1. Demodernization by Design?
War, Geopolitics and the
Architecture of Infrastructure
Stephen Graham
Newcastle University

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1 Networked Infrastructures as Sources of Boundless Threat
2 The Geopolitics of Forced Disconnection
3 ‘Cyber-Terror’ Discourse
4 State-Backed Infrastructural war
5 Case Studies
6 Conclusions

3. • 1 Networked Infrastructures
as Sources of Boundless Threat

9. 2 The Geopolitics of Forced Disconnection
• There is nothing in the
world today that cannot
become a weapon (Liang
and Xiangsui, 1999)
• If you want to destroy
someone nowadays, you go
after their infrastructure.
(Phil Agre, 2001)
• Neglected : falls between
IR and urban research

10. War in a “Weirdly Pervious World”
3 Starting points:
(i) Increasing vulnerabilities of ‘networked
societies’
The world struggle against terrorists will
continue because our global economy
simultaneously creates many possible
weapons and angers many possible
enemies (Luke)
Soon people won't be able to just turn the
machines off, because they will be so
dependent on them that turning them off
would amount to suicide (Bill Joy).

11. (ii) Changing political economies
of infrastructure development
• ”The dismantling and
dismemberment, some would
say vivisection of [the] Large
Technical Systems Rochlin
• taken for granted becomes
provisional.
• assumed to be guaranteed
becomes immutable
• deep symbols of modernity and
progress are reorganised as
fleeting, ephemeral, systems.

12. (iii) Changing nature of war
• Single hyperpower, “new wars”,
assymetric ‘frontier land’ warfare,
24/7 mediatisation
• ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’ (RMA)
• War being urbanised and fought through
everyday technics and socio-natures
• City-dwellers are particularly at risk
when their complex and sophisticated
infrastructure systems are destroyed
and rendered inoperable, or when they
become isolated from external
contacts Barakat

13. 3 Two-Sides : (i) ‘Cyber-Terror’ Discourse
• ‘Netwar’ : asymmetric,
distanciated conflict
• Coordinated, unseen, and distant
attacks by terrorists (especially
al-Qaeda)
• Everyday technics agents of mass
murder and ‘decyborganisation’
• ‘Always on’ economy:
Cascading effects, ‘swarming
attacks’
• “Electronic Pearl Harbor’
• Threat enhanced by deregulation

15. But (So Far) Largely Chimerical
• 1996-2003: 217,394 ‘security
incidents’ (Carnegie Mellon) not a
single one can be defined as cyber
terror
• Accessing computer network does not
translate to control of the
infrastructure
• Still require human intervention
• Accustomed to failure
• Hoaxes and myths about information
warfare contaminate everything from
official reports to newspaper
stories (Smith, 1998).

16. If terrorism is an act of violence to
achieve political objects, how
useful will terrorists find a
weapon whose effects may not
even be noticed, or, in the case of
economic attacks, where damage
might be gradual or cumulative?”
(Lewis, 2003)

17. 4 State-Backed Infrastructural War
• Much more neglected
• US increasingly uses
elaborate infrastructural
warfare strategies to
sustain global military
hegemony
• ‘Vertical geopolitics’ : air
and orbital/space power to
sustain urban
demodernisation and
disconnection
• Also central to Israeli
strategy of ‘Urbicide’

19. • John Warden’s
“Enemy as a System”.
Basis for US doctrine :
“Strategic Ring
Theory”
• Legitimises civilian
infrastructures as
‘dual-use targets’
• Ritzer by declaring
dual-use targets
legitimate military
objectives, the Air
Force can directly
target civilian morale.

20. • Edward Felker’s (1998)
embellishment of Warden
• Infrastructure, rather than a
separate 'ring' of the
'enemy as a system', in fact
pervades, and connects, all
the others to actually
constitute the society as a
whole
• If infrastructure links the
subsystems of a society, he
wrote, might it be the most
important target ? (1998).

