Interview transcript:

Terry Gerton: Well, I want to talk about your new book that talks about the U.S. campaign against the Sinaloa cartel and its Chinese chemical suppliers. This tells a story that a lot of people don’t know. So begin by filling us in on the background.

Jake Braun: Sure. So I initially got the idea to write this when I was sitting with some HSI, Homeland Security Investigations folks, at a retreat that we were doing in Crystal City, actually talking about fentanyl. And one of the guys there starts going into the takedown of El Chapo. And it’s just a fascinating story. And I had no idea how much HSI was involved in this. Obviously, the DEA was super involved as well. And he goes into all the wiretapping they were doing and working with the Mexican Marines and all this stuff to get them. And so he mentioned this group called the TCIUs, the Transnational Criminal Units that HSI pays. These are elite in Mexico’s case, Mexican law enforcement officials that are on the U.S. payroll and kick down doors for our brave men and women out there. So went down to meet some of them and we sat at the top of the Sofitel Hotel, which is right next to the U.S.-Mexico embassy. It’s where all the government people sit, and we’re sitting there with these agents and their HSI handlers and it’s like a rooftop thing. We’re drinking beers and by the end of the night, doing shots of tequila and everything. And these guys are showing me pictures in their phones of like them taking down these huge Sinaloa cartel groups, and they’ve got like guys with balaclavas all handcuffed next to these helicopters and so on. And talking about the shootouts they’re in and everything else and I was like, ‘Oh my God, somebody’s got to tell this story.’ And so I just kind of started writing down what we were doing every week and eventually it turned into this book. But really, there’s kind of three main pieces to it. One is really just an assessment of HSI and really just what they’ve become as an organization. And at least at that time, really just fascinating everything that they’ve done in the last 15 years or so since they were stood up. But then also that fentanyl is not a redux of the crack cocaine epidemic. Most people who are taking fentanyl don’t know they’re taking it. So it really is more like a mass poisoning than anything else. And then finally, as I came to find out when I was with HSI and their TCIUs and so on, just the complete transformation from a corporate perspective that the Sinaloa cartel has gone through over the last decade or so and how that is so responsible for what we’re facing with fentanyl today. So it was really a fascinating journey for me and hopefully, I’ve been able to pull back the curtain and for folks and add some interesting color to make it a cool kind of thriller type story while also going into some really kind of heavy topics.

Terry Gerton: Well, let’s take those three that you mentioned and sort them in order because this operation that you describe is really an unusual collaboration across agencies and across countries. What surprised you most about how that team was formed and how it operated?

Jake Braun: Well, it was really interesting in the sense that for most of history, law enforcement has looked at criminal organizations from kind of a kingpin strategy, right? It’s like in Chicago, where I’m from, they go in and they take down Al Capone and like help decapitates the mob here and everything else. Well, Sinaloa’s been around for over a century. They can outfight the government in parts of Mexico and they’re as big as a Fortune 50 company. We’ve taken out almost every head of the cartel they’ve ever had, and they’re stronger today than they’ve ever been. And so we started putting together a counter network approach, looking at it from a counterterrorism perspective, the way we took out ISIS or al-Qaida as a network, as opposed to trying to just take out bin Laden or one of the terrorist leaders, but trying to go after the network. And that really required a whole-of-government approach. So it wasn’t just HSI or DEA. I mean, they were in many ways the tip of the spear, but we had massive involvement from the intelligence community, the military from an intel perspective, obviously DEA, other parts of DOJ, and nearly every part of DHS, whether it be CBP, Coast Guard, Intel and Analysis, et cetera. And so the meetings we had on this, it was really a cast of everybody and anybody who had worked in the War on Terror because it was really kind of the same approach that we took to stand up this operation against Sinaloa. And by the way, in the first year after we launched the effort, which we launched in ’23, fentanyl fatalities went down by 37% in 2024. So we think it’s working and the current administration, I think, has picked up the many places where we left off and, hopefully, we’ll see the deaths further decline in coming years.

Terry Gerton: I’m speaking with Jake Braun. He’s the executive director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. Well, let’s come back to that for a minute, and that’s your second point. You mentioned fentanyl is really not so much a drug as it is a mass poisoning, but also the impact of this operation, reducing fentanyl deaths by about 40%. What are the key takeaways from those points? How should they impact what we’re thinking about in terms of national policy?

Jake Braun: Sure. So first off, people might view saying it’s a mass poisoning as somewhat hyperbolic, but I really don’t believe it is. And this is something else that I really did not know until I started working on this. Almost everybody, even drug users, avoids fentanyl like the plague. But the way they wind up dying from fentanyl almost always is that it is cut into something else that they’re taking. Now sometimes it’s cut into other drugs, which of course folks shouldn’t be doing, but they also don’t deserve to die for it. Oftentimes though, it’s cut into fake prescription pills that folks are given from a friend or there’s these horrible stories about a kid who’s studying for finals in college and they want to take an Adderall or a Xanax or something like that and they take one from a friend thinking it’s real. Oftentimes, the friend thought it was real, too. And it turns out it has fentanyl in it and they die from one dose. That’s where this is this again is not the crack cocaine epidemic. People are dying who don’t even know that they’re taking these drugs. And from a public policy perspective, I think that requires a very different approach for how we inform potential victims to not take the drug. It can’t just be like, ‘Hey, don’t take fentanyl.’ Nobody’s trying to take fentanyl. It’s you can’t really take anything that you don’t know exactly where it came from, even prescription pills. Not prescription pills you get from a pharmacy, but from a friend or a colleague or whatever. So that’s one major difference in how public policy needs to really think through how to address this. When it comes to the kind of counternetwork approach that we took and looking at Sinaloa, what again was so fascinating to me that I did not know going into this was that Sinaloa has completely changed its business model in the last decade. So it was an essentially a Fortune 50 company that had two main commodities that sold marijuana and cocaine. Well, marijuana, we’ve mostly legalized in the country and even in states where it’s not legal, they’re getting it from another state that is, generally not the Sinaloa cartel. And cocaine, which used to be incredibly popular back in the 80s, about 7% of the population reported doing it in any given month, it’s now down to 0.3% of the population is doing cocaine. So it’s like if you went to McDonald’s and said, ‘Oh, guess what? Nobody is going to buy your hamburgers and french fries anymore.’ I mean, what would they do? So what Sinaloa did is they’ve taken over the migration trade. I mean, you cannot cross the border in the United States or into the United States or Mexico unless you pay Sinaloa or their main rival, CJNG. That is a big shift. That is not the way migration worked years ago. And then separately, since cocaine and marijuana aren’t making money for them anymore, they figured out how to both cut fentanyl into the drugs they have to increase their margins. But also they got into this illicit prescription drug market and of course they did that right at the heels of us weaning the population off of oxycotton and other drugs that had plagued society for well over a decade. And they filled that void, which was something that a space they were not in before. And that’s made this so much more tragic is their entrance into the illicit prescription drug market.

