Case Study: Challenges in Homeland Security Operations in Argentina and Role of Emerging Technologies

After several decades of political crises and turmoil, Argentina is now making a serious effort to join the community of nations in which human rights are respected and a safe environment is provided to citizens wishing to lead peaceful and productive lives. The government is starting this journey at a time when the country is facing an acute economic crisis and its options are severely limited by that fact.Fortunately, in Argentina, terrorism is not as major a problem as it is in the US. Violent protests inside the country and acts of terrorism by agents from abroad do occur but they do not have the ferocity that events of 9/11 had in the US. Its border control problems, however, are almost a mirror image of those that keep the Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP) in the US in a state of constant alert. Its sparsely populated northern border with Bolivia and Paraguay is mostly unmonitored. Clandestine shipments of cocaine from Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, and marijuana from Paraguay, come over ground, by small aircraft, or by boats on the Parana River. Poor Peruvians, Bolivians, and Paraguayans arrive, often without proper documents, to earn money that they can send home. Simultaneously, human traffickers bring youngsters by force to use them in slave labor, prostitution rings, or in drug traffic. Stolen cars, precursor chemicals for labs that produce cocaine and marijuana, laundered money, and stolen cars travel in the opposite direction. Gangs run the illicit trade within Argentina operating with impunity by bribing or killing the local police, judiciary, and elected officials. Imprisonment does not diminish the power of bosses to orchestrate the actions by their gang members in port cities.The modest goal of this paper is to conduct a brief survey of the services that the emerging technologies can perform as force- multipliers. They are parts of the technological ecosystem that is coming with 5G, ushering in the 4^th industrial revolution.Since Argentina's homeland security problems are not entirely unique, the paper may be of interest to readers outside Argentina.Since Argentina's homeland security problems are not entirely unique, the paper may be of interest to readers outside Argentina.