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Sam

Review of Controls for Emerging Technology

The US Government is asking for advice on how to identify and define emerging technology of security concern. You have until 19 December 2018 to provide your comments.

The use and abuse of science and technology: rethinking dual-use

For over a decade now, I have be rolling around the concept of dual-use in my research, much like how a kitten plays with a fluff ball in the sunbeams of a room. What is the term? I’m mildly interested in it, though it might appear to some others that it’s all I focus on. I like rolling it around, batting it about to see how it will react. I… Read More »The use and abuse of science and technology: rethinking dual-use

Centre for the Study of Existential Risks

For the 2018-2019 I am a Visiting Fellow with the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risks (CSER), within the Centre for Research on the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH). While here, I am working on my book, putting together new grant proposals, and contributing an STS perspective to the work fo the Centres.

This is not your father’s biosecurity: Experiments in novel security governance at the edge of innovation

I spent this week in Fukuoka, Japan at the World Social Science Forum, a gathering of national and international science academies and other research and professional bodies. At the invitation of the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP), I gave a talk on several experiments in biosecurity governance that are going on: the international Genetically Engineered Machines (iGEM) competition, the FBI’s Biological Countermeasures Unit, and various efforts around the governance of gene drives.… Read More »This is not your father’s biosecurity: Experiments in novel security governance at the edge of innovation

Course Syllabus:: Making Security: Science, Technology, and the Governance of Threats

This summer, I am a Guest Professor at the University of Vienna’s Department of Science, Technology, and Society. I’ll be teaching a course called, “Making Security: Science, Technology, and the Governance of Threats.” I am super excited about this course, as it is the first time I will actually be teaching students with prior STS training! Run over less than a month, I had to be very picky in the… Read More »Course Syllabus:: Making Security: Science, Technology, and the Governance of Threats

Anomaly handling and the politics of gene drives

Back in 2015, Megan Palmer and I agreed to write a paper as part of an NSF grant on Gene Drives: A Deliberative Workshop to Develop Frameworks for Research and Governance. Over many iterations, we whittled down our ideas to expounding on the different ways groups have been debating what a gene drive is, and how that definition relates to how gene drives should be regulated. The result is this article… Read More »Anomaly handling and the politics of gene drives

Report out: Building STS Programs lunchtime workshop

There is a significant amount of largely invisible work that gets done within the STS community to keep it going and continuing building it. In an effort to make that work more visible, during the 4S 2017 Annual meeting in Boston, about 30 members of the STS community gathered for a lunchtime workshop about Building STS Programs. We gathered because we shared a belief that we do not yet have… Read More »Report out: Building STS Programs lunchtime workshop

Building STS Programs

Society for the Social Studies of Science 2017 Annual Conference Friday 1 September 2017 / 12:45-1:45 / Sheraton Boston, 3, Beacon E Add this event to your 4S schedule Purpose STS Programs at universities around the world have a wide array of institutional backing. A few are woven into the fabric of the university, while others center around a single faculty member. Some have been going for decades, and others… Read More »Building STS Programs

Constructing New Security Concerns in the Life Sciences

The idea that there is a set truth of the world that scientists must identify, codify, and disseminate in full is literally set in stone at the National Academies. It may come as a surprise, then that the Academies have also spent decades trying to figure out how to restrict or otherwise prevent certain knowledge to do with security concerns from spreading. After my Fall 2016 article on Biosecurity Governance… Read More »Constructing New Security Concerns in the Life Sciences

Knowledge and Security

The new Handbook of Science and Technology Studies is now available, and I was lucky enough to work with a set of colleagues on a chapter about “Knowledge and Security”. This chapter discusses the STS contributions to security studies. The literature that comprises this chapter is grouped around four main themes and questions: 1. Imagining security: the scope, boundaries, and discourse of security; 2.Knowledge, non-knowledge, secrecy, and ignorance; 3.Knowing citizens:… Read More »Knowledge and Security