For everything from family to computers…
https://www.wired.com/story/flying-cars-will-take-off-in-american-skies-this-summer/
The federal government announced a new pilot program designed to get new kinds of ultralight vehicles and “eVTOLs” up and running around the country—even if they’re not fully FAA-certified.
via Wired Top Stories https://www.wired.com
March 9, 2026 at 05:46PM
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3077047/logitechs-radical-new-mouse-ditches-clicks-for-magnets.html
There are a lot of different gaming mice you can use, but all of them have something in common: physical switches. They’re similar to the electrical switches in keyboards and controllers. But there’s a newer option as well, supplied by Logitech—the switches in the Pro X2 Superstrike are magnetic and adjustable. In the latest PCWorld video on YouTube, Will Smith tells us why that’s important.
The Pro X2 Superstrike‘s primary left and right buttons use a magnetic sensor under each button which can measure the distance you press down. There’s no physical contact between the components. In order to simulate a more conventional “click” experience, it uses haptic feedback, just like a phone keyboard or a touchpad on more premium laptops.
Both the actuation point (how fast the click, um, clicks) and the intensity of the feedback are adjustable. Like adjustable actuation keyboards, you can also choose how long it takes the release action to trigger, or even bind separate actions to the release.
So, what’s the point of all this? Incredibly rapid clicks!
If you’re playing a shooter and using a semi-automatic weapon, wherein each click is a separate shot, the “hair trigger” adjustments you can make to the mouse absolutely make a noticeable difference in game. The mouse is also much quieter than a conventional design since it lacks a physical contact with the buttons.
“Are you actually better with this mouse?” asks Adam.
“Look… it’s impossible to tell,” answers Will.
As with all premium gaming equipment, the better you are at the actual game, the more you’ll be able to take advantage of the hardware’s capabilities. But unlike some controversial adjustable actuation keyboard features (like Snap Tap), the rapid firing enabled by the Pro X2 Superstrike isn’t widely regarded as “cheating” (at least for now).
The Pro X2 Superstrike gets all of Logitech’s best gaming mouse capabilities, including wireless charging while playing if you use the compatible PowerPlay 2 pad. It’s also got a frankly insane 44,000 DPI sensor, grip pads in the box, all that jazz. Unfortunately, it relies upon Logitech’s G gaming software to adjust all those variables, and getting it to run on Linux might be a bit of a headache.
This mouse doesn’t come cheap, though. It’s $180 at retail. For more takes on gaming hardware, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube and check out our weekly podcast The Full Nerd.
via PCWorld https://www.pcworld.com
March 9, 2026 at 10:53AM
A decade ago, LiDAR was mostly limited to experimental autonomous vehicles. Early systems, such as those mounted on Waymo robotaxis, could cost as much as $50,000 per unit. These sensors were large and were often installed on the vehicle’s roof. They also required significant computing power to process the detailed data they produced. At the time, lidar was considered essential for autonomy research but far too expensive for production vehicles.
China changed that equation quickly. According to Automotive News, automakers there began installing LiDAR in production EVs and pushed suppliers to scale manufacturing. Companies such as Hesai and RoboSense increased output and drove prices down dramatically. Some compact units now cost roughly $200. Millions of sensors are produced each year. As a result, a growing share of Chinese EVs now feature LiDAR as part of their advanced driver-assistance systems.
LiDAR prices are falling while vehicle computing power continues to improve. This combination is pushing Western automakers to reconsider the technology. LiDAR stands for light detection and ranging. The system uses laser pulses to create a detailed 3D map of a vehicle’s surroundings. Cameras rely heavily on lighting conditions and visual contrast. LiDAR works reliably in darkness, glare, and poor visibility. It also measures distance with high precision.
Several automakers now see LiDAR as a key step toward more advanced driver assistance and future automation. Rivian plans to introduce LiDAR on its upcoming R2 crossover. Ford Motor Company and General Motors are developing systems designed to support Level 3 automated driving later this decade. Lucid Motors already offers LiDAR as part of its driver-assistance package. Automakers see it as an added layer of redundancy alongside cameras and radar.
Rivian
One of the most prominent critics of LiDAR is Elon Musk. His company, Tesla, relies on a camera-based system for its driver-assistance technology. Musk has repeatedly argued that advanced artificial intelligence and cameras are enough to achieve autonomy. In his view, LiDAR adds unnecessary cost and complexity to the system.
