Virilio outlines the idea of endo- colonisation in Pure War (Virilio and Lotringer 2008) to explain the shift from traditional forms of external or ‘exo- colonisation’, whereby the state invades other territories, to a new form of intensive or endo- colonisation, where the state progressively attacks its own territory. In Virilio's thought, this shift takes place against the backdrop of processes of globalisation, which have seen modernity run up against the limit of terrestrial space, so that there is nowhere else for the modern state to go, but to turn back upon itself and start to march into its own territory. Apart from this statist interpretation of endo- colonisation, Virilio also off ers a more general notion of the process of intensive colonisation related to the ways in which science and technology have run up against their external limit in processes of globalisation and have now started to occupy the human body itself. As Virilio argues in a conversation with John Armitage, the endo- colonisation of the human body by technology is an invasion and an attempted control of the body by technology (Virilio and Armitage 2001a: 42). However, the primary meaning of the idea of endo- colonisation remains the state's assault on its own territory and its own population. To explain this process, Virilio starts by describing the idea of deterrence and the way this relates to the notion of total peace. In his view, deterrence enables total peace through the creation of a permanent threat of war. The danger of war is always there and the population lives in a state of fear of the enemy. For Virilio, this is the military society, which entails the control of the population through the creation of fear and state intervention into their everyday lives. Virilio (PW, 106) points to 1970s’ Cambodia and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime, which waged war on its own population.