Infowar/Ecodefense:

Target-Rich Environmentalism from Desert Storm to

Independence Day

Nigel Clark

Introduction: Mission Gap

For all its obvious attractions, the end of the Cold War and the integration ofthe Eastern Bloc into the global capitalist system raises vexing questions for thearmed forces and armament industries of the surviving superpower. What USleaders have referred to as a 'mission gap' might be termed, in other discursiveformations, a legitimation crisis for the scientific-military-industrial complex.As Paul Virilio ( 1986: II) has pointed out, the entrepreneurs of war played asignificant role in the genesis of capitalism, through their exemplary couplingof the means of production with the destruction of what has been produced.But, in the current climate, it is not only the lack of a foe worthy of destructionwhich checks this self-expansive cycle. At a time in which environmental limitsand instabilities may soon gain preeminence over political-ideological fracturesas threats to global security, destruction itself appears in a new light -less asstimulus than as peril to future productivity. Not surprisingly, under theseconditions, war begins to clean up its act.

It is in the world' s most advanced forces of destruction that the greening ofaggression has been most conspicuous. In the recent reimaging of USintervention, both the reduced collateral impact of armed assault and thepositive contribution of the force of arms to environmental security have beenaccentuated, thus addressing at one and the same time the ecological critique ofwarfare and the 'mission gap' of the military. In the techno-military mediaspectacle known as the Gulf War (1991) and the techno-military cinematicevent that was Independence Day (ID4) (Emmerich 1996), we can observe theascendance of weapons of electronic precision over munitions of massdestruction. This momentum does not stop with the pseudo-sentience of thesmart bomb, but advances in the direction of purely informational infractions.

Space and Culture 2

Nigel Clark52

Both ID4 and Operation Desert Stonn point towards the coupling ofinfowar -combat on the plane of information networks and data bases -andecodefense -intervention to preserve the planet' s ecological systems. In eachcase, the' Allied ' forces appear to be acting in the interests of global nature,

reflecting the growing strategic importance of biophysical reality in an era ofescalating environmental damage and persistently rising demands on naturalresources. But at another level, the two media spectacles are indicative ofconvergent transformations in the way that the terrains of war -and the lociof environmental intervention are being constructed. As armed conflictincreasingly consigns itself to the microphysical realm of digitized data, so toodoes the social process of modifying and manipulating the natural world consistof ever more intricate and minute operations, in what is effectively aninformationalizing of nature.

If the confluence of simulated spaces -or techno-regions -of war andbiophysical reproduction now appear essential for the defense of the planet'secological integrity, so too does it provide new opportunities for thedestabilization of the self-same ecosystems. In this way, I will be suggesting, inplace of Virilio ' s self -expanding mutuality of mass production and mass

destruction, we might now begin to think in terms of a new mission- inducingcircuit of biotechnological catastrophe and restabilization. This is the field ofoperations not of the smart bomb, but of its informatic successor, the lessspectacular but more insidious 'logic bomb. ,

Gulf: InfowarThe rhetoric of military intercession' on behalf of nature, , together with that of

'infowar' dates from the first major US military engagement to follow thedefunct superpower contest. During the Persian Gulf conflict journalists spokeof 'ecowar,' obediently following the Pentagon's condemnation of Iraqienvironmental terrorism. 'The environment itself pronounced Time's RichardLacayo 'has become both a weapon and a victim' (Time February 4 1991: 28).With its convenient eclipse of the ecological atrocities wrought by theAmericans on Vietnam, the putative entry of the US military into the field ofenvironmental protection was one of Operation Desert Stonn's manyatonements for the South East Asian debacle. It was also one of the morepropitious, it now appears. In the aftermath of the Gulf, a poll asking theAmerican people for their opinions on the future role for the United States inthe global arena turned up a winning 93% in favour of 'the US using itsposition to get other countries to join together to take action against world

Apocalypse

Infowar/Ecodefense 53

environmental problems. ' This was the indicator which Vice President elect Al

Gore was keen to capitalize on (see Gore 1992: 173), and one not lost on

Hollywood.

The conflict that served to promote a 'military-industrial-environmentalcomplex' might equally mark the full-fledging of a 'military-industrial-entertainment complex' (see Ross 1996a: 8, Thomas 1995: 15). According toDouglas Kellner (1992: 135), the Desert Storm air war was coded like a warfilm, which he suggests 'points to the complicity between technowar cultureand Hollywood movies. ' In the report to which Kellner refers, from Day One of

the airborne attack, a US squadron leader exclaims that Baghdad is: 'lit up likethe Fourth of July ...I saw the most fantastic firework demonstration'(Bickerton and Pearson 1991: 63). This account was accompanied by one of thefirst images of conflict: a scene of orange-red streaks criss-crossing the sky .Five years later, a Hollywood blockbuster closes with an almost identicalpyrotechnical display, before which another American squadron leaderaddresses his son: 'You know what day it is?' 'YuP, it's the Fourth of July.''That's right, son. And didn't I promise you fireworks. ,

It is hardly surprising that Independence Day finishes up where the GulfWar starts out, for it is the film which retrospectively supplies the Westernaudience with coherent narration and moral gravity -the 'reality effects' -

which seemed to have slipped away from the earlier conflict. That is, thepackaging of the Persian Gulf conflict as the perfect high-tech infowar was amuch more ambivalent process than the war's 'imagineers' -and some of itscritics supposed. If, on the one hand, selected video and computer-generatedimagery gave the impression of a finely-orchestrated and surgically-precisemilitary operation, on the other, the same electronic mediation served todisperse the narration of a just fight into a stream of disjunct image fragmentsand sound bites. For the soon-to-be-deposed Bush administration, the problemwith war reportage in the Gulf era was perhaps that it had ceased to becinematic enough.

Much has been written about the visual effects telecast by the global mediaand their complicity with the myth of a clean war. In particular, criticalcommentaries have charged the nose-cam 'bomb's-eye' view of missile flightswith both the seduction of the television spectator into identification with theattacking forces and the displacement of attention away from its human andmaterial consequences (Wark 1994: 45-6, Broughton 1996). More generally, ithas been noted how the insertion of the audience into the circuit of information

Space and Culture 2

Nigel Clark54

which flowed between surveillance satellites, weapon guidance systems, targets,coalition combatants and media outlets served to locate the conflict in anabstract global space which transcended the specific geographical regionsupposedly under contention.

Vision detached from the human eye, targets extracted from databases,bodies operating solely as infonnation processors and switching devices:through such experiences -shared by allied combatants and TV audiences -

the Gulf conflict came to epitomize the dematerialization of reality induced byelectronic mediation. War, as Virilio (1989: 72-3) points out, has always hadthe effect of deStabilizing familiar modes of perception -with the advantagegained by those who could exact order on the chaos of the sensory field. In thissense, there has been a close correspondence between industrialized war andcinema -both of which deploy mechanical apparatuses to attain new rangesand velocities of vision. Just as 'discontiguous spaces and discontinuous timesare gathered together in a coherence that is the cinematic lived body'(Sobchack 1990: 56), so too have the choreographers of modem war sought toorganize dispersed sensory and material inputs into coherent strategies for thecombatant corps, thereby enabling their forces to attain a speed and mobility'that only cinema could apprehend' (Virilio 1989: 74).

