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That means having your capital tied up in in-transit drugs for two or three months. The cost of that may outweigh the savings from automation.

You also lose the ability to react quickly to market demand.

That approach might be suitable for established industries, but probably not for innovative, disruptive players in a winner-takes-all market like drug cartels.

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Add to the fact that the cartels don't really care too much about their drug mules.

The cartels likely already see these as "automated", given that, like you said, the mules are very low value to them. Maybe not automated, but definitely 'autonomous'.

Every drug mule is a potential informant, and one more possible leak of the to/from information about the trade.

With an autonomous step in the chain, there is no human who knows where the craft is going to drive to. If anyone picks it out of the water it can be programmed to erase information about where it's headed towards.

> That means having your capital tied up in in-transit drugs for two or three months.

The cost of borrowing is at record lows across much of the world. I suspect it's the same in the criminal underworld too...

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