Terry Gerton: What is the implication of Sinaloa’s realignment on U.S. operations in the Caribbean right now on our counter drug operations?

Jake Braun: Well, I think that they’ve largely moved, they and the other cartels have largely moved a lot of their operations out of the Caribbean because it’s easier for them to smuggle things across the border via tunnels, drones and so on and so forth. There’s still some, don’t get me wrong, but most of what they’re doing is not in the Caribbean. That being said, they have really dramatically stepped up their efforts to try and get fentanyl into the country from any vantage point, including the Caribbean. I think that what’s critically important with stopping what they’re doing is to really focus specifically on fentanyl, because no administration, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green Party, no administration will ever end criminality. That has been around since humans have existed. It’s not going to stop. But we could end fentanyl and I think if we were able to turn up the heat so high and really just put our boot on the throat of Sinaloa the way we did on al-Qaida and ISIS, they would stop selling fentanyl because they could sell all the other stuff they do, and we’d relegate this back to normal cops and robbers the way we have before with all the other illicit things they do like racketeering and prostitution and other drugs and so on, things far less deadly than fentanyl. But without a real direct focus on fentanyl, I don’t see a world in which kind of a broader approach is really going to end this one issue. And the idea that we’re going to end the Sinaloa cartel in general, them or rivals will come in and take their place later. But again, if we focus narrowly on fentanyl, I think we could end this epidemic in the United States. And there and there’s a moment for this right now. I think the president has shut down the border and or at least shut down illegal crossings. He fulfilled his top campaign promise basically already. And so we’re in a moment now where they really could turn their attention to specifically stopping this horrible epidemic that’s killing so many people.

Terry Gerton: That sounds like a policy recommendation.

Jake Braun: I guess it is.

The post A new book reveals how a covert US campaign targeted the Sinaloa cartel first appeared on Federal News Network.

EXPERT INTERVIEW — Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced today that the U.S. has carried out three additional strikes on four sea vessels, bringing the total number of attacks on boats to 13, resulting in more than 57 deaths. The Secretary said 14 people were killed and one person survived yesterday’s attacks targeting drug traffickers.

The Secretary posted on X that, “The Department has spent over TWO DECADES defending other homelands. Now, we’re defending our own. These narco-terrorists have killed more Americans than al-Qaeda, and they will be treated the same,” warning of more strikes to come. “We will track them, we will network them, and then, we will hunt and kill them.”

The strikes come amid a major U.S. military buildup in the region, most recently bolstered by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s order last week for the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier and its escorts to deploy from the Mediterranean to Latin America. President Trump says he is also considering military action against land targets in Venezuela, a sentiment echoed recently by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.

Experts on the region believe part of the counternarcotics campaign is aimed at pressuring Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to step down. The U.S. has recently suspended diplomatic efforts with Maduro’s government and the Venezuelan president has been directly accused by the U.S. of involvement in drug trafficking. And in a highly unusual move, President Trump publicly announced recently that he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela.

Maduro has condemned the U.S. military activity, accusing Washington of “fabricating a new war” while vowing to defend national sovereignty.

The Cipher Brief spoke with former CIA station chief David Fitzgerald, who served in Latin America, at the 2025 Cipher Brief Threat Conference about the implications of the strikes and other forms of pressure on both the cartels and Maduro. Fitzgerald joined the conference live from Panama. Our interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

THE INTERVIEW

Kelly: Dave, you have deep expertise in the region and in understanding the drug cartels. With everything going on in the region right now, what's top of mind for you?

Fitzgerald: Regarding Venezuela specifically, it's an interesting situation and I think President Maduro feels like the pincer movement is coming in on him right now. He's feeling the pressure, no doubt, from the military actions in the Caribbean, and also from some of the declarations by President Trump. He doesn't have the support of his neighboring Latin countries that he would like, specifically Brazil - if you remember back when he was elected during the last time, his main ally in Latin America, President Lula, never recognized the election. So theoretically, none of his counterparts other than the ones from the countries everybody suspected would - Nicaragua, Cuba, and, at the time, Bolivia - had recognized the election and President Maduro as the president elect and now the president.

So he understands very well that if push comes to shove, if there's some type of military action vis-a-vis Venezuela, Russia, China, Cuba, even Iran is not going to come to his assistance. He's going to be out on his own and he's going to be very outgunned and outmatched by the U.S. military. [He has a] decrepit air force and a decrepit army. He also claims to have rallied 4 million militia members that are undergoing training to help defend Venezuela.

