| 1. |
- Eriksson, Johan, Professor, 1967-, et al.
(författare)
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Conceptualizing the European military-civilian-industrial complex : The need for a helicopter perspective
- 2023
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Ingår i: Defence Studies. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 1470-2436 .- 1743-9698. ; 3:4, s. 561-588
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In his 1961 farewell address, US President Eisenhower coined the term “military-industrial complex,” referring to the coalescing of military, industrial, and political interest groups. In contemporary Europe, the military-industrial complex is arguably transforming into a complex with a noteworthy commercial civilian dimension, blurring traditional military and arms-focused understandings of European defence and security. Our emphasis on an added corporate civilian component captures the expansion of defence and security beyond the traditional military domain. Coalescing of industry and politics is observed in Europe, blurring the military-civilian divide, technologically as well as in organization and governance, particularly through public-private partnerships. Eisenhower, himself a decorated WWII general, warned of how the US military-industrial complex could lead to “disastrous use of misplaced power.” Rather than reiterating such a conclusion in the European context, our paper examines how the European military-civilian-industrial complex is emerging, looking at how elite participants shape the public-private structure of the complex, and specifically how policies on dual-use and emerging technologies influence developments in Europe. The focus herein is on novel actors, characteristics, and the European Union and charts out defining conceptual features of the defence and security industry in Europe
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| 2. |
- Eriksson, Johan, Professor, 1967-, et al.
(författare)
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Cyber security in Sweden and China : Going on the Attack?
- 2016
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Ingår i: Conflict in Cyberspace. - London : Routledge. - 9781138947788 - 9781315669878 ; , s. 83-94
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Introduction In recent years Western pundits and politicians have played up the specter of a new digital divide, between opposing democratic and authoritarian information orders, by at times even labeled an Internet cold war 2.0. The term digital divide originally explained unequal access to the Internet and digital information resources inside and between countries (Norris 2001). The new digital divide was not about unequal access to the Internet and digital information resources. It was political in nature due to different conceptions of liberties, freedom of expression, and how information flows should be governed nationally and internationally. Most notably, former US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in her by now well-known talk in Washington DC on January 21, 2010, emphasized that an “information curtain” had descended between free and closed nations of the world (Clinton 2010). Clinton, invoked and echoed Winston Churchill’s famous words on the iron curtain that came to divide Europe for more than fifty years when she in Washington DC said: “an information curtain now separates the free from the unfree.” Two years later, the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) World Conference on International Communications (WCIT-12) meeting, which negotiated a revision to the 1988 international telecommunications regulations (ITR), broke down on vague wordings on Internet governance in the final resolution on December 14, 2012. Subsequently, The Economist magazine ran the headline “A digital cold war?” (Dubai 2012). However, the leaks by Edward Snowden in June 2013 radically changed the nature of the debate on Internet freedom and Internet security, although black-and-white dichotomies between the “free world” and the “unfree world” remain remarkably persistent, even after Snowden, a former employee with a contractor of the National Security Agency of the United States, revealed the enormous extent of surveillance and monitoring of individual citizens worldwide and in the USA. As statements by US congressmen about Chinese spyware infiltrating the mobile phones of Hong Kong activists illustrate, hypocrisy and myth making about “good” and “evil” surveillance is very much alive (Farrell and Finnemore 2013). Internet governance issues, however, are not black-and-white uncomplicated issues on either side of the imagined cyber curtain separating the free from the unfree (cf. Stalla-Bourdin et al. 2014). Russia, China and Iran are autocratic but not totalitarian countries. They showcase complex authoritarian-capitalist settings, which in the cases of Russia and Iran entail constrained but, nevertheless, electoral politics. Unlike totalitarian North Korea, these countries are not isolated from the rest of the world, but are deeply involved in social and economic globalization. And in China, interestingly, the state cannot fully trust private commercial companies to fully comply with the party-state’s intent to censor and monitor citizens’ communication over social networks. The remainder of this chapter discusses Swedish and Chinese cyber-security strategy, focusing on threat perceptions, cyber-security methods and organization. Why compare Sweden and China? The main reason is that while both have relatively advanced information societies and cyber-security measures, they represent on the one hand a parliamentary democracy, and on the other an autocratic political system. While many other democracies and autocracies could have been chosen, Sweden and China are particularly interesting given their difference in size and position in the global system. Also, while the USA is a leading cyber power, and thus in a sense a major geopolitical counterpart of China, we are not here analyzing the balance of cyber power, but are mainly interested in differences and similarities between democracy and autocracy concerning cyber security. And while US cyber-security policies have been extensively discussed elsewhere (Mueller and Kuehn 2013; Dunn Cavelty 2008), there is hardly any studies on Swedish cyber security (for exceptions, see Eriksson 2001a, 2001b, 2004). Moreover, our particular expertise on Swedish and Chinese cyber politics is a pragmatic reason for studying these rather than any other countries. It should also be made clear that we conceive of cyber security in a broad sense. Cyber security, as we understand it, includes defensive measures against cyber attacks such as firewalls and CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) functions, offensive measures such as computer hacking and denial of service attacks, and cyber surveillance and cyber espionage (Andreasson 2012; Dunn Cavelty 2008).