The latest capacities of remote vision and electronically-guided munitionsare extending this logic to such an extent that the positioning of armies ingeographical space is being rendered obsolete (Virilio 1989: 73-5). VindicatingVirilio ' s theories on the convergence between visualization, targetting and

destruction in the age of electronic warfare, coalition intelligence prepared forwar by constructing a virtual Iraq, a data-encoded 'target rich environment, ,

which was subsequently inserted into a feedback loop of bombardment,monitoring, further bombardment, further monitoring, and so on. Combat, notsurprisingly. loses something of its substance when the function of bodilyassaulting or defending the turf underfoot is succeeded by the analysis andmanipulation of a bit-mapped zone never experienced in the flesh. With regardto an event both rehearsed and played out on a digitally deterritorializedterrain. it might be said that George Bush's resolve to draw 'a line in the sand'ended up looking like a fundamental misreading of what it meant to etch signs

in silicon.

Apocalypse

Gulf: Ecodefense

But a conflict which has been promoted to Western audiences as an epic ofmythic, or cinematic, proportions -'a titanic battle between powerful forces'(Kellner 1992: 341), one which then delivers only the ephemeral distraction ofa too-easy-to-win computer game -could hardly be entirely fulfilling. By JeanBaudrillard's (1983: 25) logic, it would generate a demand for 'the fiction ofthe real. ' Until the coverage of the attack on retreating Iraqi soldiers that wasdubbed 'the road of death, , tight restrictions over the depiction of war

casualties removed one possible source of gravity, precluding the sort ofembodied identification which gruesome scenes could still elicit during the'cinema verite' reportage of Vietnam (see Thomas 1995: 15). Into thisexperiential vacuum flowed the evidence of ecological destruction, aneventuality which had been passed over in most media previews of the Gulfconflict. 'The media, starved of images of death, turned to filming cormorants,albeit it dying in oil spilt in Allied raids, , as one environmental journalist was

later to put it (John Vidal cited in Kellner 1992: 226).

Prior to military engagement, a number of prominent environmental andmeteorological commentators had predicted that the torching of oil wells,threatened by the Iraqi leadership, could trigger a significant climaticalteration, the equivalent of 'a minor nuclear winter' (Horgan 1991: 20). OnceDesert Storm was underway, and the oil fires had eventuated, the imagery andrhetoric of eco-catastrophe was conveniently rediscovered, having morphedfrom an argument against conflict to an imperative to attain victory at all costs.Although the apportionment of blame for environmental damage between sideswas, and remains, uncertain, Western media soon accepted official assurancesof full Iraqi culpability. Reports of this 'ecological disaster beyond anything theworld has seen' helped reinflate the enemy to epic proportions, putting thecoalition forces 'on the side of the planet' and giving the allied commander,General Schwarzkopf, the opportunity to parade himself as 'a lover of theenvironment [and] a conservationist' (Kellner 1992: 218, Bickerton andPearson 1991: 90).

The images of a distressed bio-physical realm that punctuated footage of high-tech assault might be seen as an attempt to rematerialize the abstract field ofcombat. As is the case in much computer simulation, representations of natureare summoned when the more vaporous digital effects seem to be in need ofreembedding or grounding -the natural referent being called upon to 'earththe ether' of electronic data flow (Clark 1995). If it is the myth of lost Edenic

Space and Culture 2

Nigel Clark56

oneness with nature that ultimately underpins such recourse, a more immediatereference point for depictions of enviromnental catastrophe is the cinematic'aesthetics of destruction.' Over three decades ago, Susan Sontag (1965: 44)drew attention to the significance of scenes of mass-havoc in filmic narratives,most notably in the genre of science fiction. Besides the pleasure of theirspectacle, she suggested that the fascination with wide-screen catastrophicsarticulates real-world anxieties over the risks attendant on scientific andtechnological progress, as well as a desire to see science and technologyredeemed through their harnessing in a morally unequivocal and sociallyunifying 'good war' (Sontag 1965: 46-7).

For a global audience attuned to the new enviromnental consciousness,graphic images of burning oil wells served as a focus for fears over globalclimatic change, whilst shots of an oil slick allegedly forty times the volume ofthe Exxon Valdez spillage relegated such previous infractions intoinsignificance, even as it played upon their familiar codings of ecodisaster. Yeteven an entity as cinematically resonant as a vast surging sea of slime was notimmune to the vagaries of the electronic vector. Whilst the monitoring andreporting of the war's enviromnental impact relied on the latest techno scientificmodalities, the resultant vision-mix ultimately served to fracture the narrationof catastrophe, just as it did for the narration of combat. In the form in whichwe encountered it, the beleaguered nature of the Gulf was itself a multi-mediaevent, composited from ground and airborne observations, computerized dataanalysis and the ethereal images beamed down from meteorological satellites-into which was spliced select scenes of ecocatastrophe from sites totallyunrelated to the current crisis (Sadiq and McCain 1993: 74-80, Kellner 1992:215). As with the other aspects of contemporary military conflict, it wouldappear that the enviromnental impact of war is subject to 'a speculativeunfolding in an abstract, electronic and informational space' (Baudrillard 1995:

56).

Gulf: VirulenceIt is important to remember that Iraqis killed, injured and terrorized bybombardment together with those Israelis, Kuwaitis and Saudis whoexperienced direct physical danger inhabited a very different space. Criticalcommentaries after the Gulf conflict revealed that the ratio of electronically-guided projectiles to conventional weapons was far lower than official reportssuggested, and further, that the precision of so-called smart systems was muchmore questionable than indicated. As Paul Rogers (1992: 623) underscores:'The reality of Desert Storm -killing and maiming on an extraordinary scale

Apocalypse

lnfowar/Ecodefense 57

-is a very long way from the image of a clean war so I. As Bukatman's

carefully nurtured in those mili tary briefings from Saudi booklestsength .acCOt untht .sugg , pnor o elrArabia. ' If both the electronic and conventional weaponry recent upsurge,

deployed were the successors to armaments developed in concerns over theVietnam SO too was this sanitization of official runawa~ effects of

, electroruc or

pronouncements an advance on previous policies. computational

machines have had aWhat the predominance of electronic experience in the lengthy gestation in

presentation of the Persian Gulf campaign does demonstrate popular culture, andis that the new 'clean warriors' have a stronger sense of an c~ntinue to coexist

With morehierarchy of precIsIon than theIr predecessors: an mtent to 'mechanical' phobias.

