The Pursuit of Full Spectrum Dominance: The Archives of the NSA

Abstract

This article explores the archives of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the inherent logic vested in the agency’s management of them. By drawing on Derrida’s conception of the archive and the compulsion to administer and complete it, this article suggests that the data collection practices, as well as the rhetoric, of the NSA indicate a specific logic of gathering and organizing data that presents a fantasy of perfect surveillance and pre-emptive intervention that stretches into the future to cancel emergent threats. To contextualize an understanding of the archival practices of the NSA within a wider conquest for complete security and US hegemony, this article outlines the US Department of Defense’s vision for full spectrum dominance, stressing that a show of force is exercised according to a logic of appropriate response that ranges from soft to hard power. As an organization that produces knowledge and risk factors based on data collection, the NSA is considered a central actor for understanding the US security regime’s increasing propensity for data-based surveillance that is fundamentally structured around the data center: a specific kind of archive.