Duong, like Mayorkas, was a refugee. In 2007 she was awarded the National Security Medal for her contributions to Operation Enduring Freedom, namely that she and her team of scientists developed a new type of thermobaric warhead just after 9/11. The BLU-118/B, as it’s come to be known, went from concept to manufacturer in 67 days, a process that usually takes years. Her bomb was significant because it increased lethality inside confined spaces like caves by disbursing fine aluminum powder into the atmosphere, causing the air to burn. Anyone who isn’t immediately incinerated can suffer crushed inner ear bones, blindness, and organ rupture from the waves of extreme pressure. A study conducted by the Defense Intelligence Agency on thermobaric weapons similar to Duong's found that, during all this, it’s likely that many of the unfortunate recipients of Duong's contribution would remain conscious during their last agonizing moments of burning or suffocating.

Duong keeps coming back to submersibles full of cocaine, and how her department is constantly looking for “new solutions” to the problem of narcotics pouring across the border. Despite growing opposition to the drug war tactics that began during the Reagan administration, and mountains of empirical evidence that those tactics don’t work, Duong seems steadfast in wanting hard solutions. She is utterly disinterested in reasons; she knows that evil exists and that it is on the loose.

A tall woman in a dark gray suit appears holding a microphone, and she announces that there will be a question-and-answer session. I feel the overwhelming urge to launch some kind of salvo at the panel, something to break up the uninterrupted flow of bullshit, if for no other reason than to exorcise some of the impotence I feel. But what?

The woman with the microphone goes to someone else, who asks something inconsequential. In a frenzy, I try to jot something in my notepad, something not easily sidestepped, something with a jagged barb. I decide to put my hand up before they end the Q&A, and the woman with the microphone notices. She smiles to let me know she’s seen me, and I immediately regret raising my hand. As she starts in my direction I can feel myself becoming increasingly out of breath, and it feels like I might vomit.

When she gets to me I somehow manage the following accusation posed as a question: “Some would say that an enforcement and technology approach to a public health issue creates the black market demand that in turn creates a need for more enforcement and technology. And since the number of drugs coming in hasn’t been significantly impacted by all of these solutions and technologies, what concrete indicators are there that this approach is ever going to solve this problem?”

Anh Duong and Chris Thompson, who works for Raytheon, and has been, for the most part, quietly sitting next to Duong the whole time, push their chairs back from the table and partially cover their microphones with their hands. The woman with the microphone who’d smiled to acknowledge that she’d seen my hand now stares at me like I’ve somehow betrayed her. Thompson, who looks like a younger Matt Lauer, comes back to his microphone first.

“You’ve asked a very political question,” he says smiling ever so slightly. They back away again and whisper to each other before Thompson approaches his microphone again.

“I am trying to respond to what a customer is asking of me,” he says. “I’m just trying to fill a customer's need.”

He goes on to invoke a version of the orders are orders defense, except this time orders means purchase orders from a customer; if leadership chooses to address this matter in this way, it’s his responsibility to find solutions. He washes his hands publicly, or maybe this is what he tells himself too. He tells himself that he’s just filling orders, and who could blame him? It is, after all, perfectly legal, and within the logic of transaction it makes cold hard sense.

Duong is less cautious. She fumbles through her answer, but her tone is decidedly irate. She prefaces by saying that she only has one comment, and “it’s just personal, because like, um, uh, I think all the panelists on this stage here are not, um, how do I say, authorized, nor should comment on policy, um, issues.” Duong means to suggest that the activities and technologies at this expo can and should be addressed apolitically, that somehow these machines and their effects aren’t inextricably political, and that my question is wholly out of place here. It is around this time that I expect to have someone grab me by the arm and eject me from the building, or tase me from behind, but it doesn’t happen.

Duong goes on to say that drugs are just the best way for transnational criminal organizations, or TCOs, to make money right now, and that if we legalize drugs, they’ll “go to the next level,” which she specifically names as transporting weapons of mass destruction into the United States. “What we catch them today, yes, what we find, usually, is marijuana or cocaine, actually for submersibles a lot of time we find cocaine, but that doesn’t mean that,” she takes a long awkward pause, “that if we legalize marijuana then somebody might not hire a TCO to bring WMD into the US.”

I quickly exit the building. My phone buzzes inside my pocket, but I don’t answer because it’s my mother and I lied to her about where I was traveling. I didn’t want her to worry that I would be arrested or beaten or put on some list.

I leave the convention center and walk down the nearly abandoned downtown street. I look out toward a sliver of horizon that’s visible between buildings and see the pink mountains that contour the desert. It’s still early, but I lock myself in my hotel room because I need the safety of a small empty box where you can see all the walls. I draw the curtains and get into bed. I lie in the same position for what seems like hours. I watch a mote of dust particles floating within the changing light, from orange to pink and finally red, before it goes dark. I’m too tired to move, but also too tired to tip into rest, and when my eyelids finally begin to flicker, a faint glow penetrates from outside. The phone rings and a voice tells me it’s 6 a.m.