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This is such a ridiculous comment. It has never been in the technical capabilities to seal off any land border in the history of humanity, because any controls
by ygjb 5y ago
This is such a ridiculous comment. It has never been in the technical capabilities to seal off any land border in the history of humanity, because any controls that you can put in place, including all of the technology that currently exists that you could throw at it are still designed by humans, require absolutely no collaboration on the part of the operators of those defenses, and are immediately upon deployment subject to attack by your adversaries.
Assuming you are referring to the United States, even if you deployed all of those sensors at all crossings, it would not be sufficient to deter crossings; those only provide detective capabilities. Yes, you would radically increase the number of people guarding the border, but that would also require a radical investment in enforcement, and such an investment would bankrupt the country for no real practical effect. Even if you did fund and build it, the maintenance costs of preserving the effectiveness of such a land border along the northern border with Canada means protecting a nearly 9,000 km border that about 200 km from the West Coast turns into extremely inhospitable to hostile terrain and climate for a minimum of three to four months out of the year. This terrain is absolutely awful to stalk and patrol in, but is a pleasure to sneak through (at least I really enjoyed it back in my hunting and military training days :D)
It is not feasible to scale the navy to the point where it would be practical to prevent access to the continental United States, for example, let alone the island territories. Attempting to do so would bankrupt the nation. Hell, modern technology can't even reliably prevent folks from bobbing over from Cuba despite the relatively small attack surface there.
Even if you managed to invest more than the current percentage of GDP (which is already ridiculous), you would also have to confront an increasingly hostile domestic population who is used to freedom of movement, is already paying punishingly high taxes in contrast to the value and benefit they receive for them, and rapidly diminishing quality of life.
Good luck with that!
Oh, and one last note about capability based security - it works great in lab and somewhat small environments, but I would appreciate a practical explanation of how you would scale up capability based security to an environments operating in 87 distinct countries (with disparate regulatory requirements that preclude centralized management), 3600 offices, and 800,000 employees, with approximately one third of those employees having employer managed devices, notebooks, and managing a total of 2,300 distinct software applications (granted it's been about 14 years since I worked in that environment, but that company has grown substantially since then).
I'm listening for a real, practical suggestion here, not being facetious.
- fock 5y agoGerman Democratic Republic wants to disagree on that!
- JoBrad 5y agoPeople crossed the German border. People cross the Korean border, too.
- tfourb 5y agoIn Berlin alone, which was by far the most heavily fortified part of the "Iron Curtain," more than 5,000 people successfully fled across the border despite the "Berlin Wall." https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/fluchten/ https://www.chronik-der-mauer.de/fluchten/
- aerostable_slug 5y agoMore people cross into California alone in a single Border Patrol district in a single night. That said, I don't envision shoot on sight orders or the use of SM-70 directional mines on the American border. What I find particularly interesting is the complete reversal of positions from years ago. CSPAN has a video of Dianne Feinstein talking about border security with AG Janet Reno, and you could swear they were talking points cribbed from a Trump strategy session. Increased immigration tends to lower wages which favors employers. OTOH, protectionist immigration policies tend to keep the status quo especially for low-skilled labor, whom you would think the DNC is pledged to protect. It's just interesting to see how political fashions have switched. Is it the fear of terrorists crossing the border or..?
- dragonwriter 5y ago> What I find particularly interesting is the complete reversal of positions from years ago. It hasn’t reversed, though the right-wing bipartisan consensus on the issue of the early 1990s has gone. > Increased immigration tends to lower wages which favors employers. Immigration mostly increases and decreases by economic conditions (at home and abroad). Immigration policy mostly influences the proportion of immigrants with legal status. More immigrants with legal immigration status means immigrants are less likely to be in fear of asserting things like labor rights, whereas more without legal status means more fear of things like that. > It’s just interesting to see how political fashions have switched. They haven’t switched, at least not in well over a generation. Republicans have been for narrower legal immigration policies for decades (the backward-reaching amnesty under Reagan was a component of tighter forward policies). There was a brief period of general bipartisan consensus on the direction of change (though still distance on the details), but no reversal.