2 A search of the Review of International Studies on articles with the word ‘risk’ in the abstract gives a meagre five hits.

3 Aradau, Claudia, Lobo-Guerrero, Luis and Munster, Rens Van, ‘Security, Technologies of Risk, and the Political: Guest Editors’ Introduction’, Security Dialogue, 39 (2008), pp. 147–154CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

4 Rasmussen, Mikkel Vedby, The Risk Society at War. Terror, Technology and Strategy in the Twenty First Century (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

5 ‘Preventive’ drawing on Bush and Rumsfeld's terminology; not Ewald's which would be ‘precautionary’.

6 The term is borrowed and inspired by the more general discussion in Teubner, Gunther, ‘In the Blind Spot: The Hybridization of Contracting’, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 8 (2006), pp. 51–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

7 The program is not unique but has parallels not only in other targeted assassination programs, including the Israeli targeted assassinations. Kessler, Oliver and Werner, Wouter, ‘Extrajudicial Killing as Risk Management’, Security Dialogue, 39 (2008), pp. 289–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

8 For discussions of the program see Swarns, Rachel L., ‘Cheney Offers Sharp Defense of CIA Interrogation Tactics’, New York Times (31 August 2009)Google Scholar ; Mazzetti, Mark, ‘CIA Sought Blackwater's Help to Kill Jihadists’, New York Times (20 August 2009)Google Scholar ; Warrick, Joby and Smith, Jeffrey R., ‘CIA Hired Firm for Assassin Program’, Washington Post (20 August 2009)Google Scholar ; Zanetti, Mark and Shane, Scott, ‘CIA Had Plan to Assassinate Qaeda Leaders’, New York times (14 July 2009)Google Scholar , The Economist, ‘CIA Interrogations and the Blackwater Affair: Who Should Be Held Accountable for Anti-Terrorism's Dirtiest Business?’, The Economist (27 August 2009)Google Scholar , Spiegel, Der, ‘Blackwater Accused of Creating “Killing Program”’, Der Spiegel (22 August 2009)Google Scholar .

9 This will not be discussed here but see, for example, Minow, Martha, ‘Public and Private Partnerships: Accounting for the New Religion’, Harvard Law Review, 116 (2003), pp. 1229–1270CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Leander, Anna, ‘The Privatization of Security’, in Cavelty, M. Dunn and Mauer, V. (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Security Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 200–210Google Scholar .

10 For overviews of the ‘sociological’ literature on risk see, for example, Arnoldi, Jakob, Risk: An Introduction (Oxford: Polity Press, 2009)Google Scholar ; Lupton, Deborah, Risk and Sociocultural Theory: New Directions and Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Zinn, Jens O., Social Theories of Risk and Uncertainty: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

11 Douglas, Mary and Wildawsky, Aaron, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technical and Environmental Dangers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982)Google Scholar ; Ericson, Richard V. and Doyle, Aaron (eds), Risk and Morality (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003)Google Scholar ; Ewald, Francois, ‘The Return of Descartes' Malicious Demon: An Outline of a Philosophy of Precaution’, in Baker, T. and Simon, J. (eds), Embracing Risk (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 273–301Google Scholar ; Hacking, Ian, ‘Risk and Dirt’, in Ericson, R. V. and Doyle, A. (eds), Risk and Morality (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), pp. 22–48Google Scholar .

12 As underlined in Douglas and Wildawsky, Risk and Culture.

13 Quoted in Swarns, ‘Cheney Offers Sharp Defense’.

14 CIA official quoted in Landler, Mark and Mazzetti, Mark, ‘Us Still Using Security Firm It Broke With’, New York Times (22 August 2009)Google Scholar .

15 Mazzetti, ‘CIA Sought Blackwater's Help’.

16 Swarns, ‘Cheney Offers Sharp Defense’.

17 Rothstein, Henry, Huber, Michael and Gaskell, George, ‘A Theory of Risk Colonization: The Spiraling Regulatory Logics of Societal and Institutional Risk’, Economy and Society, 35 (2006), pp. 91–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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19 Power, Michael, The Risk Management of Everything (London: Demos, 2004)Google Scholar ; Power, Michael, Organized Uncertainty: Designing a World of Risk Management (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar .

20 Drawing (explicitly) on Deleuze and Guattari's work are, for example, Haggerty, Kevin D. and Ericson, Richard V., ‘The Surveillant Assemblage’, British Journal of Sociology, 51 (2000), pp. 605–622Google Scholar .

21 ‘Actant’ is a term is borrowed from Bruno, Latour, Re-Assembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)Google Scholar . ‘Boundary object’ is taken from Power, Organized Uncertainty.

22 As Douglas would have it. Douglas, Viz Mary, ‘Muffled Ears’, in Douglas, M. (ed.), Risk and Blame (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 55–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

23 Power, The Risk Management of Everything and Power, Michael, ‘The Risk Management of Nothing’, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 34 (2009), pp. 849–855CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

24 Shorrok, Tim, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), pp. 18–19Google Scholar .

25 According to CIA officials ‘the plans remained vague and were never carried’ (quoted in Zanetti and Shane, ‘CIA Had Plan’).

