I once sat down in a café in the bohemian neighborhood of Sopocachi, in La Paz, with a soft-spoken Bolivian engineer who had worked with the country’s nascent space agency. Between sips of imported coffee, he spoke matter-of-factly of Bolivia’s emerging capabilities to track criminal groups: how drones could now monitor coca-growing regions, track cartel movement in the Chapare, and support border security missions in the Chaco. When I asked who had helped build these drones, he smiled, paused, and said little. I kept pressing, and he finally uttered: Many of the drones would be Iranian.
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