War on the Cartels
The AUV Threat Behind the Drug War
The United States extracted Nicolás Maduro. That should have been the end of the story. Instead, it looks like the opening move. In the days that followed, the administration signaled that the campaign in the Western Hemisphere is accelerating, not winding down.
President Trump announced the U.S. would “start now hitting land in Mexico” targeting cartels. He called Colombia’s president “a sick man who likes making cocaine” and warned “he’s not going to be doing it very long.” Colombian officials treated a U.S. strike as a real possibility and Petro frantically called Trump to de-escalate. On January 12, reports emerged of large-scale U.S. military vehicle movements toward the Mexico border. Mexico’s president said she rejected Trump’s offers of military intervention after a direct call, which itself signals that cross-border action is being treated as live.
Cuba is also in the crosshairs. After the Venezuela operation, Rubio’s warning to Havana was brief: “If I lived in Havana, and I was in the government, I’d be concerned.”
These are not separate initiatives. They are successive moves inside a single campaign. If Venezuela was the only problem, removing Maduro should have been sufficient. It was not. The accelerating tempo suggests the administration is treating the vulnerability as distributed across the hemisphere, not contained in Caracas.
There is one framework that makes the sequence coherent.
To see the framework, we have to start with the prior thesis that made Venezuela make sense in the first place.
The Prior Thesis
Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are changing naval warfare the way machine guns changed infantry tactics. They are cheap, nearly impossible to detect, and a handful of them can shut down entire shipping lanes. The economics overwhelmingly favor the attacker due to the extreme cost of oceanic targets. You do not have to destroy every ship. You have to create enough uncertainty that routing, insurance, and scheduling can no longer function normally.
The technology is no longer theoretical. In December 2025, Ukraine used an underwater drone to strike a Russian submarine at Novorossiysk, the first combat use of the capability. Days later, Russia sank barges at its own port entrance because it had no other way to defend against the threat. Since then, Ukraine has effectively imposed a maritime blockade on Russian oil exports. On January 13, 2026, reports emerged that four shadow fleet tankers were struck near Novorossiysk in a single day. A navy with no functioning major warships is conducting maritime denial against a nuclear power.
Now apply that to the Caribbean. The Gulf Coast funnels all its traffic through two narrow lanes, the Florida Straits and the Yucatán Channel. Half of U.S. maritime trade moves through Gulf ports. A dozen AUVs positioned in those corridors could threaten the commercial arteries that sustain the American economy.
Venezuela provided the ideal staging ground. Its coastline sits close to Gulf approaches and the Panama Canal. The Maduro regime had deep ties to Russia, Iran, and China, and had already hosted foreign military personnel and Iranian drone co-production. Cartel networks operating under state protection provided deniable logistics. The infrastructure for a maritime denial capability could be built under the cover of smuggling operations.
I published “The Venezuelan Drone Crisis” before the United States extracted Maduro. My thesis was that the Venezuela buildup (carrier strike group, F-35s, amphibious ready group) was not counternarcotics. The force package pointed to a maritime threat at the strategic level. Specifically, an autonomous underwater vehicle capability that could contest Gulf approaches and had to be removed before a Pacific commitment.
I also predicted the administration would not stop short of regime change. If the threat was serious enough to justify pulling high-end assets from other theaters, it was serious enough to require a definitive outcome. That prediction proved correct.
In a separate piece, “The Bridge at the Center of the Pentagon,” I examined the strategic framework driving these decisions. Elbridge Colby, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, is the senior Pentagon official responsible for defense strategy. He has spent his career arguing the United States must prioritize China above all else. He would, if given the choice, station every carrier in the Western Pacific. That makes his actions more revealing than his words. According to John Konrad’s reporting from inside the Pentagon, Colby signed off on diverting high-end naval assets to the Caribbean. For someone with his priorities to approve that diversion, the threat assessment had to be serious enough to override his core strategic instinct.
The 2025 National Security Strategy makes this explicit. It elevates the Western Hemisphere and calls for increased Coast Guard and Navy presence to control sea lanes and key transit routes. The homeland is being treated as exposed in a way it was not before.
The Western Hemisphere focus is not America retreating to its corner of the globe. It is securing the base of operations. You cannot project power into the Indo-Pacific if hostile actors can threaten Gulf shipping lanes, canal access, or critical supply chains in your own hemisphere.
And you have to do it now, while the assets are still available. Once carriers commit to the Pacific, the forces needed to clear a maritime-denial threat in the Caribbean are no longer on hand. Any capability left in place becomes leverage an adversary can activate at the worst possible moment.
Days after the Maduro extraction, Secretary of State Marco Rubio went on Meet the Press to lay out the administration’s justification:
“We don’t need Venezuela’s oil. We have plenty of oil in the United States… We’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operations for adversaries, rivals, and competitors of the United States. It’s as simple as that.”
That statement supports the thesis. It does not confirm it, but the alignment is hard to dismiss. The objective was eliminating Venezuela as a forward operating base for adversaries.
