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Research Article

Quantum espionage: a phenomenology of the Snowden affair

Pages 920-936 | Published online: 19 May 2022
 

ABSTRACT

In 2019 Britain’s top spy agency GCHQ staged ‘Top Secret: From Ciphers to Cyber Security’, a major exhibition at the London Science Museum. Spanning a hundred years of espionage, over a hundred objects were on display, including the MacBook Air owned by The Guardian, which held top secret files stolen by Edward Snowden from the US National Security Agency. The essay constructs a hybrid method of quantum theory and phenomenology to better understand how the laptop took on an excess of meaning, requiring an equally excessive destruction, not only for secrets once held or as deterrent against future leakers and publishers. A close reading of the ‘Snowden Affair’ reveals another story, of a paradigm shift from classical spy craft to a new form of quantum espionage.

Disclosure statement

Research for this article was made possible through the support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Notes

1. Der Derian, “Leaked Snowden Files.”

2. Harding, “Footage released.”

3. Smith, “Phenomenology.”

4. The first philosophy course I took at McGill University was taught by Charles Taylor, which meant a very heavy dose of phenomenology (the first text we read was Sartre’s Being and Nothingness). Other phenomenological works that influenced the essay include Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences; Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture”; de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity; and Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception.

5. See: Beyer, “Edmund Husserl.”

6. The use of ‘deconstruction’ here intentionally invokes Derrida, who began his philosophical journey with a dissertation on the limits of phenomenology, a theme to which he returned twenty year’s later, acknowledging intellectual debts to the phenomenologists. See Derrida, The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy; and Derrida, ‘Et Cetera….’. Paradigm shift is used here in the Kuhnian sense, as a fundamental change in the essential concepts and practices of a scientific discipline. See Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

7. The conventional definition of espionage is simple if tautological: spying to obtain information. By prefacing it with ‘quantum’ I introduce a wide range of complex modifiers, like entanglement, superposition and uncertainty, that I believe can be better explained through thick description than a hard definition. I have also purposely chosen ‘espionage’ over ‘intelligence’ to avoid any confusion with a related inquiry on the implications of ‘quantum intelligence’ for the social sciences see Wendt, Quantum Mind and Social Science. For further background on the history and politics of defining ‘intelligence’ and ‘espionage’ see Der Derian, Antidiplomacy and Der Derian, “Antidiplomacy, Intelligence Theory.”

8. This can be more closely identified with the method of filmmaking – show, don’t tell – which is consistent with the origins of this essay in Project Q: War, Peace and Quantum Mechanics, a forthcoming book and documentary film funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Admittedly, it also reflects the difficulty of defining the highly motile nature of phenomenology, most aptly demonstrated by the experience of two of its founders, Husserl and Heidegger, who when asked in 1927 to co-author an article on phenomenology for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, had to give up because they could not agree on a definition. Nor, as I discovered after the fact, has the epistemic affinity of phenomenology and quantum mechanics gone unnoted by physicists (like Hermann Weyl) or philosophers (like Pierre Kerszberg). See also Lurçat, “Understanding Quantum Mechanics.”

9. Husserl, Logical Investigations, 39, 168.

10. Ibid.

11. The Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow and St. Andrews still have Professorships and Chairs in ‘Natural Philosophy’ as they were created before the demarcation of disciplinary boundaries.

12. For a fuller account of the transnational and transdisciplinary dialogue between physicists and philosophers in this period, see Der Derian and Wendt. Quantum International Relations particularly. Grove “A Quantum Temperament”; Waters ”Mind, Matter, and Motion” and Harrington “First Encounters.”

13. See Robbins, “Science-envy.”

14. A lengthier and hopefully more convincing counter-critique can be found in the introduction to Der Derian and Wendt, Quantum International Relations.

15. See Al-Khalili and McFadden, Life on the Edge; Buckley and Peat, Glimpsing Reality; and Busemeyer and Bruza, Quantum Models of Cognition and Decision.