Recent developments highlight the uncertainty surrounding autonomy technology. Tesla acknowledged that many vehicles may require upgrades to support future unsupervised, self-driving capability. This could affect customers who already purchased the Full Self-Driving package. The situation reflects the larger industry debate. Some companies continue to pursue camera-focused systems. Others believe that LiDAR’s falling costs and precise environmental mapping will play a major role in building safer, more capable automated vehicles.
via Autoblog https://ift.tt/fbIxE2R
March 7, 2026 at 07:46AM
There’s a type of knife tech often seen in science fiction that revolves around vibrating a blade to increase its sharpness. We’ve seen examples of this in franchises like Star Wars (vibroblades), Evangelion (the prog knife), Dune (pulse-swords) and the Marvel universe (vibranium), but what might surprise you is that the underlying science is sound. By vibrating a cutting tool at high frequencies, not only do you reduce friction, you essentially turn the blade into a saw, as tiny oscillations enhance the inherent sharpness of a blade.
However, up until recently, this tech largely only existed in fiction or for large companies that have the money to utilize the tech on an industrial scale. But that’s changing in a big way for home cooks this year thanks to Seattle Ultrasonics, which is releasing the world’s first ultrasonic chef’s knife: the C-200. After chopping, smashing and cooking with it for about a month, I’m convinced that this is the future of kitchen knives.
From afar, the C-200 looks a lot like a regular 8-inch chef’s knife, but with a slightly more contemporary design. It features a three-layer san mai blade made from Japanese AUS-10 steel with a 13-degree edge angle per side (26 degrees total). However, upon closer inspection, you’ll notice there are some features that seem a bit out of place on a premium knife.
The first is that the C-200 doesn’t have a full tang, which is the back end of a blade that ideally extends into the handle to provide added strength and durability. This is usually a major no-no, particularly on a $400 knife. However, when you consider that Seattle Ultrasonics needed somewhere to put its vibration tech, there really isn’t any room for it other than inside the knife’s grip.
The knife’s second quirk is that the back of the plastic handle features small indicator lights on either side, which is obviously a bit weird. Furthermore, the entire gray section can be removed to reveal a small 1,100mAh battery with an onboard USB-C port. Frankly, the presence of a battery in a knife is just kind of funky. But hey, the power to vibrate the knife has to come from somewhere because it definitely isn’t being generated by your hands. And while Seattle Ultrasonics doesn’t include a charging adapter or cable in the box, I don’t mind because the company wisely took cues from the larger gadget industry and went with a power spec that’s already widely in use. Honestly, I wish more kitchen tech makers would do the same.
However, the knife’s biggest oddity is the big orange button on the bottom of its handle. This is what you use to make the blade vibrate, which it does at 33kHz. It’s positioned well so that it’s easy to press regardless of whether you do a traditional pinch grip or if you’re a bit more casual and prefer to hold the knife only using its handle. In the future, I can see this button becoming a touch-sensitive sensor, but for now, it’s simple and effective.
The main downside to the C-200’s design is that at 328 grams (around 0.75 pounds) it’s heavier and bulkier than a typical knife. When compared to other knives I own, which are made from a wide variety of materials including, ceramic, molybdenum steel, carbon steel and even titanium carbide, it weighs more than everything else aside from my big Chinese cleaver (396 grams). And while it fits nicely in my hand, my wife said it takes a bit more effort for her to wield. It’s not too much to the point where you don’t want to use it. But for quick tasks, sometimes I found myself subconsciously reaching for lighter options like my 6-inch ceramic knife, which weighs just 97 grams.
From a user standpoint, putting the C-200 to work couldn’t be simpler. Just press the button and let the knife do its thing. The big difference from how knives like this work in sci-fi is that there’s no audible hum or detectable vibration when it’s on. It’s practically silent (well, most of the time, but more on that later), so you have to trust that it’s on or check the indicator light on the handle. That said, if you still don’t believe anything is happening, you can run the edge of the blade under water or scrape it over some cut citrus, at which point the blade’s vibration will atomize nearby liquid into a fine mist. It’s a cool party trick that also doubles as a way to amp up a cocktail by adding a faint essence of lemon, lime or anything else you can think of.
Inside, the knife relies on PZT-8 piezoelectric ceramic crystals to generate up to 30,000 vibrations per second, which propagate down the blade and make the knife function as if it’s sharper than it actually is. This all sounds rather fantastic, so how does it function in the real world?
To really put the C-200 through its paces, I cooked over a dozen meals that involved neatly slicing or preparing a wide variety of foods — including Hasselback potatoes, flank steak, pork belly, chives, sushi-grade tuna and all sorts of fruit.
In short, the C-200’s effectiveness depends a lot on what you’re chopping. For soft things like strawberries or a piece of cake, I didn’t notice much of a difference. To make things even more difficult, the knife arrived out of the box with an incredibly fine edge — the kind that makes shearing through a sheet of paper child’s play. So even though Seattle Ultrasonics says its knife can reduce cutting effort by up to 50 percent, there’s not much gain to be had when slicing foods that could just as easily be cut by a butter knife.