That framework explained Venezuela. The question now is why the campaign continues. The signals from Mexico, Colombia, and Cuba only make sense when you see the unifying thread.
The Unifying Thread
The simplest model that makes these signals coherent is a maritime denial risk enabled by unmanned undersea systems.
Venezuela provided the state-level integration point for technology transfer and was the most developed host for this threat in the Western Hemisphere. But it was not the only potential host. The vulnerability is structural: cheap technology, willing sponsors, and regional partners with coastal access. Those conditions persist after Maduro.
The operational infrastructure runs through cartel networks that span Mexico, Colombia, and beyond. Cuba remains a potential state host with access to both Gulf chokepoints. Read as a sequence, the goal looks consistent: disrupt the infrastructure throughout the Western Hemisphere that can turn AUVs into a distributed denial problem before US assets deploy to the Pacific.
Cartels Are AUV Threat Vectors
Cartels are not a secondary concern. They are the primary threat vector for a distributed maritime-denial capability in the Western Hemisphere.
Mexican cartels already move cocaine using semi-submersibles and narco-subs. These are expensive, require crews of three or four, and are typically scuttled after a single run to avoid detection. Autonomy solves those constraints. An AUV is cheaper, removes the crew requirement, is harder to detect than a manned submersible, and turns a disposable asset into a reusable delivery system. The unit economics shift immediately.
The infrastructure already exists. Cartels operate narco vessels and fishing fleets that blend into commercial traffic. They maintain coastal facilities for logistics and servicing. They have decades of experience moving high-value cargo by sea while managing detection risk. AUV operations integrate into that structure without requiring new networks. The same routes, the same vessels, the same personnel.
Capital is not the constraint. Cartels move an estimated $30 to $50 billion annually through maritime routes. Technologies that cut detection risk or reduce per-run cost attract investment. Commercial AUVs are sold through civilian channels, including by Chinese manufacturers. The acquisition path is far closer to normal industrial procurement than to a military purchase.
AUVs are also inherently dual use. A platform built to deliver cocaine to underwater caches off Florida and California can carry weapons capable of striking ships. Navigation, batteries, autonomy, and mission planning do not change with the payload. In peacetime, it is smuggling logistics. In a U.S.-China/Russia conflict, it becomes a distributed maritime-denial threat.
China and Russia benefit without exposure. Beijing and Moscow cannot station naval assets in the Caribbean without triggering a U.S. response. Commercial sales to criminal networks avoid that problem. Cartels fund the buildout. China provides the technology and gains deniable leverage at Gulf chokepoints with no formal linkage. The infrastructure gets built for commercial reasons and activates for strategic ones when needed.
Cartels get better smuggling capability. China and Russia get a maritime-denial option in the U.S. backyard. It’s a low cost, low signature, high leverage arrangement.
The Tell
The U.S. military is stretched thin. Ukraine is ongoing. Iran is heating up. The Pacific is the priority everyone agrees on. In that context, the opportunity cost of committing high-end assets to Latin America is enormous. Every carrier group in the Gulf of Mexico is a carrier group not in the Western Pacific or the Mediterranean.
The administration knows this. Colby especially knows this; his entire intellectual project is about not getting distracted from China. So, when the Department of War commit forces anyway, it reveals the nature of their threat assessment.
Drug interdiction has never justified this level of commitment. We’ve had a drug problem for decades. Fentanyl has been devastating communities for years. The Coast Guard and DEA handle interdiction. We have never pulled ground troops and F-35s to dismantle cartel infrastructure. The force package has never matched the rhetoric because the threat, however real in human terms, was not a strategic-level vulnerability.
That changed. The force package now matches a strategic-level threat. The timing, at maximum stretch while preparing for the Pacific, only makes sense if the threat they’re addressing is in the same category as the threats justifying the stretch.
What Comes Next
If this analysis is correct, the administration is not planning a single regime-change operation. It is executing a multi-year, hemisphere-wide campaign to dismantle the infrastructure that could threaten U.S. shipping lanes during a Pacific conflict. Two main lines of effort are visible.
The first is dismantling cartel networks.
The administration’s legal move has been to treat key networks as national-security threats, not just criminal enterprises. That shift widens the authorities in play and changes the operational framing. The 2025 FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization) designations of groups including Tren de Aragua and major cartels created a counterterrorism construct around these networks, with the penalties and tools that come with it.
Mexico is the obvious next target. Mexican cartels operate on both coasts, positioning them to threaten Gulf shipping lanes and Pacific fleet operations, and with maritime logistics that dwarf what Venezuela could provide. Sinaloa, CJNG, and other networks move billions in contraband annually through the same coastal infrastructure that would support AUV operations. Trump has explicitly stated the US will “start now hitting land in Mexico” targeting these organizations. While Mexico’s president said she rejected Trump’s offer of military intervention after a direct call, which signals that cross-border action is being treated as a live option by both sides. The USMCA review in July 2026 provides additional leverage. Mexico City must decide to cooperate in degrading cartel logistics or face escalating pressure.