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| 3. |
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| 4. |
- Eriksson, Johan, Professor, 1967-, et al.
(författare)
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Outsourcing the American Space Dream? : SpaceX and the Race to the Stars
- 2022
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Whereas the rise of private space entrepreneurship is indisputable, this paper contends that contrary to the “NewSpace” narrative, the development of privately owned and operated human spacefaring does not dispel or fundamentally alter the American space dream but rather implies continuity of the narrative of America as the dominant global space power, specifically regarding a return to the Moon and with the explicit aim of colonizing Mars. The present paper analyzes the continuity of the American space dream and how it is expressed by public and private space actors as well as being supported by popular culture, entertainment, and an active space enthusiast community. The paper maintains that the continuity of the American space dream as a unifying national narrative is facilitated by how private spacefaring is heavily dependent on the US government’s emphasis on the pivotal role of private space industry for US-led space exploration. This dependent relationship provides incentives for private space entrepreneurs to share and tap into the established American space dream. The continuity of the American space dream is achieved through a prevailing yet reconfigured government-industrial complex.
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| 5. |
- Eriksson, Johan, Professor, 1967-, et al.
(författare)
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Outsourcing the American Space Dream : SpaceX and the Race to the Stars
- 2023
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Ingår i: Astropolitics. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 1477-7622 .- 1557-2943. ; 21:1, s. 46-62
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Whereas the rise of private space entrepreneurship is indisputable, we contend that contrary to the “NewSpace” narrative, the development of privately owned and operated human spacefaring does not dispel or fundamentally alter the American space dream, but rather implies continuity of the narrative of America as the dominant global space power, specifically regarding a return to the Moon and with the explicit aim of colonizing Mars. Herein, we analyze the continuity of the American space dream and how it is expressed by public and private space actors, as well as being supported by popular culture, entertainment, and an active space enthusiast community. We maintain that the continuity of the American space dream as a unifying national narrative is facilitated by how private spacefaring is dependent on the U.S. Government’s emphasis on the pivotal role of private space industry for space exploration. This dependent relationship provides incentives for private space entrepreneurs to share and leverage the established American space dream. The continuity of the American space dream is achieved through a prevailing, yet reconfigured, government-industrial complex.
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| 6. |
- Eriksson, Johan, Professor, 1967-, et al.
(författare)
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Theorizing Technology in International Relations : Prevailing Perspectives and New Horizons
- 2021
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Ingår i: Technology and International Relations. - Cheltenham : Edward Elgar Publishing. - 9781788976060 ; , s. 1-21
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter presents an introduction to and brief overview of the study of technology and international relations, including a discussion of research gaps and new horizons. In particular, this contribution addresses whether and how prevailing theoretical approaches have been able to analyze the relationship between technological and international political change. This includes how the personal, social, societal, and, to an extent, also biological worlds are becoming increasingly interconnected through new technologies – what has been referred to as the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ (Newlove-Eriksson and Eriksson, 2021; Schwab, 2017). How then is technology addressed within the field of international relations (IR)? Given the considerable attention IR literature pays to globalization and global structural change – core themes of contemporary IR – it might be expected that the role of technology in world politics would be a major focus. What would global politics and globalization be if the rapid development and diffusion of global information and communications technologies (ICTs) were not taken into account? It would seem, nonetheless, that technology has received rather mixed and selective attention within IR.