However, as I used it more, I found that the C-200 excels at cutting through delicate items like tomatoes, scallions and fish, where using a dull knife often results in bruising the food as you chop. This was most evident when I made poke at home, where Seattle Ultrasonic’s knife delivered cleaner, more precise cuts than anything else I own.
When I whipped up some pico de gallo, I distinctly noticed how neatly the C-200 sliced through the skin of a tomato, instead of initially putting a crease in it before cleanly passing through its interior — which often happens when using dull knives. An additional benefit is that because of the vibrations, I found some foods like garlic didn’t stick to the side of the blade as much. This made it easier to keep track of how much I chopped while simultaneously reducing the mess from things falling willy-nilly during prep. But perhaps the most obvious demonstration of the knife’s prowess was when I diced an onion. When using my other knives or the C-200 without powering it on, I could feel when I tried to cut through thicker, more sturdy layers. But then, at the touch of a button, I was able to slice down with practically no resistance. It’s almost shocking because it feels like magic.
The C-200 even has the ability to reduce the importance of certain knife techniques. Anyone who’s seen all the posts on r/kitchenconfidential about cutting chives will already know what I’m talking about. As J Kenji Lopez-Alt neatly demonstrated, the ideal way to get crisp, clean slices is to do a subtle forward or back cut instead of simply chopping straight down. But with Seattle Ultrasonics’ knife, I’ve found that it’s so sharp you can get away with almost any motion and still get good results. And if you do it the right way, things are even better.
Other types of food that makes the C-200 really shine are denser ingredients like meat and potatoes, where you can really feel the added cutting power. Previously, when I had to break down thick cuts of protein, I sometimes wished I owned a serrated electric knife. You know, the kind you break out once a year on Thanksgiving and then it sits and gathers dust for the other 364 days. But the C-200 made that desire a thing of that past, as it quickly and easily worked through flank steak while once again producing neat, uniform slices.
My favorite application of the C-200 was when I was doing prep for Taiwanese braised pork (aka ???). Despite this being one of my most beloved dishes that I taught myself how to cook because I couldn’t easily find it from local restaurants, I don’t make it very often because it’s a lot of work to cut multiple pounds of pork belly into small lardon-shaped pieces. Here, the knife’s vibrations made it so much easier to cut through all those layers of meat, fat and skin. If there’s any situation where the C-200 makes it 50 percent easier to slice through something, it’s this.
During my testing, two small issues cropped up. While it was quite rare, the knife would sometimes emit a faint high-pitched whine. When I asked Seattle Ultrasonic’s founder Scott Heimendinger about this behavior, he was rather frank, saying that this can occur when water or moisture accumulates in just the right spots on the blade. Furthermore, he said this only happens on a small number of V1 models, which the company is working to fix in the future. Thankfully, I don’t mind, but if it bothers you, making the noise go away is as easy as wiping down the knife down with a cloth or paper towel.
The other complication came while I was working through the multiple pounds of pork belly I mentioned earlier. After 10 to 15 minutes of continuous use, the knife beeped and its indicator light turned red. Turns out the knife had overheated, which was something I had not even considered. This led to higher-than-normal temperatures inside the knife’s sealed electronics causing it to shut off. But after just 30 seconds, it returned to form. During later uses, I learned that simply taking my finger off the button between tasks, which happens naturally as you prep anyway, was more than enough to stop that situation from happening ever again.
On the flipside, I was happy to discover that despite lacking a full tang, the C-200 can handle fairly rough tasks, including laying the knife on its side to smash garlic or jamming it into an avocado to remove its pit. That said, I would really recommend against doing the latter, because between its inherent sharpness and its vibration tech, this is the first knife I’ve used that can slice cleanly through an entire avocado with almost no extra effort.
The last big concern about a knife with built-in electronics is how it handles clean-up. Thankfully, the C-200 features an IP65 rating for dust and water resistance. That means it can withstand rinsing and splashes without issue. And it’s actually even tougher than that, because the front of the knife, including its bolster and button, are rated IP67. This means it can take full submersions in water if need be. However, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Good kitchen protocol says you don’t throw knives you care about in the sink and forget them, just like how you wouldn’t put one in the dishwasher either.
But perhaps the greatest advantage of this tech is that it allows you to go longer between needing to get your knives sharpened, which if you’re like most home cooks, is probably never. To be clear, I haven’t tested this and in some respects I wish I had been able to test out a dull version of the C-200. That said, science dictates that slice for slice, an ultrasonic knife will simply cut better than an equivalent blade without the extra tech. So if you believe in the adage that a dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one because you need to apply more force to get the same results, this is another bonus for both safety and convenience.
