about my work
I'm a cultural anthropologist who researches science, technology, and society. Since 2001, my academic home has been the anthropology department at San José State University, located in the heart of Silicon Valley.
I was born and raised in a south Texas town in the lower Rio Grande Valley, minutes away from the US-Mexico border. My academic career began at the University of Texas at Austin, where I studied mechanical engineering for four years. During that time, I worked as a student engineer at General Motors and Southwest Research Institute. During my senior year, I discovered anthropology—and it turned my life upside down. I graduated in 1992 with a bachelor's degree in anthropology. Six years later, I completed my doctorate in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. My graduate research took me to the mountains of northern Oaxaca, where I spent more than two years living and working with Indigenous campesinos. This work, which focused on the scientific methods used by farmers dealing with economic transformation and climate change, eventually became the subject of my first book, Zapotec Science (2001).
More recently, my work has turned towards militarization and culture in the United States. I'm especially interested in how American military and intelligence agencies have adopted scientific and technical knowledge for use on the battlefield. I've published several books on these topics, including American Counterinsurgency (2009) and Militarizing Culture (2010). Over the years, I have undertaken a number of projects with the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, a group of scholars seeking a more ethical anthropology.
My recent projects focus on how the Pentagon is developing "data-driven" surveillance and weapon systems, and how these technologies might threaten our security over the long term, something I discuss at length in the book War Virtually (2022). At the moment, I'm working on a new book about the militarization of artificial intelligence—a topic that should concern us all.
Throughout my career I have been committed to communicating with the general public, and have written commentaries and conducted many interviews for popular media outlets, including National Public Radio, the BBC, Pacifica Radio, Los Angeles Times, The Progressive, San José Mercury-News, and San Francisco Chronicle.