Researcher
Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud
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Summary
Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud holds an PhD in War Studies from King’s College London and an MA in Security Policy Studies from The George Washington University.
His research interests include contemporary Western warfare, war and technology, military theory and operational thinking and practice, critical IR theories and Science and Technology Studies.
His forthcoming book The World According to Military Targeting will be published in 2025.
Expertise
Education
PhD, War studies, Kings college London
Master of Arts, Security Policy Studies, The George Washington University
Work Experience
2010- Research Assistant and Researcher, NUPI
2009 Lecturer, Sogn og Fjordane University College
2008-2009 Assistant, The Atlantic Council of the United States
2008-2009 Intern, The Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES)
Aktivitet
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Military AI, Venture Capital and the Hype of War
How is venture capital transforming military AI – and what are the consequences when the logics of Silicon Valley enter the domain of warfare?
From Lessons to Strategic Choices: Implications for long-term defence planning (StratLess)
This project looks at how militaries identify and draw so-called strategic lessons, and how this influences and shapes military planning. ...
The World According to Military Targeting
A revealing account of the prevalence—and alarming ubiquity—of military targeting, and how it has become a self-propelling worldview driven by dominance, violence, and power. The World According to Military Targeting engages directly with our grave world condition, asking how we ended up in a “closed world” made for military targeting by military targeting. In this book, NUPI researcher Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud explores how the operational logics and seductive forces of targeting produce a world in which the only ways to think about politics and security is through military supremacy, endless war, and global domination, with serious implications for social and political life. Offering a critical investigation of military targeting through the lenses of its historical formation, current operations, and future implications, the author presents an innovative investigation into targeting’s radical knowledge production, how it abstracts and brings into being new worlds, and the violence and destructive effects it generates. Through an interdisciplinary lens, the book draws attention to military doctrine and methodologies; statistical thought and practice; the mathematical and computational techniques of data production, processing, and modeling; and the so-called machine-learning algorithms and AI of today. The resulting narrative provides novel insights into how imagining the world, producing the world, and operationalizing the world are always wrapped up in each other and profoundly embedded in sociotechnical systems.
Algorethics: Responsible governance of artificial intelligence
How can we develop artificial intelligence ethically?
The Military Power Seminar 2022 – Northern-Europe in a changing security landscape
What are the consequences of the changing security landscape for security in the north? At this year’s Military Power Seminar, we invite you to a debate on the important political issues related to security in Norway’s immediate neighbourhood.
Krig i en verden av fremmed intelligens
This chapter investigates a number of issues related to the ongoing debates around artificial intelligence and its impact on the future of geopolitics and warfare. Through insights from science and technology studies (STS), the chapter seeks to question common assumptions in political science about the relationship between technology, war and politics. It will be argued that political science's treatment of these as independent elements and the subsequent simplified notions of technological and socio-political change must be altered in favor of a more inclusive way of thinking about socio-technical practices. This will improve our understanding of the war-technology relationship while providing a more fertile ground for discussing changes in the wake of the development of artificial intelligence.
The unsolicited rocket: a story of science, technology, and future wars
This article investigates the puzzling case of the unsolicited rocket: a Norwegian research establishment successfully developed a weapon system that no one wanted or had asked for that was later widely adopted. We argue that the ‘Terne’ weapon existed not because it was needed based on rational calculations about efficiency, but because of the narratives, coalitions, and competitive dynamics that surrounded it and made it useful. Conventionally, war and technology are often considered distinct ‘things’ with immutable essences, used as variables to explain other phenomena, rather than being examined on their own terms. In this case, we focus empirically on the configuration of sociotechnical imaginaries, and the capacities for action that arise out of it. In foregrounding sociotechnical systems, this is not a case of the ‘militarization’ of civilian society and research in peacetime. Rather, agency lay in competitive networks of narratives and coalitions between technologies, individuals, professions, technological communities, military organizations, and funding bodies, together shaping how ideas and technologies become authoritative and dominant.
Norway and Great Power Politics – Geopolitics, Technology and Climate (NISP)
Our times are shaped by developments in geopolitical power dynamics, fast-paced technological development and climate change. In this research program NUPI analyses how these developme...
Cyber security, knowledge and practices (CYKNOW)
CYKNOW will promote better understanding of cyber security, as well as develop novel theoretical and methodological tools for cybersecurity research in particular. ...