I fully admit the need to keep a knife charged up is a major annoyance and something I or anyone else probably doesn’t want to do. Thankfully, Seattle Ultrasonics thought of that by including support for wireless charging via the C-200’s magnetic tile and it’s dead simple to use. Just toss it on the charger when you’re not using and it will take care of itself, so you never have to worry about how much of its normal 20-minute runtime it may or may not have left. There are also holes around back so you can easily mount the charger on a wall or shelf. In short, the added convenience the charging tile brings is so valuable that I don’t really consider it an optional accessory. If you’re getting the C-200, you need to buy this too, which sadly means you’re looking at an all-in price of $500 for the bundle instead of just $400 for the knife by itself.
After using the C-200, I don’t think people need to rush out and throw all their old-school knives in the trash. The beauty of an ultrasonic blade like this is that it can handle everything your old cutlery is meant for, but with the touch of a button, it delivers sharpness unlike anything you’ve experienced before. And while it has some quirks, they’re nothing like the kind you typically encounter on first-gen gadgets. Its biggest drawback is that its magnetic charging tile feels like an essential accessory, but it adds extra cost on top of a product that already has a deservedly premium price tag.
Even though I’m sure knife makers will continue tweaking blade shapes and alloy mixes from now until the end of time, the addition of ultrasonic vibrations to a chef’s knife unlocks a completely new tier of performance. That’s because this technology is additive. All it does is enhance what a blade already does best. And when you look at related gadgets in the maker space, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there’s a similar revolution that resulted in Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame naming a sonic cutter as one of his favorite things of 2025. When viewed that way, it makes me even more confident that the C-200 is the flagbearer for a new breed of kitchen knives.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://ift.tt/Mow1xnc
via Engadget http://www.engadget.com
February 24, 2026 at 08:08AM
https://www.popsci.com/technology/robot-vacuum-army/
A software engineer’s earnest effort to steer his new DJI robot vacuum with a video game controller inadvertently granted him a sneak peak into thousands of people’s homes.
While building his own remote-control app, Sammy Azdoufal reportedly used an AI coding assistant to help reverse-engineer how the robot communicated with DJI’s remote cloud servers. But he soon discovered that the same credentials that allowed him to see and control his own device also provided access to live camera feeds, microphone audio, maps, and status data from nearly 7,000 other vacuums across 24 countries. The backend security bug effectively exposed an army of internet-connected robots that, in the wrong hands, could have turned into surveillance tools, all without their owners ever knowing.
Luckily, Azdoufal chose not to exploit that. Instead, he shared his findings with The Verge, which quickly contacted DJI to report the flaw. While DJI tells Popular Science the issue has been “resolved,” the dramatic episode underscores warnings from cybersecurity experts who have long-warned that internet-connected robots and other smart home devices present attractive targets for hackers.
As more households adopt home robots, (including newer, more interactive humanoid models) similar vulnerabilities could become harder to detect. AI-powered coding tools, which make it easier for people with less technical knowledge to exploit software flaws, potentially risk amplifying those worries even further.
I can confirm that @DJIGlobal has finally fixed the HUGE vulnerability they had on their servers.
This vulnerability was discovered by the very skillful @n0tsa , and he reported it to DJI.
It allowed to take remote control (movements, microphone, camera) of over 10 000 robots… pic.twitter.com/j1UunMmNXX
— Gonzague
(@gonzague) February 11, 2026
The robot in question is the DJI Romo, an autonomous home vacuum that first launched in China last year and is currently expanding to other countries. It retails for around $2,000 and is roughly the size of a large terrier or a small fridge when docked at its base station. Like other robot vacuums, it’s equipped with a range of sensors that help it navigate its surroundings and detect obstacles. Users can schedule and control it via an app, but it is designed to spend most of its time cleaning and mopping autonomously.
In order for the Romo, or really any modern autonomous vacuum, to function it needs to constantly collect visual data from the building it is operating in. It also needs to understand specific details about what makes, say, a kitchen different from a bedroom, so it can distinguish between the two. Some of that sensor data is stored remotely on DJI’s servers rather than on the device itself. For Azdoufal’s DIY controller idea to work, he would need a way for his app to communicate with DJI’s servers and extract a security token that proves he is the owner of the robot.
Rather than just verifying a single token, the servers granted access for a small army of robots, essentially treating him as their respective owner. That slip-up meant Azdoufal could tap into their real-time camera feeds and activate their microphones. He also claims he could compile 2D floor plans of the homes the robots were operating in. A quick look at the robots’ IP addresses also revealed their approximate locations. None of this, Azdoufal insists, amounts to “hacking” on his part. He simply stumbled upon a major security issue.
“DJI identified a vulnerability affecting DJI Home through internal review in late January and initiated remediation immediately,” DJI told Popular Science. “The issue was addressed through two updates, with an initial patch deployed on February 8 and a follow-up update completed on February 10. The fix was deployed automatically, and no user action is required.”
The company went on to say its plans to “continue to implement additional security enhancements” but did not specify what those may entail.