16. On ‘quantum diplomacy’ and ‘quantum war’ see Der Derian, “From War 2.0 to Quantum War” and Der Derian, “Quantum diplomacy.” Also see Thornhill, “Quantum politics” and Thornhill “Lunch with the FT” on the ‘quantum politics’ of former theoretical physicist and president of Armenia, Armen Sarkissian.

17. Omand, How Spies Think, 54.

18. See Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism; Rorty and Engel, What’s the Use of Truth?

19. Ibid. See also Rorty, “Philosophy-envy.” In the latter article Rorty critique’s Steven Pinker’s attempt to replace ‘sloppy philosophy’ with the rigor of science. I believe the only other philosopher quoted in Omand’s insightful book is John Stuart Mill, see: Omand, How Spies Think, 204. Although David Deutsch, a philosopher famous for his promotion of the controversial many-worlds interpretation in quantum physics, does receive a highly positive footnote. See Omand, How Spies Think, 301.

20. See: French, “Spy Fever in Britain.”

21. This description draws on Harding, The Snowden Files. For the bizarre footage of the destruction of the MacBook Air see: Harding, “Footage released.”

22. The phrase ‘Information wants to be free’ is attributed to Stewart Brand who was recorded saying it at ‘Hackers Conference 1984’. The phrase was popularised by early Cypherpunks. See transcript of hacker’s conference in Brand, “Hacker conference, 1984,” 49 and Hughes, Cypherpunk’s Manifesto.

23. See Schmitt, Political Theology.

24. Ibid., 13. It might make for awkward company to place Schmitt among the phenomenologists – especially among those in the left-wing existentialist camp of Sartre and Beauvoir – but Schmitt was heavily influenced by Husserl, and the collapse of objective legality under the state of the exception is only one instance among others of an anti-foundationalist ontology that he shared with the phenomenologists. See Marder, Groundless Existence.

25. See note 1 above.

26. Ibid.

27. See de Beauvoir, Ethics of Ambiguity.

28. See: Wheeler and Feynman, “Interaction with the Absorber” and Wheeler and Feynman, “Classical Electrodynamics”; Lloyd, Black Holes, Demons and the Loss of Coherence; and Linden et al. “Quantum mechanical evolution.”

29. Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-five, 94.

30. Bryan, “Head Bokononist.” BR2.

31. Barthes, “Rhétorique de l’image,” 45. See also Barthes, Camera Lucida and Fisher, “Beyond Barthes.”

32. Savage, “Judge Questions Legality of N.S.A. Phone Records.”

33. Harding, The Snowden Files, 195-200.

34. Spiegel, “Spying on Smartphones.”

35. Ibid.

36. Guardian, “NSA Prism program slides.”

37. Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 109 and 209-210.

38. Ibid., 93, and for Prism overview see, Ibid., 6.

39. Ibid., 101-7.

40. Ibid., 106.

41. Ibid., 101-2.

42. See: Guardian, “The slides that show Australian”; and Intercept, “The NSA is Recording.”

43. Oltermann, “German MPs complain about NSA.”

44. Hujer and Stark, “Obama “Should Have Apologized.’”

45. For Snowden document see: “Classification Guide for NSA.” For the Washington Post write up see: Rich and Gellman, “NSA seeks to build quantum computer.”

46. Ibid. for Snowden document see: “Excerpts from the ‘black budget’.” See also Rich and Gellman, “NSA seeks to build quantum computer.”

47. Einstein, “Einstein to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” For a fascinating account of the letter see: Lapp, “The Einstein Letter.”

48. This now famous line was coined by Einstein in a telegram appeal to several hundred prominent Americans, asking for contributions: ‘to let the people know that a new type of thinking is essential’ in the atomic age. See: Holt, “Meeting Einstein”s challenge.” (n.b. this essay was written before even more uncomfortable parallels could be made between September 1939 and February 2022.)

49. F.H. Hinsley, who worked as liaison between Bletchley and Whitehall during this period, later concluded that “it [Ultra] shortened the war by not less than two years and probably by four years – that is the war in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and Europe.’ See Hinsley, “Influence of ULTRA in the Second World,” and Copeland, “Alan Turing: the codebreaker.”

