Abstract
In this chapter I examine the relations of knowledge/power that undergird military technologies that transmute life into anonymous data and thereby render it killable through lethal drone targeting. I specifically focus on tracking technologies developed by the National Surveillance Agency (NSA) that have been incorporated into the United States Department of Defense’s (DoD) drone program. I examine the interlocking of the NSA’s metadata with the DoD’s algorithmic formulae used to conduct drone kills in which the identities of those killed are often not known. I situate what I term the bioinformationalisation of life in the context of Pakistan and Yemen in order to disclose the violent transliteration of abstract metadata to flesh.
I wish to thank Holly Randell-Moon for her invitation to contribute the keynote presentation, upon which this chapter is based, at the Space, Race, Bodies: Geocorpographies of City, Nation, Empire conference, 8–10 December 2014, Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand. I am profoundly grateful to Constance Owen for her brilliant and enduring research assistance.
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Pugliese, J. (2016). Death by Metadata: The Bioinformationalisation of Life and the Transliteration of Algorithms to Flesh. In: Randell-Moon, H., Tippet, R. (eds) Security, Race, Biopower. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55408-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55408-6_1
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