4 ways to address the failures we found along the US border’s “virtual wall”
MIT Technology Review published an investigation into deaths near the 'virtual wall' of AI-enabled surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border. The year-long project, a collaboration with Times of San Diego called 'Dying on Camera,' found cases of people who walked undetected through areas surveilled by advanced towers and later died nearby, with their bodies remaining unnoticed for weeks or months. These cases reflect systemic flaws: broken towers, algorithms that failed to detect people, and agents who did not respond to alerts.
The investigation argues each death should have raised alarms inside US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) about the surveillance network's flaws—especially for cases near the latest towers built by defense company Anduril, which continues to win major contracts and is poised to benefit from federal money slated for border security. The US is set to spend $1 billion to triple the size of the virtual wall by 2034.
The article offers four ideas for CBP, beginning with a comprehensive audit of deaths near the virtual wall. New Mexico state representative Sarah Silva reacted to the finding that more than 18 people died in 2024 alone near towers in just one small stretch of desert near her district by saying, 'If I were the federal government, I would do an audit, because this feels like it's not working.' An audit is needed because CBP does not publish a comprehensive map of its virtual wall, leaving limited knowledge of how many towers exist and where. Journalists relied on mapping by the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation and used satellite imagery to verify nearly 600 towers and their approximate installation times—still far fewer than the 800 the government says operate today. Their estimates are inexact, meaning the tally of more than 1,050 deaths near the towers is an undercount, and they lack a complete picture of where the problem is worst. An internal audit would not have such limitations: CBP tracks when each tower went up and when it was active, and has had the ability to audit their effectiveness.