26 Strategy here is used in Bourdieuan fashion, that is as a reflection of the dispositions (taken for granted understanding and habitus) and positions (resources and strength at the disposal) of given actors. For further discussions see any work by Pierre Bourdieu and for a contrast between the logic and the way most economic theories conceive of strategy see the introductory chapter in Bourdieu, Pierre, The Social Structures of the Economy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005)Google Scholar .

27 Hacking, ‘Risk and Dirt’.

28 For examples from intelligence specifically, see particularly the detailed discussion of Boz Allen Hamilton in Shorrok, Spies for Hire.

29 Mathew Burrows (the chief drafter of the National Intelligence Council report Global Trends: The Word at 2025) in a ‘Public Lecture at DIIS—The Danish Institute of International Studies’, Copenhagen (7 September 2009).

30 Rasmussen, , The Risk Society at War, pp. 199–200Google Scholar .

31 Burrows, ‘Public Lecture at DIIS’.

32 Swarns, ‘Cheney Offers Sharp Defense’.

33 Quoted in Mitchell, Andrea, ‘Interview with Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-Mi) About CIA Subcontracting Assassination Program’, MSNBC Federal News Service, 3 (21 August 2009)Google Scholar .

34 Douglas, ‘Muffled Ears’.

35 Scarce leaves room for the rare commentators who have drawn attention to the problems and the issues involved.

36 Kierpaul, Ian, ‘The Rush to Bring Private Military Contractors to Justice: The Mad Scramble of Congress, Lawyers, and Law Students after Abu Ghraib’, The University of Toledo Law Review, 39 (2008), pp. 407–435Google Scholar .

37 Reports abound both in the media, in law journals and by NGOs and IOs including the UN working group on mercenaries. For Iraq for example the NGO Human Rights First kept record of incidences and published these in their report ‘Private Security Contractors at War: Ending the Culture of Impunity’ (2008) available at: {http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/08115-usls-psc-final.pdf} accessed 26 April 2011.

38 For the US context the changes to the MEJA and the UCMJ as well as the possibility of using the Alien Tort Statue against contractor (currently tried out in Viriginia against Blackwater employees involved in the Nisour incident) are significant changes. But they have yet to result in convictions. See Waits, Elizabeth K., ‘Avoiding the “Legal Bermuda Triangle”: The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act's Unprecedented Expansion of US Criminal Jurisdiction over Foreign Nationals’, Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, 23 (2008), pp. 493–540Google Scholar .

39 Milliard, Major Todd S., ‘Overcoming Post-Colonial Myopia: A Call to Recognize and Regulate Private Military Companies’, Military Law Review (2003), pp. 1–95Google Scholar .

40 Thomson, Janice, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 59–63Google Scholar .

41 Dorn, Nicholas and Levi, Michael, ‘European Private Security, Corporate Investigation and Military Services: Collective Security, Market Regulation and Structuring the Public Sphere’, Policing & Society, 17 (2007), pp. 213–238CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

42 GAO, ‘DoD and State Department Have Improved Oversight and Coordination of Private Security Contractors in Iraq, but Further Actions Are Needed to Sustain Improvements’, in (Washington: Government Accountability Office, 2008); GAO, ‘Intelligence Reform: Gao Can Assist the Congress and the Intelligence Community on Management Reform Initiatives’, in (Washington DC: GAO, 2008).

43 Quoted in Warrick and Smith, ‘CIA Hired Firm for Assassin Program’.

44 Der Spiegel, ‘Blackwater Accused’.

45 Mazzetti, ‘CIA Sought Blackwater's Help’.

46 Cutler, Claire, ‘Transnational Business Civilization, Corporations, and the Privatization of Global Governance’, in May, C. (ed.), Global Corporate Power (Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 2006), pp. 199–226, 202Google Scholar .

47 Fischer-Lescano, Andreas and Teubner, Gunther, ‘Regime-Collisions: The Vain Search for Legal Unity in the Fragmentation of Global Law’, Michigan Journal of International Law, 25 (2004), pp. 999–1045Google Scholar .

48 Cutler, Claire A., ‘Private International Regimes and Interfirm Cooperation’, in Hall, R. B. and Bierstecker, T. J. (eds), The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 23–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Teubner, Gunther, ‘Global Private Regimes: Neo-Spontaneous Law and Dual Constitution of Autonomous Sectors in World Society’, in Ladeur, K.-H. (ed.), Globalization and Public Governance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 71–88Google Scholar .

49 Teubner, ‘In the Blind Spot’, p. 59.

50 Coleman, James R., ‘Constraining Modern Mercenarism’, Hastings Law Journal, 55 (2004), pp. 1493–1537, 1494Google Scholar .