Kelly: President Trump has openly said that he has authorized covert activity in Venezuela. What does this mean? If you're Maduro, what is that message that you're taking from that? How does it change the situation?

Fitzgerald: I think we're all a little surprised by that announcement, which is very out of character for the IC to have a covert action finding actually being announced by the president of the United States. I guess on one hand he's just circumventing what would eventually happen, and that's having it leaked, which I think has happened to all of the other covert programs. On the other hand, I think it's part of that pressure campaign that Trump is putting on Maduro and I think he's really feeling squeezed. There have been recent media reports that Maduro has offered to provide natural resources to the United States to try to find a way out of the situation by accommodating President Trump by providing oil and some of the other rich resources that Venezuela has. But I think he [Maduro] understands that his plan B is going to get on a plane and go to Cuba, much as President Chavez was back in 2002 when he had a short-lived coup d'état attempt in Caracas. There are not many options for him at this time.

Kelly: This administration has made clear that part of the policy towards Venezuela is applying pressure which includes the targeting of suspected drug boats off the coast of Venezuela. With your decades of experience understanding what motivates the drug cartels and what doesn't, how do you think these attacks might shift their thinking, if at all? And I also want you to explain to us how the cartels are technology, reportedly, better than most other groups in the world. Is this true?

Fitzgerald: They're very sophisticated and vis-a-vis Venezuela, you actually have kind of a, I hate to use the word state-sponsored, but I will say state-approved cartels working in Venezuela. I don't know if we remember the days of Cartel de los Soles, which in English means the cartel of the generals, and that was so true back in the 90’s. The then head of the National Guard was under indictment [for involvement.] He's still under indictment. He has never left Venezuela since then.

Hugo Carvajal, who was General Carvajal, the head of military intelligence, fled to Spain around 2020-2021 because he had a falling out with Maduro. He was extradited to the U.S. back in ‘23. He pled guilty [to involvement in narcoterrorism and drug trafficking] in June of this year and is going to be sentenced at the end of this month. I know the guy personally, and I remember having these conversations with him and telling him, Hugo, one day this house of cards is going to come crumbling down and there's going to be a price to pay, right? He says, ah, no, no, no, no. And I think it's kind of that same atmosphere in Venezuela right now with the senior military officers. Maduro has done a good job of handling the military in the sense of the stick and the carrot, and they all understand that as long as they're true and loyal to Maduro, they're going to benefit from it, from their illegal activities, either allowing trafficking or corruption to take place or participating in it. So there's going to be more indictments, I think. There's no doubt Carvajal is making a plea with the U.S. attorney right now in order to lower his sentence.

You have that combined with what you see now in Colombia. Trump had called President Petro a narco trafficker and said he's cutting all narcotics assistance to Colombia. That's a blow to him, but it's also a blow to our efforts in the region because Colombia, as everybody knows, has been our strongest ally in this fight, both in the Counter-terrorism fight in the region and also in the counter-narcotics fight. So we're going to watch how this plays out.

Elections in Colombia are in May of next year. All polls indicate Petro really doesn't have a chance. I'm not sure whether this announcement will help him or not. Colombia's not doing well right now. The United Nations just last month announced that they have record cultivation of coca now in Colombia. They're producing more than they ever did even before we started our Plan Colombia back in the 90’s. So it's a worrisome situation.

Kelly: I'm glad you brought up Colombia because I was going to ask you about that.

I’ve also heard recently that the epicenter of the drug problem is in Mexico. Talk to us a little bit about that and about what you have seen work or not work, against drug cartels in Mexico.

Fitzgerald: The question has always been how do you declare victory? Okay, narcotics traffic is going to exist for the rest of time. It always has, right? So the question is how do you define victory over that target? Years back, I had a conversation with [former Colombian] President [Alvaro] Uribe and I said, “we’ve made great strides, a lot of great things have happened. How do you define victory over these trafficking and terrorist groups?” Back then it was the FARC and the ELN where they were a two for one, or both trafficking and terrorist groups.

He looked at me and said victory is when these problems stop being a national security problem, a threat to our national security, and just basically turn into a regular criminal problem. I think he nailed it on the head. In countries like Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, all through Central America, these are national security problems. The corruption that it entails, the penetrations that the traffickers have made through all society. It is a threat to the region and a threat to national security of all of those countries, and indirectly a threat to our national security, especially along the border and especially with some of the violence that comes with it.

In Mexico, I think President [Claudia] Sheinbaum has done a fairly good job. You've seen all the newspaper articles about the ICS (Integrated Country Strategy) participation in Mexico. It has been a successful program, but again, flying under the radar, you really can't broadcast this. Colombia was very effective at taking out the heads of the cartels. Extradition was key. We have extradition with Mexico, but again, you have pockets of immunity within Mexico. The corruption is rampant. How to get past the corruption? Venezuela is that kind of dark hole where you really can't do much. But there has been some success, and I can't take that away from the Mexican services, to a lesser extent, the Colombian services and all through Central America, but we're not where we need to be right now.

Need a daily dose of reality on national and global security issues? Subscriber to The Cipher Brief’s Nightcap newsletter, delivering expert insights on today’s events – right to your inbox. Sign up for free today.