foreground weapons of specific targetting over munitions of

indiscriminate destruction that appears at once to have a

moral, aesthetic and technical appeal. That is to say, the

;urrent imagineers of war seem to have a share in the now

;ornrnonplace notion that we are crossing a technocultural

livide, one in which operations of a mass scale -be they

)roduction, consumption or destruction -are being

iisplaced by arrangements of a more supple or

nicrophysical disposition. As the primary modernnetaphor of the machine gives way to the predominance ofhe electronic, the informatic or the cybernetic, the military ,

ike so many other social groupings, wishes to be on the

:ide of the ascendant. With its profusely visible capacities of

nass destruction, military action has often featured in theears and phobias of the 'machine age, , even as the

lesthetics of this destructiveness have held a certain

ascination -in the sense to which Sontag referred. But if

he new electronic paradigm addresses the anxieties of the

eceding era so too does it generate its own constellation of

oncerns (Bukatman 1993: 4-5).1

As I suggested above, the dematerializing effects of

lectronic mediation in war and in other technocultural

ields may also engender a longing for the relative stability

f prior modalities. President Bush's 'line in the sand' is

ot the only demarcation effaced by new media vectors: the

we pleasurable heterogeneity of sensory input and

"eedom from bodily and spatial limitations offered by

Space and Culture 2

Nigel Clark58

immersion in circuits of information can induce a disconcerting loss of familiarsubjective, corporeal and geographical boundaries. Where the ubiquitouspresence of machinery raised the fear of confrontation with visibly powerfuland seemingly intransigent forces -often rendered palpable by the 'visionmachine' of cinema -the technoanxieties of the cybernetic era have foundexpression in the topos of infiltration or infection. The sense of the embodiedsubject being permeated by the flow of information finds its most apt metaphorin the figure of the virus or parasite -the entity which makes a surreptitiousentry, then strikes its host at the most minute but vital level (Bukatman 1993 :

76).

The rampaging machine and the consequences of its assault on the materialworld now inhabit the mediated space of combat as a kind of 'phantomreferent' -almost comforting in its familiar fonnidability .The virus, on theother hand, makes its appearance as both the promise and the threat of theemerging microphysical order, entering the fray with all the ambivalenceformerly enjoyed by its more substantial predecessor. In his paean to the F -117 ,Lt. Colonel Roy A. Griggs USAF (undated: 2) embraces the infiltrative

capacities at the apex of the new hierarchy of precision:

Throughout the war, they attacked with complete surprise and were imm\U1e toIraqi air defenses. "In a fashion analogous to a virus attacking a cell" F -117 stealthfighters destroyed Iraq's air defense network, shattered its integrity, and opened upthe CO\U1try to-strikes byolder, nonstealth aircraft.

But true virulence cannot be contained, it does not respect the lines thatseparate ally from enemy, self from other. When the dirtiness of the Gulf War

manifested itself to the West, it came not as anything so cinematographicallyspectacular as a nuclear winter, but in a form appropriate to the era ofinformationally-permeated bodies. The same servicemen and women who hadso thoroughly penetrated the 'immune system' of a supposedly well-defendedcountry began to find that their own immune systems had been damaged by

their wartime experiences.

Reminiscent of the long-term effects of Agent Orange after Vietnam, whathas come to be known as Gulf War Syndrome encompasses a range of disparatesymptoms -from respiratory problems to chronic fatigue and birth defects -

which, when taken together, indicate a 'multiple chemical sensitivity' -or

loss of the bodies capacity to tolerate common chemicals and pollutants (Nelson1996: 1, Bloom et al 1994: 237-8). This ailment, now affecting tens ofthousands of Desert Storm and Desert Shield veterans, has been attributed

Apocalypse

lnfowar/Ecodefense 59

variously to the ingestion of pollutants -including depleted uranium used inUS munitions, to exposure to Iraqi chemical warfare agents, and to the drugsadministered to counteract these chemical weapons. Recently, in a number ofwell-publicized statements, medical researchers have linked the Gulf WarSyndrome to viral infections, one scientist raising the possibility that genesegments of the my virus may have been spliced into Iraqi biological warfareagents (Abrams 1996, Baird 1996, Pexton 1996). The presence of viruses, ithas been suggested ' would go a long way in explaining why families of Gulf

War veterans and even their pets have come down with similar illnesses' (Baird1996: 1).

During and immediately after the war, it seemed as though their insertionin the quasi-disembodied flow of circulating information afforded the coalitioncorps an almost embarrassing exemption from the possibility of conventionalmortality. Now, the latest (leaked) total of reported cases of Gulf War-relatedillnesses equals US Defense Intelligence Agency estimates of the number ofIraqi fatalities (Baird 1996: 5, Rogers 1992: 633). As Baudrillard (1995: 31)observed in his contentious commentary on the Gulf War, the media acted'parasitically, , preempting critical discussion of the war by processing its

violence into a readily consumable form. 'It is as though there was a virusinfecting this war from the beginning which emptied it of all credibility' heclaimed (1995: 62). In this light, the Gulf incident now appears to havespawned its perfect pathogen -one which undermines the body's ability toread the content of the flows which pass through it and to discriminate hannfulfrom benign: one which is invisible, infectious, indeterminate and, like the waritself, suffers from an acute lack of credibility .

Rio: Return of the Real

But even as the ecocatastrophe of the Gulf was giving way to more molecularconcerns, that original and most resilient of referents -Nature -was makinga comeback on the global circuit. The mass-mediated environmental awarenesstapped by Desert Storm publicity reached a new peak with the 1992 UnitedNations Conference on Environment and Development at Rio de Janeiro -a, global eco-event' that constituted the largest diplomatic gathering ever held

(Rich 1994: 242). As Earth Summit representatives struggled towardtransnational consensus on strategies to address pressing environmental issues,President Bush's new propensity for drawing hard lines served to underscorethe cynicism and self-interest of US intervention 'on behalf of nature' in theprevious year's media event. This time stating outright that 'The American way

Space and Culture 2

Nigel Clark60

of life is not up for negotiation, , Bush directed the US delegation not to sign the

pivotal Biodiversity Treaty or to agree to any binding measures to reduce CO2emissions (Redclift and Sage 1994: 189, Rich 1994: 257-8).

A year later, the newly incumbent Clinton Administration reversed the USposition and signed the biodiversity convention. For Vice President A1 Gore, aseasoned campaigner on the environmental ticket, his country's performance atEarth Summit was a lost opportunity .' At a crucial moment in history , whenthe rest of the world was requesting and eagerly expecting American leadership-not to mention vision -our nation found itself embarrassed and isolated atRio' (Gore 1992: xi). As Andrew Ross (1996: 114-6) has argued persuasively,in the light of the post-Cold War 'mission gap,' Gore's concern for theecological well-being of the planet offers a major pretext for a renewed USmobilization in the international arena. After declaring 'war on pollution' inthe 1987 electoral campaign, the Democratic senator went on to propose agloballyorientated 'Strategic Environmental Initiative' in his 1992 tome Earthin Balance (Gore 1992: 319fl). Such pervasive military rhetoric, Ross (1996:114-6) suggests, serves to frame environmental problems as an external threat,a menace of sufficient magnitude to impel a new generation of American global

interventions.

