Separated by the most militarized border in the world, the cities of Tijuana and San Diego are witnessing the rapid integration and recombination of new technologies of policing and surveillance with increasingly draconian forms of labor and migration control—from location tracking, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered facial recognition, and human presence detection systems to drones and “smart walls.” The ethical questions raised by these technologies can only be understood as situated in practical action and political processes.

In this conference, we bring together activists, organizers, academics and artists to interrogate how border communities are particularly affected by new technologies of militarism, police, and border enforcement in San Diego/Tijuana and globally. At the same time, we are committed to conversations around counter-technologies—those that resist, exceed, or escape these forms of violent control and offer new ways of imagining geography, community, safety, and innovation. The conference’s key themes focus on labor and technology; policing and surveillance; afterlives of militarism and making life; global militarism and borderscapes; and art and aesthetics as counter-technologies.