Opinion: Cartel Clickbait

El Armadillo for Borderland Beat

I’ve been studying Mexican drug cartels since 2018, and one of the most persistent issues I’ve seen is the overwhelming amount of misinformation and disinformation that spreads whenever cartels enter the mainstream spotlight. The result is a distorted, often cartoonish understanding of how these organizations actually operate.

A perfect example is a YouTube Short posted by Barstool Chicago—a branch of the Barstool Sports media brand—that has racked up over 9 million views, 300,000 likes, and 19,000 comments. The title? "The Sinaloa Cartel has an army of 100,000 soldiers." The video opens with a shot of the infamous CJNG convoy video, because obviously, and goes on to use Ovidio Guzmán’s release during the first Culiacanazo as its main reference point.

To anyone familiar with the Mexican drug war, the title alone is enough to make you groan.

"The" "Sinaloa Cartel" has an "army" of 100,000 "soldiers." 

Every part of that sentence deserves scrutiny.

What Sinaloa Cartel? Certainly they mean the federation, but which faction—Los Chapitos? Los Mayos? Or are they citing some outdated figure from when Chapo, Mayo, and the Beltrán Leyva brothers were still united? Well in the context of Culiacanazo, they must mean Los Chapitos.

But "army"? Are we talking about professionally trained, full-time combatants? 100,000 of them? The Chapitos have an army bigger than Canada's?

I know it may sound pretentious and pedantic, but it’s deserved. It’s not just a YouTube short, this is the kind of content that shapes public perception. And when the narratives are this lazy, the consequences go beyond misinformation. They distort the way people understand a conflict that has already been flattened by years of oversimplification.

Wikipedia cites the same 100,000 figure on its page about the Mexican Drug War—but they attribute it to the combined strength of all cartels in Mexico.

The America First Policy Institute, a think tank stacked with former Trump officials, many of whom are now back in the White House, also uses this number in their 2023 “An America First Approach to Defeat the Cartels.” It’s a policy doc that proposes using severe tariffs as leverage against Mexico, among other things. They claim the Sinaloa Cartel has 100,000 members. 

So where is everyone getting this 100,000 figure from?

The 100,000 figure comes from a single anonymous U.S. defense official quoted in The Washington Times, with no report, methodology, or breakdown to back it up. It’s a headline-ready soundbite, not a serious estimate.

What does “foot soldier” even mean in this context? Are we talking about Sicarios? Lookouts? Bodyguards? Just throwing out a round number like that without explaining who counts is deliberately vague and deliberately dramatic.

It also came out in 2009, at the peak of Calderón’s militarized drug war and during a time when the U.S. and Mexico were ramping up cooperation under the Mérida Initiative. Framing cartels as narco-armies with tens of thousands of troops helped justify foreign aid, militarization, and policy decisions. That context matters.

And even if we entertain the number, modern research doesn’t support it. A 2023 peer-reviewed study by Prieto-Curiel et al. estimates that all cartels combined across Mexico have between 160,000 and 185,000 members—including everyone from shooters to accountants. If Sinaloa and the Zetas alone had 100,000 in 2009, you’d expect cartel ranks to be well into the hundreds of thousands today. They’re not.

In 2023, DEA Administrator Anne Milgram testified that the agency estimates the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel have over 45,000 members, associates, facilitators, and brokers operating across roughly 100 countries. Again, that number includes far more than just “soldiers". Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador pushed back on the claim. 

During the 2019 Culiacanazo, Government estimates put the number of armed men deployed by the Chapitos in Culiacán at 700–800. This was in Sinaloa’s capital city, the organization’s heartland.

In February 2024, Nick Sortor, a popular right-wing influencer with 900,000+ followers on X, tweeted (then deleted):

“BREAKING: The Mexican Senate has just APPROVED the entry of U.S. special forces to take on the cartels. FINALLY! Trump has designated the cartels as ‘foreign terrorist organizations’ and they’re about to PAY for the American lives they’ve taken.”

That tweet racked up views fast. Then Elon Musk quote-tweeted it, adding: “LFG 🔥🔥.”

Except it was completely false.

Journalist Ioan Grillo stepped in with a correction:

“Elon bro — this tweet is bullshit. The Mexican Senate totally did not approve for U.S. special forces to come into Mexico and fight cartels. They allowed them to train Mexican soldiers, which they have been doing for years. Anybody who knows anything about this knows it's BS.”

The original tweet was fact checked by X's community note feature. Sortor deleted it. But Elon’s tweet is still up.

And the pattern kept going.

Also in February, Benny Johnson, another influencer with 3.6 million followers, posted:

“🚨BREAKING: Mexican authorities have captured and detained the leader of Cartel del Noreste, ‘El Ricky.’”

Another viral hit. Another distortion.

Grillo again:

“The arrested Mexican trafficker ‘El Ricky’ was an underboss in the Northeast Cartel — not the top leader or one of the most well-known drug lords in Mexico. It might coincide with Trump pressure. But these kinds of arrests also happen a lot.”

And most people will never see the correction. Benny’s tweet got over 3 million views and 90,000 likes. 

These kinds of posts become even more dangerous when you consider who’s reading them.

Musk, who now holds an influential role in the administration, gets much of his information through X. And when Trump formally designated cartels as FTOs, Elon tweeted:

“That means they’re eligible for drone strikes.”

According to a senior Pentagon official quoted this month, that is not the case. 

As the U.S. and Mexican governments continue to take action against the cartels—through policy shifts, enforcement strategies, and cross-border cooperation, we’ll likely keep seeing these kinds of moments: viral claims, inflated numbers, and oversimplified narratives. It’s a reminder that lawmakers and officials, just like the public, are not immune to misinformation. And as these issues move further into the political spotlight, it becomes even more important to keep the conversation grounded in facts.

Every reporter/analyst/researcher—professional or volunteer—who covers crime in Mexico is bound to get things wrong at times. That’s the nature of reporting on clandestine networks: when stories break, verifiable information is often scarce or unavailable. On top of that, these criminal organizations actively engage in information warfare, deliberately muddying the waters to confuse law enforcement, rivals, and the media alike. Still, those who work within this space, despite the challenges, are far closer to the truth than the sensationalized narratives we often see from the outside.

This isn’t a call for complacency. The cartels are a real and dangerous threat. More action, diplomatic, economic, and yes, even military, might be necessary. But action based on viral myths, wild numbers, or influencer fantasies isn’t just useless—it’s reckless.

The drug war is a decades-long, transnational conflict tangled in a web of rival factions, street gangs, corrupt officials, crooked border agents, bought-off cops, new presidents on both sides of the border, American demand, Colombian supply—you name it. 

It’s a mess. The last thing it needs is clueless content creators reducing it to clickbait and feeding the public cartoon versions of reality.