Related: [The best robot vacuums]
The DJI security concerns come amid a period of growing unease generally about the surveillance capabilities of smart home technology. Earlier this month, Ring camera owners flooded social media after a controversial advertisement for the company’s pet-finding “search party” feature was interpreted by some as a Trojan horse for broader monitoring. Around the same time, reports that Google was able to retrieve video footage from a Nest Doorbell camera to assist in an abduction investigation (despite earlier indications that the footage had been deleted) reignited debate over how much control consumers truly have over their sensitive data.
On top of that, lawmakers from both political parties in the US have spent years warning that DJI and other Chinese tech manufacturers pose a unique security threat. The evidence for those claims are murky, it’s nonetheless helped justify the banning of certain Chinese-made products.
The irony of many robot vacuums and other smart home devices is that, as a category, they have a long history of questionable security practices, despite the fact that they operate in some of our most private spaces. All signs suggest that the average person will soon welcome more cameras and microphones into their homes, not fewer. As of 2020, market research firm Parks Associates estimates that 54 million U.S. households had at least one smart home device installed. Other surveys show that those who already have one often want more.
The specific types of devices entering homes are also becoming more sophisticated. Though still early, Tesla, Figure, and other companies are racing to build human-like autonomous robots that can live in a home and perform chores. A company called 1X is already retailing one of these humanoids, claiming it can clean dishes and crack walnuts—albeit often with some help from a human. Eventually though, for any of these at-home robot servants to function effectively, they will need unprecedented access to the intimate details of their owners’ homes. For a stalker or hacker, that represents a potential goldmine.
True to his word though, Azdoufal found himself wrapped up in this mess even though all he wanted to do was drive his robot around with a joystick. On that front, mission accomplished.
The post Man accidentally gains control of 7,000 robot vacuums appeared first on Popular Science.
via Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now https://www.popsci.com
February 21, 2026 at 08:00AM
https://kotaku.com/discord-age-verification-hack-persona-2000672570
Last week, Discord users reported prompts to submit personal information to Persona, a third-party age-verification service. As Discord commits to universal age-verification, the new measures have come under intense scrutiny after previous security failures. Now a trio of hacktivists say they’ve successfully breached Persona, getting a closer look at how the company uses submitted biometrics. They say their findings raise alarms beyond leaks.
According to The Rage, Persona’s front-end security left a lot to be desired. Worse, however, were investigative findings that suggested Persona’s surveillance of the users whose data it collected was way more sprawling than originally believed.
“It was initially meant to be a passive recon investigation,” writes vmfunc, a cybersecurity researcher and one of the hackers, “that quickly turned into a rabbit hole deep dive into how commercial AI and federal government operations work together to violate our privacy every waking second.”
On top of finding it surprisingly easy to access data gathered by Persona, the research showed that faces and biometrics were not just being scanned for age verification, but flagged for suspicious behaviour and bounced off watchlists as well. To some this may not sound like an Orwellian level of intrusion (or to people who don’t worry about their face being deemed ‘suspicious’), until you remember Persona’s full network.
Persona received $150 million in 2021 from the Founders Fund, a long-running tech investor group headed by Peter Thiel. Thiel’s main business, on top of palling around in Jeffery Epstein’s emails and waiting for the antichrist, is Palantir, an intentionally ominously-named data brokering service that is currently peddling user information for ICE-raids. The findings of vmfunc and co’s research doesn’t directly tether Persona and Discord’s operations to Palantir or Thiel, but it wouldn’t be conspiratorial to point out that all this data seems to be funnelling along similar slopes.
Persona has confirmed the breach, CEO Rick Song corresponding and even thanking the hackers for flagging the security exploit. This has not, however, tempered concerns among those hacktivists about how the user information is ultimately being used.
“Transparently, we are actively working on a couple of potential contracts which would be publicly visible if we move forward,” writes Christie Kim, chief operating officer at Persona, in an email regarding the security breach and speculation around Discord. “However, these engagements are strictly for workforce account security of government employees and do not include ICE or any agency within the Department of Homeland Security.”
After the alarm was initially raised about Persona, Discord claimed its work with the Thiel-backed firm was only temporary, and that it didn’t have new contacts with it moving forward. It also promised user info was being wiped from servers within seven days of being gathered.
In a statement provided to Kotaku, Discord said the “limited test” had concluded, though what Persona does with the information in that period isn’t clarified. It seems to go much further than verifying which PlayStation you grew up with. Even after the dust settles, it’s unclear if the trust can ever be repaired as an exodus of Discord users have already flooded alternatives like TeamSpeak.
via Kotaku https://kotaku.com/
February 21, 2026 at 11:23AM
On a bright morning last April, a surveillance plane operated by the Colombian military spotted a 40-foot-long shark-like silhouette idling in the ocean just off Tayrona National Park. It was, unmistakably, a “narco sub,” a stealthy fiberglass vessel that sails with its hull almost entirely underwater, used by drug cartels to move cocaine north. The plane’s crew radioed it in, and eventually nearby coast guard boats got the order, routine but urgent: Intercept.
