If the hemisphere's criminal groups had long term plans and major R&D investments, they'd be looking at the field of swarm robotics right now.
As the US and allies have gotten better at seizing large shipments of cocaine and other trafficked items, criminal groups have moved towards more numerous, smaller shipments. Add another 50 (or 20?) years of technology and take that logic to an extreme, and the criminal groups could consider sending small shipments inside of thousands of robotic boats that swarm towards the coast of the US. That sort of move would overwhelm the current maritime defenses that the US has in place and guarantee that a certain amount reaches shore.
For that to be economical, the robots must be cheap, scalable and available for purchase or building by criminal groups in the region. That's not going to happen in the next decade, but will almost certainly occur this century.
2 comments:
What happens when the robots get to the US though? If they're programmed to all go to the same spot the authorities will just follow one that doesn't know it's being followed and find them all.
Alternatively, if they just make it to shore they need to be collected. If the authorities watch for the collectors then they smugglers are busted.
I thought about this. There would need to be a distributed system to collect them and I don't think they would re-group all the product at one location. It's a fun thought exercise. I'm sure there is a way to do this profitably, but there are some vulnerabilities that authorities could exploit to track down the networks inside the US.
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