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Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

france24.com

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Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#81

Post by immibis »

krisoft wrote: post #57
gambiting wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>If it was on autopilot, how could they verify delivery? You put in a cheap SIM card and it will pick up signal when you get close to the coast and send a message saying it reached its destination.

I just imagine being a techie working for the cartel. In case you do not receive the ping, would you want to tell this to your violence prone boss: “Hey boss! Sooo. According to my calculations the significant investment you made in my idea should have pinged back by now. Maybe it is there, just there is something wrong with the SIM, or the antenna, or the network. Or maybe it is a few miles left or right on the coas…

Don't ask me how a criminal operation holds together without either someone defecting and getting everyone killed, or someone killing someone else because they thought they were defecting. Presuming that it does, in fact, somehow maintain cohesion, I think they're all aware the submarine stuff is risky.

They're earning however many tens of millions of dollars per successful shipment and it's way higher than what it actually cost them to produce. And I'd guess they send perhaps ten to fifty shipments per year. Having 50% shrinkage is balanced by a 9999% profit margin.

This one, if it truly had no drugs in it, might have been a test run (risk-reducing).

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#82

Post by more_corn »

thakoppno wrote: post #48

I wonder if the alleged perpetrators are reading this thread? Are there any comments that would help with the next revision? I think both conjectures are likely true.

To that end I suspect that tracking starlink used in an unmanned narco sub would be trivial for an insider at the company. My first thought was “I wonder if the movement and activity pattern would be unique. Yes probably. If unique could a script be run to pinpoint them? Yes probably.” If law enforcement has tasked someone with doing this (likely and legal) there’s high likelihood that any future narcosub using starlink will be intercepted. So to anyone on either side of this arms race: “you’re welcome”

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#83

Post by more_corn »

tczMUFlmoNk wrote: post #2

Fascinating. Does the Starlink antenna work well underwater? Or was this sub surfacing to communicate?

Semi-submersible wild be a more accurate description. Most of the boat is under water, usually only an inch or so down so it’s hard to see from a boat.

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#85

Post by clvx »

stickfigure wrote: post #20
whatever1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they do, the cartels already own huge man & firepower. They will just move on to the next thing, maybe coffee, avocados, oil whatever. When you have accumulated so much power you can demand cash from the world around you.

Coffee, avocados, and oil aren't illegal. But I'm pretty sure if you banned coffee it would spawn criminal gangs that made 1920s prohibition look tame. There's no substitute for the margins you can get in the illegal drug trade. Take away the primary source of funding and you make it much easier to break the gangs. We've already gone through this. Just legalize it already.

They already extortion every single producer. Any coffee and avocado coming from South America has an extortion tax somewhere in the supply chain whether it’s to the farmers, shipping companies, distribution center warehouses at port or whatever you imagine. The extortion comes as placing gang members as part of security, real threats or just bribes to unlock to keep moving towards the consumer.

Illegal goods have better margins but extortions provide a platform for power and money with less effort.

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#86

Post by torbid »

whatever1 wrote: post #62
stickfigure wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coffee, avocados, and oil aren't illegal. But I'm pretty sure if you banned coffee it would spawn criminal gangs that made 1920s prohibition look tame. There's no substitute for the margins you can get in the illegal drug trade. Take away the primary source of funding and you make it much easier to break the gangs. We've already gone through this. Just legalize it already.

They could set a 1000% tax on the coffee produced, if they can consolidate control. Latin America is 50% of the world coffee production. What will Starbucks / Nestle do? They will just pay up. They can even go against the families of the execs to make their case about the new price.

They tried this before with fruit. The US companies just sold their interest in production and have plenty of other options for acquisition if they try to tax beyond the relative ease of South America verse anywhere else in the global south.

I would agree that letting black market bs continue will eventually lead to groups that could threaten global control on random other commodities but that's no reason kick the can further down this road.

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#87

Post by clvx »

DragonStrength wrote: post #73
numpad0 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or fix up the Latin America. Just stop pretending US has no control over internal politics of foreign countries.

We don't do that precisely because that's how you end up with this situation. We wonder how history repeats itself, but we can't be bothered to know history from over 40 years ago.

60 years actually but for the recent criminality you need to look to Venezuela’s attempt of revolution in the late 10’s which generated the expansion of the Tren de Aragua which evolved extortion from random events to an enterprise level kind of thing.

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#88

Post by Jemm »

whatever1 wrote: post #17
stickfigure wrote: post #10

Just legalize it already. This is stupid.

Even if they do, the cartels already own huge man & firepower. They will just move on to the next thing, maybe coffee, avocados, oil whatever. When you have accumulated so much power you can demand cash from the world around you.

Applies to corporations as well but they do it legally and we consider part of our 'economy'. Heck we even subsidize them and give them the power to lobby and legally be a 'person'.

- Problem? What Problem? I don't see no stinkin' Problem!

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#89

Post by arijun »

whatever1 wrote: post #62
stickfigure wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coffee, avocados, and oil aren't illegal. But I'm pretty sure if you banned coffee it would spawn criminal gangs that made 1920s prohibition look tame. There's no substitute for the margins you can get in the illegal drug trade. Take away the primary source of funding and you make it much easier to break the gangs. We've already gone through this. Just legalize it already.

They could set a 1000% tax on the coffee produced, if they can consolidate control. Latin America is 50% of the world coffee production. What will Starbucks / Nestle do? They will just pay up. They can even go against the families of the execs to make their case about the new price.

Part of the reason such a large percentage of coffee is grown there is because it's cheap. The cartels can (and do) make profit on legitimate crops, but they can't magically rewrite the rules of capitalism.

Re: Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with Starlink antenna

#90

Post by jillesvangurp »

crackrook wrote: post #40
bigmadshoe wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The war on drugs has failed. Everyone agrees that no-one should do meth. But the solutions presented so far by prohibition are not just conceptually flawed - they demonstrably don’t work. We literally have 50+ years of data that shows it. We need to a) legalize drugs, b) provide proper treatment to addicts, and c) get unsafe drugs off the streets. I’m speaking as someone who lost a close family member to an overdose.…

I know we have data that shows just how harmful the war on drugs has been, but I'm curious if we have data showing that legalization in a modern society, with global supply chains and marketing campaigns, does not result in a bunch of people who previously wouldn't have done drugs - for fear of legal consequences, or just because they're hard to obtain - suddenly doing drugs. I'm genuinely interested to know, this is…

Most places that focus on treatment rather than punishment see drops in all the relevant stats for deaths, crime, health issues, etc. related to drugs usage. And even drops in drug abuse itself. The one thing that has never really worked and continues to create endless amounts of misery is the war on drugs and all the collateral damage it causes.

It never worked. Not even a little bit.

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