THWARTING MONEY LAUNDERING: HOW ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CAN ENHANCE FINANCIAL CRIME ENFORCEMENT

Artificial intelligence capabilities have increased exponentially in the last decade, affording terrorist and transnational criminal organizations new opportunities to inflict devastating public harm with greater anonymity. The quality of artificially generated text, images, and videos enable greater financial fraud and disinformation. Reactive investigations of these organizations are on the verge of being vastly outpaced by criminal organizations using artificial intelligence. Conversely, artificial intelligence represents a transformative tool for improving national security and delivering superior public services. Since nearly every crime has a financial aspect, prioritizing financial investigations is paramount for thwarting criminals using emerging technology. This thesis explores how U.S. law enforcement can leverage artificial intelligence to enhance transnational money laundering investigations. This study assessed emerging technology implementation by the foreign governments of Estonia and Dubai for best practices. Although Estonia and Dubai effectively introduced emerging technologies, Estonia’s higher level of ethical and privacy safeguards reflected its democratic values. This thesis ultimately concluded that U.S. law enforcement should incorporate a centralized digital infrastructure, use commercially available tools, and develop artificial intelligence specific to financial investigations to streamline strategies that will knock down criminal empires.