If true, we face a significant new challenge from both a law enforcement and a national security perspective. Drug trafficking and terrorism are both illegal, and largely clandestine, activities. And they have both found their hands strengthened through the ability to operate transnationally. And it s important that we bear in mind that for a variety of reasons, including the collapse and diminished prosperity of certain governments, state funding for terrorism is drying up, and terrorists are increasingly looking to crime for funding. Criminal drug organizations can no longer be examined simply in the context of their drug trafficking activities.
Drug cartels are more sophisticated than ever before.
They now have the resources and networks to engage simultaneously in other forms of criminal activity, including illicit arms trading, alien smuggling, technology theft, and terrorism. Drug cartels have the ability to move vast amounts of money in and out of legitimate financial systems. And as a result of the increasingly globalized economy, the trend is toward deregulation, open borders, and enhanced international movement of people, goods and services. This global capitalism and free trade facilitates the ability of terrorists and their support networks to operate internationally. While insurgency and guerilla warfare were threats that characterized the cold war environment, it may be that terrorism and its coordinated criminal activity and drug trafficking will become a high priority national security concern in post cold war America.