Instead, smuggling is dirty, dangerous, terrifying, morally questionable, and has lousy benefits. And yet it plays an indispensable role in the global political and economic balance. Much more than you probably realized.
Journalist Matt Potter, who is apparently insane, joined up with a gang of former Russian military men who, faced with unemployment after the collapse of the Soviet Union, bought a plane and started what they call a “shipping business”. They work for everybody from the Taliban to the U.S. Government, and ship absolutely everything from weapons to humanitarian aid. They get shot at, make shady deals, risk death and permanent incarceration at every turn, and generally live the unenviable life of actual real-world outlaws.
It’s fascinating and riveting stuff and might actually make you wonder if you’re better off in that cubicle, blissfully ignorant of how the darker corners of the globalized world work.