In Cartagena, about 150 miles from the action, Captain Jaime González Zamudio, commander of the regional coast guard group, sat down at his desk to watch what happened next. On his computer monitor, icons representing his patrol boats raced toward the sub’s coordinates as updates crackled over his radio from the crews at sea. This was all standard; Colombia is the world’s largest producer of cocaine, and its navy has been seizing narco subs for decades. And so the captain was pretty sure what the outcome would be. His crew would catch up to the sub, just a bit of it showing above the water’s surface. They’d bring it to heel, board it, and force open the hatch to find two, three, maybe four exhausted men suffocating in a mix of diesel fumes and humidity, and a cargo compartment holding several tons of cocaine.
The boats caught up to the sub. A crew boarded, forced open the hatch, and confirmed that the vessel was secure. But from that point on, things were different.
First, some unexpected details came over the radio: There was no cocaine on board. Neither was there a crew, nor a helm, nor even enough room for a person to lie down. Instead, inside the hull the crew found a fuel tank, an autopilot system and control electronics, and a remotely monitored security camera. González Zamudio’s crew started sending pictures back to Cartagena: Bolted to the hull was another camera, as well as two plastic rectangles, each about the size of a cookie sheet—antennas for connecting to Starlink satellite internet.
The authorities towed the boat back to Cartagena, where military techs took a closer look. Weeks later, they came to an unsettling conclusion: This was Colombia’s first confirmed uncrewed narco sub. It could be operated by remote control, but it was also capable of some degree of autonomous travel. The techs concluded that the sub was likely a prototype built by the Clan del Golfo, a powerful criminal group that operates along the Caribbean coast.
For decades, handmade narco subs have been some of the cocaine trade’s most elusive and productive workhorses, ferrying multi-ton loads of illicit drugs from Colombian estuaries toward markets in North America and, increasingly, the rest of the world. Now off-the-shelf technology—Starlink terminals, plug-and-play nautical autopilots, high-resolution video cameras—may be advancing that cat-and-mouse game into a new phase.
Uncrewed subs could move more cocaine over longer distances, and they wouldn’t put human smugglers at risk of capture. Law enforcement around the world is just beginning to grapple with what the Tayrona sub means for the future—whether it was merely an isolated experiment or the opening move in a new era of autonomous drug smuggling at sea.
Drug traffickers love the ocean. “You can move drug traffic through legal and illegal routes,” says Juan Pablo Serrano, a captain in the Colombian navy and head of the operational coordination center for Orión, a multiagency, multinational counternarcotics effort. The giant container ships at the heart of global commerce offer a favorite approach, Serrano says. Bribe a chain of dockworkers and inspectors, hide a load in one of thousands of cargo boxes, and put it on a totally legal commercial vessel headed to Europe or North America. That route is slow and expensive—involving months of transit and bribes spread across a wide network—but relatively low risk. “A ship can carry 5,000 containers. Good luck finding the right one,” he says.
Far less legal, but much faster and cheaper, are small, powerful motorboats. Quick to build and cheap to crew, these “go-fasts” top out at just under 50 feet long and can move smaller loads in hours rather than days. But they’re also easy for coastal radars and patrols to spot.
Submersibles—or, more accurately, “semisubmersibles”—fit somewhere in the middle. They take more money and engineering to build than an open speedboat, but they buy stealth—even if a bit of the vessel rides at the surface, the bulk stays hidden underwater. That adds another option to a portfolio that smugglers constantly rebalance across three variables: risk, time, and cost. When US and Colombian authorities tightened control over air routes and commercial shipping in the early 1990s, subs became more attractive. The first ones were crude wooden hulls with a fiberglass shell and extra fuel tanks, cobbled together in mangrove estuaries, hidden from prying eyes. Today’s fiberglass semisubmersible designs ride mostly below the surface, relying on diesel engines that can push multi-ton loads for days at a time while presenting little more than a ripple and a hot exhaust pipe to radar and infrared sensors.
A typical semisubmersible costs under $2 million to build and can carry three metric tons of cocaine. That’s worth over $160 million in Europe—wholesale.
Most ferry between South American coasts and handoff points in Central America and Mexico, where allied criminal organizations break up the cargo and slowly funnel it toward the US. But some now go much farther. In 2019, Spanish authorities intercepted a semisubmersible after a 27-day transatlantic voyage from Brazil. In 2024, police in the Solomon Islands found the first narco sub in the Asia-Pacific region, a semisubmersible probably originating from Colombia on its way to Australia or New Zealand.