In 1990, Gore and fellow Democrats laid out the plans for a 'StrategicEnvironmental Research Program, , intended to redirect much of the Defensebudget towards countering the 'environmental threat. ' But later reforms,

including the refitting of military surveillance and intelligence apparatuses formonitoring the environment, and a host of well-publicized environmentalprograms issuing from the Pentagon, are viewed by Ross (1996) less as thepacifying of the war machine so much as its retooling for future interventionson ecological grounds. Given Gore's championing of the 'informationsuperhighway, , it is to be expected that the collection and circulation of data

features prominently in his version of the good fight. From Earth Data Systems,the infobahn testbed which linked environmental databases from around theUS, to the broader Digital Earth program, a proposal to deploy a massivecomputer system to meld dispersed satellite data into a single global climatemodel, we can begin to get a sense of the growing entwinement of militaryinformation gathering and ecodefense (Gore 1992: 357-8, Ross 1996: 17).

Gore's conjoining of environmental issues and cybernetic technologies notonly puts ecology on the side of the technological ascendant, but also serves thepurpose of earthing the ether of the electronic realm. For all his enthusiasm for

Apocalypse

h1fowar/Ecodefense 61

the potentialities of the cybersphere, the politician who has been dubbed 'theOzone man ' shows no more willingness to give way to the dematerializing

tendencies of the digital than the new world order architects he succeeded. Hisinitiatives to render global economic growth sustainable take a thoroughlyobjective view of the planetary environmental predicament as their bottom line,an ' ecological ' vision of such panoramic scope as to defy dispute or negotiation.

Indeed, the most significant difference between Gore's commitment tomaintaining economic progress on a global scale and Bush' s defense of theAmerican way of life is that the fornler has summoned a new grand referentfrom the deep: namely, the biosphere in its crisis phase. Such deployment of theecological metanarrative may be taken as evidence of the extent to which it hasfiltered from the countercultua1 fringe to the political and cultural mainstream.

At the core of the ecological big picture is the notion that hUInankind hasimpacted on the natural environment at a global or biospheric scale. In thewords of Al Gore (1992: 2):

if we do not see that the human part of nature has an increasingly powerfulinfluence over the whole of nature -that we are, in effect, a natural force just likethe winds and the tides -then we will not be able to see how dangerously we arethreatening to push the earth out of balance.

As the French philosopher of science, Michel Serres (1995: 4) points out, thisrecognition that nature in its totality has been transfornled is unprecedented inhuman thought. For Serres, as for Gore and his fellow environmentalists, avision of natural change of such magnitude has as its corollary a similarlytitanic conception of humankind as a collective agent: 'the decisive actions arenow, massively, those of enornlous and dense tectonic plates ofhumanity'(Serres 1995: 6).

Novel though it may be in scope, the environmentalist conception of 'theviolent collision between human civilization and the Earth' (Gore 1992: 27)draws its energy from the enduring techno-anxieties of 'the machine age, , and

its imagery from the cinematic vision machine of the same era. As the latesttechniques of data gathering and visualization draw our attention to the bio-physical consequences of industrial production, old fears of the runawaymechanical juggernaut seem to receive their ultimate vindication. By contrast,the latest generation of molecular interventions, with their microscopicprecision, acute monitoring capacities and built-in feedback controls suggestenvironmental benignity , or at least minimal impact. As long ago as the early1980s, Tim Luke (1983) could discern the convergence of the interests of

Space and Culture 2

62 Nigel Clark

infonnational capital and ecology in the displacement of an older mode ofindustrialism. Subsequent developments have born out the importance of thisinfonnational-ecological equation, but have at the same time engendered newtensions and concerns. In the words of Penley and Ross (1991: xvi):'contradictions between the ecosphere and the technosphere are increasinglyexposed in everyday culture and, in many respects, constitute our immediatepolitical horizon in the 1990s. ,

m4: Invasion

The media events of the Persian Gulf and Rio suggest an opening for newmyths to reconcile the levity of electronic dematerialization with the gravity ofthe ecological crisis; a need for new ways of squaring the survivingsuperpower's continued investment in a high-tech military ordnance with theneeds of a biosphere in distress. The summer blockbuster movie of 1996 rose tothe occasion -and received the paydirt of record box office takings for itsefforts. Launched with a level of hype approaching that of the Gulf War,Independence Day is sprinkled with references to the earlier conflict, from firstsightings over the Iraqi desert, to Exocet 'shafting' of strategic targets, to apresident who made his name as a Desert Storm war hero. But if the depictionof conflict is in some sense continuous with the notion of technowar, itnonetheless offers the 'reality effects' lacking from the Gulf conflict: the stakeis genuinely global, the protagonists engage in heroic life-threatening actions,and the enemy forces are undeniably fonnidable. From the outset, ID4announces its reclamation of the 'real ' from media dematerialization when

television broadcasts are interrupted by something too momentous, toosubstantial to be contained by the networks. Images on high-tech surveillancesystems are met with incredulity or attributed to natural phenomena -and, inan iconic sequence, a tiny communications satellite vanishes in a puff of flameand smoke as it collides with the very event which it should be relaying.2

The event, it hardly needs to be said, is an alien invasion. Melding twotypes of other-worldly creatures from classic 50s and early 60s science fiction,ID4 's aliens enter as unparticularized Others whose primary task is to wreakmindless havoc, and are later revealed to be highly intelligent but regimentedand compunctionless social beings, set on extenninating humankind (Sontag1965: 47, Sobchack 1987: 43-4, 120-1). The first guise gives ample scope for acontemporary reworking of the aesthetics of destruction, with scarcely adeviation from Sontag's thirty-year old formula. In the second act, when theextra-terrestrials divulge their intentions, it becomes apparent that the long-

Apoca/ypse

lnfowar/Ecodefense

2. That the doomedsatellite bears theinscription CCCPsuggests that the newglobal threat is on itsway to filling the'mission gap'left bythe demise of thefonner Soviet Union.

tenn threat they pose to the planet is an environmental one.Indeed, the ecological message of Independence Day mightalmost have been scripted from the more effusive passagesof Gore's Earth in the Balance, which itself liberallydeployed the metaphors of invasion and heroic resistance.Taking Gore's externalization of the environmentalproblematic one stage further, the fictional US PresidentWhiunore offers his 'vision' of the planetary predicament:'I saw what they're planning to do. They're like locusts.They're moving from planet to planet -their wholecivilization. After they've consumed every natural resource,they move on. And we're next' (Emmerich 1996, cf Gore

1992: 234-5).

