Weaponization ― what is it?
To make it digestible, this article will be broken into chapters, similar to my analysis of Project 2025 and Agenda 47. Your comments will be appreciated and will be used to determine how I write future articles. Please offer your honest opinion.
Weaponization ― what is it? To analyze this, we must first define it.
The word is derived from the noun "weapon" and the suffix "-ization." The word “ Weapon’ comes from the Old English "wǣpn," which ultimately traces back to the Proto-Indo-European root *wapon-, which means "to strike."
I’ll not go in depth into this question as it wanders back into the middle ages and the formation of archaic Germanic languages, in which the old English word was spawned by the old Germanic term for “penis.” Being as I’m an old Hippie, make love, not war kinda guy, the last thing I want to do is consider a bodily appendage as a weapon. So, we’ll just skip over that whole section.
“-ization” added to “weapon” is used to form nouns from verbs, indicating the process of making something into something else or the state of being something. So, weaponization is simple enough, but to further “weaponize”, we must understand the etymology? How did we get from “to strike something” to “something to strike with” ― turning something not intended to be used in that fashion, into a weapon?
Therefore, "weaponization" means the process of making something into a weapon or the state of being used as a weapon. Anything can be weaponized. A big enough rock, dropped from a sufficient height, is a very good weapon. The livestock disease anthrax has recently been weaponized. Even the possibility that a letter or package may contain Bacillus anthracis is sufficient to prompt evacuations of entire buildings and disrupt governmental functions. Election officials in at least 15 U.S. states have been targeted with packages containing a white powder, causing the offices to be shut down for two days.
Food or access to clean water has been weaponized in the past. Withholding can either be used as a means of corruption or coercion by those in power. In the days of suffrage, the anger of women was weaponized, and in prohibition it was the anger of just about the entirety of the population.
In modern usage, the term “weaponize” has grown to reference the strategic manipulation or transformation of information, institutions, or social issues into tools for gaining political advantage. This is what we’ll discuss.
“Weaponize”’ under this definition, could involve exploiting existing laws, campaign contributions, fact-checking, manipulating social media algorithms for disinformation campaigns, or turning otherwise neutral or benign elements of governance )e.g. the Dept. of Education) into divisive issues for the purpose of delegitimizing opponents, hiding the flaws of a candidate, or rallying a base. This is weaponization in the 21st century.
The act of weaponizing in politics often entails ethical considerations, as it can distort democratic processes and contribute to social polarization. It is an intentional effort to beat down an opponent with disinformation, and this is exactly what we are witnessing today.
Using this modern definition, the first use of the word came sometime in the early 1900s, then began to be more widely used in the early 1950s. It has increased steadily since. It has become so common that the very word itself has become weaponized.
In a Slate article published on the last day of August, 2016, writer John Kelly took us back to the days leading up to the end of the 2nd World War:
Weaponize originated as technical jargon in the U.S. military. At the onset of the Cold War, scientists weaponized rockets, fitting them with nuclear material and equipping them for launch. The Oxford English Dictionary first attests weaponize in 1957, citing the controversial aerospace pioneer Wernher von Braun, who used the neologism in the New York Times with respect to ballistic missiles. That same year, Aviation Week wrote of weaponization as ‘the latest of the coined words by missile scientists.’
“Nuclear weaponizing persisted through the arms races, missile crises, and fears of mutually assured destruction of the 1950s and 1960s. Since then, weaponize has expanded into new frontiers. In the late 1960s and 1970s, we see biological and chemical agents weaponized thanks to the Vietnam War. The Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars, weighed weaponizing space in the 1980s. During the 1990s, the geopolitical focus turned from Russia to the Middle East and Asia over concerns of growing weaponization there. After the post-9/11 anthrax attacks thrust weaponize back into the spotlight, the word has since geared up on two new fronts: drones and cyberwarfare. Now, some fear future weaponization in viruses, DNA, insects, robots, geoengineering, and even marijuana.
“But it’s outside of military contexts that weaponize has really proliferated in the last decade. We’ve weaponized: women, architecture, black suffering, anthropology, the facts, texting, femininity, marketing, secularism, religion, ideology, traditional forms of dress, virtue, sadness, social constructions, iWatches, and fictional experiences in video games. The word, of course, has enjoyed glibber applications: Writers have weaponized everything from flatulence to kale salads. This website appears, to some, to weaponize the narcissism of small differences.
Since those days, weaponization has entered our civilian lexicon alongside words like “blowback” and “false flag.” Given how political campaigns increasingly have been compared to military endeavors, it’s hardly surprising that weaponize has joined other national-security jargon. In the modern sense, the word first came into use during the cold war and surged in popularity during the 1990s. As the graph below shows, the rise is steep and still climbing.
