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It’s hard to wrap your mind around the scale of the American drug problem.

In 2022, 111,000 people in the United States died of drug overdoses. In 2023, it was 113,000. To put that in perspective, over the entire eight years of the Vietnam War, 58,000 American soldiers were killed. These were the depths of the North American opioid crisis, and the nation faced predictions that if current trends continue, 1.2 million people could die by the end of the decade.

But something unexpected happened in 2024: the number of overdose deaths fell to 87,000, a drop of 24 percent. In 2025, the number collapsed further to 69,973.

Only in the dismal world of American drug policy could a shift from two Vietnams-a-year, to just over one, be considered a success. But while people celebrated the rare bit of good news–the question no one can still seem to answer is, why is this happening?

As usual, many different parties—politicians, law enforcement officials, public health advocates—have all rushed to claim the success as their own, offering a series of claims and counter-claims—none of which are really convincing.

The first proposition is that the reduction in drug deaths in the U.S. was actually the result of brilliant international political maneuvering with the old rival, China.

Now, most of the surging fatalities over the past few decades have been driven by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid roughly 50 times stronger than heroin. Fentanyl and its precursor chemicals were often synthesized in Chinese labs then smuggled into North America by Mexican drug cartels. This has led various law enforcement figures to make wild claims that China and Mexico are waging “chemical warfare” on the U.S.

The Former Acting Administrator of the DEA, Derek Maltz, testified before Congress in 2023, saying that, “Fentanyl is a chemical weapon, and the narco-terrorists in Mexico are destroying our country.” President Trump regularly uses the drug as an excuse to ramp up his tariff wars with China. In December 2025, he formally designated fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.

But in fact, since the Obama administration, every U.S. president has tried to forge narco-enforcement cooperation with China. It was the Biden administration who helped coordinate a massive crackdown on Chinese labs beginning in late 2023.

Since then, China says it has shut down over 286 companies involved in the trade, prosecuted hundreds of individuals, and scrubbed thousands of websites selling fentanyl and precursor chemicals. This roughly coincided with a drop in U.S. fentanyl purity reported by the DEA. In 2023, 70 percent of the fentanyl pills the agency tested contained a lethal dose, but in 2024 that dropped to only 50 percent.

It is tempting to celebrate this as a massive victory for diplomacy and cooperation, but the often-repeated idea that it was Chinese crackdowns that led to reduced drug deaths has serious flaws. For starters, the dates simply don’t line up.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, notes that ”Starting in late November 2023, cooperation between China and the U.S. goes from zero, to say, four or five out of ten…but deaths already started dropping in May 2023. So you have a year, or at least eight months, where you cannot attribute the drop to China.”

This explanation also fails to account for how uniquely adaptable cartel supply chains are. Back in 2019, when China first moved to ban fentanyl, cartels simply started ordering precursor chemicals and making it themselves. If they wanted to source these precursors now, there are plenty of places to find them, for example, India’s chemicals industry.

As Diane Goldstein, executive director of Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP) observes, “This is not hard stuff to come by…We’ve seen the global drug supply chain across the world, and how the drug trafficking organizations already have systems in place and are able to quickly change their production lines.”

OK, so, if the dramatic drop in US drug deaths isn’t down to Chinese diplomacy, what could it be?

Well, many within US law enforcement are eager to claim all the credit for falling drug deaths for themselves. DEA Administrator, Anne Milgram, asserts that, “The cartels have reduced the amount of fentanyl they put into pills because of the pressure we are putting on them.”

However, while there have been reports of certain factions within the Sinaloa Cartel putting out warnings to their cooks to reduce fentanyl production, many believe this is largely performative. Neil Woods, an International Speaker for LEAP, said, “This is a smokescreen…Just because one organized crime figure, or one clique, wants to publicize that they’re not going to produce fentanyl, it makes no difference to the broader market, because the market is massive and demand will be met.”

If the drop in deaths over the past few years was caused by less fentanyl coming into America overall, one would expect to see a fall in deaths across the country. But in fact, there are deep discrepancies between states and among marginalized minority groups. Drug deaths in Native American communities continue to run over double the national average. In Maine, overdoses dropped 20 percent among white residents between 2022-2023, but surged a horrifying 40 percent among Black residents in the same period.

If the reduction in drug deaths may not actually come from stamping out the supply of opioids, perhaps it comes from treating the demand?

Under the Biden administration, parts of the US saw a switch in emphasis, from mass incarceration, to funding opioid substitution programs. For example, access increased to treatments like methadone and buprenorphine, including Suboxone. Naloxone, a life-saving drug that can reverse opioid overdoses, was made more accessible across the United States.

