LAUSR

In this interview, Gabriel M. Schivone, 2018 visiting scholar at the University of Arizona9s Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice, talks to the Journal of Palestine Studies about the multi-billion-dollar surveillance technology industry and how U.S., Israeli, and Mexican state and corporate entities collaborate in the “laboratory” of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Schivone discusses how, in 2006 and 2014, the U.S. government subcontracted Israel9s Elbit Systems to provide a “virtual wall” under President George W. Bush9s Secure Fence Act. In 2014, Elbit9s U.S. subsidiary was awarded a new $145 million contract to build the Integrated Fixed Towers project, a similar “virtual wall” concept to provide fifty-two Israeli-style surveillance towers along southern Arizona9s border with Mexico.