Motherboard Episode - Narco Subs

Motherboard Episode - Narco Subs Synopsis

The greatest obstacle facing drug cartels has always been transporting narcotics from the poor regions that produce them to the less-poor areas that buy them. In the early part of the 2000s, a time still dominated by incarcerated Cali Cartel heads in Colombia, a technological breakthrough was made on this front: privately made drug-filled torpedoes and semi-submersibles.

Dr. Miguel Angel Montoya is the former trafficker who spearheaded the project, which attached simple radio devices to compartmentalized tubes the cartel hitched to modest towboats-in effect taking much of the battle out of the skies. If a marine patrol became suspicious, the device was simply jettisoned and retrieved by a backup cartel boat tracking its signal. All these years later, Montoya still doesn't believe that international customs agents will ever thwart the well-funded research-and-development efforts of international drug outfits.