-being, morale, and vulnerability. For many cyber perpetrators, ranging from terrorists to state-sponsored hackers and criminal organizations, the primary objective of attacks is to evoke anxiety and terror, and disseminate misinformation among the public. In other words, these are nonphysical aims whose efficacy cannot be simply measured by weighing rubble, counting bodies, or tallying lost funds. Viewing a ransomware attack on a hospital network as minor or unsuccessful, simply because it caused minimal physical destruction and failed to attain a ransom, ignores the extensive psychological and societal damage it can leave in its wake (Shandler and Gomez 2022). Through this lens, the severity of cyber-threats can and should also be measured by the level of psychological distress. We remove from the definition of distress transient or minor emotional responses such as unease or discomfort, and focus our attention on acute psychological distress, including visceral anxiety, enduring anger, and heightened threat perception (Canetti 2017; Byrne et al. 2022).

Currently, there is no consensus whether cyberattacks cause sufficient individual-level harm to constitute a grave threat. Some argue that the bulk of cyberattacks constitute only minor irritants (Lindsay 2013; Gartzke and Lindsay 2015), while other researchers insist that even low-level cyberattacks can levy severe psychological and political consequences (Gross, Canetti, and Vashdi 2016; Canetti et al. 2017). Addressing this dilemma, this paper employs an internal meta-analysis that reviews a series of experimental studies simulating exposure to cyberattacks. An internal meta-analysis is a powerful analytical tool that aggregates and analyzes a pooled collection of experiments conducted by a single researcher or group of researchers. This technique allows us to exploit heightened statistical power to provide precise statistical estimates of treatment effects, and incorporate studies conducted with different population groups at different points of time. We analyze the full gamut of studies conducted by the authors—including null and unpublished findings—to provide accurate, transparent, and conclusive evidence about the individual-level consequences of exposure to cyberattacks. In all, we aggregate and meta-analyze findings from eighteen experimental studies conducted between 2015 and 2021. Over the course of these studies, we exposed 6,020 unique respondents in three countries to simulated cyberattacks and conventional attacks, before measuring the psychological distress that ensued. All studies mimicked how people are exposed to real-world cyberattacks, while maintaining strict ethical standards to ensure participants’ well-being.

IND = Improvised Nuclear Device, RDD = Radiological dispersal device, RED = Radiological explosive device

NEW DYNAMICS IN NUCLEAR TERRORISM POSE NEW RISKS

Nowadays, ‘cyberattack’ is a term used on a daily basis. Bendovschi notes that in the literature can be found various definitions of the this and other similar terms, but all of cyberattacks should be seen as aimed at compromising the data confidentiality, integrity and availability [4, p. 25]. A cyberattack may generally be seen as intentionally stealing, exposing, altering, disabling, or destroying some data, applications or other assets using a network or a given digital device without having the necessary access to do that [5]. According to some scholars, a cyber incident is defined as a system’s security policy breach which affects the integrity or availability of a system in line with the 1990 Computer Misuse Act. This may also include gaining an unauthorised access or at least an attempt to gain such access [6].

Cyberattacks are not concentrated in a single sector. In fact, they can affect any activity in a society – government institutions, individual companies and even entire industries. Due to their nature and importance, critical infrastructure objects require special attention in terms of ensuring their security. For example, cyberattacks on nuclear power plants and facilities that store nuclear or other radioactive materials, as well as nuclear weapons, can have existential consequences. Although states are making great efforts to achieve the highest possible level of nuclear security, there is no such thing as absolute security. Because of this even the slightest possibility of the potential use of nuclear weapons should not be underestimated, including being misled due to misjudgment. The latter is especially important nowadays, when the world relies more and more on technology, which also raises a number of questions about the risks resulting from it. Historically, at least ten similar cases can be listed since the end of World War II [7, pp. 7-23].

The Department of Defense (DOD) is currently considering a proposal that’ll effectively nationalize 5G technology and networks in the United States. By abandoning the market-driven strategy that won the 4G race for the nation, America would merely be undermining its own progress — and losing to China.

