Colgate University hosted a lecture titled “The Border as a Networked Platform: Enmity and the Information Regime” on Monday, March 10 in light of current political discourse surrounding immigration. The speaker was Iván Chaar López, assistant professor of digital studies in the department of American studies and the principal investigator of the Border Tech Lab, a research collective at the University of Texas at Austin. López called on information from his book “The Cybernetic Border: Drones, Technology, and Intrusion.”
“Many people think of the border as a wall, a fence or patrollers on trucks, but there is so much more that people don’t know about,” López said.
López focused on three main points: Borders are war by other means, the “social” and the “technical” are intertwined and both border enforcement and borders are sociotechnical arrangements in the making of inclusion and exclusion — in other words, there are no natural borders. He then split his presentation into three digestible sections: introducing the cybernetic border, the case of “smart borders” and the case of “border haunt.”
López began by tracing the evolution of border enforcement strategies, emphasizing how modern border control operates as a “system of systems,” an intricate web of interconnected technologies, personnel and infrastructure designed to identify and respond to perceived threats. He highlighted how, following the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials increasingly linked border control with counterterrorism efforts, fueling paranoia and leading to expansive surveillance initiatives.
One key initiative López examined was Operation Control, a multi-pronged strategy aimed at securing the right combination of personnel, technology and infrastructure while enhancing mobility, rapid response capabilities and intelligence coordination. These evolving measures, he argued, illustrate how border enforcement continuously reinvents itself. It has been weaponized as early as 1970 with the electronic wall to current-day technological sophistication.
“The border is a perennial prototype,” López said. “It has evolved for years and will continue to evolve for years as it collects data from failures to catch border crossers.”
López also incorporated human rights statistics in his lecture, discussing how in Arizona alone there were around 3,900 deaths confirmed by officers.
In response, artists and activists like Ian Alan Paul have sought to challenge and disrupt information systems, as seen in his “Border Haunt” experiment. This intersection of technology, surveillance and humanitarian issues was a key focus of the event.
First-year Daniel Montan Jacome reflected on the funding put towards surveillance technology.
“I was shocked by the amount of funds that are devoted to these operations with such immense amounts of technology and surveillance,” Montan Jacome said. “[López] even talked about the possibility of surveillance bees or birds that would require extreme developments and funding devoted to one issue.”
López discussed how the system is particularly interesting because its failures drive further investment — when operations fall short and people successfully cross the border, even more money is poured into modernizing technology to prevent future crossings. This cycle of adaptation and escalation highlights the complexity of border surveillance.
Associate Professor of Anthropology Santiago Juarez shared his opinion on the lecture.
“This event was important to host because it is always good to get multiple perspectives on topics like this,” Juarez said. “The technology alone is an immensely complex subject, and [López] delved deeply [into] only one issue, using archives, for a very rapidly evolving subject.”
The lecture was part of the 2024-25 Digital War speakers series by the peace and conflict studies program.
