State hacking at the edge of code, capitalism and culture

ABSTRACT

Hacking is a set of practices with code that provides the state an opportunity to defend and expand itself onto the internet. Bringing together science and technology studies and sociology scholarship on boundary objects and boundary work, we develop a theory of the practices of the hacker state. To do this, we investigate weaponized code, the state’s boundary work at hacker conferences, and bug bounty programmes. In the process, we offer a depiction of the hacker state as aggressive, networked, and adaptive.

KEYWORDS:

• Hacker
• hacking
• state
• boundary object
• boundary work

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The material in this and the following section draws in part on fieldwork the authors performed in a hands-on hacking workshop on ethical hacking in Manchester, UK during 2017 and at DEF CON 25 (2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Lancaster University: [grant number FASS Faculty Research Grant and Security Lancaster].

Notes on contributors

Luca Follis

Luca Follis is Senior Lecturer in Law and Society in the Law School at Lancaster University (UK). He is a political and legal sociologist working at the intersection of power, resistance and technology. His work has been published in journals such as Law, Culture and the Humanities, EPD: Society and Space, and The International Journal of Communication. He is the author of Hacker States (MIT Press 2020, with Adam Fish).

Adam Fish

Adam Fish is an Associate Scientia Professor in the School of Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales. He is a cultural anthropologist and documentary video producer who works across social science, computer engineering, environmental science, and the visual arts. He has authored three books including: Hacker States (2020 MIT Press, with Luca Follis), about how state hacking impacts democracy; Technoliberalism (Palgrave Macmillan 2017), an ethnography of the politics of internet and television convergence in Hollywood and Silicon Valley; and After the Internet (Polity, 2017, with Ramesh Srinivasan), which re-imagines the internet from the perspective of grassroots activists, citizens, and hackers on the margins of political and economic power. He is currently writing a book on drone oceanography for MIT Press.