If the variables are risk, time, and cost, then the economics of a narco sub are simple. Even if they spend more time on the water than a powerboat, they’re less likely to get caught—and a relative bargain to produce. A narco sub might cost between $1 million and $2 million to build, but a kilo of cocaine costs just about $500 to make. “By the time that kilo reaches Europe, it can sell for between $44,000 and $55,000,” Serrano says. A typical semisubmersible carries up to three metric tons—cargo worth well over $160 million at European wholesale prices.
Off-the-shelf nautical autopilots, WiFi antennas, Starlink satellite internet connections, and remote cameras are all drug smugglers need to turn semisubmersibles into drone ships.
As a result, narco subs are getting more common. Seizures by authorities tripled in the last 20 years, according to Colombia’s International Center for Research and Analysis Against Maritime Drug Trafficking (CMCON), and Serrano admits that the Orión alliance has enough ships and aircraft to catch only a fraction of what sails.
Until now, though, narco subs have had one major flaw: They depended on people, usually poor fishermen or low-level recruits sealed into stifling compartments for days at a time, steering by GPS and sight, hoping not to be spotted. That made the subs expensive and a risk to drug sellers if captured. Like good capitalists, the Tayrona boat’s builders seem to have been trying to obviate labor costs with automation. No crew means more room for drugs or fuel and no sailors to pay—or to get arrested or flip if a mission goes wrong.
“If you don’t have a person or people on board, that makes the transoceanic routes much more feasible,” says Henry Shuldiner, a researcher at InSight Crime who has analyzed hundreds of narco-sub cases. It’s one thing, he notes, to persuade someone to spend a day or two going from Colombia to Panama for a big payout; it’s another to ask four people to spend three weeks sealed inside a cramped tube, sleeping, eating, and relieving themselves in the same space. “That’s a hard sell,” Shuldiner says.
An uncrewed sub doesn’t have to race to a rendezvous because its crew can endure only a few days inside. It can move more slowly and stealthily. It can wait out patrols or bad weather, loiter near a meeting point, or take longer and less well-monitored routes. And if something goes wrong—if a military plane appears or navigation fails—its owners can simply scuttle the vessel from afar.
Meanwhile, the basic technology to make all that work is getting more and more affordable, and the potential profit margins are rising. “The rapidly approaching universality of autonomous technology could be a nightmare for the U.S. Coast Guard,” wrote two Coast Guard officers in the US Naval Institute’s journal Proceedings in 2021. And as if to prove how good an idea drone narco subs are, the US Marine Corps and the weapons builder Leidos are testing a low-profile uncrewed vessel called the Sea Specter, which they describe as being “inspired” by narco-sub design.
The possibility that drug smugglers are experimenting with autonomous subs isn’t just theoretical. Law enforcement agencies on other smuggling routes have found signs the Tayrona sub isn’t an isolated case. In 2022, Spanish police seized three small submersible drones near Cádiz, on Spain’s southern coast. Two years later, Italian authorities confiscated a remote-controlled minisubmarine they believed was intended for drug runs. “The probability of expansion is high,” says Diego Cánovas, a port and maritime security expert in Spain. Tayrona, the biggest and most technologically advanced uncrewed narco sub found so far, is more likely a preview than an anomaly.
Today, the Tayrona semisubmersible sits on a strip of grass at the ARC Bolívar naval base in Cartagena. It’s exposed to the elements; rain has streaked its paint. To one side lies an older, bulkier narco sub seized a decade ago, a blue cylinder with a clumsy profile. The Tayrona’s hull looks lower, leaner, and more refined.
Up close, it is also unmistakably handmade. The hull is a dull gray-blue, the fiberglass rough in places, with scrapes and dents from the tow that brought it into port. It has no identifying marks on the exterior—nothing that would tie it to a country, a company, or a port. On the upper surface sit the two Starlink antennas, painted over in the same gray-blue to keep them from standing out against the sea.
I climb up a ladder and drop through the small hatch near the stern. Inside, the air is damp and close, the walls beaded with condensation. Small puddles of fuel have collected in the bilge. The vessel has no seating, no helm or steering wheel, and not enough space to stand up straight or lie down. It’s clear it was never meant to carry people. A technical report by CMCON found that the sub would have enough fuel for a journey of some 800 nautical miles, and the central cargo bay would hold between 1 and 1.5 tons of cocaine.
At the aft end, the machinery compartment is a tangle of hardware: diesel engine, batteries, pumps, and a chaotic bundle of cables feeding an electronics rack. All the core components are still there. Inside that rack, investigators identified a NAC-3 autopilot processor, a commercial unit designed to steer midsize boats by tying into standard hydraulic pumps, heading sensors, and rudder-feedback systems. They cost about $2,200 on Amazon.
