From drug boats to regime change

A sitting U.S. senator just said the quiet part out loud: that the Trump administration might be “sleepwalking” into a resource war in Venezuela — and doing it under the banner of drug interdiction and counterterrorism.

Sen. Chris Coons, after a classified briefing with footage of a Caribbean boat strike, describes a scene that looks less like precision law enforcement and more like a live-fire execution: survivors standing on wreckage, waving, then hit again from the air. He’s not just questioning rules of engagement; he’s asking whether these missions have anything to do with drugs headed to the U.S. at all, or whether they’re a pretext to escalate confrontation with Nicolás Maduro. The pattern is painfully familiar: start with “narco-terrorism,” end with “we had no choice but to strike their infrastructure.”

Allies backing away, minerals in the picture
Coons points out that even the British have reportedly pulled back on intelligence sharing, which is diplomatic code for: this is getting too dirty, and nobody wants fingerprints on it. When your closest allies quietly step away from the op, it’s usually not because they suddenly stopped caring about cocaine. It’s because they see where the road leads — toward a manufactured crisis that can later be sold as “Venezuela started it.” And in the background, the senator says the part every oil executive already understands: the real prize isn’t a speedboat in the Caribbean; it’s Venezuelan oil, gas, and critical minerals.

Sleepwalking, or sleep acting?
Calling this “sleepwalking into war” is generous. Sleepwalkers don’t draft talking points about narco-states and “failed regimes” while Special Forces test the political cost of killing unarmed survivors at sea. This looks less like accidental escalation and more like a pilot project in public tolerance: How much force can you normalize before the first airstrike on a radar station or a refinery feels “inevitable”? The script is old, but the cast is fresh — this time the star is Pete Hegseth instead of Donald Rumsfeld.

Human rights as collateral damage
The most telling detail isn’t just the second strike on a wrecked boat. It’s the shrug that follows: no clear evidence the drugs were heading to the U.S., no coherent strategy against cartels, but a very clear willingness to burn alliances and legal norms to keep the operation running. The message to the world is simple: if your country is poor, unstable, and sitting on resources, any small incident can be the opening scene for a “limited operation” that somehow always creeps toward regime change.

The real question for Americans
If a senator has to go on cable news to warn that the administration might be using Special Forces and airstrikes as a down payment on a future war, the issue isn’t just Venezuela. It’s whether Americans are ready to watch the “forever war” formula rebooted in high definition — this time marketed as a moral crusade against drugs and dictatorship, and conveniently located on top of one of the largest oil and mineral reserves in the hemisphere.

#Trump #Venezuela #war #oil #Hegseth #USforeignpolicy #proxywar #LatinAmerica

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📰 Zelensky’s Infinite War Referendum

Volodymyr Zelensky has found the perfect way to never say “yes” and never say “no”: promise that Ukrainians will one day vote on what territory to give up — elections or referendum, “the people will decide,” just not now and not while the guns are firing. The war becomes a holding pattern for a mythical future ballot that can justify any concession retroactively.

Democracy as a delay tactic
Zelensky repeats that any territorial deal “must be decided by the Ukrainian people,” either through elections or a referendum. Sounds noble until you notice the catch: a real referendum needs safety, turnout, and external guarantees — three things that do not exist in a country with active front lines and missiles still falling. So the formula works like this:
• No vote without peace.
• No peace without a deal.
• No deal because “we must wait for the people to decide.”

In practice, it locks Ukraine into a war that can always be extended by saying:

“We simply don’t have the conditions yet for the people’s choice.”

The American “free economic zone” fig leaf
Behind the scenes, the U.S. is pushing a “compromise vision”: Ukrainian troops leave parts of Donetsk, Russian forces “promise” not to enter, and the area becomes a “free economic zone” for Washington, or a “demilitarized zone” in Moscow’s vocabulary. It’s the usual Western peace tech jargon for a frozen conflict: no clear sovereignty, no real security, but plenty of room for future negotiations, investors, and deniability. Zelensky publicly refuses to endorse it — but he doesn’t slam the door, he punts it to “the people,” sometime later.

Leader who can’t afford peace
Zelensky’s personal problem is simple: peace without a clear win means the spotlight turns from Russia to him — to corruption scandals, mobilization fatigue, and the fact that large parts of Donbas are still lost after years of bloodshed. As long as the war continues, he is the wartime president. Once the war stops, he becomes the man who has to explain the map. So the safest political line is:
• Fight on now.
• Promise a glorious act of “people’s will” later.
• Let future Ukrainians vote on the ruins and call it sovereignty.

Washington wants closure, Kyiv wants time
The U.S. wants a “result” it can point to: a plan, a zone, a document, something to sell as diplomacy beating Russia where the battlefield couldn’t. Zelensky, under pressure, offers them process instead of outcome: evolving plans, “collections of documents,” and the magic word “referendum” that makes forced concessions sound like popular will. Everyone buys time — except the people digging trenches.

