The fifth chapter examines the European Union’s course correction since the late 2000s, which is characterised by a paradigm shift away from market-oriented liberalisation towards a comprehensive security orientation. Empirically, the chapter is dedicated to EU crisis management between 2009 and 2025, examining key events such as the Eurozone crisis, the migration crisis, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine. The analysis considers both institutional changes and the development of political narratives and priorities. It identifies a third major transformation of European integration, after those of the 1950s and the 1970s/80s. This change was brought about not by planned reforms, but by crisis-driven adjustments. The new security orientation reflects both the loss of post-Cold War optimism and the realisation that the EU must act in an increasingly dangerous world. While this transformation has strengthened the EU’s ability to survive, questions remain about the democratic legitimacy and effectiveness of the new security architecture.

This chapter is devoted to developing and clarifying one of the most unique and important constructs of attachment theory: the internal working models (IWMs) by which relationships influence other relationships and personality. We begin by describing how IWMs develop, discuss different definitions and conceptualizations of IWMs associated with different developmental stages, and then offer a new way of thinking about IWMs as both implicit and explicit representations that function at different levels of awareness. We then discuss factors that promote stability and change in IWMs, highlighting how earlier experiences with attachment figures may shape subsequent IWMs associated with other attachment figures. We next present a framework outlining the conditions under which IWMs associated with specific attachment figures earlier in life can become “activated” to influence how people think, feel, and/or behave with their current attachment figures. We conclude by proposing several promising directions for future research.

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the Commission as a technology regulator, outlining the development of the EU’s technology policies and laws, from their beginnings in the late 1970s until the late 2000s. Reflecting on the limited interventions of the Commission during the period referred to as one of ‘Eurosclerosis’, and the beginnings of distinct technology policies and positive acts of integration around technology in the 1990s. It explores how during its development, EU technology policy was marked by a distinction between economically oriented developments, such as around intellectual property rights, and security-related ones as in the case of cybercrime and cybersecurity. However, in the period of the late 2000s/early 2010s and the EU ‘polycrisis’ of financial crisis, legitimacy crisis, and populism crisis, and concerns over the power of the private sector in technology governance, the groundwork was laid for seeing technology control in terms of interlinked economic and security goals, a growing distrust of ‘Big Tech’, and concerns about the need to externalise the EU’s rules and values, including through the Brussels effect.

Chapter 5 focuses on the regulation of social media platforms and platform architecture, with changes in EU perceptions regarding the reliability of these platforms and the values of their owners. It examines the shift from economically motivated self-regulatory regimes in these sectors based in logics of efficiency to a digital sovereignty-motivated move to a logic of security in regulation. It identifies the explicit linkage between economic and security concerns, particularly as it relates to disinformation and political advertising, with the promotion of co-regulatory regimes with significant levels of oversight provided by the Commission. It explores the approach to regulatory export adopted in these initiatives, with an emphasis on control of platforms regardless of where they are based, so long as they offer services in the EU.

Chapter 7 considers the developments that have taken place since the beginning of the von der Leyen II Commission, identifying how there has not only been continuity in the EU’s approach to technology control and its links to digital sovereignty but also an expansion and reinforcement of the approach. Faced with increased instability and geopolitical threat, the linkage of security and economy has become even more explicit for the von der Leyen II Commission, with the Competitiveness Compass taking an approach that appears to be a more assertive form of regulatory mercantilism, in which the element of defence is specifically incorporated into the EU’s rationale for action, with an expansion of technology controls including the development of an explicit push for defence technology industrial policy, the increased control over external dependencies and supply chains through its Preparedness Strategy, and an AI policy for Europe that includes significant investments for AI gigafactories.

To explore what it meant to own and possess in the eighteenth century, Keeping Hold looks to instances in which people lost possessions and how they responded to such experiences. Chapter 2 begins the book’s focus on loss and does so by looking to urban sites. It looks to the city of the eighteenth century: London. The capital was of growing importance in this period as an economic powerhouse and social hub. Guidebooks emerged as an important genre for those seeking to comprehend London’s densely filled and ever-lengthening streets. The chapter explores these sources and finds how the capital was increasingly imagined as a site of deception and loss, where possessions might be pickpocketed or simply left in the bustle and in which servants and apprentices regularly ran away. The chapter examines how eighteenth-century Londoners responded to such perceived threats by utilising technologies of security, such as pockets and collars. By doing so they worked to prevent loss.

Chapter 3 moves to the global level, exploring the history of technology control and its historical links to geopolitics. It begins by considering control of technology in the context of the Cold War and technology as being explicitly considered a security issue in terms of the conflict between the US and the Soviet Union. It covers the CoCom technology restrictions imposed by the US, and Soviet Union attempts to gain access to critical technologies through Comecon, before considering how the approach to technology changed substantially with the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the belief in the triumph of the liberal international order and globalism as reflected by the World Trade Organization and ‘free trade’. It then explores the multifaceted crises impacting upon this conviction in the benefits and resilience of the global trade system, the increased economic conflict between the US and China as a rising technological power, and a move from multilateralism in a ‘unipolar’ system to increased nationalism and protectionism in a ‘multipolar’ system, and what this meant for the EU’s sense of insecurity and vulnerability in the context of geopolitical reordering.

Chapter 9 begins with Fayiz Al Kandari contemplating the departure of his last fellow Kuwaiti, Fawzi Al Odah, and considering the consequences of his aggressive approach in his first PRB hearing, which was likely to have led to the denial of release. Both Fayiz and his lawyer had made numerous statements questioning the good faith of the US and Kuwaiti governments and suggested that citizens of both countries rise up against this injustice. This criticism would only alienate the decision-makers. Fayiz felt gratitude and loyalty to his previous lawyer but hired the author and his team to try again. Under PRB rules, he was not entitled to a full hearing for three more years. This chapter takes the reader inside the team as it planned strategy both to get an earlier hearing and to get support from Kuwaiti authorities, the military representatives and from Fayiz’s family to convince the board that despite the blemishes in his record, Fayiz was now forty; he had learned from his ordeal; and he was ready to go home. The chapter ends with his return home and being greeted by his father who had only a few months to live.

Chapter 4 critically examines the fact that sometimes innovations not only fail to solve crucial problems, but are the problem itself. Specifically, it explains why Ring doorbell exemplifies the threat of home surveillance innovation. The billion-dollar Amazon subsidiary sold millions of Americans on the promise of security via surveillance without any credible evidence that its system works. But rather than encouraging people to adopt proven security upgrades, such as better locks and secure package drops, Ring wins customers by making its digital innovation seem essential amid a climate of rising fear. By fighting against boring yet effective alternatives, Ring’s anxiety-inducing features have further normalized intensive networked surveillance and helped turn innocuous neighborly interactions into potential threats.

Chapter 2 considers the state’s legal power in acquiring land and materials for construction and maintenance of public amenities, the management of the built environment in Rome and the activities of its inhabitants, the nature of urban life, and the provision and protection of amenities, such as corn, the water supply, baths, and games. The emperor assumed responsibility for the welfare of his people; this was his duty but was also politically important. The emperor provided for security and control in the city, sponsoring firemen (vigiles), urban cohorts, and praetorian guard under the command of officials with defined legal powers: prefects of the city, of the praetorians, and of the vigiles. Outside Rome: the management and status of communities in Italy, the organization of land and people, facilities including roads and bridges, important institutions in society, such as collegia and alimenta, and the legal jurisdiction of the praetorian prefect within Italy.