This graph is a snip from an old article and only goes to 2010. In the almost 15 years since I would suspect the climb would show an even steeper rise.
A few examples of how the word has been used over the past ten years. Notice how military usage declines while the use of the word in other context skyrockets:
In May 2014, David C. DeFrieze, an Attorney for the U.S. Army Contracting Command, Aberdeen Proving Ground, submitted a report titled, “Defining and Regulating the Weaponization of Space,” following revelations that China was researching space-based weapons of war.
In a 2015 meeting with wealthy donors, Jeb Bush adviser Mike Murphy announced “We want to weaponize our [fundraising] number.”
In a March 2017 report, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), Security and Technology Programme, warned about "The Weaponization of Increasingly Autonomous Technologies.”
FXB director Dr. Jennifer Leaning of the Lancet-American University of Beirut (AUB) Commission on Syria, wrote an article titled, “Health workers and the weaponisation of health care in Syria.”
In April 2017, the Rand Corporation, National Security Research Division, discussed “The Weaponization of Information: The Need for Cognitive Security.”
Paul Massaro, in June 2017, submitted a report to the U.S. Helsinki Commission titled “Russia’s Weaponization of Corruption (and Western Complicity).”
In October 2017, the IRS was accused of weaponizing audits and was forced to apologize for aggressive scrutiny of conservative groups
Nathan D. Steger submitted his post-graduate thesis in December 2017, titled The Weaponization of Migration: Examining Migration as a 21st Century Toll of Political Warfare.”
In March 2018, Seattle Community Media ran a documentary that discussed “Weaponization of Media.”
April 2018 saw a “Full Committee Oversight Hearing” of the House Committee on Natural Resources, on the "Weaponization of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Implications of Environmental Lawfare."
Also in April 2018, as reported by Brian Lennon, Penn State’s Justin Joque drew a large crowd to his lecture on “Deconstruction and the Weaponization of Knowledge.”
On June 27, 2018 the National Constitution Center’s Daily Blog carried Lyle Denniston’s piece, “Has the First Amendment been weaponized?”
September 2018 saw an article in the Media Law Newsletter titled, “The ‘Weaponization’ of Freedom of Speech.”
In October 2018, NPR’s Fresh Air broadcast a program titled, “The 'Weaponization' Of Social Media — And Its Real-World Consequences.”
The Atlantic Council’s Margaret Suter published a November 2018 article, titled, “An update on Yemen’s water crisis and the weaponization of water.”
The New York Times published Elizabeth Williamson’s November 5, 2018 piece discussing the disturbing trend where “Industries Turn Freedom of Information Requests on Their Critics.”
In January 2020, researcher Kevin C. Desouza published the scientific paper,” Weaponizing information systems for political disruption.”
Donnalyn Pompper’s 2021 book, What IS News, contains a chapter titled, “’Fake News Is Anything They Say!’ — Conceptualization and Weaponization of Fake News among the American Public.”
Then came William Barr. In August 2020 former DOJ officials came forward and revealed that the attorney general planned to undermine voting rights, and his potential to unleash an “October surprise.” The Intercept’s Peter Stone reported on it in an article titled “How William Barr Is Weaponizing the Justice Department to Help Trump Win.”
In March 2023 the Ezine Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence ran a piece titled, “The weaponization of artificial intelligence: What the public needs to be aware of.”
Then in 2023, then Speaker Kevin McCarthy ironically created the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which so far has done nothing other than consume oxygen and waste money.
In May 2023 at the Annual Conference of the Memory Studies Group at The New School for Social Research (NSSR), a program titled “The Weaponization of Memory in Times of Political Rupture(s).”
In February 2024, Columbia Law Review published an article by Lena Chan, titled “The Weaponization of Trade Secret Law.”
Probably the most disturbing of all comes from The New Republic on June 27, 2024. Writer Colin Dickey published “Mind Games, The Weaponization of Storytelling: The American public is more susceptible than ever to skewed narratives.”
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Whew! That’s a lot, but it only scratches the surface. A full internet search revealed hundreds of papers and news articles using “weaponization” either in the headline, or somewhere in the body. An SSRN search returned 18 pages of Social Science papers, and a newsreader search returned over 100 pages.
It seems that everything other than the PB&J sandwich I had for breakfast has been weaponized.
This discussion will be continued in future articles over the next few days, with emphasis on the politization of weaponization, and we will try to follow the money.