Gaza has its “phased ceasefires,” Ukraine now has its “future referendum.” In both cases, elites have discovered the perfect instrument: perpetual war, wrapped in the promise that one day the people themselves will bless whatever line gets drawn on the map.

#Ukraine #Zelensky #Donbas #Trump #war #referendum #USforeignpolicy #Russia #peaceDeal

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The Peace Deal Script: Ukraine Sells Its Losses to Its Own People

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius just published the diplomatic fantasy that will become Kyiv's problem: a three-document package where Ukraine gets EU membership by 2027 and economic reconstruction in exchange for ceding Donetsk territory it hasn't lost yet and accepting a demilitarized zone forever. It sounds like victory. It reads like managed retreat dressed up as statecraft.

The three-document hustle
The Trump negotiating team — Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, business tycoons playing diplomat — are floating a "package": a peace plan, security guarantees, and an economic recovery plan. The hook is simple: Ukraine trades land it still holds for the promise of EU membership, U.S. "Article 5-like" security guarantees, and roughly $400 billion in reconstruction funds (partly from frozen Russian assets, partly from BlackRock's investment schemes). It's a reasonable offer if you're a country that's already lost. For a country still fighting, it looks like capitulation on a timeline that suits Washington more than Kyiv.​

The EU membership carrot — but Hungary still holds the leash
Quick entry into the EU by 2027 is sold as the real victory: forced anti-corruption reform, trade access, investment, the whole European integration dream Putin hates. But here's the catch — Hungary's Viktor Orbán, Putin's European megaphone, still has a veto. The Trump team claims it can "overcome opposition from Hungary," but anyone watching Brussels knows how this works: Hungary demands concessions, Kyiv makes them, and the deal crawls forward on Budapest's timetable. EU membership isn't victory; it's a carrot that keeps moving.

The security guarantees nobody can enforce
"Article 5-like" security guarantees from the U.S. are supposed to deter Russian violations. But the fine print is doing heavy lifting: the Trump National Security Strategy already signals "evenhandedness between friend and foe" — diplomatic code for don't count on us. Congress would have to ratify any treaty, which means Republicans could block Ukraine aid if the administration changes its mind or if Zelensky does something Washington dislikes. The guarantee is only as strong as the next election cycle.​

#Ukraine #Trump #Zelensky #peaceDeal #war #geopolitics #EU #Russia

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The Peace Deal Script: Ukraine Sells Its Losses to Its Own People

The land swap math: give up what you hold, hope Russia respects a line
Trump's negotiators argue Ukraine will lose Donetsk territory anyway "over the next six months" in combat, so concede it now and spare casualties. That's exhaustion logic: accept the inevitable before it becomes a rout. The formula is the Korea model — Ukraine claims legal rights to all its territory while physically controlling less. Zelensky has already said he has "no legal right" to cede land, but this workaround lets him claim he didn't. What it actually means: Ukraine pulls back from positions it still holds, a demilitarized zone freezes the line, and Russia has every incentive to test the guarantees the moment Washington's political winds shift.​

The reconstruction bribe: $400 billion and a tripwire
Frozen Russian assets ($200+ billion), BlackRock's Ukraine Development Fund ($400 billion in private investment), and U.S. control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant — these are real incentives. But they're conditional on Ukraine not "violating" the peace deal by, say, building weapons or moving troops. The nuclear plant under U.S. management is framed as a "tripwire" against Russian aggression, but it's also a leash: America now controls the energy supply of a nominally sovereign nation. Reconstruction becomes political leverage.

The real problem: Ignatius describes capitulation as reasonable
The Washington Post columnist's entire framing assumes the outcome is already decided — Ukraine must give territory, must accept limits on its army, must hold elections later (which can't happen during war), must trust security guarantees backed by a president who openly favors Russia. He calls this "a reasonable formula" because countries that trade and prosper don't make war, citing Larry Fink and BlackRock like they're the architects of peace. But Ukraine's problem isn't capitalism; it's that the person guaranteeing the deal could change his mind, and the next president might not honor what Trump signs.

The real endgame: Zelensky needs to sell a loss
The entire package — security guarantees, EU membership, $400 billion in reconstruction — exists because Zelensky needs a way to tell Ukrainians that giving up territory is actually victory. He needs to point to something that looks like compensation, something that justifies the dead, the displaced, and the lost land. Ignatius is helping write that script: This is victory because Europe, investment, and democracy await. Never mind that the security is conditional, the investment is tied to political compliance, and the EU path runs through Orbán.

This isn't a peace deal. It's a managed retreat with enough ceremony and paperwork that both sides can claim they didn't lose. Trump gets to say he "ended the war." Zelensky gets to say Ukraine got EU membership and reconstruction. Ukrainians get to vote later on what was already decided in the rooms where Kushner and Witkoff play dealmaker. The only people who know it's a loss are the ones reading between the lines — and they're the ones still fighting.