Like so many environmentalist texts, Gore's inclusive,ID4 ' s opening sequence includes the view of our planet

from space. The familiar 'Whole Earth' image -aterraqueous oasis floating in a black void -is sooneclipsed by an unimaginably large vessel. When we laterobserve the craft in its entirety , it is suspended in space likea vast set of vampiric fangs, poised to drain the life bloodfrom our planet. If individually, the alien beings of ID4 arenot as formidable as some of their 1980s counterparts,collectively they constitute a force which mirrors ourdawning self-understanding as global agents capable ofmassively impacting on nature. Like Serres 'enonnous anddense tectonic plates,' the death-dealing alien craftreduplicate the scale and inorganic density of the citiesbeneath them, while the even more immense baseship offersan ugly premonition of a totally industrialized planet.Although the aliens are supposedly endowed withtechnological capacities far in advance of our own, thejourney into the mothership reveals an environment farfrom the shiny, sterile surfaces of futuristic science fiction.With its bilious grey-green smog, tarnished vaulting andsmoking vents, the interior is more resonant of a darksatanic mill than an ultramodern spacecraft. And if thesehyper-industrial artefacts are not enough, it is the task ofJeffGoldblum's environmentalist hero to hammer home the

Space and Culture 2

Nigel Clark64

message that the ecocidal impulses of the extraterrestrial Other are no more

than an extension of our own fatal tendencies: 'We've gotta burn the rain forest

...We've got to dump all our toxic waste! ...We've got to pollute the air! Maybe if we screw this planet up badly enough they won't want it anymore'

(Emmerich 1996).

But if it is the case in ID4 that 'aliens R us, , or to use Zoe Sofoulis' more

precise formulation 'aliens R U.S.' (cited in Sobchack 1987: 289) then the

point of reference is an interesting admixture of post Rio and pre Gulf. In the

depiction of the alien megamachine, the film eschews the molecularities of the

cybernetic age for the 'hyperbolically visible technology' of the modernist era

(see Bukatman 1993: 5). Its scenes of attack and counter-attack are played out

in the same coherent three-dimensional space as the 1950s invasion genre,

rather than the multilayered, hypenextual environments of contemporary

technowar and cyberfiction. In a similar sense, ID4 's extraterrestrials reverse

the trend of recent fictive engagements with Otherness by confronting rather

than infiltrating, assaulting rather than infecting. Apan from a brief telepathic

incident, they leave the subjective and corporeal boundaries of their human

opponents intact, if not reinforced by the experience (see Bukatman 1993: 267).

Symptomatically, Jeff Goldblum, whose fusion with a foreign body in The F/y

(Cronenberg 1986) results in the shedding of his penis, concludes his alien

encounter in this incarnation by gaining a cigar.

ID4: Infection

But there is more to the film than a clarifying of the blurred ontologies of the

cybernetic era. In an important sense, Independence Day's recovery of classic

cinematic space prepares the ground for a fresh advance into the realms of

electronic deterritorialization. While ID4 genera11y keeps the audience on the

outside of its circuits of information, it nonetheless inherits the logistics of

visualization and destruction of the Gulf conflict, offering a strong

reaffirmation of the new hierarchy of ballistic precision. If the alien death ray is

impressive for its capacity to zero-in on Strategic edifices, it is equally

contemptible for the way it moves on to indiscriminate annihilation. For the

forces of earthly ecodefense, the decision to counterattack on the same plane of

mass destruction is a source of deep anxiety, and a strong preference is shown

for the more discriminating properties of guided munitions.

But the smart bomb is no longer the epitome of pin-point penetration. As

Vivian Sobchack (1987: 303) observes 'the most popular SF films keep

Apocalypse

lnfowar/Ecodefense 65

appropriating the culture's newest technology.' Independence Day is noexception. Where pathogenic metaphors seemed to express the intrusivecapacities of the most advanced Gulf War weaponry, ID4 accedes to the powersof virulence in a rather more literal sense. Reminiscent of the bacteria andgerms that halted the Martian onslaught in War of the Worlds (Haskin 1953), itis an event on the microphysical plane which finally disables the latesl:invasion. Only. this time the ultimate weapon in the terrestrial arsenal is anentity of wholly human design, a microorganism native to the realm ofinformation.

When the earth's defenders successfully infiltrate the alien communicationsystem with a computer virus, we are made aware of the limitations of themegamachine -its vulnerability to a generation of technologies which arelighter, faster, more prolific, more insidious. From its earliest outings, self-reproducing computer code has been associated with the subversive end ofcybercultural practice, a product of hackers -as some would have it -

'heroically battling the monolithic structures of financial and military powerand information control' (Bukatman 1993: 214). What ID4 achieves is to putthe errant computer program on the side of the righteousness and authority ,while it endows the scientific-military establishment with some of thecounterCultural hipness of the renegade coding fraternity. In this ligh4Baudrillard's (1995: 86) thoughts on the Gulf conflict are even more appositeto this fictional battle for planet Earth: 'Our wars ...have less to do with theconfrontation of warriors than with the domestication of the refractory forces onthe planet. ,

As it happens, the story of the militaristic redemption of the virus arrivedon the cinema screen having already negotiated a spiral of fabulations thatincluded several turns through the Gulf. It may have begun with a February1991 article in an aerospace magazine claiming that Exocet missiles sold toIraq by France had been infected with a virus that would prevent them fromhitting French vessels (Slade 1992). Then, in 1992, a US News and WorldReport issued a release from a forthcoming book on the Gulf War which relatedhow agents from the top-secret National Security Agency had intercepting aFrench-made computer printer bound for a Baghdad military facility andplanted it with virally-infected microchips. Once interfaced with mainframes,the virus purportedly proceeded to delete vital information from militaryscreens over the course of the conflict. It has been noted, however, that the story-which was rerun in many papers and on major network news shows -bears

Space and Culture 2

Nigel Clark66

a remarkable resemblance to a prank article from the April I, 1991 edition ofInfoWor/d, a California computer industry publication (Slade 1992, Karn

1992).

Although the 'factual account' of the Gulf War virus has never beenretracted, and continues to circulate, its author has been prepared to considerthat details from the fictional story may have 'leeched into our report' (Karn1992: 3). Most 'virologists' now consign the news version to the category ofurban legend. One commentator, living in the vicinity of Universal Studios,recounted the interest generated by the scenario, expressed in the local opinionthat 'Universal could have done it better.' As he concluded, back in 1992, 'Youwill, Oscar, you will' (peterson 1992: 5). While it was Twentieth Century Foxwho eventually inflated the military virus to earth-saving proportions, thewhole episode is a paradigmatic case of the mutual penneability of the realmsof 'knowledge' and entertainment, one which is particularly revealing of thepower of the cinematic medium to absorb and reprocess the fugitive images ofother media into a temporary recoherence, pending a further, expanded roundof dispersions.

