Transregional Threats Journal

Weaponized Chaos: The Rise of Tren de Aragua as Venezuela’s Proxy Force, 2014–2025

• José Gustavo Arocha
• 11/18/2025
• Transregional Threats Journal

Tren de Aragua (TdA) has morphed from a prison gang into a paramilitary instrument of the Maduro regime, now active in at least eleven Latin American countries and twenty-three U.S. states, according to the U.S. House Oversight Committee (2025).

Weaponized Drug Trafficking: How Venezuela Built a Super Cartel to Attack the United States

• José Gustavo Arocha
• 09/22/2022
• Transregional Threats Journal

Drug trafficking can exist for purposes other than profit. That is especially true when we consider Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution that from the outset was dedicated to the development and deployment of illicit drugs for purposes of asymmetric warfare against the United States.

Killer Drones: How Commercial Drones are Changing the International Security Environment

• José Gustavo Arocha
• 07/10/2022
• Transregional Threats Journal

As of 2022, there are more than half a million drones in private hands in the US alone and the global market is expected to grow to reach nearly $43 billion in 2024 from drone sales.

The Struggle for the Soul of the Latin American Left

• José Gustavo Arocha
• 04/19/2022
• Transregional Threats Journal

Will Latin America’s left go the direction of authoritarianism, like Venezuela and Nicaragua, or seek to maintain the democratic institutions that afford the losing side the opportunity to regain political power.

Mexico’s alarming turn away from democracy and free enterprise

• 11/03/2021
• Transregional Threats Journal

The Venezuelan Conundrum: Why negotiations continue to fail

• José Gustavo Arocha
• 06/21/2021
• Transregional Threats Journal

A new SFS publication contextualizing our geopolitical expertise for local and state audiences. Our sixth issue delves into the vicious cycle of sham elections that make negotiations largely ineffective. This is fueled by the Maduro regime's complex, adaptive threat network.

Weaponizing Networks (part one): Venezuela’s Asymmetric Attack on Texas

• 02/02/2021
• Transregional Threats Journal

A new SFS publication contextualizing our geopolitical expertise for local and state audiences. Our fifth issue delves into the Bolivarian threat network that has penetrated Texas through Venezuelan illicit drug networks and legitimate oil networks to tap into the core of economic and political influence in the Lone Star State.

Venezuela’s Crime-Terrorist Convergence

• José Gustavo Arocha
• 08/12/2020
• Transregional Threats Journal

A new SFS publication contextualizing our geopolitical expertise for local and state audiences. Our fourth issue delves into convergence within the Maduro regime and how this convergence is layered over an anti-Western ideology that has developed asymmetric tools that play to the benefit of Russia, China, and Iran's global interests.