I am not trying to be pedantic here, but words are important. If the US/Mexico border is a defense issue, then it should be entirely militarized?
Andruil would be most accurately described as a surveillance company, would it not?
Border security works well for this, because a lot of the software & hardware they will build here is dual-use for defense and border security. Furthermore, selling technology to the border patrol is probably the closest sales problem in the world to selling to the U.S. military - Same regulatory framework, sales cycle, Congressional lobbying landscape, even product review. It's a stepping stone to selling full-blown defense tech, hence the mish-mash of terms.
But yes, it is a surveillance company from what I can tell.
https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geo...
It's long, so here's the relevant part quoted at length:
>
There’s an anthropologist friend of mine, a guy called Steve LeBlanc–he runs the Peabody Museum in Harvard–who wrote a book once called “Constant Battles” about pre-civilized human beings and how they actually lived. Not the fantasy version, where they lived in, you know, the Garden of Eden and wore flowers in their hair, but the real ancient world where food shortages, including ones that you could die from, were a regular occasion. And his rule of thumb is “people always raid before they starve.”
“Raid the neighbours.”
Now, it doesn’t automatically/inevitably follow that large civilized society will do the same as small hunter-gatherer bands, but it’s the same people, you know. So the military think that there’s going to be a lot of work for them. I mean I can’t discern, and I don’t see how you would separate their motives into the ‘good ones’–they just want to be ready to deal with trouble–and the ‘bad ones’–they’re looking for a justification for their existing budget and the present justifications are getting a bit thread-worn so we need some new ones…I can be quite cynical about this on occasion; but I have taken my pills today.
But they’re right. That–I mean, you talk to the US military for example, their, I’d say, obsession in the planning. I mean, not your average grunt or his, you know, the “2nd platoon officer” but in the thinking parts of the military: the obsession with Mexico. Because there’s a 2,000 mile/3,000 kilometers (I’m in Canada) 3,000 kilometer border between Mexico and the United States. There are a hundred million people in Mexico, another 50 million south of them in Central America; the farms there are going to dry up and blow away.
There’s already a well established pattern: when you’re in deep trouble and you can’t feed your family, head north. There is an existing arrangement on the US border which might be described as “catch some, let some go.” I mean it’s–it’s not really fortified. It looks pretty impressive in the cities where people can see it, but if you drive 10, 15 kilometres out of town east or west along the border, you’re down to three strands of barbed wire and a dirt patrol track with a vehicle down it every 4 hours. It is actually meant to allow lots of people to get through because cheap illegal labor is what keeps American agro-business profitable, and the reason that it’s cheap is because the workers are illegal and they can’t bargain. So there is a reason for all this–though not one we can speak of in front of the children. This provides a safety valve for Mexicans, the Mexican state. It provides cheap labor for American farmers and, you know, the flow is maybe half a million a year, a million a year, and half of them go home again after the harvest. We can deal with that–there’s 300 million people in the United States; drop in the bucket. But try 5 million a year, because things have fallen apart and there’s no food in Mexico.
What do you do at 5 million a year? Well, the US Army’s convinced that the Congress will tell them to close that border–really close it–and they can do that! It’s absolute nonsense–though you’ll hear it often enough in the States, they go: “Ooh, I dunno…2,000 miles of border; we could never shut that–”
Bullshit.
Iron Curtain! You remember the Iron Curtain?
But the dirty secret is that you can only shut a border if you’re willing to kill people.
ENDQUOTE
What if the first stop across the border wasn't a detention center but rather a LTC training facility?
Yes there is the language problem, but how many jobs in LTC require fluency?
Yes there is the fact that some places where the LTC crisis is hitting hard like New England and the rust belt are far away from the border, but perhaps families are desperate/poor enough to relocate? Aren't some retiring near the border for cost reasons (tax) already?
And from what I see, he's not some random conspiracy-theory dude.
Border security is THE most basic, fundamental responsibility of national defense. The US has just spent so frickin' long with benign powers on its land borders, and so focused on global expeditionary operations, that its border security efforts have atrophied. That said, national defense is now an over-arching term that includes a mix of law enforcement and military responsibilities and tasks. Note that securing our airspace "borders" largely falls onto Combat Air Patrols conducted by the various state Air National Guards, typically flying F-16s or F-15s.
>>>I am unaware of any Latin American terrorist groups threatening the USA.
Maybe not Latin American ones, but Al Qaeda just called for renewed attacks on the US in the wake of the 9/11 anniversary.[1] We KNOW that illegal aliens are crossing into the US traveling from as far as west/central Africa. [2] West Africa already has an Islamic terrorism problem.[3] From a risk assessment/risk management perspective, it is wise to allocate resources to reduce the chance of AQ or ISIS agents sneaking across our southern border, which leaks like a sieve.
>>>If the US/Mexico border is a defense issue, then it should be entirely militarized?