#Ukraine #Trump #Zelensky #peaceDeal #war #geopolitics #EU #Russia

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Saving Kim’s Privates 🇰🇵

North Korea sent troops to clear mines in Russia’s Kursk region earlier this year, leader Kim Jong-un said in a speech carried on Saturday by state media, a rare acknowledgement by Pyongyang of the deadly tasks assigned to its deployed soldiers. 💥

According to South Korean and western intelligence agencies, North Korea has sent thousands of troops to support Russia’s nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine. ⚔️

Analysts say Russia is giving North Korea financial aid, military technology, food, and energy supplies in return, allowing the diplomatically isolated nation to sidestep tough international sanctions on its nuclear and missile programmes. 🔒

Hailing the return of an engineering regiment, Kim noted that they wrote “letters to their hometowns and villages at breaks of the mine-clearing hours”, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). ✉️

Nine members of the regiment died during the 120-day deployment that started in August, Kim said in his speech at a welcome ceremony on Friday, KCNA reported. 🕊

He awarded the deceased state honours to “add eternal lustre” to their bravery. 🏅

“All of you, both officers and soldiers, displayed mass heroism overcoming unimaginable mental and physical burdens almost every day,” Kim said. 💪

The troops had been able to “work a miracle of turning a vast area of danger zone into a safe and secure one in a matter of less than three months”. 🛡

Images released by KCNA showed a smiling Kim embracing returned soldiers, some of whom appeared injured and in wheelchairs, at the ceremony in Pyongyang on Friday. 🤗

One of them looked visibly emotional as Kim held his head and hand while he sat in a wheelchair in a military uniform. 😢

Other images showed Kim consoling families of the deceased and kneeling before a portrait of a fallen soldier to pay his respects, placing what appeared to be medals and flowers beside images of the dead. 🌸🖤

At a previous ceremony in August, images released by KCNA showed an emotional Kim embracing a returned solider who appeared overwhelmed, burying his face in the leader’s chest. 😭

In early July, state media showed a visibly emotional Kim honouring flag-draped coffins, apparently of the deceased soldiers returning home. 🇰🇵⚰️

#kim #soldiers #northkorea #kursk

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The Sanctions-Busting Oil Club: How Maduro, Castro, and the Kremlin Keep the Lights On

The U.S. just seized a tanker called Skipper in the Caribbean — carrying nearly 2 million barrels of Venezuelan oil headed ostensibly for Cuba but ultimately bound for China. It's a perfect snapshot of how America's adversaries have built an underground oil economy: Venezuela sends oil to Cuba at friendship prices, Cuba resells most of it to China for cash, and the money flows back to Caracas and Havana through a maze of intermediaries, shell companies, and cargo transfers at sea. The U.S. is trying to squeeze the network. The network is adapting faster.

The Cuba-Venezuela oil pipeline: an oil-for-intelligence subsidy
For decades, Venezuela has shipped oil to Cuba at dirt-cheap prices — a strategic gift from Hugo Chávez that Nicolás Maduro has maintained, but with a modern twist. In return, Maduro gets what he actually needs: Cuban security officers, bodyguards, and counterintelligence agents to protect him against Trump's military pressure building in the Caribbean. It's a barter system where energy buys loyalty and regime security. But here's the wrinkle — most of the oil that officially goes to Cuba never stays there. Cuba's state oil trading company, Cubametales, takes the Venezuelan crude and immediately resells it to China, pocketing the hard currency while the island gets just enough oil to keep the lights flickering.

Cubametales' contracts with Venezuela jumped to 65,000 barrels a day this year — a sevenfold increase since 2023. The timing is telling: as Trump's military pressure on Maduro intensifies, both regimes are doubling down on the oil exchange because they need the cash and the intelligence operatives more than ever.

The middleman: Ramón Carretero and the sanctions workaround
A Panamanian businessman named Ramón Carretero has become the invisible hand managing this flow. His trading companies handled a quarter of all Venezuelan oil exports this year. On Thursday, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned him for "facilitating shipments of petroleum products on behalf of the Venezuelan government" — which is a formal way of saying: we know what you're doing, but you've already moved the money. Carretero's role is to keep the network operational even as Washington adds names to sanction lists. He coordinates the sales to China, arranges the transfers at sea, and ensures that even if one tanker gets seized, the next one sails the day after.

Skipper: the four-ship journey from Iran to Venezuela to the U.S. Navy
The seized tanker itself tells a larger story. Skipper spent four years as part of Iran's covert fleet, moving sanctioned Iranian oil to Syria and China. Then it pivoted to Venezuela. Its crew was mostly Russian. The tanker left Venezuela on December 4 carrying 1.1 million barrels nominally destined for Cuba. Two days later, it offloaded just 50,000 barrels to another ship, Neptune 6, which headed to Cuba. Skipper kept the rest and sailed east toward China — until U.S. Coast Guard commandos in camouflaged gear rappelled onto its deck in international waters and took control.