Neil Woods is keen to point out that the decline in drug deaths map almost exactly onto where treatment and harm reduction programs have been expanded. “Where harm reduction has grown the most, that’s where the biggest drops in drug deaths have happened,” said Woods. “I’ll refer you to New York and North Carolina. In places with the most resistance to harm reduction, places like Arizona and New Mexico, they have actually seen increases in drug deaths.”

It’s a hopeful point of view, suggesting a manageable solution to this devastating issue. But there is one dark possibility that experts have suggested to explain the fall in deaths: What if fewer people are dying, simply because so many people have already died?

In any population, there are only ever so many people who will take strong opioids, and in North America this group may have died faster than it can replace itself.

“I think it’s a strong argument,” says Neil Woods. “Just as the Black Death in the 1300s died out because it ran out of humans to infect – with the percentage of the population which are problematic opioid consumers in the US, so many have died that it would be hard to think that the sheer numbers haven’t had an influence on how far this can spread.”

If this theory holds, it means that when one sees U.S. policymakers celebrating their success in reducing drug deaths, they’re actually celebrating the fact that their policies have already killed so many people that they’ve run out of people to kill. This would—by any measure—represent a total betrayal of the American people.

The real answer is very probably that all of the factors above have played a role in reducing US drug deaths, and that hunting for a single silver bullet is a distraction.

But Diane Goldstein is also keen to echo a warning that the current administration is now defunding and shutting down many of the public health initiatives that may have kept people alive. “They’ve removed funding for syringe exchange programs. They’ve reduced funding for Naloxone, and worse yet, they have inserted the prohibitionist language that America should ‘strive to be drug free’…so I will almost predict that unless they reopen the money for harm reduction, you’re going to see drug overdose deaths probably go up again.”

As I write, the World Cup is in full swing and for the first time in years it feels like the planet is unified in watching something joyful. But the fear in defense circles is that drones could be used by lone wolves, criminal organizations, or terrorist entities to target fans, players and officials at the largest sporting event on Earth.

“We should be careful not to mistake the absence so far of successful attacks on venues like the World Cup for the absence of threats,” warns Henry Ziemer, a fellow with the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in DC.

It is no surprise that counter-drone technology has been at the forefront of World Cup security operations. Across Mexico, the US and Canada, huge crowds are gathered in stadiums and other venues for the month-long tournament. At a time when Ukraine can successfully use drones to attack an oil refinery close to Moscow, how exactly do you protect yourself from drones when even Putin seems unable to?

The explosion of counter-drone technology

Nowadays, defense companies are constantly thinking of new platforms and systems to neutralize drones on the battlefield. “Defense expos” like Modern Day Marine and the Association of the United States Army, feature booths where defense industries regularly show off the latest counter-UAV technologies.

These systems include the SMASH 2000 by Smartshooter, which is essentially a little computer and target system that can be installed on a rifle for a dismounted soldier to track and shoot at drones. Another option is Leonidas, produced by Epirus, a high-powered microwave gun. Remote weapon systems, like those developed by AimLock or Kongsberg, can also track and neutralize incoming drone threats. And we should not forget the futuristic-looking jamming rifles, like the aptly named Dronekiller, produced by IXI.

Meanwhile, the Utah-based company Fortem Technologies announced in February a “multimillion-dollar order to protect U.S. venues.” Specifically, the company is supplying its DroneHunter, a rotary-wing drone that shoots a net to trap and take down hostile drones.

Besides the Fortem contract, little has been disclosed about which specific systems the three host nations are using. However, militaries understand that there is not one single platform or system that can effectively protect troops, vehicles, or facilities from all drone threats. A “multi-layered approach” with various systems working together is the rational and ideal strategy, and it is most likely what is occurring at the World Cup.

After the tournament, Ziemer wonders “whether the kinds of countermeasures and best practices used for the World Cup can be deployed at scale for lower-profile events,” such as local sports games or political rallies “that could represent softer targets for violent non-state actors.”

Policing Drones

The sky above World Cup stadiums has become militarized, as policed as an airport or a national border, with authorities declaring them no-fly zones and handing out severe penalties. Though there is no suggestion their motives were violent, a Honduran national was arrested in Dallas for flying an unregistered drone over a match, and faces up to three years in prison, while a Mexican national was also detained in Atlanta. So far, more than 300 drones have been intercepted across the US, and law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, have announced many arrests. Eleven drones were seized and four people arrested at Seattle Stadium during the US-Australia game.

In the US, during match days at any of the 11 venues, aircraft (including drones) are not allowed within a three-mile radius of the stadiums and up to 3,000 feet above ground level. Drones are also banned at Cup-related fan events.

