Masco, Joseph, The Theatre of Operations: National Security Affect from the Cold War to the War on Terror

J oseph Masco has made many contributions to theorizing security, se- crecy, and government practices.His new book The Theatre of Operations adds to growing sociological and anthropological literature on how security, policing, and intelligence agencies construct threats.What makes this book unique is that Masco compares threat construction and its outcomes in the United States (US) from World War II to the present.Masco's central argument is that American identity and insecurity are shaped by how government agencies communicate notions of threat to the public.From the Cold War to the War on Terror, the claim is that threats such as nuclear and biological warfare not only influence the way people in the US feel about themselves; these threats also "focus social energies, unlock resources, and build things" (7).In other words, threat categories are not simply immaterial concoctions of government workers, but have material consequences for how cities are built and how security operations unfold.Masco suggests that US government communications about threat since World War II are intentionally shocking."Living code orange" (21) today operates to legitimize massive expenditures on military and security, much like the nuclear bomb raid drills in schools and workplaces did in the mid-20 th Century.In the first chapter, Masco examines the nationalism that emerges in relation to nuclear ruins across the US.He argues that "mass circulation of certain images of the bomb and censorship of all others" (52) cultivated support for America's geopolitical maneuvers and mass testing of nuclear devices in North America and elsewhere.Masco then explores how images of families were set against bomb blasts at the Nevada Testing Site (NTS).At the NTS, 925 above and below-ground nuclear tests occurred between 1951 and 1992.There were nearly 90 tests in 1962 alone.Bombs of 61 and 74 kilotons were dropped at the NTS during the 1950s -the bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a nuclear yield of approximately 15 kilotons.These operations normalized the bomb and sensitized US citizens to the possibility of nuclear combat.Masco also considers how similar catastrophic imagery is woven into apocalyptic films to bolster "the continued commitment to,

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