Laboratories in global politics: Towards technopolitical histories of security

Abstract Contemporary security governance increasingly relies on science and technology, yet little attention has been paid to how their place in security has been historically constituted and continues to shape security practices. High-containment laboratories working with dangerous pathogens exemplify this puzzle: while expert debates have focused on governing these dual-use technologies, they often overlook the historical conditions that enabled their global expansion and continue to affect the insecurities these laboratories generate. This article examines how the rise of high-security laboratories has been intertwined with changing understandings of biological threats and approaches to governing them. Bringing together research on technopolitics, global history, and security studies, the paper develops technopolitical histories of security , an analytical framework for the historical study of technoscientific systems in security politics. The framework examines how security rationalities are materialized in scientific practices and technologies, how these arrangements are constituted through global connections and power asymmetries, and how they prefigure subsequent approaches to security. Empirically, the article traces high-security laboratories across three technopolitical arrangements: biological warfare, biological defence, and biological preparedness. It shows how pathogen research mobilized for past security projects laid the structural foundations for contemporary biological security governance, making visible the enduring political effects of technoscientific systems.