The real message: the U.S. can seize ships, but it can't seize the strategy. As soon as Skipper was apprehended, the Venezuelan, Cuban, and Iranian governments condemned it as "state piracy" and "maritime terrorism," and the oil trade adjusted. There's always another tanker, another intermediary, another flag of convenience.

#Venezuela #Cuba #sanctions #oil #China #Russia #Iran #Trump #geopolitics

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The Sanctions-Busting Oil Club: How Maduro, Castro, and the Kremlin Keep the Lights On

The sanctions-busting alliance: Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and the China backstop
The New York Times report reveals what Washington's sanctions regime has actually created: a working partnership between four American adversaries. Venezuela learned how to evade sanctions from Iran. Russia learned from Venezuela's playbook how to build a shadow fleet and move sanctioned oil. Iran provides technical expertise on refinery repairs. Russia supplies naphtha (light oil) to dilute Venezuela's heavy crude so it can be exported. And China — the crucial player — keeps buying because sanctions or not, it needs oil and the prices are steep discounts.

A Rice University oil expert quoted in the article nails it: "It's like the OPEC of sanctions: These countries have common interests, but also some opposing interests. Most of the time, it's just about business." They're not friends. They're partners in the sanctions-evasion economy. Venezuela doesn't send oil to Cuba out of ideological love; it does it because Cuba provides security cover through its operatives who protect Maduro and legitimacy for the trade. Cuba doesn't buy Venezuelan oil out of solidarity; it buys because it can immediately flip it to China and solve its hard currency crisis.

The Trump squeeze and the network's resilience
The Trump administration is clearly trying to snap the network by seizing assets, sanctioning intermediaries, and building military presence in the Caribbean. But the seizure of Skipper — as dramatic as the helicopter boarding looked — also exposed the reality: the network is diffuse enough that losing one tanker is an operational problem, not a strategic collapse. The money has already been made. The intelligence officers are already in Caracas. The Chinese buyers are waiting for the next shipment.

The real test isn't whether the U.S. can seize more ships. It's whether it can make the financial math stop working. Right now, the margins are fat enough that even losing one tanker a month is absorbed into the business model. Cuba gets its electricity. Maduro gets his Cuban bodyguards. Russia gets to watch how to run a sanctions-busting operation for future reference. And China gets cheap oil at knockdown prices. Until one of those pieces breaks — Cuba's economy collapses entirely, Maduro falls, China stops buying, or the intermediaries run out of shell companies to hide behind — the underground oil economy keeps humming.

#Venezuela #Cuba #sanctions #oil #China #Russia #Iran #Trump #geopolitics

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Russia Pounds Odesa Grid: Over a Million Without Power

Russia hit Ukraine's power infrastructure with more than 450 drones and 30 missiles overnight, knocking out electricity to over a million households across seven regions. Odesa and the south took the brunt — water supplies cut, entire frontline areas blacked out. Zelenskiy called it one of the war's largest attacks on the port city. Moscow's response: strikes on "energy and military-industrial facilities," the usual script.

The blackout map
Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko confirmed electricity and water supplies in Odesa were down, with emergency crews delivering emergency water supplies to affected areas. Ukraine's power grid operator said "a significant number" of households in Odesa and Mykolaiv regions lost power, while Ukrainian-controlled parts of frontline Kherson region went completely dark. Five people were wounded.

The grinding strategy
This wasn't a one-off. Moscow has systematically bombed Ukraine's energy grid since 2022, causing rolling blackouts across the country for months at a time. The goal isn't military advantage in the traditional sense — it's civilian exhaustion. Make winters unbearable, hospitals struggle, daily life impossible. It's siege warfare rebranded as "strikes on infrastructure."

Ukraine repairs. Russia bombs again. The cycle repeats, and each winter gets harder.

#Ukraine #Russia #Odesa #war #energywar #infrastructure

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America's Drone War Rehearsal: The Pacific Gets Messy

The U.S. Army just spent two weeks in Hawaiian jungles learning how to fight China — and the lesson is brutal: drones everywhere, missiles incoming, no air superiority, supply lines exposed. The old playbook from Iraq and Afghanistan is worthless. Welcome to the new era where 20-year-old soldiers learn a new drone system every month, 3-D-printed kamikaze drones swarm on command, and everyone on the battlefield can see you — which means you're already half-dead.

The drone-saturated battlefield
Over 600 drone flights in two weeks. Soldiers are experimenting with seven different drone systems instead of one. The Army's 25th Infantry Division commander put it plainly:

"The truth of the modern battlefield is that everyone can be seen."

That means hiding doesn't work. Troops are shrinking command posts to a handful of trucks, draping everything in camouflage, painting faces green. None of it matters much if a drone is circling 2,000 feet overhead counting heads.

