‘The system of systems’ is a military term that embraces the doctrine of ‘total interoperability’ and ‘full spectrum dominance’, whereby warfare becomes ‘a permanent boundless exercise … against a wide range of non-state adversaries’. Not the Thirty Years War, or the Hundred Years War, but the for ever and everywhere war – war itself as a kind of super-world. When I look at images of the militarised European border at, say, Melilla or Ceuta – places I hope never to find myself in – I see the technologies of a medieval siege repurposed for the Technicum. This medieval modernism is born of a fatal resolve to keep the outsider out, to separate the verified from the unverified. But because it requires the systematic enactment of suspicion, it’s also a demonstration of the weakness of the strong.
Frances Stonor Saunders, “Where on Earth are You?”
