Introduction to Security Studies and Technology

Session 1: Introduction to Security Studies and Technology

• Hobbesian statism originates from the need to address radical violence, both interpersonal and international. Advocates for centralized violence under a sovereign, which establishes legitimacy (sovereign authority), accountability (hierarchical governance), and coordination (collective state purpose).
• The evolution of security studies expanded beyond traditional paradigms (realism and liberal internationalism) to include Critical Security Studies (CSS). CSS introduces new agents (non-state actors, individuals), diverse levels of analysis (beyond the state), and topics like human security, gender, and environmental threats.
• Technology in security is reshaping security protocols, for example, surveillance systems, AI, and robotics. Proactive, data-driven approaches are replacing reactive models, raising ethical and political questions (algorithmic bias, technological infrastructure).
• Critical Security Studies (CSS), developed by Krause and Williams, critiques traditional state-centric and military-focused security frameworks. Central questions include security for whom (individuals, communities, states) and against what (physical, economic vulnerabilities, environmental hazards). It focuses on the construction of security threats through language and power dynamics, with examples involving language (e.g., "proliferation") and non-state actors (NGOs, private firms challenging state sovereignty).

Session 2: Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and Femicide

• Definitions: Femicide is the intentional killing of women based on gender, showcasing misogynistic motives or patriarchal power dynamics. Feminicide broadens this concept to include state complicity. Intimate Partner Homicide (IPH) is the killing of an individual by a current or former intimate partner.
• Global Trends: Latin America has some of the highest femicide rates globally, despite legal frameworks and social movements. Global femicide rates tend to plateau, indicating systemic challenges in reducing gender-based violence.
• Focus Areas: Research explores how perpetrators rationalize their actions through emotions and narratives. The role of societal and institutional factors are also considered. The study explores structural and systemic barriers to addressing gender-based violence and ethical/methodological challenges in research on perpetrators' perspectives.
• Key Article Insights: One article identifies four key emotions (fear, helplessness, pain, and anger) in perpetrators' narratives, often reflecting societal norms of masculinity. Another examines police attitudes and definitions of IPV in Canada.

Session 3: Counter and De-radicalization

• Core Concepts: Cognitive vs. behavioral radicalization (internal ideological transformation vs. outward actions). Counter-radicalization focuses on preventing initial radicalization by addressing vulnerabilities and root causes. De-radicalization is a process involving ideological shift and renunciation of violent extremism, typically tailored to individuals or groups.
• Program Objectives: Reduce violence and promote re-socialization/reintegration of ex-extremists. The acquisition of intelligence from participants aims to combat terrorism and improve societal acceptance of former radicals through community engagement.
• Challenges: Evaluation limitations exist (defining success, and reliable recidivism data). Program design needs to be context-specific, addressing gender and cultural sensitivities, which are often insufficiently addressed.

Session 4: EU Security, Enlargement, and the Ukraine Conflict

• Russia's War on Ukraine: Marked by a shift in EU security and enlargement policies, highlighting EU weaknesses in strategic autonomy and hard power capabilities.
• Enlargement and Security: EU enlargement policy is increasingly influenced by geopolitical factors (e.g., Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia). Challenges exist in balancing institutional complexity with national sovereignty and addressing the need for a stronger and better-equipped EU security framework.
• Geopolitical Dynamics: Russia's aggression emphasized the EU's eastern borders and the strategic importance of its security.
• Strategic Autonomy and Security: Concepts around strategic autonomy remain ambiguous, with EU member states divided over implementation, but Russia's invasion reignited debates about Europe's defense capabilities, highlighting the EU's reliance on NATO. This is impacting the nature of EU enlargement.

Session 5: Crisis Management – Governance and Coordination

• What is a Crisis?: A serious threat to fundamental norms and structures of a social system. Crises are socially constructed, reflecting the politics of crisis management.
• Phases: Preparedness actions to mitigate risks (planning and training), Response to the immediate crisis, Recovery to return to normal, and Learning from the crisis.
• Transboundary Crises: Crises affecting multiple organizations, sectors, or countries (e.g., pandemics, cyber-attacks).
• Core Challenges: Managing fragmentation (breakdown of collaboration) and transitioning between modes of organizing during crises, balancing accountability, learning, and sense-making.
• Governance, Capacity, and Legitimacy: Robust crisis management requires governance capacity (resources, coordination); and legitimacy (trust, fairness, effectivness); in crisis response. Types of crises include unique and recurring (local and transboundary) crises. Fragmentation (e.g., ambiguity about roles/responsibilities) and lack of integration can hinder traditional crisis coordination approaches.

Session 6: Intelligence – Failures, Covert Actions, and Open-Source Innovations

• Intelligence Defined: The collection, analysis, and dissemination of security-relevant information to reduce uncertainty.
• Intelligence Failures: Common causes include noise and ambiguity in data, organizational issues (fragmentation and coordination problems), and cognitive biases in analysis.
• Covert Actions: Actions taken in the shadows that fall along a scale from plausible to implausible deniability, potentially tied to both state and non-state actors.
• Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT): Increasingly important intelligence method utilizing publicly available data but challenges exist with information overload, reliability and ethical concerns.
• Anglo-American Intelligence Paradigms: Critiqued for not accurately reflecting perspectives of other world regions and cultures.

Session 7: Sanctions and Infrastructural Geopolitics

• Sanctions as Choice: Used increasingly as a policy tool to assert control through financial networks, although often without clear success.
• Weaponized Interdependence: States can influence other states through coercive tools like disrupting economic networks (e.g., SWIFT).
• Sanction Failures: Exemplified by Iraq and Afghanistan, where the consequences tended to outweigh any positive results.
• Infrastructural Geopolitics: The idea that financial infrastructures are not neutral, but they are shaped, and influence, global power dynamics. Alternative systems (e.g., blockchains) are challenging the status quo.