Assessing The Narcoterror Drug Boat As A Trolley Problem
To understand the Trump policy solution
At sea, form is function. That is a drug boat. Do not let anyone talk you into doubt. There are no cranes with nets, no rods or reels, nothing visible to suggest they are fishermen out for a pleasure-cruise at night in eel-infested waters. Fishing boats do not require three powerful outboard motors with extra fuel. These ‘go-fast boats’ are used for transporting drugs between the shore and the ship that is waiting out at sea to take the drugs to their final destination. It is a logistical middleman — or, if you prefer, a link in a kill chain. On average, every go-fast boat like this one will kill a dozen Americans through cocaine overdose.
The boat has a crew of three. This is our ‘trolley problem,’ the moral dilemma for us to consider. Suppose you have a trigger that launches a missile which can destroy the boat and the three men inside it. If you choose not to pull the trigger, twelve Americans will die instead. You can choose to kill three foreigners or twelve Americans. There is no choice in which zero people die because intercepting a vessel at sea is inherently dangerous. Readers may recall that two US Navy SEALs drowned in the Red Sea during a boarding action in 2024. Every hour of drug interdiction operations also costs as much as combat while putting elite American personnel at risk. Taxpayers demand lower costs and lower risks.
As a practical matter, waiting until the drugs are aboard the larger vessel also makes no sense. Inspection and seizure are likewise risky, expensive, and also legally time-consuming. As a matter of law enforcement, it is of course impossible to interdict the drug trafficking on the shore, in foreign territory, without the cooperation of that foreign state, which is not always forthcoming. For these reasons and more, the Trump administration has decided the ‘war on drugs’ is not a metaphor, after all, that the logic of war applies more clearly and usefully than the logic of law enforcement to their perceived trolley problem. Agree or disagree, for better or worse, legal or not, they have framed the go-fast boat this way in their own minds.