Mexican authorities are also taking the situation seriously. Last week, an unidentified drone flew during a private training session of the South Korean squad in Guadalajara. According to reports, the drone was neutralized by jamming equipment operated by the Mexican Army and the National Guard. Mexican officials explained that the South Korean players were never in any danger, and that the drone belonged to a “private enterprise” seeking footage of the training. Other drones have been neutralized in Monterrey and Mexico City.

Drones and Cartels

Drones operated by narco-insurgents and criminals will keep proliferating across Latin American skies. On 15 June, just days after the World Cup commenced, the armed forces of Colombia carried out an operation in the Cauca department against the narco-insurgent bloc “Jaime Martínez,” a dissident faction of the FARC. Colombian forces reportedly found a vast weapons cache, and images released showed a fleet of 13 drones of various models.

It is understandable to be concerned about drones being operated by criminal networks, particularly in Latin America. Regional criminals are eager adopters of new technologies that can help their operations.

Case in point: Latin American criminals, gang members, illegal miners, drug-traffickers, and insurgents operate modern and easily accessible technologies, like mobile phones, laptops, and USB sticks (not to mention the infamous South American narco-submarine). Moreover, I have argued that Starlink systems are becoming increasingly popular because they provide reliable, fast satellite communications to criminals operating in isolated regions (or even in prisons).

In other words, the commonly known narco-drones are not an aberration, but the natural next step in the evolution of the arsenals of Latin American criminals and terrorist organizations.

Moreover, narco-drones are evolving quickly. Commercially, easily accessible drones like DJI are quite common. They are used by criminals for surveillance operations to monitor potential targets; narco-insurgents and illegal miners also operate them to search for military or police patrols. However, the drones have other uses. They can carry growing quantities of cocaine and other narcotics.

To make the situation worse, in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, cartels, narco-insurgents, and gangs have developed drones that transport lethal payloads. The integration is crude but effective: a grenade or improvised explosive device is attached to a rotary drone, which is then flown by the operator to a target. Now you have a narco-drone with a lethal payload. In recent years, these lethal drones have dropped explosives on civilians, police forces, military personnel, civilian agencies, and criminal rivals.

Countries are starting to invest in counter-UAS technologies. Colombia, for example, wants to create a national counter-drone shield. On the other hand, Mexico, which Ziemer explains, faces “the most acute domestic drone threat from the cartels… has been slow to roll out a national counter-strategy or task force.”

Hopefully, the ongoing World Cup will conclude on 19 July with no violence. However, on 20 July, the threat of the narco-drone will continue to be very much alive in Mexico, the US, throughout Latin America and beyond.

In partnership with Adobe Acrobat, we’re opening up our reporting. Using PDF Spaces, you can dig into original documents, research, and source material—so you can follow the story the same way we do.

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In partnership with Adobe Acrobat, we’re opening up our reporting. Using PDF Spaces, you can dig into original documents, research, and source material—so you can follow the story the same way we do.
Step inside our story

For most of American history, UFOs were relegated to the fringes of public discourse—the domain of conspiracy theorists, tabloid headlines, and late-night radio hosts. Journalists, politicians, and other “serious” people treated the topic with skepticism, if not outright derision. Even asking questions about UFOs, extraterrestrial life, or non-human intelligence would invite ridicule.

That is beginning to change.

In recent weeks, the federal government has released hundreds of pages of previously classified records related to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs—the term government agencies now use instead of UFOs. The disclosures include military reports, intelligence assessments, witness accounts, videos, photographs, and historical records documenting decades of government interest in unexplained aerial encounters. The Pentagon has described the effort as an unprecedented transparency initiative, with additional materials expected to be released on a rolling basis.

Critics have questioned the timing of the disclosures, arguing that the UAP releases serve as a distraction from more pressing issues, including inflation, the rising cost of living, ongoing conflicts abroad, and the continuing fallout from the Epstein files. For advocates of disclosure, however, the document dump represents something very different: long-awaited confirmation that the government has taken the subject far more seriously than it has publicly acknowledged.

Despite the sheer volume of material, the releases so far have offered more intrigue than answers. The documents contain unexplained incidents, unusual witness accounts, and glimpses into how government agencies have approached the phenomenon over the years. They do not provide definitive proof of extraterrestrial life, nor have they resolved the debate surrounding UAPs.

But there are undoubtedly examples of phenomena that cannot be explained. For example, a newly released report details a 2022 sighting over Colorado in which military personnel observed what witnesses described as a massive, stationary object resembling an irregularly shaped potato hovering above Cheyenne Mountain before disappearing. Government analysts later proposed possible optical explanations for the sighting, but ultimately concluded they had “low confidence” in those theories.

