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Mann, war, and cyberspace: dualities of infrastructural power in America

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Abstract

Not long after the completion of Michael Mann’s “quadrilogy” on The Sources of Social Power (1986–2012), social scientists began to interrogate the meaning of his concepts of “despotic” and “infrastructural” power. While we know that the former is the most evident sign of danger in times of war, less well understood is the role of infrastructural power in state/civil society relations. Most important is the ambiguous relationship between the two types of power and the possibility that—especially in times of war—infrastructural power can become the vehicle for despotic ends. But infrastructural power is also reciprocal, offering firms and civil society groups channels with which to contest the state’s projects. In this article, I first explicate the different meanings that Mann gave to his concept of infrastructural power. In the second section, I turn to how the concept has been “received” in political science and historical sociology. In the third part, I argue that the main danger to American democracy in wartime lies not in its becoming a despotic state, but in the use of the state’s infrastructural channels for the exercise of despotic ends. The fourth part illustrates the complexities of infrastructural power in business/government/civil society relations in cybersecurity, which Mann—for understandable reasons—did not examine in his encompassing work.

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Notes

  1. The four volume work is cited as SOSP below, followed by the volume number.

  2. The classical pluralist sources are Bentley (1949), Truman (1951), and Dahl (1956).

  3. Robert Dahl’s (1956) book, Who Governs? was a lightning rod for this line of criticism, especially from sociologists such as C. Wright Mills (1956), Floyd Hunter (1959), and Michael Schwartz (1987) and from political scientists including Bachrach and Baratz (1963).

  4. The most creative post-pluralist work was carried out by the late Jack Walker, in his Interest Groups in America (1991), completed after his death by his colleagues, and by Theodore Lowi in his The End of Liberalism (1979).

  5. Tilly’s most ambitious work on state formation was his Capital, Coercion and European States (1990). This was preceded by his edited volume, The Formation of National States in Western Europe (1975). Skocpol’s major contribution was her States and Social Revolutions (1979). Giddens’s was his The Constitution of Society (1986), and Poggi’s was his The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects (1990).

  6. For example, see Poggi’s critique in his puckishly titled “Political Power Unmanned: A Defense of the Holy Trinity from Mann’s Military Attack” in Hall and Schroeder, eds., An Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann (2006).

  7. The most through critical evaluation of Mann’s contributions came in 2006 with the essays in John A. Hall and Ralph Schroeder, eds., An Anatomy of Power: The Social Theory of Michael Mann. In particular, see Linda Weiss’s contribution to that book, “Infrastructural Power, Economic Transformation, and Globalization.”

  8. I am grateful to Antonina Gentile for this insight. See her “Afterward” to a debate in Trajectories (2016) on my War, State and Contention.

  9. Slater finds support for his reading of the concept from a number of other scholars and criticizes my own reading in his “State Power and Contentious Politics,” in Perspectives on Politics 14 (2016), pp. 164–165.

  10. The quotation is from p. 3 of the manuscript of Clemens’s forthcoming book, “Civic Gifts: Benevolence and the Making of the American Nation-State”. I am grateful to Professor Clemens for permission to quote from it. The term “expansible state” is taken from Ira Katznelson’s essay, “Flexible Capacity” in his and Martin Shefter’s edited book, Shaped by War and Trade (2002).

  11. Gorski puts this more sharply: While authoritative networks like the Church “tend to be organizationally unified, geographically centralized and internally hierarchical, diffuse networks tend to be fragmented, de-centralized and flat:” they “employ peaceful and persuasive tactics to diffuse their ideologies;” and they “provide partial or incomplete worldviews. They focus on particular realms of life, and provide scripts for acting within them.” They “are often absorbed and deployed without the conscious will or knowledge of the actor” (Gorski, “Mann’s Theory of Ideological Power: Sources, Applications and Elaborations,” in Hall and Schroeder, An Anatomy of Power, 2006, pp. 201–202.

  12. Giddens is an exception. “The very nature of industrialized war in a certain sense,” he concludes in The Nation-State and Violence, “ensures a diversity of interests and concerns” (1985, p. 248, emphasis added). Where the society is plural—if not pluralistic—then its “diversity of interests and concerns” makes the relations between the state and civil society both heterogeneous and potentially contradictory.”

  13. As late as 2013, the Congressional Research Service reported that there were 108,000 private contractors in Afghanistan, compared to the 65,700 American troops who were stationed there. For this report, go to http://www.businessinsider.com/108000-contractors-are-in-afghanistan-2013-6, visited 25 October 2013. A more detailed analysis will be found at http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/06/03/Pentagon-Has-No-Idea-What-108K-Contractors-Are-Doing.aspx#page1#ixzz2ilPdkD4x.

