National Security, Insider Threat Programs, and the Compliance-Industrial Complex: Reflections on Platformization in Corporate Policing, Intelligence, and Security

Insider threat programs and platforms are a managerial tool used today well beyond traditional defense organizations. Insider threat and risk programs and platforms promise to detect organizational betrayal, crimes, malicious behaviours, and subversive activities by insiders, ‘disgruntled employees’ and other ‘enemies within’—and thus tackle corporate and foreign espionage, intellectual property (IP) theft, financial crimes, corruption, fraud, insider trading, (cyber)security breaches, ‘leaking’, sexual harassment, and more. In this chapter, I argue that the proliferation of insider threat/risk management (and its platformization) is symptomatic of broader hybridization of governance through crime and security and of the shift to data-driven and intelligence-led pre-emptive, anticipatory, and targeted governance. Insider threat programs reflect the ever-deeper securitization of society. But they are also a direct expression of new ways in which the state, after decades of neoliberal restructuring, seeks to manage crime and national security threats. Namely, by weaponizing corporate governance and managerial infrastructures through compliance-oriented regulation and by delegating intelligence and policing powers to unaccountable corporate managers. I argue that these systems are flawed by design, reinforce a particular form of ‘epistemic closure’, and may lead to intelligence failure.