Re: <nettime> [Air-L] Map of WikiLeaks "Vital Facilities" (fwd)

[John Hopkins <jhopkins@neoscenes.net>]

> These data offer a fascinating insight into the ways that the national
> security priorities of the United States span the entire globe. This global
> web of essential facilities goes a long way to explain the fact that the US
> Department of Defense has more military facilities around the world than all
> other nations combined. The globalization of the world economy means that
> facilities that are vital to the communication, health, and economic needs
> of the U.S. are scattered across the planet; and this ultimately means that
> the U.S. (as well as other developed and developing countries) have to
> contend with new and changing notions of what "security" means in the 21st
> century.

(Wide) distribution of imperial sourcing is nothing new, and shouldn't be 
considered remarkable.  It is precisely these widely dispersed patterns of 
(energy) in/out flow which define an imperium.  Protection of those pathways of 
flow is the core portfolio of any imperial military, as without those inflows, 
the ordered (thermodynamically determinate) existence of empire is directly and 
immediately threatened.

Unfortunately all of this comes as a big surprise to people living in the 
developed world -- because if it's important to the US strategically, you can be 
sure it is of importance to any other country striving to mimic the US system or 
to compete as a consume society -- the scope of wikileaked data is nothing of 
the scope of the ignorance of the population of that developed world...

jh


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