Age of Security

An eye-opening examination into a chilling paradox: our hunger for security—from border walls to video doorbells—is making us less safe and weakening democracies worldwide, for readers of Naomi Klein and Shoshana Zuboff
How much are you willing to give up to feel safe?
Ruben Andersson argues we've surrendered far too much. We've handed over our digital privacy to Big Tech, while facial recognition scans and home surveillance systems track our every move. Governments have likewise ramped up their security investments in a global surveillance arms race. Once a plaything of the hard right, fear has infiltrated the entire political spectrum—and the most intimate corners of our lives.
As Age of Security makes clear, this rapid securitization comes with disastrous consequences for our lives and our politics alike. In a decades-long trend accelerated since 9/11, panic over perceived threats has increasingly undermined political discourse the world over and strengthened the controls that governments and corporations exert over our lives. And none of us is safer for it: border fences generate new smuggling routes, drone warfare creates new enemies, and advanced surveillance machinery invites state abuse. Meanwhile such democratic principles as the rule of law, free speech, and our very respect for the dignity of life are all being undermined by the relentless pursuit of security.
From global border zones to a devastated Gaza, and from small-town Sweden to the Chinese surveillance state, Andersson uncovers the global story of how “security” has overtaken “freedom” as the watchword of our time. The result is a clear accounting of the harm done when we prioritize security above our most fundamental rights. We cannot build a free and better future from behind our own walls, Andersson argues. It is time we wrest back control.
Animated by a close focus on the human costs of securitization, and narrated with a wry wit befitting our Orwellian world, Age of Security reveals the battlelines over our securitized future—and points the way out of the maze of paranoia that increasingly defines our politics.

Ruben Andersson is a social anthropologist at the University of Oxford, with a specialty in migration, borders, and security. His academic books include Illegality, Inc., winner of a BBC book award, and Wreckonomics, with David Keen He has been a fellow of the UK's Leverhulme Trust, where he conducted the research behind Age of Security.