Question from NBC Reporter Dan DeLuce (in the audience): Let's say Maduro does get on a plane and fly to Cuba. What does he leave behind? What are the scenarios you see unfolding? I know it's highly speculative, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Fitzgerald: First of all, he wouldn't be the only one on the plane. He would be joined by his wife, probably half of the general staff and anybody else who could get on that plane. They will all understand that if he goes, they go and that they're going to be left to the hoards to try and figure out their survival. So I think right now that is option B, because militarily, he understands the Russians are not going to come to his assistance. The Chinese look at this as a transactional relationship with Venezuela. They are making money off Venezuela’s oil and the loans they provide. They just want to be paid back. Maduro is pretty weakened right now. Nobody is likely to come to his aid. So I think for him right now, it's a very serious consideration as far as plan B, how to get out of Venezuela and how to get out of Venezuela fast.

Kelly: How do you measure the impact of these strikes against these boats?

Fitzgerald: In two ways. The first impact is the psychological impact, and the second is the actual counter-narcotics effort impact. I think the impact of stopping the drugs from reaching [destinations], whether they're going to San Domingo or Dominican Republic or some other Caribbean island as a transit, that's minimal. The Coast Guard has been doing that for decades. It helps, but in many ways it's a drop in the bucket. The psychological impact, however, is far greater. I doubt there's very few volunteers or crewmen, both from Venezuela and from Colombia, who are happy about getting on some of these fastboats or the submersibles to crew them out to the Caribbean. I think what you're going to see, it's probably already started, is a shift to the Pacific side. This situation is kind of a pendulum and it’s been like this for decades. The US and our allies would focus on the Caribbean. They'd switch to the Pacific. We'd focus on the Pacific. They go back to the Caribbean. They would just change their routes, change their modus operandi of how they traffic drugs.

Kelly: Thank you so much, Dave. I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you don't do a lot of interviews like this.

Are you Subscribed to The Cipher Brief’s Digital Channel on YouTube? There is no better place to get clear perspectives from deeply experienced national security experts.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief because National Security is Everyone’s Business.

OPINION / FINE PRINT — “We have asked the Mexican government to also step up their involvement in stopping these cartels and stopping the huge amount of drugs that are coming across. If the Mexican navy saw a group of American fishermen that they thought were suspicious of potentially moving drugs and they moved in to kill the 15 American citizens without contacting you, without going through any normal procedures, would you be okay with that?...What we do in combat there is reciprocity, and we are concerned about what other militaries will do to us because we have opened the door on this.”

The was Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) speaking back on September 18, during a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing for Derrick M. Anderson to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict and Platte B. Moring III to be the Defense Department Inspector General.

Three days earlier, the U.S. had carried out the second of its attacks on speedboats it said were trafficking drugs in the Caribbean that were destined for the U.S. killing three individuals. The first such attack, on September 1, killed 11 occupants.

Because the jobs both Anderson and Moring were up for would involve them dealing with the Trump administration’s new policy of attacking alleged narco-trafficking boats in international waters, Sen. Slotkin and other Senators raised questions at this hearing that are highly relevant today as these deadly Trump administration attacks have continued in the Caribbean and since Tuesday began in the eastern Pacific.

So far, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reported nine such attacks resulting in the deaths of 37 individuals.

As I will explore below, last month, Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) at the close of this hearing made a pledge that remains unfulfilled – in effect to hold oversight hearings on the attacks.

Before that happened, Sen. Slotkin made clear, “I have no problem with these groups being designated foreign terrorist organizations. Fentanyl is killing just as many people, if not more, as any terrorist group we have ever seen. But I do have a problem with the lack of transparency and potential violations of international law.”

The Senator then pointed out, “The U.S. government has a way of interdicting ships. You know this. The U.S. Coast Guard uses patrol boats and helicopters. They are able to shoot out a motor and disable the vehicle, board it, and then indict all those people, grab all those people. Show everyone all the drugs that they have secured.”

As I wrote in my column three days ago, the U.S. Coast Guard announced October 14 that it has seized more than 100,000 pounds of cocaine in the eastern Pacific Ocean since launching Operation Pacific Viper in early August, averaging over 1,600 pounds interdicted daily. These drug seizures, and the apprehension of 86 individuals suspected of narco-trafficking, were the result of 34 interdictions since early August.

I also pointed out in that column, that on the day after the Coast Guard release of the success of Operation Pacific Viper, during an Oval Office press conference President Trump said that Coast Guard interdiction “had been ineffective” for 30 years because “they have faster boats.”

As Sen. Slotkin noted above, and I mentioned in my column, the Coast Guard has helicopter-mounted special long-range rifles that can hit and disable the engines mounted at the rear of narco-trafficker speedboats.

While Trump and Hegseth have publicized videos each time a boat has been blown up, I agree with Sen. Slotkin who at the September 18 hearing said, “I would love it if the Trump administration showed us the full video from that encounter, showed us that these men did not have their hands up, that they were not waving a white flag, that they were not turning around and getting out of there, and then show us the drugs. The President said that there were all kinds of drugs that were in that ship. Show it. Show us the video that he is apparently alluding to.”

Hegseth did show what he said were packages of drugs floating on the water after yesterday’s eastern Pacific action, but then the drugs appeared to have been blown up.

The Cipher Brief brings expert-level context to national and global security stories. It’s never been more important to understand what’s happening in the world. Upgrade your access to exclusive content by becoming a subscriber.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) followed Slotkin and brought up a series of questions he and 24 other Democratic or Independent Senators had sent to the White House on September 10, and had not received answers. In fact, they have not yet received an answer.

The questions are worth reviewing: “Give us the evidence that these boats were carrying drugs. Tell us who was on the boats. Tell us what your legal authority was to take a military strike that had not been authorized by Congress? The question that I really want to know is why did you decide to attack rather than interdict? If you interdict a drug boat you get evidence. You seize the drugs but you also get evidence by having access to people and often it is that evidence that leads you to be able to go after the kingpins and the real, you know, muscle behind these operators.”

