[-empyre-] Borders and Technologies (Vietnam War) - Operation Igloo White

[Ricardo Dominguez]

Hola Tod at s,

The relationship between war driven technologies and borderization is a 
long one and I thought this article allows to to consider this
history. One aspect that I find particularly odd, but I am sure is at 
play even now-is the "people-sniffer" system to pick up the scent
of the "enemies" sweat and urine. That was then spoofed by the North 
Vietnamese via buckets of urine to redirect U.S. Arm Forces. A
tradition that still continues on the Mexico/U.S. border now in terms of 
what might be named as "science of the oppressed.":

"From 1968 until 1973, the US military spent about $1 billion a year on 
a new computer-powered initiative intended to end the war in Vietnam. It 
went by many names over the years — including Practice Nine, Muscle 
Shoals, Illinois City and Dye Marker. But today it’s most commonly known 
as Operation Igloo White.

Despite being a high-priced technological failure for the US military, 
Igloo White was the first real-time, computer-driven surveillance 
operation program, set up during the Vietnam War.

The US military sought to build a virtual fence dividing North and South 
Vietnam. And in the process they helped to invent the modern electronic 
battlefield, whose technologies came back to the US in the early 1970s, 
where they were quickly deployed against drug cartels, smugglers, and 
anyone else trying to cross the border from Mexico. Igloo White also 
formed the bedrock of a border surveillance revolution that’s ongoing 
today. At the US-Mexico border, drones stalk the skies and electronic 
sensors 
<http://gizmodo.com/americas-already-building-a-wall-on-the-mexican-border-1728007994> 
alert Border Patrol agents to anyone trying to cross into the United 
States."

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/how-the-vietnam-war-brought-high-tech-border-surveillan-1694647526



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