Description
How martial actors experience and understand the world around them is mediated by steadily growing layers of technical systems. These technical systems process and compile numerous data sources together, visualise and present the result of analysis to decision makers and leaders. These systems enable key military functions from intelligence production to targeting. However, they exist through the inherent dependencies of a socio-technical ecosystem or ‘stack’, and few of them can exist without it. The stack comprises of horizontal technical layers through which data reaches its users, and vertical connectors which bridge between layers to deliver data and allow work to be done on it. Each horizontal layer and vertical connector represent organisations, technologies, people and their associated cultures, assumptions and biases which together relate and affect each other. Using assemblage theory, this paper sets out how the capability of the stack emerges from its component actants. Lacking the technical capacity to build and maintain the stack, martial actors are being epistemologically captured by private sector organisations who are dictating the terms by which the state’s sovereign control over the direction and use of violence is understood.