Kaine added, “If you attack a boat and destroy it makes an impact, but you do not get the evidence. It may actually be counter-productive in fighting narco trafficking.”

As I noted above, when Chairman Wicker closed the September 18 hearing, he said, “The questions about what happened in the Caribbean [and now eastern Pacific] are going to have to be answered. This committee has congressional oversight responsibility.”

Earlier, Sens. Wicker and Slotkin had an exchange about what might occur at any future oversight hearing.

Chairman Wicker reminded Slotkin that “each witness has answered in the affirmative to this question, ‘do you agree to provide records, documents, electronic communications in a timely manner when requested by this committee, et cetera.’ So that is on the record.”

Sen. Slotkin asked, “Do you understand that as video? Just to clarify for me, Chairman.”

Chairman Wicker responded, “Documents, records. I think each witness has answered in the affirmative there…and they will be obligated to follow that.”

“Great,” Sen. Slotkin said at one point, “I look forward to the video.”

I think we all do.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

OPINION — “In the 12-month period ending in October 2024 [Fiscal Year 2024], 84,076 Americans died from a drug overdose, according to the most recent available provisional statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), underscoring the devastating effect these cartels have on our country.

Although these numbers show a 25 percent decline since the same 12-month period last year [Fiscal Year 2023] – when the country lost 112,910 people to drug poisonings – demonstrating positive momentum in the fight against these drugs and the organizations trafficking them, the threat remains grave. The trend is hopeful, however. October 2024 was the eleventh consecutive month in which the CDC reported a reduction, and the current statistics represent the largest 12-month reduction in drug overdose deaths ever recorded.”

The above was excerpted from the 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment, an annual report from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which was published May 12, 2025, by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice and the DEA.

I refer to that 84,076 American death-by-drug overdose figure because – although it is far higher than acceptable -- it is much lower than figures used recently by President Trump to justify his recently stepped up U.S. military operations against drug cartels and particularly alleged narco-traffickers off the Venezuelan coast.

Back on September 5, when President Trump was defending the September killing of 11 alleged Venezuelan narco-traffickers, he said, “We’re strong on drugs. We don’t want drugs killing our people. I believe we lost 300,000. You know, they always say 95[,000], 100,000. I believe they’ve been saying that for 20 years. I believe we lost 300,000 people last year.”

On September 15, during an Oval Office meeting, President Trump said of drug cartels, “They killed 300,000 people in our country last year and we're not letting it happen anymore.” Later that same day, at an impromptu airport press conference, President Trump mistakenly said, “the fact that 300 million people died last year from drugs, that’s what’s illegal.”

Only President Trump knows why he inflates the number of American drug deaths in this country that his own DEA officials have provided to the public. But to me, it shows he wants to justify this recent tactic of blowing up Venezuelan speedboats on the Caribbean Sea.

The September 2, September 15, and September 19 attacks reportedly have killed 17 individuals without the U.S. military first stopping any of the speedboats to determine whether they are narco-trafficking or not – as they did with a Venezuelan fishing boat on September 13.

However, for the three attacks, President Trump provided video tapes which he said showed the speed boats each being destroyed. In addition, both he and Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth said with the first two, there are voice intercept tapes proving drugs were involved and that they were destined for the U.S. “We have recorded proof and evidence,” Trump told reporters on September15, “We know what time they were leaving, when they were leaving, what they had, and all of the other things that you'd like to have.”

But neither those voice tapes nor any other specific evidence has been made public.

In his September 4, letter to Congress, required by the War Powers Act after the September 2 attack, Trump wrote, “I directed these actions consistent with my responsibility to protect Americans and United States interests abroad and in furtherance of national security and foreign policy interests, pursuant to my constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive to conduct foreign relations.”

Meanwhile, many legal experts, including retired Pentagon lawyers, have questioned the legality under the law of wars, maritime law or human rights conventions for these U.S. attacks. Such attacks also contradict longtime U.S. military practice.

My further concern is that at his September 15, Oval Office exchange with reporters, President Trump mused that “there's no drugs coming by sea, but they do come by land. And you know what? We're telling the cartels right now, we're going to be stopping them, too. When they come by land, we're going to be stopping them the same way we stop the boats.”

The notion that Trump would order such an attack on another country’s land is not far-fetched.

Back in the summer of 2020, during his first term in office, Trump privately asked his then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, about launching missiles into Mexico to destroy drug labs, according to Esper’s 2022 memoir A Sacred Oath.

Early last month, both NBC and The New York Times reported that Trump had reportedly sent a secret directive to the Pentagon asking for options to attack Latin American drug cartels after they had been named as terrorist organizations.

Last Friday, The New York Times published a story that said, “Draft legislation is circulating at the White House and on Capitol Hill that would hand President Trump sweeping power to wage war against drug cartels he deems to be “terrorists,” as well as against any nation he says has harbored or aided them, according to people familiar with the matter.”

That Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill are contemplating legislation to justify what they are already doing shows they recognize some legal authority is needed. However, what’s also missing from much of the current media coverage is what the U.S. had initiated during the Biden administration to counter hemisphere drug cartels.

The Cipher Brief brings expert-level context to national and global security stories. It’s never been more important to understand what’s happening in the world. Upgrade your access to exclusive content by becoming a subscriber.

Back in February 2025, The New York Times disclosed that the CIA under the Biden administration had, as part of bilateral cooperation with Mexico, begun secret drone flights well into Mexico to hunt for fentanyl labs, and that the Trump administration was increasing them.

CIA officers in Mexico passed information collected by the drones to Mexican officials, according to the Times, but the Mexican government was slow to take action against the labs, although the Mexican authorities did use some of the CIA information to make arrests.