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| 7. |
- Newlove-Eriksson, Lindy, et al.
(författare)
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Governance Beyond the Global: Who Controls the Extraterrestrial?
- 2013
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Ingår i: Globalizations. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1474-7731 .- 1474-774X. ; 10:2, s. 277-292
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- How is outer space governed? This article argues that private authority is gaining salience in space politics, even with respect to the traditionally state-centric security and military aspects of space. Further, while commercial actors have always played a role in space programs, three significant changes can be detected: transnational conglomerates and consortia as opposed to individual corporations are emerging as key partners in space politics; private partners are gaining stronger and wider responsibilities for the development and management of space programs (including manned spaceflights); and public accountability is increasingly at stake due to a widening of security in space policy. The latter development includes a blurring of key distinctions between military and civilian usage (also referred to as dual-use or dual-role application), as well as between the public and private realms.
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| 8. |
- Newlove-Eriksson, Lindy, et al.
(författare)
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Technological Megashift and the EU : Threats, Vulnerabilities, and Fragmented Responsibilities
- 2021. - 1
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Ingår i: The European Union and the Technological Shift. - Cham : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9783030636715 - 9783030636722 ; , s. 27-55
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter addresses the technological megashift and implications for security and accountability within the EU. Digitalised interconnectivity of increasingly ‘embedded’ systems, infrastructures and societal functions are megashift features. Although the EU hardly lacks technological strategies, accountability structures beg improvement, and there are multiple expert groups with insufficient coordination and societal focus. The EU suffers from techno-optimism—coupled to powerful objectives of fuelling economic growth—which can lead to broadly conceived and represented security issues falling in shadow and struggles between interests being inadequately addressed. This chapter analyses how the EU deals with the megashift with respect to threats, surveillance systems, infrastructural vulnerability and public-private accountability. It is suggested that the EU take (i) a holistic grip on the megashift and implications, (ii) abandon optimistic techno-determinism for nuanced and contextual understanding and (iii) avoid outsourcing management of sensitive data and critical infrastructures.
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| 9. |
- Newlove-Eriksson, Lindy, et al.
(författare)
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The Invisible Hand? Critical Information Infrastructures, Commercialisation and National Security
- 2018
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Ingår i: The International Spectator. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0393-2729 .- 1751-9721. ; 53:2, s. 124-140
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Corporatisation of critical information infrastructure (CII) is rooted inthe ‘privatisation wave’ of the 1980s-90s, when the ground was laidfor outsourcing public utilities. Despite well-known risks relating toreliability, resilience, and accountability, commitment to efficiencyimperatives have driven governments to outsource key publicservices and infrastructures. A recent illustrative case with enormousimplications is the 2017 Swedish ICT scandal, where outsourcing ofCII caused major security breaches. With the transfer of the SwedishTransport Agency’s ICT system to IBM and subcontractors, classifieddata and protected identities were made accessible to non-vettedforeign private employees – sensitive data could thus now be inanyone’s hands. This case clearly demonstrates accountability gapsthat can arise in public-private governance of CII.
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| 10. |
- Andersson, Staffan, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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Democracy and technocracy in Sweden's Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic
- 2022
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Political Science. - : Frontiers Media S.A.. - 2673-3145. ; 4, s. 1-13
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sweden’s management of the coronavirus pandemic, beginning in early 2020, hasbeen much discussed because it deviated from other countries’ equivalents. Set inthe context of scholarly debate about the balance between politicians and experts inpolitical decision-making, we argue that a necessary condition for this case of Swedishexceptionalism was the manner of policy-making adopted by the Swedish authorities. Inthis article, we describe this policy-making procedure, which involved a radical form ofdelegation by elected politicians to appointed experts, and seek to explain how it cameabout. We focus on the 1st year of the pandemic, and use media reports and other publicdocuments, including parts of a public inquiry, as our empirical material.
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