I think most major countries handle it as a national-level law enforcement responsibility, but sometimes there are still significant military forces involved.
As a point of comparison, China uses Army forces for border security, in addition to other agencies.[4] Russia's primary border force is a law-enforcement organization.[5]
[1]https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/al-qaeda-chief-issues...
[2]https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-02/watch-first-large-...
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram
[4]https://china-defense.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-second-line-p...
[5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Service_of_the_Federal_...
This whole thing smacks of corruption.
Soviet Union used the army to police immigration as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_force
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_maximization_problem
Let's say 1 Anduril Widget would stop 10 border crossings/year on the southern border, but only 1/yr on the Canadian border. If I have 100 widgets, allocating them all to the southern border is the objectively superior employment of my assets. Only if my marginal utility per widget drops to preventing <1 crossing per year in the SOUTH should I even CONSIDER shifting resources to the northern border.
If they are going to build it and hand it of to border patrol, then Congress should fund it with the border patrols budget. Which they won’t, because this is as useless as a physical wall. So funding it with the money taxpayers allocated for the DoD is the definition of corruption.
It's a longer border, making it harder to man with...manpower.
Or maybe it’s dealing with the other nuclear powers.
Stopping people coming over the border to be residents is probably not in the top 10 of national defense priorities.
Honestly, as a matter of policy I don’t think it’s even something we are trying to do since immigration is so good for GDP, and nothing else really matters as much as growing GDP.
And where do you intend to stop the invading armies, if not....at your border?
>>>Stopping people coming over the border to be residents is probably not in the top 10 of national defense priorities.
Well, let's take a look at the 2018 National Defense Strategy: https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-Nation...
Page 4, Defense Objectives, first line: -Defending the homeland from attack
That's vague enough to cover infiltration of terrorist organizations across the border.
Do you imagine border patrol plays a key strategic role in war? What would be an example of that from history?
"Defend everywhere" makes for a very poor Commander's Intent or Mission Statement. If you are defending "inside the border"...you've already failed at stopping your adversary AT the border. It also violates almost half of the Principles of War (mass, objective, economy of force, simplicity). Reference Appendix B of [6].
>>>Do you imagine border patrol plays a key strategic role in war? What would be an example of that from history?
From[1]: "Pakistani patrols began patrolling in territory controlled by India in January 1965, which was followed by attacks by both countries on each other's posts on 8 April 1965.[44][45] Initially involving border police from both nations, the disputed area soon witnessed intermittent skirmishes between the countries' armed forces."
Re: [2][3]These Soviet-Japanese border conflicts would have 2nd and 3rd order effects on military doctrine, development, and strategic focus (the Japanese stopped poking the Bear and focused on China). The Soviets gained some confidence in their operational doctrine and gained confidence fighting the Japanese (who they last fought against, and lost to, in the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War).
Reference [4] describes how the Soviets managed border security during their Afghanistan war.
Reference [5] has a short section on "Border Security in Contemporary Counterinsurgency" to summarize border control issues from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq. It particularly points out the significant political ramifications of cross-border insurgents and counter-insurgency operations.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1965
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Khasan
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol
[4]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13518046.2015.10...
[5]https://apps.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA503298
[6]https://www.marines.mil/News/Publications/MCPEL/Electronic-L...
In my analysis the US "War on drugs" is a major reason. Illegal goods in high demand mean smuggling and black markets with lots of profits. These markets cause criminal cartels. The cartels corrupt government and law enforcement. Corruption and cartel activity lead to high crime areas and low economic opportunity. High crime and lack of opportunity leads to people wanting to leave.
The US also ended guest worker programs that made it easy for seasonal workers to work in the US and live in Mexico. Many people wanted to do this, so they could live in their homeland with their family, friends, and culture but also seasonally work in the US where they could earn more. By ending seasonal worker programs, the people who wanted to work in the US needed to do so illegally, and, in order to minimize the risk and hassle of repeat illegal border crossings, they made a single illegal crossing and lived and worked in the US with their families.
If I were President, I'd end the drug war and decriminalize virtually all drugs. I'd also reinstate guest worker programs and make it very easy to get temporary legal access to the country. I'd invest in technology and infrastructure at the US Mexico border so we could move people through, both ways, as fast as possible. I'd also be involved with Central and South American allies and work with them to mitigate problems that may be the root of illegal immigration.
Well, whether you agree with it or not, part of the justification is that if anybody can cross easily, terrorist groups will, too. IIRC, the 9/11 hijackers didn’t fly into the US since we were looking for them, they flew into Canada and crossed the border (although Canada’s not Mexico, of course…)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_...
They were all (most?) students in various flight schools here, with valid visas.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_millennium_attack_plots#L...
You don't hear a lot about the big wall we need across the Canadian border.
We don't have many people crossing the border illegally, at the canadian border.
Of course we are going to prioritize the location in which the vast majority of people who enter the border illegally, are using. Which is the southern border, in this case.