During a February 19, 2025, news conference, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum described the CIA drone program as part of Mexico’s longstanding cooperation with U.S. forces. However, on September 10, Reuters published a more extensive story about CIA’s counter-drug activities in Mexico, its reporters having spoken to more than 60 current and former U.S. and Mexican security sources, including former CIA officers and diplomats and military officers from both countries.

With the permission of the Mexican government, Reuters said, the CIA had, in a previously covert, years-old program, individually vetted, trained and equipped two Mexican military units – a Mexican Army group and a special Mexican Navy intelligence outfit. The Army outfit is comprised of hundreds of CIA-trained special forces and, Reuters said, “is seen as the military force in Mexico most capable of nabbing heavily armed drug lords holed up in fortified mountain hideouts.

For example, Reuters reported, “The CIA’s Mexican Army group in January 2023 nabbed Ovidio Guzmán López, the son of the imprisoned cartel kingpin Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán.’”

More recently, CIA under the Trump administration, has created a new Americas and Counternarcotics Mission Center, Reuters has said, with top counterterrorism officials reassigned to work on Mexican cartels. The agency also has increased its already existent drone surveillance flights south of the border.

However, I join Washington Post Columnist David Ignatius when he questions: “Why has the [U.S.] military been so silent as the Trump administration has pushed the bounds of law by…attacking alleged Venezuelan drug-smuggling boats abroad?”

As I have noted in previous columns, on February 21, Hegseth, at a time when the top Navy Judge Advocate General (JAG) had just retired, fired the top Army and Air Force JAGs giving as his only stated reasons that he considered them not “well suited” for the job. Hegseth also said he wanted to avoid “roadblocks to orders that are given by a Commander-in-Chief.”

Ignatius pointed out, “The Trump team has gutted the JAGs — judge advocate generals — who are supposed to advise commanders on the rule of law, including whether presidential orders are legal. Without these independent military lawyers backing them up, commanders have no recourse other than to comply or resign.”

President Trump, who wanted to win a Peace Prize, it seems is now firmly on a war path.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

Police in the city of Ryazan (a city in Russia) have taken 4 suspected drug traffickers into custody.

According to the information provided by law enforcement agencies, the group worked according to a carefully planned scheme. There are four suspects in total: three men and one woman. As it turned out later, their leader was a 24-year-old man. Responsibilities for processing orders, packaging and delivery of drugs were distributed among the group members. While the group leader was responsible for the operation of the store in the “dark web”, the second member was engaged in the purchase of apartments to use them as a platform for storing and packaging drugs. A third man and a girl were responsible for packaging and order processing, and they packaged drugs in packages according to orders received from the “dark web”.

They quietly conducted their business until January 13, 2023, when they were detained by the police. During the investigation, the apartment they used as a packaging center was searched, and the police also searched the suspects’ apartments. As a result, a large amount of drugs such as hashish, ecstasy, and others were found.

Currently, the criminals have been arrested and are to be tried under the article on drug trafficking in particularly large amounts.

Colby John Kopp, a 23-year-old man living in Connecticut, imagined that he could get away with selling fake oxycodone pills on the dark web.

It all started in August 2020. FBI agents investigating the work of dark marketplaces came across a seller under the nickname “MadHatterPharma” who was conducting his “pharmaceutical activities” on the Empire Marketplace. Having started his work on May 4, 2020, the “entrepreneur” already had 554 successful orders on his account. The only and at the same time quite popular product of this seller was oxycodone pills (as the seller stated, they were made by pressing a mixture of morphine and fentanyl). In order to find the person behind it all, the FBI agent placed an order with MadHatterPharma (10 pills worth $100). After placing the order, the seller provided a bitcoin address to pay for the “goods”. The order was not long in coming, and less than a week later, a package with the USPS Priority Mail logo arrived at the address provided by the agents to receive the order, in which the agents found exactly what they had ordered through the “dark web”. After the successful order, the agents went to the bitcoin address provided by the seller. After analyzing the blockchain, the FBI went to the Coinbace exchange, and from there to a 23-year-old guy named Colby John Kopp.

Then an unexpected situation occurred. At the end of August 2020, Empire Market ceased to exist. This did not hurt the drug dealer’s business; after the old store was closed, he announced on Dread (an analogue of Redit only in the dark web) that he would be making deals on Wickr, and his future customers would be able to find him under the nickname “hatmatter”. The FBI agents did not sit idle, so they placed another order, but this time several times more (100 pills worth $910).

You’re probably wondering how Kopp laundered the money. It’s very simple, he worked with an accomplice (her name is Adriana Beatrice Sutton) who helped him cash out BTC. The scheme went something like this: Kopp sold all the BTC he earned through the exchange and transferred the proceeds to his PayPal account, spent some of the money from his account, and sent some of the money to Adriana’s account, and she, in turn, withdrew cash within a few hours of the transfer (using Coin Cloud ATMs). Continuing the investigation, FBI agents learned that over the past year, the “pharmacist” had purchased various equipment and substances for the manual manufacture of pills several times.

After he was detained on January 11 this year, he managed to share all the details of his “small business”. He is due to be sentenced on April 18, and according to preliminary estimates, he will face 5 years in prison.

Austrian law enforcement agencies detained a 39-year-old man who resold drugs ordered from “DarkWeb”. According to the information provided, the man lived in the city of Linz.

According to the information provided by the police, the accused resold drugs ordered from the “dark web” for 10 years. He sold such drugs as cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, LSD and others. After his arrest, police were able to identify two more drug dealers, aged 31 and 22. They are known to have sold drugs worth more than 130 thousand euros. The police are also investigating 40 other people accused of buying drugs.