21. First Order Effects
Second Order
Effects
Third Order Effects
No light after dark or in
building interiors
Erosion of command
and control capabilities
Greater logistics
complexity
No refrigeration
Increased requirement
for power generating
equipment
Decreased mobility
Some stoves/ovens non
operable
Increased requirement
for night vision devices
Decreased Situational
Awareness
Inoperable hospital
electronic equipment
Increased reliance on
battery-powered items
for news, broadcasts,
etc.
Rising disease rates
No electronic access to
bank accounts/money
Shortage of clean water
for drinking, cleaning
and preparing food
Rising rates of
malnutrition
Disruption in some
transportation and
communications
services
Hygiene problems
Increased numbers of
non-combatants
requiring assistance
Disruption to water
supply, treatment
facilities, and sanitation
Inability to prepare and
process some foods
Difficulty in
communicating with
non-combatants

22. 5 Case Study 1: Systematic
De-electrification - Serbia 1999
• NATO strategy designed to demolish, destroy,
devastate, degrade, and ultimately eliminate the
essential infrastructure of the country (Clark)
• Between the 13th and 31st of May highly classified
weapons used, known as BLU-114 'Soft' Bombs
• Short-circuited 37 electrical transformers, plunging
large swathes of Serbia into a blackout for four
days
• By May 24th the foundations of the elementary
well-being of ordinary men, women and children
have already been destroyed (Cohen in Nation).

24. Lt. General Michael C. Short:
had airmen been in charge, it
would have been done
differently. I felt that on the first
night [of the bombing] the
power should have gone off,
and major bridges around
Belgrade should lave gone into
the Danube, and the water
should have been cut off

25. Case Study 2: ‘Bomb Now, Die Later’ :
The ‘War on Public Health’ in Iraq -- 1991-2003
• Destroying the means of producing electricity is
particularly attractive because it can not be
stockpiled (Bolkcom and Pike, 1993)
• Gen. David Deptula 1991: “hey, your lights will come
back on as soon as you get rid of Saddam !
• General Buster Glosson 1991 : ”I want to put every
[Iraqi] household in an autonomous mode and make
them feel they were isolated… We wanted to play
with their psyche

26. ”There was considerable
discussion of the results that
could be expected from
attacking electric power.
Some argued that … the
loss of electricity in Baghdad
and other cities would have
little effect on popular
morale ; others argued that
the affluence created by
petro-dollars had made the
city populations
psychologically dependent
on the amenities associated
with electric power
(Keaney and Cohen, 1993)

27. • In 1991 88% electric power capacity destroyed
• 20 generator sites 100% destroyed
• Turbine halls repeatedly bombed despite being banned in ROE
(‘easy targets’ and many spare ‘planes hanging around)
• al-Hartha power plant in Basra bombed 13 times
• At wars’ end 4% pre-war supplies left

28. Sanctions, Bombing, and 2003 Invasion
Added to Humanitarian Disaster
• Apocalyptic demodernisation
of highly urban-industrial
nation
• Water and sanitation collapse
• Fully predicted by U.S.
Defense Intelligence Agency in
1991
• 111,000 civilian deaths
attributable to postwar
adverse health effects
• Between 1991 and 1998 over
500,000 excess deaths
amongst Iraqi children under
five

29. Case Study 3: Towards State
Computer Network Attack (CNA)
• The challenge is to break into the
computer systems that control a
country's infrastructure, with the result
that the civilian infra-structure of a
nation would be held hostage (Church,
2000).
• Joint Warfare Analysis Center at
Dahlgren (Va.). Major General Bruce
Wright: a team at the Center can can
tell you not just how a power plant or
rail system is built, but what exactly is
involved in keeping that system up and
making that system efficient

30. 6 Conclusions : Demodernisation,
Democracy, Geopolitics
• Everyday urban technics emerging as key geopolitical
sites
• Binaries breaking down: civil/military, inside/ outside,
war/peace, local/global, domestic/ international
• Potentially boundless and continuous landscapes of
conflict, risk and unpredictable, distanciated attack
• War increasingly becomes a strategy of deliberate decyborganisation and demodernisation through
orchestrated assaults on everyday, networked, technics
• “War, in this sense, is everywhere and everything. It is
large and small. It has no boundaries in time and space.
Life itself is war (Agre, 2001)