The molecularisation of security: medical countermeasures, stockpiling and the governance of biological threats

Abstract

What do states need to do to protect themselves from security threats? When it comes to global health threats, the answer seems to be to stockpile medical countermeasures. In The molecularisation of security, Christopher Long takes us through the ways in which molecular science has shaped contemporary security practices, with developments such as the mRNA vaccines during the COVID–19 pandemic, and why this should matter for future security and international relations. In the past, security threats were countered with weapons, armies, defence strategies and intelligence. This vital new book explains how security can be delivered when science can pinpoint and neutralize the threat of a particular molecule or microbe, and indeed viruses such as HIV, Ebola or COVID–19. Long's conception of the molecularization of security follows an established line of scholarship that has explored the relationship between global health and security (see, for example, Simon Rushton and Jeremy Youde's edited volume, Routledge handbook of global health security, London: Routledge, 2014). Drawing on a Foucauldian method of exploring ‘the biopolitical matrix of body and population’, Long discusses the importance of molecular life for contingency and preparedness, and for developing countermeasures for some of the biggest security threats in the world. The author helpfully focuses on how molecular science and medicine shape security, rather than how security shapes health and science. Here, Long paints a complex picture that draws on a range of threats, from rabies to Ebola to smallpox, and a host of new molecular security actors. Long's argument builds on the works of Ulrich Beck, Michel Foucault, Georg Hegel and Martin Heidegger. To put it simply, states’ responses to these threats involve stockpiling medical countermeasures and incentivizing pharmaceutical companies to create new countermeasures, giving these actors a pivotal role in global security.