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What are the implications of computer vision in relation to machine learning and ‘artificial intelligence’? New York‐based artist and writer Trevor Paglen argues that autonomous image‐interpretation systems, from algorithms that analyse photos on Facebook to licence‐plate readers used by police, constitute a new kind of visuality which is paradoxically largely invisible to human eyes. What is more, this new ‘invisible visuality’ should be understood as a means of centralising power in the hands of the state and corporate actors who are able to deploy machine‐vision systems at scale.

While the question of state secrecy has become a topic of much political debate, relatively little attention has been paid to the topic in academic literature. Most of the literature adopts one of several frameworks. In the legal literature, state secrecy has been examined as a historical and constitutional question. Social scientists have tended to follow Weber in examining secrecy as a question of regulation and bureaucracy or have focused on the cultural play of visibility and invisibility that is often characteristic of state secrecy. This paper, by way of contrast, uses the development of the F-117A ‘stealth fighter’ as a case study to give a spatial account of secrecy. I show how state secrecy gives rise to numerous spatial, political, juridical, and even ecological contradictions and propose that a spatial understanding of state secrecy foregrounding these contradictions provides a fruitful basis for a deeper understanding of state secrecy.

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