The significance of the disclosures may not lie in any particular document, but in the way the conversation has shifted. What was once confined to internet forums and fringe conventions is now being debated in congressional hearings, discussed by intelligence officials, and addressed by sitting and former presidents. The question is no longer whether UAPs deserve investigation. It is just how much the government knows, and President Trump is willing to share.

That shift was at the center of Shane Smith’s recent conversation with filmmaker Dan Farah, director of The Age of Disclosure, a documentary that follows those pushing to uncover exactly what the government knows. Farah agrees that the changing conversation has less to do with new evidence than with who is discussing it. His goal with The Age of Disclosure was to create what he describes as the most credible documentary yet made on the subject by focusing exclusively on military officials, intelligence personnel, lawmakers, and government insiders with direct knowledge of the issue. That credibility has helped push the topic further into the mainstream.

Farah describes the current moment not as a single revelation but as part of a significant historical process. Disclosure, he argues, is unlikely to arrive in one dramatic announcement. Instead, it is unfolding gradually through ongoing congressional investigations, whistleblower testimony, hearings, official reports, documentaries, and public conversations. “That’s why I call the movie The Age of Disclosure,” Farah said. “It wasn’t the moment of disclosure. It’s this age, this process.”

The government says additional records will continue to be released. But regardless of what future disclosures reveal, the most significant change may already have occurred.

The age of disclosure is here.

These men aren’t any old police officers or soldiers. This is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The mafia of Iran. The guys you never want to run into…

When the war broke out more than two months ago, my reaction was the same I have to every war: this is very bad. For years, Vice News has reported on the brutality of the Iranian regime: the repression, the crackdowns, the everyday reality of living without freedoms many of us take for granted. Before the war, a crackdown on anti-regime protestors killed thousands of Iranians. But none of that changes my belief that war is always the worst case scenario.

Most Western coverage has focused on military strategy and the Trump administration’s justification for the strikes the U.S. launched alongside Israel, including the core argument that Iran must be prevented from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Far less attention has been paid to what life in Tehran actually looks like right now. That’s partly because, for Western journalists, reporting from inside Iran has become nearly impossible.

So when we had the opportunity to travel to Tehran, I knew it was important to get on the ground and speak directly with Iranians about their experience of the war.

I also wanted to speak with government officials to better understand Tehran’s position on its nuclear program. If, as Trump says, the conflict revolves around Iran’s nuclear program—with the U.S. claiming Iran is pursuing a weapon and Iran insisting the program is for energy and development—then in theory, some kind of compromise should be possible.

I had never filmed in Iran during an active conflict, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Being stopped by the IRGC two hours into our trip was an unpleasant experience to say the least. I’ve never gotten used to interactions like these. Iran has always felt like a police state, but now it feels like a police state on overdrive. But you have to be prepared for this when you’re reporting in an authoritarian country. Risk is part of the calculus.

As we ventured on to cover one of the city’s nightly anti-war rallies, we found the streets filled with traffic, the stores at the grand bazaar were full, and construction underway on luxury apartments. It was an unbelievable dichotomy. Despite the fact that the U.S. and Israel have carried out thousands of strikes on the country, Tehran felt, at least on the surface, surprisingly normal. Unveiling unexpected details like these is why it’s always been important to get on the ground- there’s a broader story that the mainstream media can’t capture.

Internet access in Iran is heavily restricted, but using local SIM cards, we were able to livestream portions of our visit. The familiar imagery of Iranian demonstrations was everywhere: flag waving, chants of “Death to America,” “Death to Israel,” and “Death to the Jews.” There were signs maligning Reza Pahlavi, son of the last shah of Iran, who- from exile in the United States- has become a kind of opposition figurehead. Teenagers crowded around booths playing podcasts about martyrdom. Vendors sold miniature Shahed drone keychains as merch.

Yet the people we spoke with were consistently friendly, polite, and eager to talk. That’s something you come to realize when you report in authoritarian places like Iran, North Korea, or Cuba: the people are not the regime. They wanted to connect, and to share with the world their frustrations, fears, and their hopes for peace.

As we filmed, police stopped us repeatedly to check our paperwork, but our fixers managed to smooth things over each time. We were in Iran legally as journalists, and because the regime controls virtually every aspect of foreign reporting, that meant the regime had allowed us to be there. Thus the people I was able to speak with on camera were overwhelmingly anti-war and supportive of the regime. Those that hold different opinions were unlikely to risk speaking candidly to journalists.

