On the other, it refers to the way that individuals and institutions are increasingly encouraged to reduce the possibility of potential disruptions, errors and catastrophes by policing, guarding, anticipating and interdicting possible threats through surveillance, militarization, profiling and the analysis of data. In both cases, securitization relies upon an underlying logic of risk management, which holds that the future can be subjected to sophisticated logistical and mathematical models that seek to subordinate the qualitative category of uncertainty to a quantitative measure of risk and to commodify that risk in ways that allow it to be integrated into an increasingly global capitalist market. Walmart, I argue, is a unique and masterful exemplar of the way these two forms of securitization come together in a corporate entity. Not only is Walmart a paragon of securitization, it is also, by virtue of both its economic clout and its special reach, a key means by which the broader paradigm of securitization is spread through the cultural–political fabric of everyday life.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 248