The Politics of Corporate Security and the Translation of National Security

In the intelligence community, there is now a tendency to treat terrorism and other global threats as demanding active involvement of businesses and other social communities. Private companies are called upon to manage issues of national security, including terrorism, climate change, and organized crime. The overall political aim is to make ‘the entire society’ 1 resilient against natural disasters and human-made catastrophes. The US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (2011) put it this way: [T]he homeland security enterprise extends far beyond DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and the federal government … it requires not just a ‘whole of government,’ but a ‘whole of nation’ approach. In some respects, local law enforcement, community groups, citizens, and the private sector play as much of a role in homeland security as the federal government. That is why I like to say that ‘homeland security starts with hometown security.’ These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.