50. We will leave for now the question of whether weapons of mass destruction or tools of mass (dis)information have proven more disruptive since that fateful year.

51. ‘QUINT’ is, as far as the author knows, still in a quantum state of possibility; it should not be confused with ‘the quint’, as the largest members of NATO (United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy) are sometimes called.

52. This debate is reflected in the contrast between the responses to Snowden’s leaks by traditional media and the blogosphere. Outlets as diverse as online news magazines like Huffington Post and technology commentators like Mashable and Wired continually emphasised the importance of exposing ‘No Such Agency’ to the widest possible audience. This approach was not restricted to so-called radical ‘fringe elements’ of WikiLeaks or Internet libertarians, but was also the stance of web-based security, privacy and technology commentators. The divergent responses of traditional versus next-generation media is highlighted by the willingness of online sites to publish NSA slides that Snowden’s media partners like the Washington Post and even the Guardian refused to publish. In many instances cyberspace outlets asked the difficult questions about the security, privacy and surveillance implication of the NSA’s monitoring regime that traditional media outlets shied away from.

53. See: Deibert, Black Code and Singer and Friedman, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar.

54. Ibid. Their account of an early act of hacktivism against the US Department of Energy, which left the message ‘You Talk of Peace for All, and Then Prepare for War’, signed by WANK (‘Worms Against Nuclear Killers’), is better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick for Australian followers of Julian Assange and Midnight Oil.

55. Gibson, Neuromancer, 17 & 63

56. Borges, “On Rigor in Science.” In that Empire, the Art of Cartography reached such Perfection that the map of one Province alone took up the whole of a City, and the map of the empire, the whole of a province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps did not satisfy and the Colleges of Cartographers set up a Map of the Empire which had the size of the Empire itself and coincided with it point by point. Less Addicted to the Study of Cartography, Succeeding Generations understood that this Widespread Map was Useless and not without Impiety they abandoned it to the Inclemencie’s of the Sun and of the Winters. In the deserts of the West some mangled Ruins of the Map lasted on, inhabited by Animals and beggars; in the whole Country there are no other relics of the Discipline of Geography.’

57. Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 166.

58. In fact, ‘The Ellsberg Paradox’, first presented in his 1962 Harvard dissertation on ‘Risk, Ambiguity and Decision paper’, in which classical theory wrongly predicts ambiguity neutrality in cases of low vs high probability, has recently enjoyed a revival as one of several instances in which quantum decision theory (QDT) proves superior to classical models in predicting human behaviour. See Ellsberg, Risk, Ambiguity and Decision; and Wei, al-Nowaihi, Dhami, “Quantum Decision Theory.”

59. Gladwell, “Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden.”

60. Snowden, Permanent Record.

61. Ibid., 42, 47.

62. Ibid., 44, 45.

63. Ibid., 88.

64. Ibid., Homo contractus, passim.

65. ‘He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.’ Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, IV, 146. The full quote captures an existential crisis Snowden relates in his memoir, where he experienced a great emptiness from a career that seems to have chosen him, prompting a decision to leave behind an essence defined by spying upon others to the much more uncertain existence of a whistleblower; it reads as a very Sartrean moment.

66. Snowden, Permanent Record, 279.

67. Ibid., 239.

68. Ibid., 258,259. For 10,000 documents see: Spiegel, “‘Explosive’ NSA Spying Reports.” The number is not without controversy. Former NSA chief Keith Alexander claimed Snowden took as many as 200,000 documents, see: Hosenball, “NSA chief says Snowden leaked up to 200,000.”

69. See Gilling, Project Rainfall.

70. Gilling, Project Rainfall [ebook], chap. 5.

71. Ibid., chap. 23.

72. Ibid., chap. 5 and 25, ‘Snowden’ passim.

73. NTNews, “Hundreds sign up to storm Pine Gap.”

74. Heisenberg (1971), “Quoted in Buckley and Peat”, Glimpsing Reality, 8-9.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Der Derian

James Der Derian is Michael Hintze Chair of International Security at the University of Sydney, where he is Director of the Centre for International Security Studies.

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