ISJ hears exclusively from Lina Kolesnikova, Senior Consultant and Michael Kolatchev, Principal, Rossnova Solutions, Belgium.
The progressive infrastructuralisation of border control, understood as the embedding of admission and exclusion functions within interconnected digital, financial and transport infrastructures, is transforming sovereign territorial security into a distributed architecture spanning digital identity systems, biometric databases, telecommunication networks, financial compliance infrastructures and privately operated platforms.
In the EU, for example, the Schengen regime increasingly relies not only on interoperable large-scale information systems and biometric verification technologies, but also on delegated enforcement through airlines, mobility providers and digital identity intermediaries performing pre-screening and access-control functions beyond the physical borderline.
Border governance thus shifts into infrastructural nodes that are operationally indispensable yet institutionally hybrid, while borderlines cease to function as simple lines on geographic maps.
This shift fundamentally reconfigures the structure of security risk. In sovereign territorial regimes, border authority was spatially concentrated and institutionally unified with decision-making anchored in identifiable sites where responsibility was formally centralised.
By contrast, distributed border regimes operate as interconnected socio-technical assemblages in which admission decisions are continuously enacted across dispersed infrastructures.
The contemporary border therefore functions as a system-of-systems whose stability depends on coordinated performance of heterogeneous technological and institutional components.
A clear example is the Schengen Information System (SIS), now the most widely used large-scale IT system for internal security in the Schengen area. Its more than 15 billion recorded accesses in 2024 underscore that border governance no longer relies primarily on isolated checkpoints, but on the stable functioning of a deeply integrated and continuously queried information infrastructure.
Rather than being exposed only to localised breaches, distributed border regimes are structurally vulnerable to systemic disruptions arising from interdependency, cyber-physical coupling, delegated authority and governance fragmentation.
Cascading failure dynamics
Distributed border control operates as a sequential processing chain comprising identity capture, database verification, risk scoring, authorisation and physical access.
Each stage depends on upstream validation and real-time data availability. A disruption at a single node – whether a database outage, network degradation or cyber-attack – may propagate downstream, suspending or distorting admission processes.
In tightly coupled systems designed to fail safely, that is, to fail closed, the inability to verify eligibility results in automatic denial.
A technical malfunction at the data layer thus materialises as a denial of mobility at the physical level. Telecommunications instability may interrupt watchlist updates or authorisation exchanges, generating bottlenecks or inconsistent enforcement across jurisdictions.
High interdependency, limited redundancy and weaknesses in error detection and correction amplify these cascading effects.
Sovereign authority is thereby operationally mediated by infrastructural reliability.
The availability and integrity of the infrastructures involved, whether state- or privately owned, become conditions of border control insofar as they determine its feasibility.
A concrete illustration occurred during the nationwide UK e-gates outage of 7 May 2024, when technical problems in the Home Office network disabled automated passport control and forced border authorities to revert to manual checks.
The case demonstrates how, in digitally mediated border regimes, failure at the data and network layer can rapidly translate into disruption at the physical point of admission.
Delegated enforcement and private infrastructures
First, both the probability and the impact of such systemic vulnerability increase with the delegation of border-related functions to private actors.
A paradigmatic example is the EU carrier liability regime, under which airlines face financial penalties for transporting passengers who lack the documentation required for border crossing.
In practice, carriers conduct pre-emptive verification at foreign airports, effectively enacting admission decisions through check-in systems and digital screening tools.
While this arrangement extends border control geographically, it also embeds it in commercially governed infrastructures.
In cases of technical ambiguity or system failure, precautionary exclusion is likely to prevail.
A denial of boarding by a private carrier thus becomes a de facto border decision without formal state adjudication.
The risk of misuse also increases, since these are private commercial systems rather than state-owned controls designed for that purpose.
A parallel dynamic is observable in financial compliance regimes. Banks and fintech platforms, operating under anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CTF) obligations, increasingly adopt de-risking strategies by restricting or terminating services to clients perceived as regulatory liabilities or simply because of a full or partial match with limited-detail records.
Although not formally border authorities, financial institutions thereby participate in mobility control by mediating access to payment systems, remittances and cross-border transactions.
For migrants, asylum seekers and individuals from sanctioned jurisdictions or mere foreigners, exclusion from financial services can function as a form of deterrence and infrastructural containment.
Both cases illustrate how delegated enforcement shifts border control from territorially bounded state decision-making to infrastructural gatekeeping.
In both aviation and finance, private actors operate under liability and compliance pressures that incentivise risk-averse exclusion.
