Patrick Brian Smith

War in the Smartphone Age, book talk and discussion with Matthew Ford Matthew Ford on his new book War in the Smartphone Age: Conflict, Connectivity and the Crises at Our Fingertips + respondent Miglė Bareikytė

Pleased to be talking with @patrickbriansmith.bsky.social and Miglė Bareikytė about my book at @salforduni.bsky.social' Emergent Nonfiction Lab on 3 December at 16:00 Stockholm time.

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/war-in-the...

Collateral Damages, book talk and discussion with Nadia El-Shaarawi Nadia El-Shaarawi on her recent book Collateral Damages: Tracing the Debts and Displacements of the Iraq War

Upcoming event at the Emergent Nonfiction Lab, Nadia El-Shaarawi will present her recent book Collateral Damages: Tracing the Debts and Displacements of the Iraq War! You can register here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/collateral...

YouTube video by Patrick Smith Means of Control, Byron Tau book talk and discussion

Recording of recent talk with @byrontau.bsky.social on "Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government is Creating a New American Surveillance State" (2024). Discussion bridges investigative journalism, critical media studies, + surveillance studies! www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT3s...

Just a reminder that this event with @byrontau.bsky.social is coming up soon: Wednesday, October 15 at 3pm GMT

Means of Control, book talk and discussion with Byron Tau Byron Tau on his recent book Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government is Creating a New American Surveillance State

Pleased to announce this talk with @byrontau.bsky.social on his recent book "Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government is Creating a New American Surveillance State." You can register here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/means-of-c...

Just Evidence - World Records

"Just Evidence," the World Records volume that I edited with @patrickbriansmith.bsky.social and LaCharles Ward @blurrdblue.bsky.social, launches today! It asks: What does accountability look (and sound and feel) like? Read the intro here:
worldrecordsjournal.org/just-evidence/

Pleased to share the introduction from this special issue! More articles to follow in the coming weeks! worldrecordsjournal.org/just-evidence/

Laleh Khalili · Collective Property, Private Control: Defence Tech The United States was born in war and has waged a war of some sort in every year of its existence. Silicon Valley knows...

"The US was born in war and has waged a war of some sort in every year of its existence. Silicon Valley knows that war is good for business. And many of its most powerful
people want us to stop worrying about frivolities like ethics or ecology and love the bomb" www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Law’s capture of human rights focused open-source investigation Abstract. With new protocols emerging to regulate the field of open-source investigation, this article critiques their widespread deference to the requirem

Sasha Crawford-Holland, @patrickbriansmith.bsky.social, and Andrew Williams look at open-source investigation and propose tactics to counter epistemic injustice aimed at fostering pluralistic, decentralised, and solidarity-based OSI practices.

academic.oup.com/lril/article...

Volume 13 Issue 1 | London Review of International Law | Oxford Academic Publishes high-quality scholarship on international law from around the world. While no area of international legal interest is excluded, the journal prioritises non-doctrinal scholarship, including t...

Our new issue of the London Review of International Law is out with articles by Tanja Aalberts, @ingovenzke.bsky.social, Gavin Sullivan, Wouter Werner, Sasha Crawford-Holland, @patrickbriansmith.bsky.social, Andrew Williams, and the Medellín Group.

academic.oup.com/lril/issue/1...

New article that critiques dominant narratives in “media forensics," arguing for a decolonial reorientation grounded in Indigenous epistemologies. Examining the work of NRO, it calls for counter-hegemonic practices that challenge settler-colonial evidentiary regimes... csalateral.org/issue/14-1/f...

'Human rights OSI frequently privileges technoscientific and criminological modes of investigation over alternative methods of identifying or tracking violence and harm.'

Law’s capture of human rights focused open-source investigation Abstract. With new protocols emerging to regulate the field of open-source investigation, this article critiques their widespread deference to the requirem

Interesting new piece challenging some of the assumptions on OSI contributions to atrocity accountability, particularly relating to the privileging of legal deference: there is a growing risk of excluding accounts of suffering in order to appease legal practices and norms - tinyurl.com/yc4v6y9z

