The somatic-security industrial complex: theorizing the political economy of informationalized biology

Abstract

In this article, we seek to intervene on the global health security debate and attendant literatures to argue that the primary focus of global health security – that infectious disease is an existential security threat to both humans and vital infrastructures – only tells one part of the story about the meaning and significance of biological danger in the contemporary context. While important, this perspective fails to grapple with the ways that our conception of what biology is and what it can do have been altered through advances in science and technology, particularly through the intermingling of computer science and molecular biology. Starting from the premise that biology has been informationalized, we argue that biological exchange is not only a threat to humans and the institutional structures they create, it is also, importantly, a political and economic opportunity for firms and core states involved in global health security, and one of the key bases for an emergent global political economy of health security. We forward the idea of a somatic-security industrial complex to capture this dynamic.