Article,
Quantum espionage: a phenomenology of the Snowden affair
Intelligence and National Security, (2022)
DOI: 10.1080/02684527.2022.2076341
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.
