Securing with algorithms: Knowledge, decision, sovereignty

Abstract

Amid the deployment of algorithmic techniques for security – from the gathering of intelligence data to the proliferation of smart borders and predictive policing – what are the political and ethical stakes involved in securing with algorithms? Taking seriously the generative and world-making capacities of contemporary algorithms, this special issue draws attention to the embodied actions of algorithms as they extend cognition, agency and responsibility beyond the conventional sites of the human, the state and sovereignty. Though focusing on different modes of algorithmic security, each of the contributions to the special issue shares a concern with what it means to claim security on the terrain of incalculable and uncertain futures. To secure with algorithms is to reorient the embodied relation to uncertainty, so that human and non-human cognitive beings experimentally generate and learn what to bring to the surface of attention for a security action.