United States Customs and Border Safety is paying Basic Dynamics to create a prototype of “quantum sensors” alongside a “database with artificial intelligence” designed “to detect illicit objects and substances (resembling fentanyl) in autos, containers, and different gadgets,” in line with a contract justification revealed in a federal register final week.
“This database and sensor venture will combine superior quantum and classical sensing applied sciences with Synthetic Intelligence and in the end deploy confirmed ideas and finish merchandise wherever within the CBP setting,” the justification doc reads. “Beneath this requirement, CBP will take further steps to reinforce its potential to detect, and thus, considerably scale back the harms of illicit contraband coming into the USA of America, thus bolstering nationwide safety.”
The doc redacts the title of the corporate creating the prototype; nonetheless, contract particulars included within the federal register entry reveal that the justification is for a $2.4 million General Dynamics contract that has been public since December 2025.
CBP and Basic Dynamics didn’t reply to WIRED’s requests for remark.
CBP’s request for a prototype of “quantum sensors” with an AI database—which comes amid a widespread push throughout the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) “to assist the adoption and scaling of AI applied sciences,” in line with a strategy memorandum revealed final yr—entails an actual and rising space of scientific and technological analysis.
Final week’s justification doesn’t get into element about which strategies its “quantum sensors” would use or what data the AI database would retailer and analyze. Nonetheless, it does present hints about detection strategies the company has thought of.
The doc claims that CBP carried out market analysis from April by way of October of 2025. In July, CBP revealed an information request looking for a vendor for precisely 35 handheld “Gemini” analyzers, sold by Thermo Fisher Scientific, that are designed to establish unknown chemical substances and narcotics.
DHS has additionally examined the Gemini in earlier years, in line with stories revealed in 2021 and 2023. The July request—which notes that the gadgets could be used to establish substances like fentanyl, ketamine, cocaine, methamphetamine, diazepam, and MDMA—makes no point out of synthetic intelligence or a database.
“The detection tools will likely be utilized by CBP Officers in non-intrusive testing to detect a variety of narcotics, managed substances, unknown substances, and common natural supplies,” the request reads, noting that the company “continues to grab an growing variety of opioids on the nation’s borders.”
The July request for data claims that the Gemini analyzers use “Fourier Rework Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR),” which measures how a lot infrared mild a pattern absorbs, and “Raman spectroscopy,” which measures how mild scatters off the floor of a pattern when a laser is directed at it.
Final week’s contract justification says that the company discovered an American firm that creates a “handheld analyzer” for figuring out harmful chemical substances however claimed it “can’t detect fentanyl.” It’s unclear whether or not this was referring to Gemini or one of many greater than 10 different gadgets DHS examined in 2021 and 2023. However when reached for remark, Thermo Fisher Scientific mentioned that its Gemini analyzers “are designed to detect fentanyl.”
It’s additionally unclear whether or not the Basic Dynamics prototype might use FTIR or Raman spectroscopy. However a 2024 working paper a few laboratory-based fentanyl-detection technique (unrelated to CBP, Basic Dynamics, or Thermo Fisher Scientific) notes that “transportable Raman spectrometers” and different handheld gadgets—although handy, quick, and cheap—can “wrestle with detection of fentanyl” and could also be liable to “false-positive and false-negative outcomes.”
Whereas it stays ambiguous what precisely final week’s justification was referring to with its point out of “quantum” sensors, there are fentanyl detection strategies based mostly in quantum chemistry. The 2024 paper, as an illustration, explains how “quantum dots” and fluorescent dye can be utilized to detect fentanyl and 58 of its analogues.
