[Air-L] The World According to Military Targeting, online book talk and discussion with Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud, 25th Feb 3-5pm CET

Patrick Smith patrickbriansmith at gmail.com
Tue Feb 17 10:48:04 PST 2026


Dear colleagues,

With apologies for cross-posting.

The Emergent Nonfiction Lab (part of the Counter Evidentiary Futures
project) at the University of Salford welcomes Erik Reichborn-Kjennerud
(Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International
Affairs) for this online talk on his recent book The World According to
Military Targeting, on 25th Feb 3-5pm CET.

You can register here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-world-according-to-military-targeting-talk-w-erik-reichborn-kjennerud-tickets-1980570147627?aff=oddtdtcreator


“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, 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” - MIT Press.

“Providing a master class in deep and generative scholarship,
Reichborn-Kjennerud chronicles the deadly logics that perpetuate worlds of
warfighting, from the systems thinking of the last century to the
data-driven algorithms of the present - Lucy Suchman, Professor Emerita,
Lancaster University.

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.

Best,
Patrick
-- 
Dr. Patrick Brian Smith
Assistant Professor and University Fellow
School of Arts, Media and Creative Technology
University of Salford


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