The German Public Prosecution Service confirmed that a bunker functioning as an illegal cyber center had ties to a right-wing dissident movement and possibly to WikiLeaks. These revelations came to light when the main suspect – Herman Johan Verwoert-Derksen (60), also known as ‘Johan X.’ – reacted to his criminal case for the first time.

According to German media, the employees of the cyber center saw the hosting of servers for dissident groups as a lucrative endeavor. One group is specifically mentioned: Generation Identity. That right-wing movement has chapters in several European countries, such as France, Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom.

Through encrypted messages, an employee of the bunker communicated with a member of Generation Identity. For just thirty euros a month, the cyber bunker would host a cloud server for the group. A very competitive price because other tenants paid hundreds of euros a month for the same service. That may indicate that the employees of the bunker had some degree of sympathy for the ideology of Generation Identity.

The cyber bunker offered a host of IT services, without requiring contracts or personal details. Furthermore, the bunker hosted many websites on the dark web involved in the distribution of drugs, weapons, and even child pornography. The center was also connected to dark web markets such as Wall Street Market, Cannabis Road, and Flugsvamp 2.0. Moreover, massive cyber attacks were conducted from the bunker, sometimes targeting a million routers at the same time.

In 2013, Johan X. – the head of the organization – bought the former NATO bunker located in Traben-Trarbach, a town in Western Germany. In secret, he converted the former bunker into an underground data center. In addition to the main suspect, the police arrested twelve other men, all German and Dutch nationals. They claim to provide a high degree of privacy and thus do not know illegal content was hosted on their servers.

In 2002, Johan X. was involved in a similar case, running a data center in the South West of the Netherlands. His customers were mostly legal pornographers. The police also discovered an ecstasy laboratory in the same building, although he was never convicted in that case.

Johan X. claims to be a victim of political persecution. He believes the German authorities only showed interest because his data center hosted the servers of WikiLeaks. The public prosecutor denies those allegations, stating that investigators did not found any server belonging to WikiLeaks. Furthermore, WikiLeaks is not even mentioned in the indictment.

Regardless of the outcome, (former) employees of Johan X. are already making plans for a new data center. Several countries showed interest, including Bahrain, Moldova, Zimbabwe, and Vietnam.

The post Darknet bunker plot thickens: ties to right-wing dissidents and WikiLeaks appeared first on Rana News.

A 41-year-old man from the Californian city of Martinez was charged with possession of equipment for producing counterfeit drugs. At the time of his arrest, Jeremy Donagal – an old school dark web vendor previously known as ‘Xanax King’ – was on supervised release from a 2015 conviction for manufacturing and selling counterfeit drugs.

According to a federal complaint, Donagal leased a warehouse in the city of Concord as soon as his supervised release began. Inside the building, law enforcement encountered professional medical equipment such as pill presses, plastic trays with punches and dies in them, and materials for packaging and shipping. Furthermore, the building also housed thousands of counterfeit pills, containing markings of Sandoz, a legitimate pharmaceutical company.

Moreover, Donagal was building a dark web vendor site to sell the pills nationwide.

Before his 2014 indictment, Xanax King was one of the largest distributors of counterfeit drugs on the dark web. He was arrested along with eight others for manufacturing and distributing counterfeit drugs, (international) money laundering, and structuring. As soon as Donagal was detained, his moniker ‘Xanax King’ was hijacked by other dark web vendors, hoping to profit from its reputation.

At its height, Xanax King’s operation manufactured and distributed over one million Xanax tablets in a single week, selling them for up to one dollar per pill, depending on the quantity of the order.

In 2015, it appeared Donagal got off lightly, as he was caught making significant cash transfers to China, both for money laundering and promotion purposes. If convicted, that charge could have landed him in federal prison for up to fifty years. However, at that time the judge seemed to show leniency.

If Donagal is convicted again, he could at least spend the next seven years in prison.

The post Dark web legend ‘Xanax King’ arrested again appeared first on Rana News.

Michael Goldberg, a 36-year-old man who sold meth on the darkweb under the name “Drugs R Us,” is going to prison.

As first spotted by Dark Net Daily and detailed in court documents, Goldberg ran a criminal organization with his wife and a few other associates. According to the criminal complaint, Goldberg and his associates purchased drugs from various sources and then shipped them internationally using UPS, DHL, and the United States Postal Service.

Goldberg and company weren’t sneaky and the authorities first figured out something was up in 2018 when they discovered several parcels intended for the Philippines were full of methamphetamine. Goldberg shipped them under fake names but used a phone number registered to his real name.

After the cops arrested him, Goldberg continued to run his criminal empire from a jail. “While detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center…Goldberg has made numerous phone calls to Rabulan, often using other inmates’ phone lines, to discuss drug trafficking, destruction of evidence, and the movement of currency,” the criminal complaint said.

The cops, of course, recorded these phone calls. Which is why we know his dark web store’s name. “I don’t know the login for the other thing…the dark web,” Goldberg’s wife said during a call the cops recorded.

“It’s ‘Drugs R Us,’” Goldberg said. 

Later in the conversation, his wife told Goldberg that the business wasn’t going well. “Babe. I was online yesterday. It was all bad. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. That’s all I’m going to say,” she said.

“How many did they get? A lot? All of them?” Goldberg said.

“I’ve seen everything that you’ve dinged,” she said. “Like everything. Everything.”

“So, they got every last thing that we’ve sent? That’s crazy,” Goldberg said into an unsecured line while sitting in prison. 

