Q&A: Jake Braun on the Fight Against Fentanyl and the Global Network Fueling It

Jake Braun, Executive Director of the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy Cyber Policy Initiative, spent years working on some of the most complex national security and homeland threats of the past two decades—from the Afghan refugee evacuation to the fentanyl epidemic that now claims tens of thousands of American lives each year. His new book, Fentanyl: Fighting the Mass Poisoning of America and the Cartel Behind It, draws on his experience at the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to tell that story from inside the rooms where it happened.

We spoke with Braun about what drove him to write the book, what he learned about the evolution of the Sinaloa Cartel, and what policymakers can do to stem the tide of overdose deaths.

Fentanyl by the Numbers

• 80,000+ overdose deaths linked to fentanyl each year
• >100,000 total drug overdose deaths nationally
• 37% drop in fentanyl deaths during DHS counter-network push
• 5,000 deaths annually from heroin or cocaine

What inspired you to write this book?

Fentanyl is the deadliest drug crisis in American history, and it didn’t happen by accident. When I got into the Biden administration and began working on the fentanyl threat, it became clear I wasn’t just dealing with a public-health issue — I was looking at a national security crisis fueled by a cartel that had fundamentally evolved, and a global supply chain that increasingly runs through China and the digital world.

The scale was staggering. We passed 100,000 overdose deaths that year—80,000 linked to fentanyl. Heroin and cocaine kill about 5,000 each year. And when I started digging into why it was happening, I realized this wasn’t just another drug crisis. It was the result of a fundamental transformation of the Sinaloa Cartel.

“This isn’t kids chasing a high — it’s kids taking one counterfeit pill and dying.”

I’d thought my book might be about the withdrawal from Afghanistan; that became chapter one. But once you confront a threat that kills more Americans per year than any war in our lifetime — and see how it intersects with cyber vulnerabilities and international adversaries — you realize this is the story that needed to be told.

How so? What changed with the Sinaloa Cartel?

They’re one of the largest criminal organizations on Earth—think Fortune 50 scale. But their two main commodities, marijuana and cocaine, had collapsed. Marijuana’s effectively legal now in the United States, and cocaine use dropped from 7 percent of the population in the 1980s to 0.3 percent today. Sinaloa needed new revenue streams.

So, they moved into two businesses: migration and synthetic drugs. Today, you can’t cross the U.S.–Mexico border without paying Sinaloa or one of its rivals somewhere along the way, and at the same time, they discovered that cutting fentanyl into fake prescription pills—or into heroin and cocaine—was an easy way to hook new users. Most people dying from fentanyl aren’t seeking it; they think they’re taking something else, maybe even something harmless, and have no idea they’re ingesting fentanyl. That’s what makes it such a horrific epidemic.

How did your team at DHS approach the problem differently?

We knew that the traditional “kingpin” strategy—working your way up the ladder until you arrest the top guy—doesn’t work with a cartel of this scale. The U.S. took down El Chapo, and Sinaloa didn’t miss a beat. So, we started thinking of them not as a hierarchy but as a network, the way we approached al-Qaeda or ISIS.

We brought in counterterrorism experts to map the network and identify the “nodes” that mattered most: the trucking firms smuggling drugs, the brokers shipping precursor chemicals from China, the money-launderers moving the profits. Instead of chasing individual personalities, we targeted particular functions that made the system work. That “counter-network” approach was a major shift in strategy.

Speaking of China and Mexico, how did those relationships factor in?

China’s an interesting case. They care about their reputation and don’t want to be seen as a narco-state, so when we pressured them, they agreed to stop shipping finished fentanyl directly to the U.S.— almost overnight. But the trade didn’t end; it moved upstream. Now they export the chemicals required to produce fentanyl to Mexico, where the cartels make the drugs.

Of course, Mexico doesn’t want this poison coming north into the U.S., but Sinaloa is so powerful it can literally outfight the Mexican government in the cartel’s strongholds. One reason the cartel is so powerful is that they’re armed with huge arsenals of U.S.-made military-grade weapons, acquired here and transported south. We’ve got to do far more to stop that weapons flow, or the Mexican government will never stand a chance.

What kind of progress did the US make during your time at DHS?

Within about a year of launching the effort, overdose deaths dropped nearly 37 percent. I’ve never seen a government program make that kind of impact that quickly. While it was dramatic progress, but there are still far too many Americans dying.

It wasn’t just law enforcement; there was a huge public-education push to make young people aware of what they were inadvertently taking. The Trump Administration has continued many of those tools and even expanded some. My hope now is that with the current administration’s objectives around border security largely locked down, they’ll direct more energy toward the fentanyl crisis that’s still killing tens of thousands of Americans every year.

You mention young people—what should Americans understand about this epidemic?

That it’s not like past drug waves. There’s a story in the book about a high-school senior named Zach—top of his class, varsity athlete, never in trouble. He bought what he thought was one Percocet from a dealer who targeted him on Snapchat. It was fentanyl. He took one pill and died in his room the day after Christmas.

