Description
The truth is my head of school wanted me to take on the thankless job of “Director of Undergraduate Studies.” A few days after having failed to convince him that I really didn’t want to do it and (therefore) would be terrible at it, I saw an email about a research fellowship application for the UK’s signals intelligence organization GCHQ. I put together a proposal for an interdisciplinary project (politics, linguistics and computing) studying gender constructions of online narrative on violent extremism and got it. Since, I have migrated – like many others – from terrorism and counterterrorism “expertise” to cyber security “expertise.” In my defence, cyber security is as much in dire need of critical engagement as terrorism and counterterrorism was twenty years ago. To start with, “security” is almost always used uncritically and often interchangeably with resilience. But is this enough to justify a move that, in essence, is spurred by the migration of government funds from one overinflated security threat (terrorism) to possibly another overinflated security threat (cyber security)? Aside from ethics of joining the cyber wagon, the reflection will address the sociology and economy of migrations in security expertise and the risks they represent for policymaking.
