Anduril surveillance towers spreading along the US border | Hacker News Reader

Anduril surveillance towers spreading along the US border

theguardian.com

38 points_8j5011 comments

The “Flame of the West”? The best hope for the side of light to fight back the hordes of darkness, a.k.a. migrants crossing the border?

But, come on, if they wanted to come up with a LOTR name for an all-seeing eye on top of a tall tower, Barad-dûr is RIGHT THERE.

or Amon Hen.

but anduril is the company name and makes other things besides the towers.

Interesting border tech, it seems like a next step would be attaching drones to the units for remote dispatch and investigation. Maybe a network of these could at least give some better analytics for border crossings that were previously undetected and see if that can drive some policy decisions on it.

The most surprising thing was seeing that they're looking to use these on the Northern border too which seems to be a pathway that more people are taking after receiving Canadian visas

Gosh, we complain about people coming over the border but we never talk about how the US is complicit in creating the environment to cause that.

The War on Drugs fuels the cartels and corruption that they flee. The US is manufacturing a crisis and then complaining about it. But "patriots" like Thiel will make sure to profit from it.

It doesn’t follow that an open border policy is an appropriate palliative to compensate for that historical injustice. A much more logical solution might be, for example, providing security assistance to impacted countries.

We don't have an open border policy, and regardless of that we need to reevaluate our policies and their impacts on those south of the border.

Providing security assistance would like like what?

And while ending The War would not magically erase the existence of the the cartels, it would be a good start. Corruption itself needs to be addressed or nothing will change.

> Gosh, we complain about people coming over the border

You wrote this and it sounded like you were endorsing an implicit open border policy. Did you have some more intermediate solution in mind? Recall that we do presently have a legal pathway for asylum seekers to immigrate to the US.

> Providing security assistance would like like what?

We already do this. US agencies frequently cooperate with their counterparts in Mexico and elsewhere.

No, I'm commenting on the complaints about migrants coming here without acknowledging that we effectively forced them to due to our actions.

Between the War on Drugs and agricultural dumping we have deeply damaged their economies and political stability.

https://nacla.org/article/mexico-cost-us-dumping

(oh, and let's also not forget how US Big Ag utilizes these vulnerable migrants to maximize their profits).

Anduril is mostly made up of senior Palantir employees who wanted to stay focused on the mission. And Palmer Luckey.

Is the Guardian a far left publication now? Because they’re saying there’s bipartisan agreement on border security and that Biden approved a border security package, but the tenor of the article somehow bizarrely postures Anduril and CBP as the criminals, for enforcing immigration law.

And there’s the argument that enforcing those laws is causing “migrants” to cross in more dangerous ways and is therefore somehow immoral, which is functionally equivalent to: “defending against criminals makes the criminals dumber and more likely to injure or kill themselves and therefore, respecting the interests of the criminals, we should soften our efforts at enforcing the law”.

How did we get here? It’s just so absurd it beggars belief.

I think the article presents a few different ways that this technology is concerning: the budget aspect (which seems to be neutrally aligned), the concern for privacy of US Citizen's near the border (also not a left aligned concept), and the regard for human life regardless of immigration status (something that I imagine isn't unique to the far left).

Regardless of one's take on immigration law, or characterization of undocumented immigrants as criminals: the practices of CBP absolutely should be under scrutiny given the unparalleled power they wield.

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