A grainy video posted to social media on Saturday shows a small motorboat bobbing in the swells of the Eastern Pacific. Seconds later, a missile strike turns the vessel into a blinding orange fireball that consumes the screen. According to U.S. Southern Command, this was the fourth lethal strike this week under "Operation Southern Spear." The attack killed three men, bringing the total death toll of the campaign to 205 people.

General Francis L. directed the strike, using the standard military jargon that labels the victims as "narco-traffickers" linked to terrorist organizations. Per the Pentagon’s own social media feeds, the U.S. military is now broadcasting these extrajudicial executions in high-definition color. There are no courtrooms in the middle of the ocean. There are only drones, infrared cameras, and the finality of a kinetic penetrator. "Washington’s blending of the war on drugs with the war on terrorism is not actually having a positive impact," argues analyst Daniel DePetris.

While the military makes a spectacle of boats exploding on the high seas, the actual flow of narcotics remains steady. This is the "Hollow State" in its most violent form: a government that cannot pay its own employees but has an infinite budget for orbital surveillance and maritime assassinations. The Pentagon is playing a trillion-dollar game of Whac-A-Mole while the domestic infrastructure of the United States collapses into a heap of unpaid bills and burnt-out rail cars. The fireballs in the Pacific are a distraction from the fires at home, intended to instill a false sense of security through the theater of mass death.