Table Of ContentRhetoric of InSecurity
This book demands that we question what we are told about security, using tools
we have had for thousands of years.
The work considers the history of security rhetoric in a number of distinct but
related contexts, including the United States’ security strategy, the “war” on Big
Tech, and current concerns such as cybersecurity. Focusing on the language of
securitydiscourse,itdrawscommonthreadsfromtheancientworldtothepresent
dayandthenearfuture.ThebookgroundsrecentcomparisonsofDonaldTrump
to the Emperor Nero in a linguistic evidence base. It examines the potential
impact on society of policy-makers’ emphasis on the novelty of cybercrime, their
likening of the internet to the Wild West, and their claims that criminals have
“gone dark”. It questions governments’ descriptions of technology companies in
words normally reserved for terrorists, and asks who might benefit.
Interdisciplinary in approach, the book builds on existing literature in the
HumanitiesandSocialSciences,mostnotablystudiesonrhetoricinGreco-Roman
texts, and on the articulation of security concerns in law, international relations,
and public policy contexts. It adds value to this body of research by offering new
points of comparison, and a fresh but tried and tested way of looking at problems
that are often presented as unprecedented. It will be essential to legal and policy
practitioners, students of Law, Politics, Media, and Classics, and all those inter-
ested in employing critical thinking.
Victoria Baines is Visiting Fellow at Bournemouth University’s School of Com-
puting. She has held visiting research fellowships at the University of Oxford and
lecturedatStanfordUniversity.TrainedasaClassicistwithaspecialisminrhetoric
in Roman literature, she worked as a law enforcement intelligence analyst and a
technology company executive before returning to research. Her research touches
on public policy, threat representation, surveillance, cyberspace and internet gov-
ernance,andfuturesmethods.Sheregularlycontributestomediacoverageonthe
misuse of social and emerging technologies.
Law, Language and Communication
Series Editors
Anne Wagner, Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale, France and Vijay Kumar
Bhatia, formerly of City University of Hong Kong
Thisseriesencouragesinnovativeandintegratedperspectiveswithinandacrossthe
boundaries of law, language and communication, with particular emphasis on
issues of communication in specialized socio-legal and professional contexts. It
seeks to bring together a range of diverse yet cumulative research traditions in
order to identify and encourage interdisciplinary research.
Theserieswelcomesproposals–botheditedcollectionsaswellassingle-authored
monographs–emphasizingcriticalapproachestolaw, languageandcommunication,
identifyinganddiscussingissues,proposingsolutionstoproblems,offeringanalysesin
areassuchaslegalconstruction,interpretation,translationandde-codification.
Titles in the series
International Arbitration Discourse and Practices in Asia
Edited by Vijay K Bhatia, Maurizio Gotti, Azirah Hashim, Philip
Koh and Sundra Rajoo
Phraseology in Legal and Institutional Settings
A Corpus-based Interdisciplinary Perspective
Edited by Stanislaw Gozdz Roszkowski and Gianluca Pontrandolfo
Fiction and the Languages of Law
Understanding Contemporary Legal Discourse
Karen Petroski
Law and Imagination in Troubled Times
A Legal and Literary Discourse
Edited by Richard Mullender, Matteo Nicolini, Thomas D.C. Bennett and
Emilia Mickiewicz
Social Media in Legal Practice
Edited by Vijay Bhatia and Girolamo Tessuto
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Law-
Language-and-Communication/book-series/LAWLANGCOMM
Rhetoric of InSecurity
The Language of Danger, Fear and Safety in
National and International Contexts
Victoria Baines
Firstpublished2022
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
andbyRoutledge
605ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10158
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©2022VictoriaBaines
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assertedbyherinaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright,Designs
andPatentsAct1988.
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor
utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now
knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orinany
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trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintent
toinfringe.
BritishLibraryCataloguing-in-PublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Names:Baines,Victoria,author.
Title:Rhetoricofinsecurity:thelanguageofdanger,fearandsafetyinnational
andinternationalcontexts/VictoriaBaines.
Description:Abingdon,Oxon;NewYork,NY:Routledge,2021.|Includes
bibliographicalreferencesandindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2021001200(print)|LCCN2021001201(ebook)|ISBN
9780367463076(hardback)|ISBN9781003028062(ebook)
Subjects:LCSH:Security,International.|Nationalsecurity.|Rhetoric–Political
aspects.
Classification:LCCJZ5588.B35242021(print)|LCCJZ5588(ebook)|
DDC355/.033–dc23
LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2021001200
LCebookrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2021001201
ISBN:978-0-367-46307-6(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-032-03084-5(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-003-02806-2(ebk)
DOI:10.4324/9781003028062
TypesetinGalliard
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
For Jeff, and his counsel always to get to the point.
Contents
List of illustrations viii
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1 The Classical heritage of modern (in)security rhetoric 11
2 The rhetoric of the US National Security Strategy 38
3 The war on Big Tech: Construction of internet companies as
ideological others 72
4 The dark Wild West world war: Danger and incapability in the realm
of cybersecurity 103
5 Epilogue 126
Index 140
Illustrations
Figure
4.1 Stock Image of Cybercriminal from FBI Website (until August
2020): Shutterstock 106
Tables
2.1 Presidential Prefaces by Word and Paragraph Length 43
2.2 Statistical Analysis of Presidential Prefaces by Readability Index 44
Preface
Over the course of the last 20 years, I have increasingly come to the conclusion
thatoneneverreallystopsbeingaClassicist.StudyoftheGreco-Romanworld,its
history and literature, exposes one to tales and events that are the bedrock of
Western civilisation. Thus inculcated, Classicists are destined for the rest of their
natural lives to spot echoes of epic poetry, tragedy, and other ancient literary
forms in contemporary culture. It is an irresistible compulsion.
After completing my doctorate on the Roman satirist Juvenal, I embarked on a
career as an intelligence analyst in law enforcement. As well as finding myself
suddenly required to write in a more concise style than that to which I had
become accustomed in academia, my focus changed from second-century Rome
to crack cocaine and heroin trafficking, child abuse, and cybercrime. But in many
respectsmyworkconsistedofthesamecoretasks–totaketextapart,makesense
of it, and present my findings to others.
I also discovered that I couldn’t help but be alert to how authorities, myself
included,communicatedonissuesofcrimeandsecurity:notonlythesubstanceof
their press releases, reports, and speeches, but also the techniques they used to
presentthem.Asanauthorofthreatassessmentsfornationalandinternationallaw
enforcement organisations, I am doubtless guilty of having contributed to threat
inflation. In hindsight, I was perhaps not always as mindful as I could have been
about the potential impact on citizens of the public, sanitised versions of these
documents.
AsubsequentspellasaUStechnologycompanyexecutiveputmeonthereceiving
end of safety and security rhetoric. First-hand experience of how governments and
media outlets shaped the popular narrative on Big Tech, how those companies
responded, and the impact of both activities on policy- and law-making afforded a
privileged insight into the dynamics of public discourse: who gets to speak, who is
listenedto,andhowthisismediated.Arealisationthatsecuritystakeholdersrepeat-
edlytalkedpasteachotherpropelledmetoreturntoresearch,thistimetoshedlight
onconceptualandrhetoricalgapswiththeultimateaspirationofclosingthem.
Asanexpressionofthisaspiration,thisbookisthereforemorethanaloveletter
toaClassicaleducation,althoughitisundoubtedlyalsosuch.Itisaninvitationto
all comers to grasp and work with the tools of Classical rhetoric to deconstruct
modern policy-making and media representations of security concerns. Its