  14. Shorrock’s source for these data was an unclassified PowerPoint presentation that was unwittingly released by the office of the Director of National Intelligence prepared for a Defense Intelligence Agency conference. See the description of how he derived his estimates in note no. 18 on p. 392 of his journalistic but informative book, Spies for Hire (2008).

  15. These examples are drawn from a longer discussion in chapter 8 of my War, States and Contention.

  16. Joris Verhulst, “February 15, 2003: The World Says No to War,” in Steffen Walgrave and Dieter Rucht, eds., The World Says No to War: Demonstrations Against the War on Iraq, 2010, pp. 16–17.

  17. The three most important cases were Rasul v. Bush (542 US 466, argued before the Court in 2004; Hamden v. Rumsfeld (548 US 557, in 2006, and Boumediene v. Bush (553 US 723), in 2008.

  18. For the ACLU’s campaign, go to https://www.aclu.org/free-speech-national-security-technology-and-liberty/reform-patriot-act-section-215.

  19. For the role of the ALA and local public libraries in opposing Section 215, see Florent Blanc, “Dissent After September 11: Mobilization of Librarians, ACLU, Cities and Lawyers,” Unpublished PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, June 2010, chap. 3. The ALA’s position against section 215 can be found at http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg/federallegislation/theusapatriotact. Its 2002 Resolution can be found at www.ala/org/ala/washoff/woissues/civillberties/theusapatriotact/alaresolution/cfm .

  20. For the details of the campaign and a list of the cities and states that had passed Bill of Rights resolutions as of the end of 2013, go to http://www.constitutioncampaign.org/map/resos.php.

  21. I am grateful to Kristen Eichensehr for her path-breaking work on cybersecurity that has inspired this section of this article. See, in particular, her “The Cyber-Law of Nations,” Georgetown law Journal 103, pp. 317–380, “Public-Private Cybersecurity,” Texas Law Review 95: pp. 468–538, and her unpublished paper, “Digital Switzerlands,” cited with permission.

  22. Eichensehr takes the term from a keynote speech by Microsoft President Brad Smith, which laid bare “the reality that although somewhat bounded by the laws of the countries in which they are headquartered or operate, US technology companies are increasingly standing as competing power centers, challenging the primacy of governments.”

  23. Andrew Ross Sorkin, “Tech Companies Tread Lightly in Statements on U.S. Spying,” New York Times, June 10, 2013, available at http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/tech-companies-tread-lightly-in-statements-on-u-s-spying/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0.

  24. At this writing, it is too soon for scholarly assessments of the “Snowden affair” to have appeared, but two “insider” accounts are more or less reliable. See Luke Harding’s The Snowden Files (2014), and Glenn Greenwald’s No Place to Hide (2014), a more serious account than its title suggests.

  25. Scott Shane and David A. Sanger, “Job Title Key to Inner Access Held by Snowden,” New York Times, June 3, 2013, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/us/job-title-key-to-inner-access-held-by-snowden.html? hpw.

  26. The rally is described at https://rally.stopwatching.us/, visited October 28, 2013.

  27. The Commission issued its report in December 2013 under the title “Report and Recommendations of The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies,” available at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2013/12/18/liberty-and-security-changing-world. The USA Freedom Act (H.R. 2048, Pub.L. 114–123) was enacted on June 2, 2015 to restore in modified form several provisions of the USA Patriot Act, which had expired the day before.

  28. Adam Nagourney, Jan Lovett, and Richard Perez-Pena, “San Bernardino Shooting Kills at Least 14; Two Suspects are Dead,” New York Times, Dec. 2, 2015, p. 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/us/san-bernardino-shooting.html?_r=0.

  29. The government relied in its filing on the “All Writs Act,” a revolutionary-era piece of legislation that had hardly ever been used since (28 USC section 1651). The court ruling can be found at https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2714001-SB-Shooter-Order-Compelling-Apple-Asst-iPhone.html.\http.

  30. For a succinct summary of what the FBI was asking Apple to do, why Apple refused to comply, and whether it could even be done technically, go to Dave Lee, “Apple vs the FBI- a Plain English Guide,” BBC Technology, February 18, 2016, at www.bbc.com/news/technology-35601035.

  31. Stuart Dredge and Danny Yadron, “Apple challenges ‘Chilling’ Demand to Decrypt San Bernardino Shooter;s iPhone,” The Guardian, February 17, 2016. http://www.theguardian.com.technology/2016/feb/17/apple-challenges-chilling-demand-to-decyrpt-San-Berndadino-shooter’s-iphone.

