Roundtables: The Deadly Failures of The Virtual Border Wall

Over the past 25 years, the US has spent billions building a “virtual wall” of surveillance towers along its southern border. The towers were promoted as tools to detect and apprehend border crossers and to save lives. But a groundbreaking MIT Technology Review investigation documented more than a thousand people who moved through areas watched by these towers without being reached or apprehended, and who ultimately died there. Some of those deaths occurred under the watch of newly installed AI-powered towers designed to spot people automatically. The findings reveal a humanitarian crisis more visible than previously known, as well as repeated failures of the virtual wall’s basic security promise.

MIT Technology Review editors and reporters will discuss those failures and the stories of people who die in the borderlands in a roundtable conversation. Speakers include Mat Honan, editor in chief; James O’Donnell, senior AI reporter; and Eileen Guo, senior features and investigations reporter. Related coverage includes why the US cannot catch people before they die despite billions spent on border surveillance, how the first comprehensive map of deaths along the US border’s “virtual wall” was made, and four ways to address the failures found along that virtual wall. Registration is open for the event.