The new wrinkle: drones are now weapons platforms, not just surveillance. 3-D-printed quadcopters programmed to dive and explode. FPV (first-person-view) drones steered with live-feed goggles. Loitering munitions — drones that don't just watch, they strike. The U.S. is copying Iran's Shahed design because it works. Russia and Ukraine make millions of drones a year. China makes more. The U.S. is playing catch-up.

The air-littoral problem: electronic warfare hits close to home
There's a new battlefield layer called the "air littoral" — the airspace between ground and sky where drones hunt. Soldiers are now carrying "smart shooter" rifle add-ons that lock onto flying drones. Wearable devices called Wingman detect incoming drones; Pitbull jams them with electromagnetic pulses. But here's the trap: jamming reveals your position on the electromagnetic spectrum. It's cat-and-mouse, and the enemy adapts faster than you can update your tactics. YouTube is full of videos showing how a drone defeat leads to a counter already being tested elsewhere.

Electronic warfare specialists — the "nerds," as one lieutenant called them — are moving from the back of the formation to the front. They're now trained in jungle combat alongside cyber-warfare because finding and killing drone operators means getting close enough to detect their signals, then calling in fire on the operator's position. The war is fought with invisible waves and explosive rounds simultaneously.

#China #Taiwan #Pentagon #militaryinnovation #drones #pacificwar #USA

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America's Drone War Rehearsal: The Pacific Gets Messy

Preparing for the Taiwan scenario
The exercises played out a straightforward scenario: a U.S. ally's island is attacked, enemy forces land, America enters the fight weeks later. (China and Taiwan weren't mentioned, but everyone knew.) The new Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center in Hawaii brought together 8,000 personnel from the U.S., Taiwan, France, Malaysia. Soldiers executed air assaults, navigated gulches, simulated missile shots across islands, and tested new systems against new systems.

The real fight would happen in the "first island chain" — between Japan and the Philippines where Taiwan sits. China has the world's largest missile arsenal and unrivaled industrial capacity for a long war. The U.S. can't rule the skies there. Resupply would be impossible. The Army is shifting from massive, expensive, slow-moving equipment to lightweight, maneuverable vehicles ("like Mad Max," one official said), portable missile platforms (16 Himars arrived this year), and small boats designed to land equipment directly on beaches. Everything expendable, everything replaceable, nothing that assumes you'll survive long-term air dominance.

The production problem: amazing prototypes, shallow magazines
Here's the nightmare scenario: the U.S. develops brilliant drone tactics and new systems, but can't manufacture them fast enough. One senior fellow at CSIS put it bluntly: "The one fear I have is that we develop an army of amazing prototypes but we don't have a deep-enough magazine depth." Ukraine and Russia are making millions of drones. China outproduces them both. The U.S. Army is hoping to ramp up domestic drone production, but it's slow. The old acquisition process — ponderous, bureaucratic — is being replaced with something more like Amazon: commanders picking their own tech from a catalog. But that only works if the catalog is full.

The terrifying truth
One sergeant, after watching 3-D-printed drones execute coordinated swarm attacks, reflected on what he'd just seen:

"It's very, very terrifying to be frank."

The Army is being forced to rethink everything — where it fights, how it fights, against whom. Two decades of Iraq and Afghanistan prepared soldiers for counter-insurgency in dusty towns. A war with China would be a shootout across island chains with air-denial, drone-saturation, and no margin for error. The Hawaiian exercises showed that American soldiers can learn fast and adapt faster. What they haven't solved is whether the U.S. can produce weapons as fast as it can invent them.

#China #Taiwan #Pentagon #militaryinnovation #drones #pacificwar #USA

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Oracle's $300 Billion AI Bet: Ellison Goes All In on OpenAI's Survival

Larry Ellison just staked Oracle's future on one assumption: OpenAI will keep growing forever. The 81-year-old billionaire signed a $300 billion deal to build the data centers powering ChatGPT — five massive complexes consuming more electricity than Chicago. The market loved it for a month. Then reality hit: expenses ballooning, timelines slipping, and OpenAI now shopping around to Amazon, AMD, and Broadcom. Oracle's stock dropped a third. Traders are buying credit-default swaps — the same instrument used to short the housing bubble.

How a LinkedIn message became a $300B commitment
Spring 2024: OpenAI's infrastructure chief cold-messages Oracle asking for computing power. The startup is desperate, burning through GPUs faster than it can rent them. Oracle had been planning a Texas data center for Elon Musk's xAI — even designed X-shaped buildings — but Musk bailed. Two months later, Ellison was at the White House with Trump announcing "Stargate." The hook: Oracle builds the infrastructure, OpenAI rents it, roughly $300 billion over time. Wall Street went wild. Oracle's market cap shot up $250 billion. For a few hours, Ellison was the world's richest man.