Technical malfunction, database latency, partial-match policies or ambiguous documentation may trigger precautionary delay or denial of service.
In operationalising policy objectives, states both distribute costs to the private sector and become dependent on privately managed infrastructures.
Delegation thus redistributes operational capacity while diffusing accountability and concentrating systemic risk in private nodes not fully integrated into public crisis-governance structures.
Cyber-physical convergence
A second weakness arises from cyber-physical convergence. Physical mobility is contingent on digital authentication and on the availability and integrity of data.
The border is instantiated through interoperable databases, biometric identifiers and algorithmic assessments. Consequently, digital disruption produces immediate material effects in the physical world.
Cyber incidents affecting identity systems, biometric repositories or cross-border data exchanges, as well as intentional or unintentional misuse, can directly impede access to territory.
Data corruption or integrity breaches may generate false exclusions or erroneous admissions, with legal, economic and diplomatic implications.
Because these systems are interoperable across jurisdictions, vulnerabilities in one domain may cascade transnationally. In such configurations, infrastructural fragility becomes border insecurity by design.
Governance fragmentation
Distributed regimes are further characterised by governance fragmentation.
Border agencies, interior ministries, telecommunications operators, database administrators and private carriers operate under distinct regulatory frameworks and incident protocols.
In the event of systemic disruption, authority and coordination may become ambiguous. Responsibility for erroneous exclusion triggered by algorithmic misclassification or system unavailability is rarely straightforward.
Fragmentation affects not only operational response but also transparency, redress and, potentially, traceability.
When exclusion results from interactions between public databases and private compliance systems, accountability diffuses.
Appeals become more complex, reinforcing perceptions of arbitrariness.
Systemic vulnerability thus extends beyond technical fragility to questions of institutional legitimacy.
This erodes the societies’ trust in public services.
Risk topology of distributed borders
Taken together, cascading interdependencies, delegated authority, cyber-physical coupling and fragmented governance constitute a distinct risk topology.
Distributed border regimes expand surveillance reach and anticipatory capacity while simultaneously multiplying points of failure and increasing the density of interconnection.
Security amplification and vulnerability amplification thus proceed in parallel.
Resilience in such regimes cannot be reduced to the hardening of individual components.
Effective mitigation requires architectural resilience: redundancy across critical nodes, clearly defined public-private crisis-governance arrangements, interoperable incident protocols and mechanisms capable of sustaining legitimacy under conditions of disruption.
Two additional layers must be introduced, both of which may reduce the financial benefits of distributing costs to the private sector.
First, delegation expands complexity from a single system to the ensemble of interconnected systems that together form a system-of-systems.
Increased complexity entails slower and more costly development, quality assurance, monitoring, support and maintenance.
Second, the implementation of protection by design – particularly the protection of societies and individuals -becomes significantly more complex, creating greater scope for human inventiveness, error and misuse.
Infrastructuralisation has not merely displaced the border; it has transformed a line to be defended into a complex assemblage of lines and networks that must be stabilised.
The central challenge for contemporary security governance is therefore not only to control mobility, but also to manage the systemic vulnerabilities generated by the control architecture itself.
Infrastructural dependency and sovereign authority
Distributed border systems transform not only how control is exercised, but also the conditions under which decisions are produced.
In traditional settings, information gathering and decision-making were institutionally unified, allowing for a relatively direct link between knowledge and administrative judgment.
In distributed architectures, this link becomes mediated and increasingly dependent on complex technical systems.
Admission decisions rely on digital identity infrastructures, biometric databases and automated risk assessments, while the underlying data is produced and processed across interconnected platforms often operated by external, including private and foreign, actors.
In practice, public authority is exercised through these infrastructures.
This introduces a structural dependency.
When systems generate risk flags, fail to retrieve data or produce inconsistencies, frontline actors have limited capacity to override them.
Decisions are therefore shaped not only by legal frameworks, but also by system outputs and technical parameters such as data quality, update cycles and interoperability.
As a result, disruptions affect not only operations but the conditions of decision-making itself.
Interruptions in data flows can constrain or suspend the informational basis of authority, increasing the likelihood of inconsistent or discretionary outcomes and complicating redress.
Sovereign control is thus both extended and conditioned by infrastructure. While reach and anticipatory capacity increase, effective authority depends on the reliability and coordination of systems that are not under unified command.
Border governance consequently requires managing dependencies across digital infrastructures, algorithms and transnational data exchanges.
Ensuring sovereignty in this context hinges on maintaining data, system and infrastructural integrity across a heterogeneous ecosystem of actors.