This is especially concerning since China sees itself as a rival to U.S. hegemony and is increasingly exerting its diplomatic and military influence in a brazen way. It has launched cyberattacks and attempted to acquire sensitive military secrets and intelligence. It has already made strides in the 5G race and is rapidly acquiring key 5G patents. Its flagship telecommunications giant is propped-up by $75 billion in subsidies and was slated to build the UK’s 5G network this year. The British government only reneged after U.S. diplomatic pressure.

Nuclear terrorism could even spark full-scale nuclear war between states. Such war could involve the entire spectrum of nuclear conflict possibilities, ranging from a. nuclear attack upon a nonnuclear state to systemwide nuclear war. How might such far-reaching consequences of nuclear terrorism come about? Perhaps the most likely way would involve a terrorist nuclear assault against a state by terrorists "hosted" in another state. For example, consider the following scenario:

Early in the 1980s, Israel and her Arab state neighbors finally stand ready to conclude a comprehensive, multilateral peace settlement. With a bilateral treaty between Israel and Egypt already several years old, only the interests of the Palestinians—as defined by the PLO— seem to have been left out. On the eve of the proposed signing of the peace agreement, half a dozen crude nuclear explosives in the one kiloton range detonate in as many Israeli cities. Public grief in Israel over the many thousand dead and maimed is matched only by the outcry for revenge. In response to the public mood, the government of Israel initiates selected strikes against terrorist strongholds in Lebanon, whereupon the Lebanese government and its allies retaliate against Israel. Before long, the entire region is ablaze, conflict has escalated to nuclear forms, and all countries in the area have suffered unprecedented destruction.

Few would argue that the world is a safer place than it was on 9/11. So how has America avoided a massive, foreign-directed terrorist attack since then? One key has been the foreign collection program implemented under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. This lifesaving program is set to expire at the end of the year, unless Congress votes to extend it.

The program authorizes U.S. intelligence officials to mount and sustain surveillance on foreigners outside the country who are suspected of presenting a national security threat to the United States, friends and allies. The surveillance program has uncovered all kinds of invaluable information, from terrorist plots and changes in terrorist tactics to plans to spread weapons of mass destruction and escalate cyberattacks.

In biotechnology and other leading-edge industries, after-tax investor gains are often reinvested in the next round of risky startups, thus creating a virtuous cycle. If the government had taxed away the Struengmanns’ capital gains from selling Hexal, they might not have had the cash or incentive to invest in BioNTech. One of the reason that nearly all high-income countries keep capital-gains taxes low is to help ensure that investors and entrepreneurs are incentivized to take the risk of committing time and resources to ventures that can offer no promise of a good return, the sort of ventures, in other words, so typical of ventures relying on scientific and technical innovation. Those who take high risks should be rewarded, if that risk works out, with high rewards.

Unfortunately, that logic eludes President Biden and congressional Democrats. They not only would like to raise capital-gains-tax rates, but some of them would also like to broaden the capital-gains-tax base, including by taxing gains before they are realized. If applied to startup investing, that could do terrible damage to the ability of early stage companies to secure the patient capital that they need. Punishing capital gains makes no sense if we want investors and entrepreneurs to pursue valuable but risky growth opportunities.

