In the United States, the rapid acceleration of AI in border-security technology hit a fever pitch over in 2025-26 bringing new competitors into the industry and offering a new vision of what surveillance and border enforcement looks like. The Trump administration has made border security and immigration enforcement its top priority, and vendors have been eager to secure funding and contracts before political winds shift. Paul Allen, president of Airship AI, a surveillance intelligence system, said the administration’s emphasis on securing the border has led companies serving other sectors to begin applying their technologies to border security.

Even Amazon.com is getting in on the border-security game, displaying a tricked-out pickup truck equipped with systems to provide mobile monitoring of people or border threats via drones or other inputs. Representatives said the truck is a prototype of what Amazon could offer DHS. They added that the vehicle hasn’t been deployed to the border yet. The company has a specialized email account set up to recruit DHS business.

Most of the technology on display was autonomous and AI-equipped….Representatives of WilliamsRDM—whose products include solar panels that power covert cameras while disguised as rocks and litter—said the power demands of AI-linked systems are increasing the need for their products.

The government has touted technology as a way to find and apprehend potential smugglers and immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, saying it is more efficient than human power and, in some cases, less invasive than a physical border wall. Others have cried foul on what they see as dystopian Big Brother surveillance that is being rolled out with little public understanding and oversight.

Excerpt from Elizabeth Findell, Tump’s Border Spending Spurs Boom in AI-Infused Surveillance, WSJ, May 8, 2026