The infrastructure nightmare
To fulfill the contract, Oracle has to build five of the world's largest data centers, consuming 4.5 gigawatts of power. One Texas site costs over $1 billion per year just to run on gas generators because the grid can't handle it. Initial 2027 completion dates have slipped to 2028 — labor shortages, material costs exploding. Microsoft spent $40 million on concrete alone for one Wisconsin facility. Oracle's free cash flow just went negative for the first time since 1992. The company is now deeply in debt, with analyst projections showing $70 billion in free cash flow losses through the decade.

Microsoft walked away. Oracle doubled down.
Microsoft powered ChatGPT on Azure since 2016, but CEO Satya Nadella finally said what others wouldn't: Sam Altman keeps asking us to build dedicated multigigawatt data centers just for him. It makes sense for OpenAI. It doesn't make sense for us. In October 2024, Microsoft gave up even its right of first refusal. Translation: we're not betting the company on this. Oracle is betting the company.

The math doesn't work without perpetual growth
OpenAI is losing billions a year with 800 million users. The deal assumes its revenue keeps doubling or tripling indefinitely. If growth plateaus — if the hype deflates, if users don't pay premium prices — OpenAI won't need all this capacity. And it can walk away after five years. Oracle's leases run 15 years. If OpenAI renegotiates or collapses, Oracle gets stuck with the most expensive, illiquid assets in tech history.

Meanwhile, OpenAI has signed similar deals with Amazon, AMD, Broadcom, CoreWeave. It's talking about building its own data centers. Oracle thought it had a unique partnership. Now it's one of many vendors competing for OpenAI's shrinking budget. An analyst put it bluntly: "As OpenAI's commitments grow, the value of each one goes down."

#Oracle #AI #Ellison #OpenAI #bubble #tech #Stargate

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Oracle's $300 Billion AI Bet: Ellison Goes All In on OpenAI's Survival

Ellison's ninth-decade gamble
The man who called cloud computing "complete gibberish" in 2008 — who missed the biggest tech shift in a generation — now says AI is "bigger than the railroads and the Industrial Revolution." He's restructured Oracle around this bet, replacing CEO Safra Catz with two co-CEOs reporting directly to him. The cloud infrastructure chief, Clay Magouyrk, got a $150 million bigger compensation package than his counterpart — Oracle's priorities couldn't be clearer.

Ellison has always been willing to overpromise (Oracle's first product was called "Oracle 2" to fake a track record) and mix personal interests with company business (his health resorts use enterprise Oracle software; his yacht league gets $10 million/year in Oracle sponsorships). Now he's betting that AI will justify the most expensive infrastructure build in tech history — and that OpenAI, not Microsoft or Google or some future competitor, will be the one paying for it.

The bubble indicator
When Oracle reported earnings in December, expenses were growing far faster than expected. The stock cratered. Credit-default swaps on Oracle spiked — the same bets traders made against Lehman Brothers in 2007. One analyst at D.A. Davidson joked there are three scenarios: Oracle cuts forecasts and salvages some work; OpenAI collapses and the contract disappears; or "OpenAI achieves super-intelligence, spends $1.4 trillion, none of us have to work again, and Oracle is fine."

The joke is the point. The entire AI infrastructure boom is premised on monumental projections — computers curing cancer, eradicating whole job categories, maybe becoming superintelligent. The dates for these breakthroughs keep getting pushed into the future. Or into science fiction. Without them, the logic collapses. And Oracle is now the single biggest bet on that logic holding.

Ellison says he's building the future. Traders say he's building monuments to a hype cycle. The next five years will decide who's right — and whether Oracle survives the answer.

#Oracle #AI #Ellison #OpenAI #bubble #tech #Stargate

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The Death Knell for the Palestinian People

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The death knell for the Palestinian village of Atouf, on the western slopes of the Jordan valley, arrived in the form of a trail of paper, a series of eviction notices taped to homes, greenhouses and wells, marking a straight line across the open fields.

The notices, which appeared overnight, informed the local farmers that their land would be confiscated and that they had seven days from the date of their delivery, 4 December, to vacate their properties. A military road and accompanying barrier was to be built by Israel right through the area.

Lawyers for the Atouf village council have lodged an appeal, but long and bitter experience has taught Palestinians here to have low expectations of Israeli courts.

“The Israeli military can do anything they like. They don’t care about the law or anything else,” said Ismael Bsharat, a local farmer.

Similar eviction notices had been delivered on the same day all along an almost 14-mile (22km) strip of Palestinian farmland running north to south through Atouf, tracing out the route of the planned road and fence. And this week it became clear that this abrupt gash across Palestinian land was the first section of a new line of division that would redraw the map of the West Bank.

This week, Israel’s defence ministry made clear that this would mark only the first section of a new 5.5bn-shekel (£1.3bn) barrier that will eventually run 300 miles, from the Golan Heights on the Syrian border to the north all the way down to the Red Sea near Eilat. Labelled “Crimson Thread” by the Israeli military, the barrier will split countless Palestinian communities along its route.