Leonie Maria Tanczer, a postdoctoral researcher of cybersecurity, collective action, and gender studies, draws on the research of Jordan and Taylor to further study the “male-only” stereotype of hacktivism. In a 2015 article with a sample of five women and five men, Tanczer conducted a discourse analysis of hacktivist communities, believing that a gendered analysis was particularly necessary for a community focused on creating social and political change. Language reflects and perpetuates cultural stereotypes, so it was an appropriate venue to study the gender biases of hacktivists. Though Tanczer’s sample size is small, she is the first to venture into studying the direct link between gender and hacktivism. In interviews with her subjects, she recognized four patterns of discourse. Most prominently, she identified Male Oblivious Discourse among the men she surveyed, wherein they overlooked gender entirely. Not acknowledging sexism is in itself a form of sexism, and a male identity in the predominantly male hacktivist community affords the privilege of seeing gender as a non-issue. Female hackers push back on this attitude through Female Discourses of Resistance. This is either an Emphasis Discourse, where they actively emphasize their identities as women and hackers and combat the sexism in the community, or Negation Discourse, where women struggle with feelings of exclusion and with justifying a hacktivist identity. When confronted with their sexism or erasure of women, men retaliate with a Male Justification Discourse, where they try to defend themselves and explain away their Oblivious Discourse.41 A specific experience that Tanczer cites as Negation Discourse is particularly interesting in the context of my work. One woman who did not participate in the study explained to Tanczer that she identified as an activist and a hacker but not a hacktivist because her hacking work was not recognized as “real hacking” by other hackers: teaching everyone at occupy how to use wordpress, or teaching sewing classes at a makerspace in a poor neighbourhood…Skills that are categorized as ‘feminine’ are not thought of as real work in our society, so because of systemic social prejudices both within the hacker culture and society at large, by definition women are often not hacktivists.42 Comparing this with the experiences of the other women in her survey, Tanczer concludes that when faced with the struggle to reconcile their female and hacktivist identities, some will altogether drop the label hacktivist. Men, who dominate hacking communities, set definitions and decide what is considered hacktivism. Because of men’s built-in gender biases, these definitions often exclude work perceived as more feminine.43

Growing distrust of capitalism follows from its failure to address major socioeconomic challenges, not least climate change and inequalities in opportunity, income, and wealth. While private incentives under capitalism are good at stimulating efficiency, growth, and innovation, they also generate unequal income and wealth distributions (even in a context of intense competition), often at odds with social norms of fairness. Moreover, capitalist systems tend to underinvest in public goods like education, health care, and social insurance – all critical factors in the pandemic response – while also discounting negative externalities such as greenhouse-gas emissions.

These shortcomings of capitalism are predictable, but they are remediable through public policies and institutions. Tax and transfer policies and minimum wages can reduce income and wealth disparities, just as public investment in education, training, and health care can enhance opportunity by providing access to good jobs and fostering the creation of new enterprises. Likewise, a price on carbon dioxide and regulations limiting or banning carbon emissions can help the world avert the existential threat of climate change.

How can we adjudicate such claims? One answer is by looking at available forecasts. At the Swedish National China Centre, this is what we have done in a new report. For the first time, we have produced an overview of all available forecasts of a possible Taiwan conflict. We find that the results largely contradict the alarmist position. Forecasts consistently rate the risk of armed conflict in the Taiwan Strait as low.

Alarmist commentators overestimate the risk of war in at least three important ways.

Plenty of Americans — including senior military officers, academics, and politicians — think Chinese leader Xi Jinping sees war as the best option. Those making this argument typically say Xi is tired of waiting for unification to happen peacefully, sees a military window of opportunity, or has set a deadline for finishing the job. Some think China’s recent economic problems create an incentive for Beijing to launch a diversionary Taiwan war.

We cannot know Xi’s priorities with certainty. Nevertheless, from what we can observe, an elective war against Taiwan is hardly a compelling proposition for Xi’s government.

BEIJING (AP) — China fired back at the United States on Sunday over the two nations' trade dispute, issuing a report that blamed the conflict on the Trump administration but refraining from escalating the trade war.

The report from the Cabinet spokesman's office said China won't back down on "major issues of principle," but offered no sense of whether or how the world's second largest economy might retaliate against U.S. tariffs on goods manufactured in China.

The International Monetary Fund says China's economic decline is likely to continue over the next four years as the world's second largest economy deals with a range of challenges from a rapidly aging population, higher unemployment and a property crisis.

In a report released on Friday, the global financial policy body – also known as the IMF – projected China's economic growth would drop to 4.6% this year, down from its 5.2% growth in 2023, and fall further to 3.4% by 2028.