The break room is stocked with free sparkling water. The worktables are a lacquered, honey-blonde wood. And in the center of the gleaming workspace, under the scalding white ceiling of a two-story atrium, stood the solution to the southern border problem. Its four mechanical legs spread over the polished cement. A metal mast rose in bolted sections and at the top, level with the second floor's glass-walled offices, were two boxes.

IoT equipment designers shooting for efficiency should explore the potential for using buildings as antennas, researchers say. Environmental surfaces such as walls can be used to intercept and beam signals, which can increase reliability and data throughput for devices, according to MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Researchers at CSAIL have been working on a smart-surface repeating antenna array called RFocus. The antennas, which could be applied in sheets like wallpaper, are designed to be incorporated into office spaces and factories. Radios that broadcast signals could then become smaller and less power intensive.

After years of promises about a physical wall stretching along the United States-Mexico border, president Donald Trump declared a state of emergency last week in an attempt to secure wall funding in spite of Congressional opposition. But physical barriers alone have always been both ineffective and expensive. And the constant debate around that singular aspect has distracted from a much more pressing issue: how the US can expand its use of technology for screening and enforcement at the border without overstepping already strained privacy rights. Border security technologies, like surveillance drones and biometric identity schemes, received funding in Congress's most recent spending bill as an alternative to Trump's physical wall. But privacy advocates have long argued that a "smart wall," often called a "smart fence," can pose real threats to human rights not just at checkpoints and processing facilities, but for anyone within the 100-mile-wide "border zone" in which US Customs and Border Protection has jurisdiction. "The way that this debate has been weaponized has really shut down a big portion of the conversation that we should be having," says Evan Greer, deputy director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future.