SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The U.S. military is increasing strikes against alleged drug smuggling vessels in the Caribbean. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that three such vessels were blown up just this week, but one of the vessels targeted last week included a semisubmersible, what authorities call a narco-submarine. And they say these vessels are playing a larger role in global drug trafficking. Steven Dudley is the co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime, a nonprofit think tank and media organization that specializes in organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean. He joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us.
STEVEN DUDLEY: Thank you.
SIMON: What is a narco-sub, or semisubmersible vessel?
DUDLEY: I think it's something closer to a boat than an actual submarine. You basically fasten a very tight fiberglass or wooden hub on the top, and you put a bunch of outboard motors on it, and you run it along the surface of the sea. And it's just incredibly difficult to detect because of the way they paint it, because of the materials they use. It's just - makes it so it's hard to find, especially once it's out at sea.
SIMON: Who's building them? I'm assuming not traditional shipyards.
DUDLEY: Yeah. They're mostly being built in places like Colombia. That's where most of them have been seized. They are being built mostly in areas near the sea. They're being built by large organizations but very often subcontracted out to independent producers. At this stage, you may even have specialists who just do this kind of semisubmersible. So this is part of the way that this works now.
SIMON: Who's running them? Is there any one answer to that?
DUDLEY: These are complex, multilayered organizations that are spread across a huge geographic expanse. So even if you've got some groups that might be collecting and collating the cocaine in one spot and putting it on a semisubmersible in another spot, you might have another one that's picking it up in Europe and then another group that is the distribution group. These are different organizations that are connecting in these different spaces through, very often, these subcontracted groups. So this is a mirror of the global economy, and I don't think we should think about it any differently.
SIMON: And the next stage will be a craft that's utterly submersible, I gather.
DUDLEY: Absolutely, and probably unmanned and maybe run by artificial intelligence, or at least remotely. They're entering into the future just like we are, and we should expect them to be using all of the tools at their disposal.
SIMON: Your organization has reported on a rise in seizures of this kind of vessel by different governments. Does that mean more of them are being used or that governments are just getting better at detecting them?
DUDLEY: Well, seizures are an imperfect measure, but if all things are sort of equal across the board, then more seizures indicates an increased use, and that's our suspicion as well. It's not just in the jungles of Colombia, which is really where most of it began, but now all the way to Europe. These are obviously indications that this is something that they're using more and more.
SIMON: How much of the international drug traffic would you be able to say?
DUDLEY: Again, it's one of these things we don't know what we don't know, but certainly what these can do is carry large quantities. If you make a submarine, you're thinking about taking in the tons. It's one of these things that allows for them to move a lot of drugs in one fell swoop.
SIMON: Now, InSight Crime had statements from U.S. officials recently saying, quote, "once the subs are in open water, interception rates become extremely challenging, with interdiction rates as low as 5%, depending on conditions." But here's what Secretary Hegseth said this week.
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PETE HEGSETH: Whether it's in the Caribbean or in the Pacific with the last two strikes, we know exactly who these people are. We know what networks they work with, what foreign terrorist organizations they're a part of. We know where they're going, where they originated from, what they're carrying.
SIMON: Is the secretary, based on your reporting, correct or hopeful?
DUDLEY: Well, I have a lot of questions about what he just said, including if they do know so much, then why haven't they said anything about the different networks that are running these? But if we just leave that aside, you know, by the U.S. government's own admission, extremely hard to detect once they're in open water, then, again, it's very hard to take at face value what he's saying. These are difficult to detect, and it's very difficult to solve this problem and certainly solve this problem the way that they're trying to solve it, which is just shoot them from the sky.
SIMON: Steven Dudley is the co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime. Thanks so much.
DUDLEY: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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