Goldberg was a busy international drug dealer. “I have identified a total of 59 international mail parcels that I believe are part of Goldberg and Rabulan’s scheme to distribute drugs,” the criminal complaint said. “Shippers mailed these parcels to the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, and France. Fourteen of the 59 parcels have been seized in the United States containing a total of approximately 22.3 kilograms of methamphetamine and 170 grams of marijuana. Authorities in other countries have seized four of the 59 parcels containing 2.1 kilograms of methamphetamine.”

Impressed with himself, Goldberg told an associate he knew what he’d do once he got out of prison. “I was reading this book about this Cocaine Cowboy [A famous drug dealer that inspired ‘Miami Vice’] and I was like, ‘this fool is fucking weak,’” Goldberg said. “I really want to do a movie and book when I get out. I think I’ll make enough money for everybody to get out of the game. Man, damn, this would be a great fucking documentary.”

More people are buying their drugs on the dark web than any other time in recorded history, according to the findings of the latest Global Drug Survey (GDS). 

Researchers found that in 2020, 15 percent of GDS participants who reported using drugs in the previous 12 months obtained them from darknet marketplaces—either by purchasing them first-hand or via someone else. This equated to a threefold increase of the percentage of people who reported the same in 2014, when the survey first started measuring the trend.

Over the past seven years that number has steadily climbed, but never as significantly as it did in 2020: jumping by four percent of the total respondents compared to 2019 levels. And the global pandemic is only part of the reason.

Dr Monica Barratt, a senior research fellow at Melbourne’s RMIT University and co-lead researcher of the GDS, told VICE World News that cultural trends, shifting taboos, market innovators and a growing population of people who spend more of their lives online are all likely contributors to the significant increase in dark web drug crime.

“If you’re coming of age in 2021—say you’re 18 or 19 years old—this isn’t that odd to you; there’s been 10 years since Silk Road was founded in 2011, so you’ve sort of grown up with it,” Dr Barratt explained over the phone. “Partly, I think, that cultural difference and generational difference may explain why this is happening.

“If you buy everything online, why wouldn’t you also buy your drugs online?”

It is for this latter reason in particular, she suggests, that darknet drug markets may have attracted more new customers in 2020 than any previous year.

“When you think about it, in the last 12 months there were many people who weren’t really keen on buying things online, but who had to buy things online because they had no choice; the shops weren’t open and they were in lockdown and they needed to use the post to get goods to them,” she noted. “I think once they get over that hump some people will decide that they want to continue not going shopping for clothes and only using the Internet—and they may feel the same way about everything.”

There is some anecdotal precedent for this trend of homebody buyers. In 2017, Dr Barratt sought to find out why it was that Scandinavian countries like Finland consistently reported the world’s highest proportion of drug buyers who were using the dark web to purchase their supply. A local source explained that, due in part to the climate and the prohibitively cold weather, Finnish people are typically “more isolated” than other peoples around the world and “tend to stay home”. 

“He said it makes perfect sense to him, culturally, that they would be one of the highest users of the [drug] servers that deliver to home,” Dr Barratt recalled. “And the question is: ‘Well, where else would they buy from?’”

That goes some way toward explaining the cultural patterns. But another factor that’s worthy of consideration is the way in which drug dealers and darknet vendors are diversifying their offering and creating a more reliable service—even in the face of transnational cybercrime crackdowns and rampant fraudulent activity.

Dr Barratt points to a dark web marketplace that introduced multi-signature authentication a few years ago, as a way to insulate buyers and sellers against so-called “exit scams”—when the site administrator runs away with people’s funds—and garner some trust from consumers. Other operators have gone even further, leveraging social media apps and chatrooms to create new channels of illegal commerce: like Televend, the fully-automated system that allows users to buy drugs from bots via the encrypted messaging app Telegram.

“What happens is that everyone innovates: the people who are selling drugs on the darknet, and the people who are producing these new applications, they try to work out what the issues are that mean people aren’t taking up their particular platform,” Dr Barratt explained. “Maybe it’s just a bit too hard to go on the darknet, but people like to use messaging apps. So Televend is sort of like a cross between social media app-purchasing and the darknet. And I’m just fascinated as to whether the future of the darknet might be some other hybrid thing that has only just begun.”

These trends are likely to continue, as online marketplaces become more sophisticated and more people turn to e-commerce outlets to score their illegal products. But this brave new world of darknet drug-dealing is fraught with pitfalls and slippery slopes.

One unsurprising consequence is that it gives consumers unprecedented ease of access to illicit—and oftentimes mysterious—substances. Each year, somewhere around a quarter to a third of GDS respondents say that they’ve consumed a wider range of drugs since using the dark web. The breadth of the darknet’s product offering, combined with the relatively low barrier to entry, creates gateways to novel drug-using behaviours, where people try new substances just because they’ve suddenly been made available to them.

But another worrying knock-on effect is that people who buy drugs off the darknet, rather than through a contact or a friend, may be using those drugs alone.

For that reason, Dr Barratt urged darknet drug users to stay diligent and exercise caution—and, wherever possible, to let someone else know what they’re going to be consuming, as well as when and where.

“It may be that a person’s entire experience of using drugs has actually started through the darknet, and may indeed be confined to the darknet,” she explained. “The risk of that is that they may be using alone—so one of the things to consider is ensuring that if you are going to take something for the first time, even if you’re alone, that somebody out there knows you’re about to do this, and somebody out there has a ‘check-in with me in an hour’ and has your details. 

“That’s hard, obviously; this stuff is mostly illegal and a lot of people are secretive about what they’re doing. But the concern would be that someone buys something, maybe takes the wrong dose or the wrong drug or they're having a bad time, and they don’t necessarily have someone with them.”

Take part in the Global Drug Survey 2021 here

Follow Gavin on Twitter