Layered Ambiguity: US Cyber Capabilities in the Raid to Extract Maduro from Venezuela

Even if there was real disintegration in Venezuela in terms of political unrest or crackdowns, or much stronger law enforcement action, there would be no difference on a global scale...The global cocaine market is so huge, so agile, so adaptive, that none of that is going to disrupt supply in a meaningful way...There's a bigger question around enforcement as a strategy. It’s naive and against all previous evidence that enforcement and disruption can achieve much on a large scale. There are more fundamental questions about prohibition. We have decades of evidence that it’s not working, so we need to have a proper conversation.”

One of the challenges we have is that we don't know how brittle the ruling elite is. It certainly looks like it is at its most vulnerable point certainly since the 2009 so-called Green Revolution but what we don't know is will one more push topple it. And that's got to be a factor in what will be a difficult decision for the US. It could mean that the clerical elite, the theocracy, would collapse but you might get a military takeover by elements of the Revolutionary Guard or their allies in the Basij. So one of the big decisions, and it has up until now meant perhaps a cautious approach to Iran and regime change, is the unpredictability of what comes next."

A lot of this depends on what they [the US] are attempting to do, whether that is punitive strikes to force the regime to back down from murdering their own citizens or whether they think there is an opportunity to push the regime over the edge and topple it. It might influence their thinking in terms of the level of force they are prepared to use."