Two accepted panels on Palestine were targeted after the preliminary programme was published online: Technologies at war: The role of tech companies and the EU in facilitating war crimes and genocide in Gaza, and Cyber Surveillance and Data Violence in Palestine: Protection, Practice, and Legality. CPDP approached the panel organisers and advised them to remove the word ‘genocide’ in the titles and descriptions, including references to crimes and violations of international law. CPDP then unjustifiably singled out these two panels with a disclaimer that read: “The text of this panel represents the opinions of the Panel Organiser and not those of CPDP. The case before the ICJ regarding the categorization of Israel’s activities in Gaza has yet to be decided.” Upon the request of the panels’ organisers, the disclaimer was removed. Discussions about human rights abuses, atrocity crimes, or genocide do not require a court ruling to be legitimate. At the core of international law and human rights work is prevention — a responsibility that also extends to private companies, which are expected to identify and mitigate risks of contributing to such abuses. These obligations are clear under the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its provisionary measures orders, affirmed the responsibility of state and non-state actors to take actions in the face of a clear and imminent risk of genocide. Multiple UN bodies and experts, genocide scholars, and leading human rights organisations have already categorised the Israeli conduct in Gaza as genocide that has met all legal elements of this crime.

"We were excited to have a panel accepted on the role of technology in genocide in Gaza at this year’s Computers, Privacy & Data Protection (CPDP) conference in Brussels. However, CPDP then requested that Access Now & others remove the word “genocide” from panel titles & descriptions. We declined."

This event is coming up next week! With Mark Griffiths (@casesofyou.bsky.social) and Kali Rubaii. You can register here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/late-moder...

Law’s capture of human rights focused open-source investigation Abstract. With new protocols emerging to regulate the field of open-source investigation, this article critiques their widespread deference to the requirem

A new co-authored piece that critically examines open-source investigation’s increasing reliance on—and deference to—the law. Written with Sasha Crawford-Holland and Andrew Williams. doi.org/10.1093/lril...

Those exploring the environmental consequences of conflicts throughout their lifecycle may well be interested in this event on 29 May.

Pleased to share details for this forthcoming event at the Emergent Nonfiction Lab. You can register here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/late-moder...

Over the course of the summer, pieces from the forthcoming issue of World Records, titled "Just Evidence," co-edited by LaCharles Ward, Sasha Crawford-Holland, and myself, will be released. The full issue with introduction will be available late summer! worldrecordsjournal.org/category/vol...

"Strategies of witnessing, speculating, and testifying through body and voice can stake out a political intervention... aesthetic counterforensics bypass metrics of truth-seeking that are indissociable from colonization and enslavement as they bear upon the present."

Tongueless Whispers and Recited Choreographies - World Records On black memory as counterforensics.

Third piece from World Records Vol 9! Yasmina Price examines how Afro-diasporic artists use counterforensics—embodied, multisensory practices—to challenge colonial archives and reclaim black memory beyond the limits of evidence, law, and visual authority worldrecordsjournal.org/tongueless-w...

"Strategies of witnessing, speculating, and testifying through body and voice can stake out a political intervention... aesthetic counterforensics bypass metrics of truth-seeking that are indissociable from colonization and enslavement as they bear upon the present."

"How does catharsis—and our presumed right, or imperative, to attain it—operate in Western, neoliberal culture as an affective currency that connects our screens to our courts in the reproduction of a carceral common sense?"

No Justice, No Relief - World Records Brett Story on the demand for catharsis in our courts and on our screens.

Second preview piece from the forthcoming issue of World Records, co-edited by LaCharles Ward, Sasha Crawford-Holland, and myself. Brett Story asks "Can injustice be answered by catharsis? In other words, is catharsis.. itself just, and thus a right?" worldrecordsjournal.org/no-justice-n...

Had a great time presenting this paper, cowritten with Sireesh Gururaja and Lucy Suchman!

Paper draft here: arxiv.org/abs/2411.17840

This talk was such a joy to do! If you'd like to read the paper, it's here: arxiv.org/abs/2411.17840.

Thank you for having us, @patrickbriansmith.bsky.social!

You can see archives of previous lab talks here: emergentnonfictionlab.com

The paper traces how AI research in academia is quietly shaped by military funding. Grant calls framed as “basic research” blur into warfighting aims, sidestepping moral scrutiny. A key tactic: presenting military AI as nearly solved—except for “one small problem”—to justify more investment...

YouTube video by Patrick Smith Basic Research, Lethal Effects, David Widder and Sireesh Gururaja article talk and discussion

A recording of @davidthewid.bsky.social and @siree.sh's recent talk at the Emergent Nonfiction Lab. "Basic Research, Lethal Effects: Military AI Research Funding as Enlistment," co-authored with Lucy Suchman www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnJy...