I'm not surprised that the cartels finally learned about decentralized managed radio networks. It's a bit more complex than what the average HAM has. Over the air rekeys and frequency assignment is usually a pretty penny from Motorola. It's nothing new, but it's genius in the engineering.
We trained the Mexican special forces to hunt the cartels. Big surprise, they flipped. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if all of the cartels now have SF advisers. The drug trade is very darwinian. The less fit members are killed or jailed in short order. They survive by becoming more sophisticated. As the article says, they can buy or bribe technicians to provide training to their own personnel. Worst case, they can just kidnap experts and dump their bodies after their usefulness has ended. Break up the radio network (easier said than done) and they'll move to softphones and/or VOIP.
There's only two long term options. Altering the Constitution to allow extremely draconian measures to be taken against US citizens who use the drugs, or legalization.
Funny thing, when google does major data transfers (bear in mind, they own a lot of the fiber in connecting their data centers), they do it via fedex.
Let's face it, say you want to transfer a 100TB of data.
Well, using 2.5" 1TB flash drives at 300MB/s sustained write, it takes about an hour to transfer the data into the drives, and requires a hundred drives (a box about a cubic foot).
FedEx latest drop-off is roughly 7pm, and would get to the other coast at 0830, for a total elapsed time of 10.5 to 16hrs, so let's say its leaving google HQ, and its a 10.5hr round trip, for a total of 12hrs.
That's a AVERAGE bandwidth of 50Gbps, which is damn sporty or would suck up a big chunk of their leased lines.
Total cost for for the shipment is <$300, or roughly $20,000/mo if you did it twice a day (I.e. Like saturating the equivalent BW). 50Gbps of bandwidth on a leased line would cost WAY more than that...typical for 95% billing would be $0.5-1/Mbps, or 35-50k/mo.
Additionally, let's say you want each days shipment to go to a different place...its now WAY cheaper due to setup and other aspects.
So sneaker net rules the day. Period.
The old phrase is "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with backup tapes." It hasn't proven inaccuracy in fifty years.