“These are plug-and-play technologies,” says Wilmar Martínez, a mechatronics professor at the University of America in Bogotá, when I show him pictures of the inside of the sub. “Midcareer mechatronics students could install them.”
For all its advantages, an autonomous drug-smuggling submarine wouldn’t be invincible. Even without a crew on board, there are still people in the chain. Every satellite internet terminal—Starlink or not—comes with a billing address, a payment method, and a log of where and when it pings the constellation. Colombian officers have begun to talk about negotiating formal agreements with providers, asking them to alert authorities when a transceiver’s movements match known smuggling patterns. Brazil’s government has already cut a deal with Starlink to curb criminal use of its service in the Amazon.
The basic playbook for finding a drone sub will look much like the one for crewed semisubmersibles. Aircraft and ships will use radar to pick out small anomalies and infrared cameras to look for the heat of a diesel engine or the turbulence of a wake. That said, it might not work. “If they wind up being smaller, they’re going to be darn near impossible to detect,” says Michael Knickerbocker, a former US Navy officer who advises defense tech firms.
Autonomous drug subs are “a great example of how resilient cocaine traffickers are, and how they’re continuously one step ahead of authorities,” says one researcher.
Even worse, navies already act on only a fraction of their intelligence leads because they don’t have enough ships and aircraft. The answer, Knickerbocker argues, is “robot on robot.” Navies and coast guards will need swarms of their own small, relatively cheap uncrewed systems—surface vessels, underwater gliders, and long-endurance aerial vehicles that can loiter, sense, and relay data back to human operators. Those experiments have already begun. The US 4th Fleet, which covers Latin America and the Caribbean, is experimenting with uncrewed platforms in counternarcotics patrols. Across the Atlantic, the European Union’s European Maritime Safety Agency operates drones for maritime surveillance.
Today, though, the major screens against oceangoing vessels of all kinds are coastal radar networks. Spain operates SIVE to watch over choke points like the Strait of Gibraltar, and in the Pacific, Australia’s over-the-horizon radar network, JORN, can spot objects hundreds of miles away, far beyond the range of conventional radar.
Even so, it’s not enough to just spot an uncrewed narco sub. Law enforcement also has to stop it—and that will be tricky.
With a crewed vessel, Colombian doctrine says coast guard units should try to hail the boat first with lights, sirens, radio calls, and warning shots. If that fails, interceptor crews sometimes have to jump aboard and force the hatch. Officers worry that future autonomous craft could be wired to sink or even explode if someone gets too close. “If they get destroyed, we may lose the evidence,” says Víctor González Badrán, a navy captain and director of CMCON. “That means no seizure and no legal proceedings against that organization.”
That’s where electronic warfare enters the picture—radio-frequency jamming, cyber tools, perhaps more exotic options. In the simplest version, jamming means flooding the receiver with noise so that commands from the operator never reach the vessel. Spoofing goes a step further, feeding fake signals so that the sub thinks it’s somewhere else or obediently follows a fake set of waypoints. Cyber tools might aim higher up the chain, trying to penetrate the software that runs the vessel or the networks it uses to talk to satellite constellations. At the cutting edge of these countermeasures are electromagnetic pulses designed to fry electronics outright, turning a million-dollar narco sub into a dead hull drifting at sea.
In reality, the tools that might catch a future Tayrona sub are unevenly distributed, politically sensitive, and often experimental. Powerful cyber or electromagnetic tricks are closely guarded secrets; using them in a drug case risks exposing capabilities that militaries would rather reserve for wars. Systems like Australia’s JORN radar are tightly held national security assets, their exact performance specs classified, and sharing raw data with countries on the front lines of the cocaine trade would inevitably mean revealing hints as to how they got it. “Just because a capability exists doesn’t mean you employ it,” Knickerbocker says.
Analysts don’t think uncrewed narco subs will reshape the global drug trade, despite the technological leap. Trafficking organizations will still hedge their bets across those three variables, hiding cocaine in shipping containers, dissolving it into liquids and paints, racing it north in fast boats. “I don’t think this is revolutionary,” Shuldiner says. “But it’s a great example of how resilient cocaine traffickers are, and how they’re continuously one step ahead of authorities.”
There’s still that chance, though, that everything international law enforcement agencies know about drug smuggling is about to change. González Zamudio says he keeps getting requests from foreign navies, coast guards, and security agencies to come see the Tayrona sub. He greets their delegations, takes them out to the strip of grass on the base, and walks them around it, gives them tours. It has become a kind of pilgrimage. Everyone who makes it worries that the next time a narco sub appears near a distant coastline, they’ll board it as usual, force the hatch—and find it full of cocaine and gadgets, but without a single human occupant. And no one knows what happens after that.
Eduardo Echeverri López is a journalist based in Colombia.
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February 19, 2026 at 05:23AM