Trump Administration to Kickstart 200 High-Tech Towers for Virtual Border Wall

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

“Build the wall!” enthusiasts might not have had a virtual border wall in mind, but that’s exactly what the Trump administration will put up in remote parts of our desert Southwest.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) revealed on Thursday a “program of record” that tech startup Anduril Industries will build hundreds of autonomous surveillance towers (AST) “to greatly improve situational awareness and agent safety along the U.S. border.” That’s according to Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf.

CBP’s announcement of the construction program explains how ASTs will work:

Perfectly suited for remote and rural locations, the AST scans the environment with radar to detect movement, orients a camera to the location of the movement detected by the radar, and analyzes the imagery using algorithms to autonomously identify items of interest, such as people or vehicles. Border Patrol agents are then alerted to this event and have the opportunity to make the final determination on what the item is and if it poses a threat.

Image courtesy of CBP

The towers will “operate off-grid with 100 percent renewable energy and provide autonomous surveillance operations 24 hours per day, 365 days per year,” according to CBP.

Anduril’s homepage claims:

At the core of all our products is Lattice, an AI software backbone that uses sensor fusion, machine learning, and mesh networking to integrate real-time data from Anduril hardware and third-party systems into a single, autonomous operating picture.

If the company’s claims are accurate, what ASTs will do is very much like the “sensor fusion” hardware/software package that makes the fifth-generation strike fighter so deadly.

Among Anduril’s backers is angel investor and PayPal founder Peter Thiel.

The pilot program for a virtual border wall launched in 2018 with four ASTs in the San Diego Border Patrol Sector, and since then a total of 60 ASTs have been added to the border in the region. Today’s plan calls for another 140 for a total of 200 ASTs.

Read the rest from Stephen Green HERE.

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