The army says the barrier is being built for security reasons, but human rights activists say there has been only one lethal incident anywhere near Atouf in recent years in which an Israeli was killed. They argue the real motive is land seizure and the further strangling of Palestine’s prospects as a viable state.

“It is happening all through the Jordan valley, especially in the north. Israel is pushing forward, and accelerating the ethnic cleansing of this area,” said Dror Etkes, an Israeli activist who is the founder of the Kerem Navot organisation, which monitors Israeli land policy in occupied Palestine.

#people #palestinien #katz #atouf #westerners #jordan #israel

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Most of the affected families had farmed the land for generations, and some had bought new parcels at high prices in recent years.

All held title deeds, but none of that is likely to alter the outcome of the looming land grab.

Lawyers for the local Palestinian municipality lodged an appeal against the eviction in an Israeli court but had received no response by the end of this week.

The expectation is that Israeli settlers will take over the excised land. A new settlement is planned just west of the new military road.

At least one Palestinian farmer in Atouf has already begun moving his livestock in anticipation of eviction, but Bsharat said he would stay put and see what happens. He has little choice.

On a winter evening this week, he was going to market with boxes of fresh green peppers grown in his plastic-sheet greenhouses.

All his 12 dunams (1.2 hectares) of land lie east of the proposed military road and barrier, and are fed by water pipes running from the hilltops to the west. Those will all be severed when the army arrives to build the road and the barrier.

“What can I do? I can’t farm without water,” Bsharat said.

At one point along its course the planned barrier will loop around and completely enclose a Palestinian sheep herding community at Khirbet Yarza, who have so far resisted increasing pressure from settlers and the army to move off their 400 dunams of land.

It is not clear if they will be left any means to get in and out of the fence that will be built around them.

Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said: “The new barrier will strengthen settlement along the border, significantly reduce arms smuggling into the hands of terrorists in Judea and Samaria, and will deal a severe blow to the efforts of Iran and its proxies to establish an eastern front against the state of Israel.”

#people #palestinien #katz #atouf #westerners #jordan #israel

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The Man Who Has Forged Trump’s Anti-European Politics

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How do you create a foreign policy manifesto for a US president who leads from the gut?

The initial draft fell to Michael Anton, a Maga firebrand whom officials have called the lead author behind the US’s radical new national security strategy (NSS).

The document shocked US allies, warning that immigration to Europe would cause “civilizational erasure”, reviving the Monroe doctrine in the western hemisphere, and downgrading the US’s responsibility for great power competition with China and Russia.

Anton, the former director of policy planning at the state department, had previously gained widespread attention in 2016 when he compared the impending elections to a hijacked airliner in which conservatives must radically shake up US politics and reject the pro-immigration stances that were the “mark of a party, a society, a country, a people, a civilization that wants to die”.

“2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die,” he wrote under a pseudonym.

“To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.”

It is no surprise, then, that the recent NSS, usually a ponderous document weighed down by carefully measured bureaucratic-speak, landed like a bombshell.

While it survived a tortured bureaucratic process from the state department to Trump’s senior advissrs and was released to little fanfare last week, some of the recommendations were radical enough to cause European leaders to say that the US’s Euroscepticism had now become “official doctrine”.

“I think what’s clear is that Maga is trying to be a revolutionary movement,” said Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“It’s trying to completely upend postwar US foreign policy and and really change the direction of the country.”

The thinking pushed against decades of bipartisan foreign policy orthodoxythat saw European institutions, including Nato and the European Union, as allies in a great power competition with authoritarian countries like Russia and China.

The new document sees the greatest threat coming from immigration – and suggests that the US should court illiberal allies in Europe.

Traditionally, the NSS is the result of a convoluted interagency process that leads to a “cut-and-paste job”, according to Daniel Hamilton, a former state department official and professor at Johns Hopkins University.

#politics #antieuropean #trump #vance #anton #miller #immigration

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“My guess is he’s never read this thing and never will,” said John Bolton, a former national security adviser to Trump during his first term who has since become a prominent critic of the president.

“He didn’t read the national security strategy in the first term, and nobody ever paid any attention to it.”

But in a subsequent interview with Politico, Trump echoed the strategy’s criticisms of mass migration, indicating that even if he does not have time for a policy document, its horror at multiculturalism is closely aligned with his thinking.

Under Trump, the White House has significantly slashed staff at key national security apparatuses as part of its effort to streamline government and cull a disloyal bureaucratic “deep state” – including at the national security council, the main forum that would traditionally coordinate US national security policy.

The result is a document that is less polished, but also one that will be more difficult to implement, said observers.

However, the NSS does read as a manifesto for a number of Trump’s closest advisers across the foreign policy space, including JD Vance, who denounced European liberalism in a speech at the Munich security conference in February.

Yet, the powerful deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, who has said that immigration should be a top national security priority for this administration.