Colombia is also on the list. After the public exchange with Trump, Petro moved quickly. Within days Colombia deployed 30,000 troops to the Venezuelan border to monitor cartel and ELN activity. The message from Washington is cooperate in dismantling cartel networks or face escalation. Petro’s response suggests he understood.
The second line of effort is neutralizing remaining state hosts.
Cuba is the clearest case. The method is economic strangulation, not military extraction. Cuba’s grid runs on diesel generators requiring roughly 120,000 barrels per day of imported fuel. Venezuela supplied about 45 percent. Mexico, via Pemex, supplied most of the rest. The second valve closes in July 2026, when the USMCA review gives Washington leverage to pressure Mexico City on Pemex shipments. If Mexico complies, Cuba loses access to virtually all of its fuel imports.
The United States now has meaningful leverage over Cuba’s energy supply without occupying the island or firing a shot.
The pressure is already visible. The grid is unstable. Blackouts are frequent. Economic conditions are deteriorating. The U.S. can intensify the energy crisis inside Cuba until internal pressure forces regime change, or forces the regime’s hand to negotiate.
This matters for the AUV thesis because Cuba remains a potential host. Ninety miles from Florida, access to both Gulf shipping lanes, and a government still aligned with Russia, China, and Iran. If the regime survives and maintains those relationships, Cuba could replace Venezuela as the state-protected node for technology transfer and maritime operations.
The oil noose addresses that risk. Regime change through energy strangulation removes Cuba from the board without the costs of military intervention. If the current leadership falls or is forced to realign, the Western Hemisphere loses another potential host for adversarial capabilities.
The administration appears committed to this sequence. Whether it can execute fully before the Pacific window closes remains to be seen.
The Narcotics Frame Is Not a Cover Story
The counternarcotics frame serves two purposes. Both are important.
The first is political. The narcotics frame provides a wrapper that stabilizes domestic support and preserves flexibility abroad.
Maduro’s cartel connections are real and documented. American families have been devastated by fentanyl. The public understands drug trafficking intuitively. If you oppose the operation, you are opposing efforts to stop the flow of drugs. That is politically untenable for critics.
The AUV threat, by contrast, requires technical explanation. Why is it different from submarines? Why can’t countries have defensive capabilities? The nuance gets lost. After Iraq, public trust in preemptive strikes against emerging threats is shot.
And even though the Maduro extraction went well, it was operationally risky and stabilization ahead is uncertain. If operations go sideways, “we had to stop the drugs” is more defensible than “we invaded over underwater drones.”
The narcotics frame also preserves negotiating space with Russia and China. If the public story is drugs rather than weapons systems, quiet tradeoffs around Ukraine or Taiwan remain possible. That flexibility disappears once you lock yourself into a threat narrative that demands escalation.
The political logic is sound. But the narcotics frame is not just politically convenient. It is operationally accurate. This is the second point, and it matters more.
Counternarcotics operations are counter-AUV operations. The same platform that moves drugs in peacetime becomes a maritime-denial tool when activated. Dismantling cartel maritime networks is dismantling the infrastructure that a distributed undersea threat would ride.
Trump emphasizes drugs for the American public, while Rubio tells the foreign policy establishment the strategic objective: “the Western Hemisphere will not be a base of operations for adversaries.” Both statements are accurate. But its different messages for different audiences. The Trump modus operandi.
The frame fits because the problem is the same problem. The cartels are not a cover story. They are the threat vector.
Conclusion
A skeptic could argue that expanded operations in Latin America weaken the AUV thesis. If Venezuela was the threat, why does the campaign continue. Why Mexico. Why Colombia. Why Cuba.
Yet the opposite is true. The expansion strengthens the thesis. The AUV threat was never contained to Venezuela. Venezuela was the state-protected node where technology transfer was easiest. The operational infrastructure runs through cartel networks across the hemisphere. The threat is distributed by nature, which means the campaign has to be distributed to match it.
Without the AUV thesis, these moves look disconnected. Venezuela is oil and regime change, Mexico is fentanyl and cartels, Colombia is Petro and internal politics, and Cuba is a separate legacy problem. With it, the pieces line up as one campaign with one objective. Clear the infrastructure that could contest U.S. shipping lanes before high-end forces commit to the Pacific.
This also explains why counternarcotics is not merely political framing. Cartel maritime logistics are the pathway an undersea capability would ride. Degrading those networks degrades the operating layer that makes a denial capability scalable. Venezuela removed the easiest state-protected transfer node. The remaining work sits in the cartel networks and in the remaining state hosts.
If this analysis is correct, Venezuela was just the start. Over the coming year, we should expect continued military operations and escalating pressure to neutralize potential AUV threats throughout the Western Hemisphere. Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, and any other node that could host adversarial maritime capabilities will face the same logic. The campaign ends when the hemisphere is cleared or the Pacific window closes.
Bravo. Extraordinary analysis