U.S. News: AI-Driven Surveillance Tools Proliferate --- Big U.S. spending is driving advances in technology that aid border control

“PHOENIX -- As officials and contractors working in border security milled around a convention-center hall this week, artificial intelligence analyzed their threat potential in real time, displaying the results on computer screens.

 

Companies showed off how their systems, from miles away, could distinguish people from animals, or those carrying bags or weapons -- using mounted cameras or sensors or drones as small as a child's toy.

 

The annual Border Security Expo, a trade show catering to Department of Homeland Security personnel, provides an array of companies showing off the newest, flashiest technology they are eager to sell to the U.S. government. This year, the stakes were even higher.

 

The acceleration of AI in border-security technology hit a fever pitch over the past year, bringing new competitors into the industry and offering a new vision of what surveillance and border enforcement looks like. The Trump administration has made border security and immigration enforcement its priority, and vendors have been eager to secure funding and contracts before political winds shift.

 

Paul Allen, president of Airship AI, a surveillance intelligence system, said the administration's emphasis on securing the border has led companies serving other sectors to begin applying their technologies to border security.

 

"If you look at where the money's going, it's ICE and CBP," Allen said, referring to a pair of U.S. agencies: Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. "So if you're in this line of work, that's what you're doing."

 

Last year, Republicans in Congress passed more than $170 billion for border-security and immigration measures in President Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill," but some specific funding remains in flux. Some contracts are being awarded that have long been in the bidding process. Others have been on hold awaiting the reopening of DHS, which had its funding frozen as a divided Congress debated checks on immigration enforcement. Congress recently funded DHS through the rest of the fiscal year, but a larger package is pending.

 

David Olive, a government-relations consultant specializing in homeland security, said some contracts are being rushed as agencies look to spend money that has been allocated, fearing that if control of Congress flips to Democrats in November, unspent money could be rescinded next year.

 

"Speed is more important than efficiency or effectiveness right now," Olive said.

 

The government has been actively soliciting new technology and trying to find ways to speed up its rollout.

 

"CBP is open for business," Edward Mays, a deputy assistant commissioner at the agency, told attendees at a panel exploring the potential of quantum technology.

 

Even Amazon.com is getting in on the border-security game, displaying a pickup truck equipped with systems to provide mobile monitoring of people or border threats via drones or other inputs. Representatives said the truck is a prototype of what Amazon could offer DHS. They added that the vehicle hasn't been deployed to the border yet. The company has a specialized email account set up to recruit DHS business.

 

Most of the technology on display was autonomous and AI-equipped.

 

Not all of it worked perfectly. Attendees at one point hurried to avoid a tethered drone crashing to the ground from above their heads. (The drone's maker blamed a computer error.)

 

Paul Venesky, director of air and ground radar systems for SRCTec, said autonomous systems have come more heavily into use over the past year. He said that a Border Patrol agent might be alerted by AI when a radar system or camera flags a potential threat, rather than having to actively watch a screen with a joystick to switch angles.

 

He and other vendors said that although competition for business remains, the current mood is driving innovation and collaboration in new ways.

 

"A lot of it is very complementary," said Larry Bowe, chief executive of PureTech Systems, which makes surveillance-camera software. "You can apply AI to fiber-optic fence technology or radar." He added: "In the future you could be dispatching robots to go make intercepts."

 

Heightened demands of advancing technology have also brought opportunity for new competitors. Representatives of WilliamsRDM -- whose products include solar panels that power covert cameras while disguised as rocks and litter -- said the power demands of AI-linked systems are increasing the need for their products.

 

The company is developing larger chargers for drones, allowing them to increase their range, representatives Eddie Hinojosa and Chris Stimek said. WilliamsRDM has contracts with some Border Patrol offices, but would like to get more traction with DHS, they said.

 

The government has touted technology as a way to find and apprehend potential smugglers and immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, saying it is more efficient than human power and, in some cases, less invasive than a physical border wall. Others have cried foul on what they see as dystopian Big Brother surveillance that is being rolled out with little public understanding and oversight.

 

Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the use of AI in border enforcement a civil-liberties threat.

 

"Fierce political will to seal the border and novel AI surveillance technologies are converging to create a maelstrom of investment, lobbying, development of new technologies and efforts to increase surveillance of the border and of Americans," Stanley said. "It seems like a bad deal."” [1]

 

1. U.S. News: AI-Driven Surveillance Tools Proliferate --- Big U.S. spending is driving advances in technology that aid border control. Findell, Elizabeth.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 09 May 2026: A3.