  32. Eric Lichtblau, “Judge Tells Apple to Help Unlock iPhone Used by San Bernardino Gunman,” New York Times, Feb. 16, 2016, p. 1 at www.nytimes.com/2016/02/17/us/judge-tells-apple-to-help-unlock-iphone-used-by-san-bernardino-gunman.

  33. Tim Cook, “A Message to our Customers,” February 16, 2016. At http:// www.apple.come/customer-letter/.

  34. Jennifer Granick, “Who Sets the Rules of the Privacy and Security Game?” Just Security, February 22, 2016. https://www.justsecurity.org/29446/sets-rules-privacy-security-game/.

  35. “EFF to Support Apple in Encryption Battle: Defending Your Rights in the Digital World.” February 16, 2016. Http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/02/eff-support-apple-encryption-battle

  36. Danny Yadron, “Facebook and Twitter Back Apple in Phone Encryption Battle with FBI”, The Guardian, February 18, 2016. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/18/apple-fbi-encryption-battle-iphone-facebook-twitter-san-bernardino-shooting. Also see Farhad Manjoo, “Apple’s Stance Highlights a More Confrontational Tech Industry.”New York Times, February 17, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/technology/apples-stance-highlights-a-more-confrontational-tech-industry.html.

  37. For the timeline of Fight for the Future’s online activism since 2011, go to https://www.fightforthefuture.org/timeline/.

  38. The petition and the major supporting groups can be found at https://savesecurity.org/. See the account of the Fight for the Future campaign by Evan Selleck, “Fight For the Future is Planning a Pro-Apple demonstration in Front of Apple, FBI Hearing, on Phonehacks, March 16, 2016. http://www.iphonehacks.com/2016/03/fight-for-the-future-is-planning-a-pro-apple-demonstration-in-front-of-apple-fbi-hearing.html.

  39. I am grateful to Chan Suh for providing me with the data in Fig. 2.

  40. Danny Yadron, Spencer Ackerman, and Sam Thielman, “Apple Accuses FBI of Violating Constitutional Rights in iPhone Battle,” The Guardian, February 25, 2016.

    http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/25/apple-fbi-iphone-encryption-request-response.

  41. Joe Nelson, “FBI Ends Case Against Apple After Cracking Gunman’s iPhone in San Bernardino Terror Attack,” Los Angeles News, March 28, 2016. http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20160328/fbi-ends-case-against-apple-after-cracking-gunmans-iphone-in-san-bernardino-terror-attack.

  42. Danny Yadron and Spencer Ackerman, “FBI May Have Found Way to Unlock San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone Without Apple,” The Guardian, March 22, 2016. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/21/fbi-apple-court-hearing-postpone-unlock-terrorist-iphone.

  43. The tech firms’ defense of their users’ privacy was revived as an issue in the wake of the 2016 election. But this time, both Facebook and Twitter were found to be hosting ads from suspicious but unknown sources—which turned out to be Russian—that had hammered Hillary Clinton’s campaign and generally tried to stoke tensions between opposing groups in this polarized election. When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was told that Facebook was being used to project “fake news” into the election campaign, he at first denied it, but then, confronted by the evidence that over $100,000 of such ads had been projected on his platform during the campaign, he had to admit his company’s indifference. For an early but serious scholarly report on the issue of Russian hacking through social media, see James M. Ludes and Mark R. Jacobson, “Shatter the House of Mirrors,” a report of the Pell Center for International Relations, http://pellcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Shatter-the-House-of-Mirrors-FINAL-WEB.pdf.

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Acknowledgements

This article draws on two previous efforts: my book War, States, and Contention (2015) and a recent paper, “A Transnational Movement to Protect Privacy? Close Interaction, Incompatible Regimes, and the Securitized Internet,” presented to the Berlin Wisschschaftzentrum in 2016. I am grateful to Eitan Alimi, Josh Chafetz, Lis Clemens, David Cole, Mike Dorf, Kristen Eichensehr, Antonina Gentile, Philip Gorski, Jacob Hacker, John Hall, Steve Hellman, Peter Katzenstein, Des King, Michael Mann, Joe Margulies, Doug McAdam, Suzanne Mettler, David Meyer, Steven Pincus, Aziz Rana, Elizabeth Sanders, Dan Slater, Bill Sewell, and Linda Weiss for comments on earlier iterations of this article.

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Tarrow, S. Mann, war, and cyberspace: dualities of infrastructural power in America. Theor Soc 47, 61–85 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-018-9306-x

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