51 For a general argument to this effect Teubner, Gunther, ‘Societal Constitutionalism: Alternatives to State-Centered Constitutional Theory’, in Joergs, C., Sand, I.-J. and Teubner, G. (eds), Constitutionalism and Transnational Governance (Oxford: Hart, 2004), pp. 31–50Google Scholar .

52 For the significance of institutional state sanctioning in the legal field see Bourdieu, Pierre, ‘Rethinking the State: On the Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field’, Sociological Theory, 12 (1994), pp. 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

53 Zanetti and Shane, ‘CIA Had Plan’.

54 Mazzetti, ‘CIA Sought Blackwater's Help’.

55 Landler and Mazzetti, ‘US Still Using Security Firm’.

56 The Economist, ‘CIA Interrogations and the Blackwater Affair’; Josh Meyer, ‘CIA Inquiry Will Target Contractors’, Los Angeles Times (28 August 2009)Google Scholar .

57 See Singer, Peter W., ‘Can't Win with ‘Em, Can't Go to War without ‘Em: Private Military Contractors and Counterinsurgency’, Foreign Policy at Brookings. Policy Paper (2007)Google Scholar ; and Carney, Heather, ‘Prosecuting the Lawless: Human Rights Abuses and Private Military Firms’, The George Washington Law Review, 74 (2006), pp. 317–342Google Scholar .

58 For example the Fallujah lynching where four Blackwater employees were killed has triggered court cases by the families of the employees in question Scahill, Jeremy, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Washington: Nation Books, 2007)Google Scholar .

59 It has been investigated for overcharging and not respecting its engagements for example in relation to a plane incident in Afghanistan killing six people including three soldiers Karp, Jonathan, ‘Private Firms Like Blackwater Could Be Held Liable for Casualties During Military Tasks’, Wall Street Journal (8 March 2007)Google Scholar .

60 It has been involved in several violent incidents of blue on white violence (military against contractors accidental or not) Scarborough, Rowan, ‘Air Force Officer Reprimanded over Incident with Private Security Guard’, Washington Examiner (5 April 2007)Google Scholar .

61 King, Neil Jr. and Cole, August, ‘Few Alternatives to Blackwater’, Wallstreet Journal (17 October 2007)Google Scholar ; Landler and Mazzetti, ‘US Still Using Security Firm’; Navarette, Ruben Jr., ‘How Will Liberals React to Obama Maintaining Bush-Era Security Policies?’, San Diego Union-Tribune (28 August 2009)Google Scholar .

62 Rall, Ted, ‘Scapegoating Blackwater’, Boise Weekly (Idaho) (17 October 2007)Google Scholar .

63 Epitomising this is the civil lawsuit is filed against Blackwater for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) violations Leopold, Jason, ‘Feinstein: CIA Assassination Program Went Beyond the Simple Planning Stage’, The Public Record (21 August 2009)Google Scholar .

64 It is perhaps telling that Representative Jan Schakowski – who has worked on privatisation of security for a long time and was on the intelligence committee – was kept at the margins of the discussion around the CIA Killing Program. She was given 1 minute to address the house of representatives on 16 Sept 2010.

65 On the contrary as argued, for example, by Fainaru, Steve, Big Boy Rules: In the Company of America's Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2008)Google Scholar .

66 Departing from an interest in the war on drugs in Columbia, Jan Schakowsy, for example, has been trying to get a discussion on the politics of markets in the US Congress for some time already. She tried to introduce the Stop Outsourcing Security, SOS, Act, H.R. 4102 in 2008. Similarly, there are civil society groups militating against commercial military services and even groups focused on Blackwater specifically, see, for example {http://www.blackwaterwatch.net/ or http://www.stopblackwater.net/} both accessed 26 April 2011.

67 As clear from the references above, this article is far from the only one reflecting on this.

68 Europeans are far closer to the US logic than they usually think, but so are many other countries because technologies of government (in this case risk thinking and law) may be given a contextual content and structure but they also span borders as do the professional communities that implement them. Making this argument in detail is far beyond the scope of this article but see, for example, Goede, Marieke De, ‘Beyond Risk: Premediation and the Post-9/11 Security Imagination’, Security Dialogue, 39 (2008), pp. 155–176CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Bigo, Didier, ‘Globalized (in)Security: The Field and the Ban-Opticon’, in Bigo, D. and Tsoukala, A. (eds), Terror, Insecurity and Liberty: Illiberal Practices of Liberal Regimes (New York and London: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar ; Bigo, Didier, Bonelli, Laurent, Chi, Dario and Olsson, Christian, Mapping of the Field of the Eu Internal Security Agencies (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2007)Google Scholar ; Bigo, Didier and Tsoukala, Anastassia (eds), Terror, Insecurity and Liberty: Illiberal Practices of Liberal Regimes (New York and London: Routledge, 2008)Google Scholar .

69 As I suggest we should say in Leander, Anna, ‘Commercial Security Practices’, in Burgess, P. J. (ed.), Handbook of New Security Studies (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 208–216Google Scholar .