Still it was incredible to get the raw opinions of an important proportion of Iranian people. One night, when our friend Andrew Callaghan of Channel 5 News joined us at a rally, I met a man who surprised me. He approached me speaking perfect English and explained that he had spent part of his childhood in Ottawa — the same Canadian city where I grew up. With one child on his shoulders and another holding his hand, he came across as warm, thoughtful, and completely ordinary. But when I asked him about the war, he told me he actually wanted America to attack again. He was “waiting for it.” He explained that he believed another confrontation would allow Iran to finally “finish the job” — by which he meant forcing the United States out of the region entirely, leaving Iran and its neighbors to determine their own future without Western interference. I was stunned by how genuine he came across. This was a happy man.

Later in the trip, I sat down with the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Esmail Baghaei. We discussed the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, the risk of regional escalation, and Israel’s role in the conflict, before turning to the central issue: Iran’s nuclear program. I asked him a question that many Americans would probably ask. If Iran’s nuclear program is truly peaceful, why not abandon it in exchange for a deal with the United States? Iran sits atop enormous oil and gas reserves. Why not focus on fossil fuels, or solar, or wind energy instead?

Baghaei rejected that premise. Iran, he argued, is not attempting to build a nuclear weapon but should continue to pursue nuclear energy. Critics point to Iran enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels, but Baghaei insisted the program is about “development” and “welfare.” He reminded me of something I had learned while visiting Iranian nuclear facilities with the IAEA last time I was in Tehran: before the Islamic Revolution, it was American institutions that encouraged the Shah to pursue nuclear energy, with U.S. and European companies helping build Iran’s first reactor. He also pointed out that several Gulf states with enormous fossil fuel reserves maintain civilian nuclear programs of their own, and that the world is pushing countries away from dependence on fossil fuels for their environmental impact.

I was relieved to emerge from Tehran with a mission accomplished: capturing perspectives on this conflict that hadn’t presently been shared. I understood the impasse between Washington and Tehran more clearly than before. The United States sees a regime inching toward nuclear weapons capability and says that military intervention is necessary to stop it. Iran sees itself as a sovereign power and says it’s being denied rights that other countries already possess. And caught between those two positions are ordinary Iranians, waiting to see what happens next.

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In January 2026, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told the US military to “accelerate like hell” in the use of AI, robots, and autonomous systems.

Now, just over 100 days later, we’re on the ground in Morocco, where AI-powered “robotic forces” are working alongside human soldiers as part of African Lion, the US military’s largest exercise on the African continent.

“The Russia Ukraine Conflict has provided interesting insight into how the battlefield has changed,” 1st. Lt. Vincent Gaspari told us in a tent at Camp America in Tan-Tan, Morocco. “We now have very low-cost solutions that are precise and effective.”

Indeed, the modern battlefield has become much more lethal with drones, creating asymmetrical warfare where one side becomes substantially weaker than the other. Here at Africa Lion, we’re seeing autonomous ground vehicles that are weaponized. But with anything lethal, a human is in the loop.

As this technology advances further, what are the ethics of of autonomy on the battlefield?

This and more as we cover Africa Lion 2026:

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Shane Smith traveled to Venezuela for a special episode of Shane Smith Has Questions, on the ground for the first meeting between U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez: the Trump administration’s first official visit since the regime change.

Reporting from Caracas, Shane gets rare access as U.S. officials engage Venezuela’s new leadership and begin shaping what comes next for the country and its vast oil reserves.

He also sits down with Venezuelan journalist María de los Ángeles Graterol and Wall Street Journal South America Bureau Chief, Juan Manuel Ferero, to unpack the power shift, the stakes for Washington, and what the future may hold for Venezuela.

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Shane and Channel 5/All Gas No Brakes’ Andrew Callaghan traveled to Denmark and Greenland covering the ongoing crisis over Greenland, which the U.S. is threatening to annex. A number of European countries are promising to defend Greenland, if necessary, under Article Five of the North Atlantic Treaty. Canada is weighing whether to send a small number of troops.

Watch the video to see what Shane and Andrew uncovered.

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Shane sits down in Denmark, immediately following today’s high-stakes US–Danish meetings, with former Danish foreign minister Per Stig Møller for an on-the-ground conversation about why Greenland has become one of the most sensitive geopolitical flashpoints right now. Coming off the press conference and escalating rhetoric between Washington and Copenhagen, Møller draws on his role negotiating a key defense treaty with the United States to explain what the agreements actually allow, and why the current moment has raised fresh alarms.

They break down the US narrative around security gaps, rare earth minerals, and competition with Russia and China, questioning whether those claims hold up under scrutiny. The conversation looks at sovereignty, NATO obligations, Arctic militarization, and what it means when long-standing allies begin treating territory and people as leverage rather than partners.

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