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He World Cup 2026 which begins tonight will be the largest soccer tournament in history: 48 teams will face each other in 104 matches, distributed in 16 venues in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and more than five million fans in the stands. It’s also going to be one of the most watched sporting events of all time. This is the security apparatus that is going to be deployed in the stadiums. A world cup under the magnifying glass. The event is held in a terrorist risk contextfueled by the conflict between the US and Iran. Of the more than 100 games, 78 are going to be held in eleven American cities, which places considerable strain on security resources at all points in the chain, from travel to the stadium itself. They count in Wired that the Trump administration may use this event to deploy an invasive surveillance system without appropriate safeguards. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), has issued a travel warning to attendees to the world cup, in which they specifically warn about “repression of freedom of expression and protest and increased surveillance.” Drones. Both drones and, above all, anti-drone systems will play a key role in the security of events. Stadiums will be no-fly zones, but there are other gathering places that may be targets for drone attacks. The company Fortem Technologies has once again been chosen (already participated in Qatar in 2022) to deploy its kinetic anti-drone technology at US headquarters. Contracts have also been signed with Sentrycs, which will contribute its non-disruptive anti-drone technologyand Axon, which will deploy a full stack of drones and counter-drones in Dallas. Facial recognition. It will be another of the great security systems used during the event, something that already happened during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where more than 15,000 cameras monitored the stadiums. In this edition, the stadiums of Boston, Miami and Atlanta, making up the facial recognition powered by AI to gain access to the premises and make payments, and there will also be facial recognition on Kansas City buses. Robot dogs. In addition to facial recognition in the stadiums themselves, Boston Dynamics robot dogs equipped with cameras will be deployed capable of detecting faces. These robots will be seen at the venues in Dallas, Texas and at the New Jersey stadium, where the final will be held, which has been classified as a “national special security event.” In Mexico, at the Monterrey stadium, they also plan reinforce security with four robot dogs. Command platforms. Lenovo is the official technology partner of FIFA and has announced that will be in charge of managing the command center in which they will monitor the movements of the crowd and manage the devices that each worker will carry. On the other hand, Booz Allen Hamilton will provide his Sit(x) platform of situational information in real time. What if it’s not temporary? In statements to WiredElectronic Frontier Foundation security analyst Matthew Guariglia warns of the risk of this technology being used “to restrict people’s civil liberties and the fact that surveillance infrastructure is precisely that: infrastructure.” That is to say, there is concern that all these supposedly temporary measures will end up being permanent. Additionally, there is concern that ICE performs during the games against the migrant population. The agency’s director has confirmed that ICE will be a key part of the security of the events, but They have not made clear what their role will be. The militarization of sport. As we said, in the previous edition of the World Cup in Qatar there was an enormous security deployment, but also took advantage of this context to reinforce its national security strategy, outsourcing part of that security to allied powers and using the tournament as a test bed for new military and police capabilities. They say in Wired that there is not much information about the companies behind many of the World Cup security contracts, but they are expected to end up in the hands of military industry companies such as Palantir, Anduril and Lockheed Martin. Organizations such as Privacy International fear that these events will be used to normalize mass surveillance tools. Image | Xataka with Gemini In Xataka | Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle: “Citizens will behave because we are recording and documenting everything that happens”