This isn’t kids chasing a high. It’s kids making one mistake because someone handed them a counterfeit pill. Every parent should understand that’s the reality.

What surprised you most while working on this problem and researching the book?

The scale of Sinaloa’s diversification. For example, during the Ukraine invasion, we saw a sudden spike in Russians crossing the southern border. They were being coached—clearly organized—and it turned out to be a partnership between the Russian mob and Sinaloa. They were flying people into Mexico via Istanbul and moving them north. The cartel has gone from a drug operation to a multinational criminal conglomerate that touches everything from human smuggling to global finance.

One of the book’s admirers said the book reads almost like The Wolf of Wall Street—full of colorful detail. Why tell it that way?

I wanted readers to feel like they were in the room – to hear the accents of the agents, vision what they were drinking over a steak dinner—even the cursing. These were real people in impossible situations—agents kicking down doors, diplomats negotiating under threat, analysts tracking cryptocurrency in the dark web. The work was deadly serious, but it was also human, messy, sometimes even darkly funny.

You’re an expert on cyber policy and security. How does that capability fit into combatting fentanyl?

One of the most remarkable parts of DHS—specifically Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)—is its cyber capability. Because they also combat child exploitation online, they’ve built world-class skills for tracking cryptocurrency, infiltrating dark-web marketplaces, and tracing precursor-chemical purchases between China and Mexico. These weren’t high-tech spooks from NSA—these were gumshoe investigators who taught themselves to think digitally. That cyber perspective became critical to dismantling the fentanyl supply chain. And it will remain a vital part of the effort.

News reports indicate that the Trump administration has begun planning a mission to send American troops and intelligence officers into Mexico to target the cartels. Do you think this will move the needle on further reducing the fentanyl crisis in the US?

It’s unclear what they are proposing to do that is significantly different than what has been going on for a century or more. Intelligence operations carried out with military support targeting the cartels in Mexico has, quite literally, a storied past with dozens of Hollywood movies chronicling military and intelligence escapades into Mexico, Colombia and other parts of Latin America. Think movies like Sicario. Further, the IC was deeply involved in the take down of former Sinaloa kingpin, el Chapo. In former DEA agent Andrew Hogans’ book Hunting el Chapo, he routinely grouses about the CIA’s blitzes with the Mexican Marines against Sinaloa mucking up his plans. Then, of course, there is the infamous Iran-Contra episode where several cartels were both opposed and, allegedly, supported directly by the IC and military.

So if they are going to actually invade Mexico, that is certainly a huge shift in U.S. policy. However, the Administration has said an invasion is off the table. So, except in matter of degree, it's unclear if they are doing anything new. It’s quite possible this is more bluster than substance. That being said, two key issue stand out. First, any strikes against the cartel not done in concert with the Mexican military, again something we do all the time, will be ineffective. Obviously, the Mexican military knows the terrain and players in Mexico far better than anyone else. Ideally these strikes would be executed with SEMAR, the Mexican equivalent of the Marines, who are an elite military force and have far less corruption issues than other branches of the Military. Second, China is constantly trying to undermine the Monroe Doctrine and pick off our allies in the Western Hemisphere. If we are likely headed into a war with China over Taiwan in the next few years, the last thing we want is to drive Mexico into the arms of China as hedge against a U.S. administration it views as violating its sovereignty.

President Trump recently agreed to slash his fentanyl-related tariffs on China in half in return for a fresh “consensus” on the drug. The Administration indicated that it plans to hash this consensus out in a new bilateral working group. What’s your experience with these? Is it a viable model?

Only if there’s real enforcement behind it. We tried dialogue with China — it works when it's backed by consequences, not concessions. Cutting tariffs before securing verifiable action gives Beijing leverage, not us. The right approach is pressure plus cooperation: chemical tracking, sanctions on bad actors, cyber targeting, and real accountability. A working group can help — but hope and handshakes don’t stop synthetic opioids. Enforcement does.

What do you hope readers—and policymakers—take away from the book?

The fentanyl crisis isn’t inevitable. We can disrupt it when we treat it like the global networked threat it is. Second, that this is everyone’s problem—law enforcement, industry, parents, educators, the weapons manufacturers enabling the cartels. We need all hands on deck. And finally, I hope people see that there’s no room here for partisanship. Every administration has a role to play, and lives depend on it.

You teach courses and oversee the Cyber Policy Initiative at Harris. Are there opportunities for students to get involved in combatting this crisis? Are there alumni working on it?

At Harris, through the Cyber Policy Initiative, we offer research, training, and field opportunities. Alumni are working on this today in government, intelligence, tech, and public-health agencies. This next generation will help finish the job.

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Braun’s book, Fentanyl: Fighting the Mass Poisoning of America and the Cartel Behind It, is available now at Barnes & Noble or Amazon.