Indeed, even as ID4' s reterritorialization of the elusive virus was inproduction, the US military was already actualizing the viral myth of the GulfWar into its own arsenal .In a 1995 article on the development of informationwarfare, Time magazine (August 21 1995: 37) reported that the 'super-secret'Intelligence and Security Command headquarters was working on high-techbattle scenarios in which the US chose not to counter its enemies with 'legionsof soldiers or fleets of warships,' but instead 'visit(ed) upon the offendingtyranny a series of thoroughly modern plagues, born of mice, video screens andkeyboards.' Exit the smart bomb, enter the 'logic bomb': a virus planted in theopposition computer system which remains donnant until triggered, at whichtime 'it would come to life and begin eating data' (Time August 21 1995: 39).Further plans include the delivery of other 'infobombs' via the Internet, therelease of microbes which have been bred to feed off computer electronics andinsulating material, and the deployment of miniature aerial 'biosensors' whichtrack enemy troops by way of chemicals previously planted in their food. AsAdmiral William Owens, Vice Chainnan of the Joint Chiefs of Staff proclaimsof the new generation of info-weapons: 'This is America's gift to warfare'(Time August 21 1995: 38).

Apocalypse

67Infowar/Ecodefense

Target-Rich Environments

Although they may well be used in life-threatening disruptions to air and landtraffic control or vital service provision, weapons that appear to reside entirelyon an informational plane are more likely than conventional weapons to meetcurrent US military demands for 'usable systems that conserve life and areenvironmentally friendly and fiscally responsible' (Morris et al 1995). But it isnot only the potential to present the new micro-molecular arsenal as collaterallylow-impact that allies them with the cause of ecodefense. At a morefundamental level, there are significant similarities between technoscience'slatest gifts to warfare and its contemporary contributions to planetary 'welfare':homologies between the constitution of the geopolitical terrain in which futurewarfare is to be played out, and the biophysical terrain in which strategicenvironmental operations will take place. Increasingly, both realms are beingconstrued in terms of enormously complex arrangements of data, which canonly be rendered visible through computerized schematizations. In the words ofManuel DeLanda (1991: 6): 'computers have become not only powerfulinstruments of oppression in the hands of military and paramilitary agencies:they have also opened new windows onto the creative processes of nature. ,

With its hitherto unavailable capacities for calculation and visualization,the digital computer is enabling processes to be modelled that are too minute,too extensive or too multivariate to be observed in any other mode. In this way,both technocultural and biophysical fields of operation are increasinglynegotiated in the form of digital simulations, which nonetheless have profoundimplications for the material world, as even Baudrillard reminds us from timeto time. 'Through computer simulation,' Les Levidow (1994: 318) observes,'enemy threats -real or imaginary, human or machine -become precise gridlocations, "targeting information," abstracted from their human context. ,

Analogously the conceptualization of the biological organism in terms of genesequences stored in a database makes it possible for DNA to be 'targeted' andmanipulated at specific sites (Rabinow 1992: 239, Levidow 1996: 63), whilst ona broader scale, new forms of remote sensing, data processing and modellingserve to reconceptualize the entire biosphere into hazard-rich environmentdemanding intervention.

Ultra-precision warfare's intention to 'get inside our opponent's decisioncycles' (Griggs, undated: 5), might equally stand for the biotechnologicalregime which is crystallizing in the era of a pervasive, externalizedenvironmental threat (Escobar 1995: 206fl:). Visions of the pathological

Space and Culture 2

Nigel Clark68

condition of the planet are giving rise to a new directive to 3. Ulrich Beck

think gl ball d . h . call hi h fi ds . t (1995), amongstO y an act ID1crop ysl y, one w c n I s others would resist

iconic representation in the final act of Independence Day .such; downplaying of

In a striking computer-enhanced sequence an appropriated the nuclear threat and, .

th hi Lik might well challenge

fighter-craft enters the allen mo er-s p. e a Minsky's distinction

microorganism passing through a pore, the tiny vessel is the on account of the

vector of an informatic irruption which will occur deep in uptake o~radioactivethe metabolism of a vast, corru p t, p lanet-body. Suggestive eb ~ernl ~ts a1mto I d10 oglc cyc es, an

of a return voyage into the heart of an utterly degraded their concomitant

nature, this sequence closes the loop initiated by the intergenerationalOpening invocation of the pristine Whole Earth sending its effects.

astronautical envoys out 'in peace for all lnankind' at the

close of the extensive phase of the machine age.

While the cinematic aesthetics of destruction might

demand an explosive finale to the terran-alien showdown,

we should not view this outcome as the imperative of the

virus, nor of micro-molecular interventions in general.

Through such micro-level sciences as molecular biology,

genetics and immunology , the organic bodies of nature may

be being reconstituted as battlefields (Haraway 1992: 320-

1, Levidow 1996: 64-6), but these 'target-rich

environments' are the objects of interventions which are

high on the hierarchy of precision. This exchange of codes

between the biological and the informatic

can only intensify as the machinery of warfare itself -

from biosensors and viruses, to autonomous robots and

molecular level nanomachines -takes on increasingly

lifelike traits.

Far from annihilating or even visibly confronting the

Other -whether it be an organization or an organism -

the new devices penetrate and modify the host system's

decision-making, form-generating or function-determining

mechanisms, doing so most effectively when the system as a

whole remains operational. As DeLanda (1991: 9) puts it,

with regard to the dispersal of autonomous digital agents:

'Whether these processes are viewed as "creative" or

"destructive" will depend on how much they interfere with

Apocalypse

69hlfowar/Ecodefense

the network's original function.' It will also depend on whose interests are atstake. Paul Virilio (1986: 133) has observed that with the coming of weaponsthat fly at supersonic speeds, penetration implies destruction. McKenzie Wark(1994: 45) adds that with the arrival of the instant feedback of the missile-carn.it is the vectors of destruction and information which are rendered synonymous.We might now go one step further, and suggest that with the deployment of thenext generation of micro-molecular assemblages, prefigured by the virus, it ispenetration, destruction and reproductionwhich will be indistinguishable. It isdifficult to imagine the full consequences of weapons -or tools -that aregenuinely capable of reproducing themselves, but as MIT luminary MarvinMinsky (cited in Regis 1995: 218) implied, when addressing an audience ofmolecular engineering enthusiasts, our familiar conceptions of ballisticeffectiveness may be in for a shake-up. 'Nuclear explosions aren't so terrifying,because they're not self-replicating' he claimed, 'They're just irritating. ,3

The Edge of Chaos

While it is seems appropriate to speak of the micro-molecular regime as theinstantiation of a 'new grid of control on the planet' (see Escobar 1995: 207),there is an important sense in which the coming advances may also constitute arelinquishing of control, a new world ordering imbued with a world-disordering streak. For once the machine is endowed with an 'autopoietic node'(Guattari 1995: 37) -a self-directing, self-organizing, or self-reproducingfunction -its capacity for enhanced performance must be played off against aloss of programmability .Whether we are dealing with a transgenic organismreleased into the wild -or an autonomous digital agent unleashed into anetwork -in order for the new entity to insinuate itself in an existing ecology ,to adapt to changing conditions and to solve problems on its own, it mustsecede from the direct control of its designer (DeLanda 1991: 164-7, 177-8;

Clark 1996: 104-5).

