OTTAWA/AUSTIN — In today’s episode of The Bureau Podcast, former U.S. Border Patrol agent Ammon Blair traces his path from military service to the front lines of America’s border—and explains why he believes Mexican cartels now function as a parallel power with expanding operations in Canada and in more than 60 countries worldwide.
Blair says U.S. military sources have for years classified cartels as hybrid-war operators threatening American citizens, but only recently has Washington begun to respond to the threat as such—one he argues is greater than ISIS and, in little-understood ways, connected to Hamas and Hezbollah.
The hybrid-warfare model he describes blends violence, intimidation, and corruption with corporate-style supply chains and control of legal economies, allowing these networks to move people, drugs, and money with industrial efficiency.
“Their influence,” he says, “extends into sectors most citizens never associate with organized crime—agriculture, telecommunications, and financial services.” Blair adds that alliances with Chinese nationals—from precursor chemicals to laundering and human-smuggling pipelines—have tightened the system and complicated investigations on both sides of the border.
The discussion then turns north. Blair warns that similar dynamics are visible in Canada—perhaps at an earlier stage of infiltration—where permissive legal gaps, vast terrain, and strategic infrastructure can be exploited for cross-border trafficking. In his view, the cartels’ footprint and financial power demand a national-security response in both countries, not a narrow criminal-justice lens.
Three lines capture the scale of the problem as Blair sees it: “They control every facet of society.” “They are a non-government government.” And: “They make more than nation-states.”
For policymakers, the takeaway is clear: if cartels operate like insurgent conglomerates, the response must be integrated—intelligence-led policing, financial targeting, cross-border enforcement, legal coordination—and, where necessary, integration—between the United States and Canada on special cases involving Mexican, Chinese, and Middle Eastern hybrid-warfare networks, and the political will to close the gaps that criminal organizations have mastered. Recognizing the cartels as an evolving strategic threat, Blair argues, is the first step toward containing their reach.
