The Walls Have Eyes: A Podcast with Petra Molnar

If you want to learn about border technology, listen to this conversation about a new book on surviving migration in the age of artificial intelligence.

By Todd Miller

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May 30, 2024

Last week I attended the 17th annual Border Security Expo in El Paso, Texas, which focused on border enforcement technology. I mention this because I can’t think of a better person to talk to about this than anthropologist and lawyer Petra Molnar, whose new book, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, is hot off the presses. I’ve been awaiting this book for years, and I was fortunate enough to interview Molnar for this podcast while she was in Tucson for a book event.

Petra Molnar speaks at a book event at the Good Shepherd UCC church in Sahuarita, Arizona on Saturday. (Photo credit: Steev Hise)

It is essential to know about border technology and its evolution, and how it affects people crossing borders and people living in borderlands around the world. Molnar, on the leading edge of reporting and analysis on this issue, helps us understand how border tech connects to larger political and economic power structures, and how it is not a humane alternative to a wall.

She splits her time across the hemispheres, in North America and Europe, which brings a global perspective to the book, and underscores the omnipresence of surveillance. And this is not Molnar’s first appearance at The Border Chronicle, check out her article on robotic dogs from 2022. You should also see her work at the Migration Tech Monitor and the Refugee Law Lab.

Petra Molnar and Todd Miller recording this podcast. (Photo credit: Steev Hise)

After we recorded the podcast, we took a trip to the border in Nogales. Lengthwise across the bollards was a narrow metal track that looked exactly like the encasement for a sensor system that I saw displayed by a company at the Border Security Expo. It was the first time I had seen this addition to the wall. Indeed, the walls do have eyes.

Note the metal track at the top of this swath of wall in Nogales, Arizona. (Photo credit: Todd Miller)

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Author

Todd Miller is Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of The Border Chronicle. He is the author of four books that examine border militarization and its externalization, surveillance technology and industry, climate change, and the search for alternatives. His books include Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders (City Lights, 2021) Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World (Verso, 2019), Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security (City Lights, 2017), and Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security (City Lights, 2014).

Todd’s forthcoming book is a deep examination of water as a border issue in an age of climate-induced heat waves and drought. It will be published by Seven Stories Press in 2027.

Besides The Border Chronicle, articles by Todd have appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, San Francisco Chronicle, In These Times, Guernica, TomDispatch, and Al Jazeera English, among other places. He has also authored and co-authored reports on border surveillance, the border industrial complex, and climate change for the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute, where he is a fellow.

Todd’s book Storming the Wall received the Izzy Award in 2018 for “path-breaking and in-depth reporting.” He also received first place in “Community immigration reporting” by the Arizona Press Club in 2013. Todd has a bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies and Journalism from Prescott College, where he is also an adjunct professor.

In his spare time, Todd likes to travel, read, philosophize, and hang out with his two kids—whether it be going to a dance recital or being a basketball coach.