In this way, the possibility arises of autonomized agents breaking intoutterly unanticipated patterns of behaviour or dispersion, and thus radicallyinverting the apex of precision into the epitome of promiscuity .As in UlrichBeck's 'risk society' thesis, it is the most intimate interventions intobiophysical processes which constantly hold the potential of producing the mostundelimitable accidents, through the release of matter or beings which defydeactivation or recontainment (1995: 76). Coming at the issue from a ratherdifferent angle, Baudrillard observes the rise of 'superconductive events':runaway incidents triggered by the contiguity of objects, events and messages in

Space and Culture 2

70 Nigel Clark

any densely networked context (1993: 103). Alongside the sort ofenvironmental disasters depicted by Beck, he affords a prominent place to thepurely informational incident.

While Beck' s contemporary catastrophes are to some degree foreseeable,they are nonetheless undesirable and universally feared. Baudrillard (1994: 71,1993: 104; Clark 1997: 79-80), by contrast, detects a certain fascination withindeterminate, open-ended events, a growing compulsion to be experimental, totake risks, to play' double or nothing with nature. ' In support of this position,

we might note the recent growth of scientific and popular interest in systems'poised at the edge of chaos. ' Although mathematicians had long been aware of

forms of behaviour or States that were neither orderly and predictable nortotally random, it is only with the advent of computers that it has becomepossible to visually represent complex, non-linear events, and thus to gain awindow into nature's 'wild spaces' (DeLanda 1992: 136). Such modellingreveals that the zone between order and chaos has certain properties: that it isin such phases that the system is at its most resilient and adaptable in the faceof external disturbances, but also that it is here that the self -generation ofnovelty or the spontaneous emergence of higher levels of organization is mostlikely to occur (DeLanda 1992: 159, Waldrop 1992: 12). Researchers are nowextending their explorations from the inorganic to the biological and the socialrealms, felicitously deploying advanced computer modelling techniques to pushtheir chosen systems 'to the verge of a nervous breakthrough , (Clark 1997: 92-

3).

As the new virtual catastrophism blooms against a background ofimpending crises of biophysical materiality, it is timely to recall that field oftechnocultural endeavour whose speciality is the negotiation of those 'wildspaces' between order and chaos. As Virilio (1990: 66) has pointed out, thebattlefield offer a 'state-of-the-art experimentation' ground for military technics(see also Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 467). Moreover, the state of constant,diffuse insecurity , which now exists at a global level, serves to radically extendthis experimental domain, evident in the recent uptake of chaos theory bymilitary analysts (Morris et al: 1995). The omnipresent possibility of Beck's'undelimitable accidents' then, begin to materialize as the raison d'etre for acouespondingly limitless mobilization of a war machine which has freed itselffrom the particularity of a defined opponent. As Virilio (1990: 65-6) remindsus: 'Ecological catastrophes are only terrifying for civilians. For the

Apoca/ypse

hlfowar/Ecodefense 71

military, they are but a simulation of chaos, and consequently a subject of studyand an opportunity for large scale manoeuvres in open terrain. ,

The military shows little compunction over prompting the environmentalcrises that will generalize their sphere of influence, as exemplified by thecoalition forces' unswerving commitment to actions triggering the 'monstrousatmospheric experiment' of the Gulf War (see Horgan 1991: 17). Gulf War-related illnesses suggest that it is not only open terrain but the inner space ofthe body which is the site of such manufactured uncertainty , the administeringof untested drugs to American forces in the Desert Storm operation having beendescribed as 'one of the largest medical experiments in history' (Kellner 1992:387).Likewise for the virtual space of the electronic networks, where militaryintelligence gleaned useful information from the Internet virus as it 'pulsed thesystem, , revealing its strengths and vulnerabilities, not to mention promoting a

new mode of warfare (see Ross 1991: 112), for the regions of 'ecological'uncertainty now include all the various networks which now encircle the planetand all the inherently intractable organisms and entities, compounds andchimeras that are being modified, fabricated, bred or evolved within theseintegrated circuits.

In place of a cycle of production and destruction, then, an even more self-reinforcing cycle of preprogrammed catastrophe and restabilization missions: ' a

New World Order/Disorder which 'manages and intensifies its own endemicinstabilities while attributing these to an external enemy from which we needperpetual protection' (Levidow 1996: 66, see also 1994: 327). The domain ofpresent and future military-environmental manoeuvres is not so much a NewWorld in the singular, however, as a proliferation of technoculturally-fabricated'neo-worlds': (see Luke 1995: 102fl). As extensive space gives way tooverlapping, multidimensional 'paraspaces,' what matters is less the amount ofterritory under one's jurisdiction, as the number of scalar levels and fractaldimensions which have been infiltrated and influenced.

With its history of finding striking ways to visually represent aspects of'reality' which escape normal cognition, science fiction film has been pivotal inarticulating the experience of these new layered and fractured spaces (Sobchack1987: 100-103, 234-5, Bukatman 1993: 133-7), and for all its politicallysimplistic and narrativally retroactive tendencies, JD4 makes an importantcontribution. We should not belittle the significance of that fateful militarist-environmentalist virus insinuating itself in the degraded planetary body -and,by extension, in the popular imaginary .Hollywood has spoken on behalf of

Space and Culture 2

72 Nigel Clark

mission control, and it is up to us to resist its comforting resolutions to our ownreal but other-worldly crises. The question remains open as to whether we willbe able to compose responses with enough valence, speed and virulence tomake an impact on the new biotechnological terrains.

University of AuklandAuk/and, New Zealand

References

Abrams, J. 1996. 'Scientist Says Virus Could Be Behind Gulf-Related llInesses,'Arlington Online, October 7, httpJ/www.arlington.net:80/news/doc/l047/1:MED12/1 :MED121 00796.html

Aronowitz, S., B. Martinsons, and M. Menser eds. 1996. Technoscience andCyberculture, New York and London: Routledge

Baird, R. E. 1996. Untitled, Colorado Daily On-Line Edition. January 3httpJ /bcn. boulder .co. us:80/media/colodaily/zjan3/GW AR3E.html

Baudrillard, J. 1983. Simulations, trans. P. Foss, New York: Semiotext(e) (fIrstpublished 1981 )

-1993. The Transparency of Evil; Essays on Extreme Phenomena, trans. J. Benedict,London and New York: Verso (fIrSt published 1990)

-1994. The Illusion of the End. trans. c. Turner, Cambridge: Polity Press (first

published 1992)-1995. The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, trans. P. Patton, Bloomington and

Indianapolis: Indiana University Press (fIrst published 1991 )Beck, U. 1995. Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk, trans. A. Weisz, Cambridge:

Polity Press (fIrst published 1988)Bender, G. and T. Druckreyeds. 1994. Culture on the Brink; Ideologies of Technology,

Seattle: Bay PressBickerton, I and M. Pearson 1991.43 Days; The Gulf War, East Melbourne and Sydney,

