The War At Home

At Subtopia, Bryan Finoki interviews Stephen Graham, author of Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism. He emphasizes:

"the long-standing interplay of social and urban control experiments practiced on the populations of colonised cities and lands, and appropriated back by States and elites to develop architectures of control in the cities at the 'heart of empire.'"

This is true not only of methods architectures, but also technologies. The U.S. military occupation of Iraq is no exception, and the technologies of control used in Fallujah, al-Anbar and Baghdad are already being pitched to police forces and private security firms operating in the United States.

A stark example: armed robots.

Danger Room reports that "robots -- similar to the ones now on patrol in Iraq -- are being marketed to domestic police forces." Arms manufacturer Foster-Miller is customizing robot soldiers, essentially laser guided guns on treads, for "scenarios frequently encountered by police SWAT [special weapon and tactics] units and MPs [military police]."

This is a very real concern. The military industrial complex is in top gear churning out equipment for use in the asymmetrical urban warfare, settings not unlike intense and violent police work. As firms develop new products, it's only natural they'd turn to domestic police forces as a market for their wares, contributing to the militarization of American law-enforcement.

UPDATE: Via Yglesias, what police departments should be spending their money on instead of robot guns.