Dear colleagues, With apologies for cross-posting. The Emergent Nonfiction Lab (part of the Counter Evidentiary Futures project) at the University of Salford welcomes Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud (Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs) for this online talk on his recent book The World According to Military Targeting, on 25th Feb 3-5pm CET. You can register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-world-according-to-military-targeting-tal... “The World According to Military Targeting engages directly with our grave world condition, asking how we ended up in a “closed world” made for military targeting by military targeting. In this book, Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud explores how the operational logics and seductive forces of targeting produce a world in which the only ways to think about politics and security is through military supremacy, endless war, and global domination, with serious implications for social and political life. Offering a critical investigation of military targeting through the lenses of its historical formation, current operations, and future implications, the author presents an innovative investigation into targeting’s radical knowledge production, how it abstracts and brings into being new worlds, and the violence and destructive effects it generates. Through an interdisciplinary lens, the book draws attention to military doctrine and methodologies; statistical thought and practice; the mathematical and computational techniques of data production, processing, and modeling; and the so-called machine-learning algorithms and AI of today. The resulting narrative provides novel insights into how imagining the world, producing the world, and operationalizing the world are always wrapped up in each other and profoundly embedded in sociotechnical systems” - MIT Press. “Providing a master class in deep and generative scholarship, Reichborn-Kjennerud chronicles the deadly logics that perpetuate worlds of warfighting, from the systems thinking of the last century to the data-driven algorithms of the present - Lucy Suchman, Professor Emerita, Lancaster University. Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud holds an PhD in War Studies from King’s College London and an MA in Security Policy Studies from The George Washington University. His research interests include contemporary Western warfare, war and technology, military theory and operational thinking and practice, critical IR theories and Science and Technology Studies. Best, Patrick -- Dr. Patrick Brian Smith Assistant Professor and University Fellow School of Arts, Media and Creative Technology University of Salford