The Text Publishing Company/ABCBloom, S., J. Miller, J Warner, and P. Winkler 1994. Hidden Casualties;

Environmental, Health and Political Consequences ofthe Persian Gulf War,Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books

Broughton, J. 1996. 'The Bomb's-Eye View: Smart Weapons and Military TV,'Aronowitz et 811996: 139-165

Bukatman, S. 1993. Tenninal Identity; The Virtual Subject in Post-Modem ScienceFiction, Durham and London: Duke University Press

Clark, N. 1996. 'Earthing the Ether: The Alternating Currents of Ecology andCyberculture,' Sardarand Ravetz 1996: 90-110

-1997. 'Panic Ecology: Nature in the Age of Superconductivity,' Theory, Culture &Society 14:1.77-95

Crary, J. and S. Kwinter eds. 1992. Incorporations; Zone 6, New York: ZoneCronenberg, D. 1986. The Fly, 20th Century Fox

Apocalypse

htfowar/Ecodefense 73

DeLanda, M. 1991. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, New York: Swerve Editions-1992. 'Nonorganic Life,' Crary and Kwinter 1992: 128- 67Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and

Schizophrenia, trans. B. Massumi,. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

(first published 1980)Emmerich, R. 1996. Independence Day, 2Oth Centwy FoxEscobar, A. 1995. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third

World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University PressFeatherstone, M., S. Lash and R. Robertson eds. 1995. Global Modernities, London:

SageGore, A. 1992. Earth in the Balance: Forging a New Common Puryose, London:

EarthscanGrossberg, L., C. Nelson and P. Treichler eds. 1992. Cultural Studies, London:

RoutledgeGriggs, R. undated. 'Technology and Strategy,' http://www.cdsar.af.Inil/apj/griggs.htmIGuattari, F. 1995. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm, trans. P. Bains and J .

Pefanis, Sydney: Power Publications (fIrSt published 1992)Haraway, D. 1992. 'The ProInises ofMonsters: A Regenerative Politics for

hlappropriate/d Others,' Grossberg, Nelson and Treichler 1992: 295-337Haskin, B. 1953. The War of the Worlds. Paramont PicturesHorgan, J. 1991. 'Up in Flames,' Scientific American, May. 17-24Karn, P. 1992. 'Gulf War Virus?'/'1 *Knew* It Sounded Fishy!,' The Risks Digest 13:4

http:/ /catless.ncl.ac. uk/Risks/13 .04 .htmI#subj2Kellner, D. 1992. The Persian Gulf TV War, Boulder, Col.: Westview PressLevidow, L. 1994. 'The Gulf Massacre as Paranoid Rationality,' Bender and Druckrey

1994: 317-327-1996. 'Simulating Mother Nature, Industrializing Agriculture,' Robertson, Mash,

Tickner, Bird, Curtis and Putnarn 1996: 55-71Luke, T. 1983. 'Infonnationalisrn and Ecology,' Telos 56:Summer. 59-73-1995. 'New World Order or Neo-world Orders: Power, Politics and Ideology in

Infonnationalizing Glocalities,' Featherstone, Lash and Robertson 1995.Morris, C., Morns, J., and Baines, T. 1995. 'Weapons ofMass Protection: Nonlethality,

Infonnation Warfare, and Airpower in the Age of Chaos,' Air Chronicles: AirPower Journal, 1: Spring. http://www.cdsar.af.Inil/apj/morris.htmI

Nelson, S. 1996. 'Civilian Docs ill A Cause For Gulflllness /Government Uses WrongTests, Say Environmentalists,' Gulf War Veterans Resource Pages.http:/ /www .gulfwar .org/ doctors.htmI

Peterson, A P. 1992. 'Chicken Little and the Computer,' The Risks Digest 13: 5http:/ /catless.ncl.ac. uk/Risks/13 .05 .htmI#subj 3

Pexton, P. 1996. 'Gulf War Sickness: Genetic Marker a Clue?,' Navy Times 21 Octoberhttp:/ /www .gulfwar .org:80/GWV A/rnhonarc/msgO 1213.htmI

Space and Culture 2

74 Nigel Clark

Penley, C. and Ross, A. eds. 1991. Technoculture, MiIU1eapolis: University ofMiIU1esota Press

Rabinow, P. 1992. Artificiality and Enlightenment: From Sociobiology to Biosociality , ,

Crary and Kwinter eds. 1992: 234-252Regis, E. 1995. Nano: The Emerging Science of Nanotechnology: Remaking the World -

Molecule by Molecule, Boston: Little, Brown and CompanyRedclift, M and C. Sage eds. 1994. StrategiesforSustainable Development: Local

Agendas for the Southern Hemisphere, Chichester: John Wiley & SonsRich, B. 1994. Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment,

and the Crisis ofDevelopment, Boston: Beacon PressRobertson, G., M. Mash, L. Tickner, J. Bird, B. Curtis, and T. Putnam eds. 1996.

FutureNatural: NaturelSciencelCulture, London: RoutledgeRogers, P. 1992. 'The Myth of the Clean War,' Crary and Kwinter 1992: 622-3Ross, A. 1991. ' Hacking Away at the CoWlterculture, , Penley and Ross 1991

-1996a. 'The Future is a Risky Business,' Robertson, Mash, Tickner, Bird, Curtis andPutnam 1996: 7-21

-1996b. 'Earth to Gore, Earth to Gore,' Aronowitz, Martinsons and Menser 1996:111-121

Sadiq, M and J. McCain 1993. The Gulf War Aftennath: An Environmental Tragedy,Dordrecht: Kluver Academic Publishers

Sardar, Z and J. Ravetz 1996. Cybeifutures: Culture and Politics on the InfonnationSuperhighway, London: Pluto Press

Serres, M. 1995. The Natural Contract, trans. E MacArthur and W Paulson, Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press (fIrSt published 1992)

Slade, R. 1992. "'Desert Storm" Viral Myths,' The Risks Digest 13: 6.http:llcatless.ncl.ac. uk/Risks/13 .06.htIn1#subj3

Sobchack, V. 1987. Screening Spoce: The American Science Fiction Film, New York:

Ungar-1990. 'The Scene of the Screen,' Post Script 10: 50-59Sontag, S. 1965. 'The Imagination ofDisaster,' Commentary, 40: November 4. 42-48Thomas, W. 1995. Scorched Earth: The Military's Assault on the Environment,

Philadelphia and Gabriola Island, BC: New Society PublishersVirilio, P. 1986. Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology, New York: Semiotext(e)

(first published 1977)-1989. War and Cinema: The Logistics ofPerception, trans. P. Cami11er, London:

Verso (fIrst published 1984)-1990. Popular Defense and Ecological Stroggles, trans. M. Poli:zzotti, New York:

Semiotext(e) (fIrst published 1978)Waldrop, M. 1992. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos,

New York: Simon & SchusterWark, McK. 1994. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events, Bloomington

and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press

Apocalypse