The US has spent billions building a “virtual wall” of surveillance towers along its southern border over the past 25 years, promising they will help detect and apprehend border crossers and save lives. But a groundbreaking investigation by MIT Technology Review has documented over a thousand people who moved through areas watched by these towers…

22 September 2026

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Don’t be fooled by this summer of AI hype  —Timnit Gebru, executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), and Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the University of…

22 September 2026

It’s been a busy few months for AI hype. At the end of April, Anthropic claimed that its model Claude Mythos is better at finding software vulnerabilities than most security experts. Then we had the OpenAI–Hugging Face hacking incident, after which Anthropic (proudly) and Meta (reluctantly) disclosed similar incidents involving their models. This was followed…

22 September 2026

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The US spent billions on border surveillance. Why can’t it catch people before they die? When José Morales Bernal crossed the border into the US in April 2024, the day before…

21 September 2026

She had only walked for a couple of hours, and already she was lost.  It was early afternoon on Sept. 14, 2025, when 30-year-old Graciela Gómez Hernández crossed the border from the eastern edge of Tijuana into Southern California, sending voice messages to her mother and sister as she walked.  This story is part of Dying…

21 September 2026

When José Morales Bernal crossed the border into the United States on April 8, 2024, the day before his 32nd birthday, it should have triggered a chain of technological alerts and human responses.  As he walked through the desert in southern New Mexico that morning, he was within range of three surveillance towers. Newly installed…

21 September 2026

MIT Technology Review today published our investigation into how many people have died near the “virtual wall” of surveillance towers that the US government has installed along the US-Mexico border. We found cases of people who walked undetected through areas surveilled by advanced, AI-enabled towers and later died nearby, where their bodies remained unnoticed for…

21 September 2026

Our 15-month investigation into death and surveillance along the US-Mexico border began with a simple question: Why did so many people die near government surveillance towers meant to help track and apprehend them? This story is part of Dying on Camera, a collaboration between MIT Technology Review and Times of San Diego. Journalists in both newsrooms spent the past…

21 September 2026

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Could AI really kill us all? Your questions, answered On Wednesday, MIT Technology Review hosted a live Roundtables event that asked the question many seem to be asking right now: could…

18 September 2026

On Wednesday, MIT Technology Review hosted a live Roundtables event for subscribers that asked the question everyone’s asking right now: Could AI really kill us all? But attendees had so many more questions than we had time to answer in the 30 minute session. So we asked our senior AI editor Will Douglas Heaven and…

18 September 2026