Cyber security and the politics of time

Abstract

Time is an under-represented topic in security studies and International Relations (IR). The development and implementation of security measures are often justified as necessary responses to the contemporary rate of global change yet little attention is granted time and temporality as factors influencing the politics and practices of security. This thesis proposes that security can be understood within the framework of a ‘politics of time’ (chronopolitics), in which collective perceptions of time and temporality are constitutive of security politics and practices. Its principal object is cyber security, which aims to regulate and exploit complex sociotechnical systems of networked and interdependent information technologies. The thesis examines how cyber security actors imagine time and temporality in (post)modernity and the implications of these temporal biases for the politics of cyber security. It explores how cyber security actors imagine the accelerating present and the relative deceleration of political decision-making; how apocalyptic narratives of imminent catastrophe illustrate concerns about the immanent dangers of technology; how the past is mobilised through historical analogies to understand dystopian futures; how the future is metaphorically inhabited through preparedness exercises and simulations, and literally populated through education, training and recruitment. These ‘chronotypes’ inform the cyber security imaginary and disclose a manifold of deeper chronopolitical tendencies, theorised here as the logics of assemblage, real time, event, and eschaton. The thesis makes an original contribution to IR by promoting the interdisciplinary analysis of time to help understand the politics and practices of contemporary security.

Date of Award	1 Nov 2013
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	King's College London
Supervisor	David Betz (Supervisor) & Theo Farrell (Supervisor)