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Suddenly, everything can be weaponised… | blogjou

Mark Galeotti

The Weaponisation of Everything

p. 11
09 Apr 2023

Suddenly, everything can be weaponised...


Suddenly, everything can be weaponised as part of the expanding array (arsenal, even) of military metaphors all around us. The irony is that just as the language of real war is becoming blandly euphemistic (with ‘delivery systems’ causing ‘collateral damage’), civilian speech becomes more martial. Beyong the ‘War on Drugs’ and the ‘Battle Against COVID’ (British prime minister Boris Johnson even hailed news of vaccines as proof that the ‘scientific cavalry’ were ‘coming over the brow of the hill’), everything now seems couched in military terminology. In part this may reflect the new age in which a terrorist’s bomb or a rival’s sanctions could hit anyone, any time, leaving us feeling like reluctant conscripts on an invisible battlefield.