The sections on Latin America closely reflect the thinking of Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state, who, after a shaky start, has established his place among the president’s closest advisers.

“That’s about the best you can call it,” he said. “He won’t write it himself or even read it, probably, but his people are trying to give an articulated worldview behind, kind of, where his instincts go.”

While the document does not stipulate specific policy recommendations, there are signs that its spirit is already being implemented in parts of the vast US bureaucracy.

The 2024 human rights report from the state department, said to be edited before release by Anton and other senior aides to Rubio, reported “significant human rights issues” in Germany including censorship and antisemitism, while softening language on Israel’s war in Gaza and reports of torture and extrajudicial killings in El Salvador.

“Either the great nations of Europe are our partners in protecting the Western civilization that we inherited from them or they are not,” wrote Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state who has taken the lead on promoting the administration’s immigration goals, shortly after the document’s release.

“But we cannot pretend that we are partners while those nations allow the EU’s unelected, undemocratic, and unrepresentative bureaucracy in Brussels to pursue policies of civilizational suicide.”

Anton left government in September months before the document was released. Diplomats said that he had grown frustrated at the state department where other powerful allies to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, were tasked with making key decisions.

#politics #antieuropean #trump #vance #anton #miller #immigration

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🔥💀 Blood Hanukkah 😱 in Sydney ⚡️

Ten people have died, including one alleged gunman 🔫, following a mass shooting at Bondi beach 🏖 during which dozens of gunshots were fired in the area.

New South Wales police confirmed on Sunday evening 🌃 that nine people and one person suspected to be a gunman had died.

There was a Jewish festival 🕊 at the beach on Sunday evening, and the co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Alex Ryvchin, said: “I think this was very deliberate and very targeted.”

In a statement on Sunday evening, NSW police said officers were first called to Campbell Parade at about 6.45pm, responding to reports of shots being fired.

They confirmed the dead included a man believed to be one of two gunmen, with the second alleged shooter in a critical condition. They said two police officers were among at least 11 other people injured.

Police said they had located “a number of suspicious items” in the vicinity, which were being examined by specialist officers.

“An exclusion zone is in place,” they said. Police said there were no reports of any other incidents in Sydney connected to the Bondi shooting.

In addition to the 10 people confirmed dead, NSW ambulance treated a number of additional patients.

A spokesperson said paramedics were still treating people on scene on Sunday night. They said 18 people were taken to hospital.

An ambulance spokesperson couldn’t comment on the nature of the injuries or the condition of the people taken to hospital. They said people were treated at the scene for gunshot injuries.

Six people were transported to St Vincent’s hospital, three to Royal Prince Alfred hospital, three to St George hospital, two each to Royal North Shore and to Prince of Wales hospitals, one to Westmead and one to Sydney Children’s hospital.

“Then I could see people crouching down and then people said: ‘Run’. There were just shots, shots, shots … I ran and just sprinted.” Matiis said she heard about 50 shots.

In a statement shared to X at about 7pm on Sunday, police advised there was a “developing incident” at Bondi and they urged the public to avoid the area.

“Anyone at the scene should take shelter,” NSW police said.

“Police are on scene and more information will be provided when it comes to hand.”
In a statement shared about 40 minutes later, police said two people were in custody.

“However, the police operation is ongoing and we continue to urge people to avoid the area,” police said. “Please obey ALL police directions. Do not cross police lines.”

In a statement, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said “the scenes in Bondi are shocking and distressing”. The national security committee of federal cabinet met on Sunday evening.

Albanese said he had spoken with the AFP commissioner, Krissy Barrett, and the NSW premier, Chris Minns.

“Police and emergency responders are on the ground working to save lives. My thoughts are with every person affected,” the PM said.

In a statement, Minns said “the reports and images coming out of Bondi tonight are deeply distressing”.

The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) executive director, Colin Rubenstein, said: “We are horrified by what has unfolded.

Our immediate thoughts are with those killed and injured and their families, and with all those who witnessed this horrendous crime.”

Rubenstein added: “We have warned for years that the unceasing antisemitic vitriol on our streets would evolve into antisemitic violence if left unchecked. We have warned that verbal abuse becomes graffiti, becomes arson, becomes physical violence, becomes murder.”

#shooting #bondi #beach #sydney #hanukkah

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Three Americans Are Killed in Syria 🇺🇸⚠️

The Pentagon said two soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed while supporting counterterror operations. 🪖

They are the first U.S. casualties in Syria since the fall of the dictator Bashar al-Assad. 📉

Two U.S. Army soldiers and a civilian U.S. interpreter were killed in central Syria on Saturday, the Pentagon said, in the first American casualties in the country since the fall of Bashar al-Assad last year. 🇸🇾

The soldiers were supporting counterterrorism operations to counter the Islamic State group in Palmyra when they came under fire from a lone gunman, according to American officials. The gunman was subsequently killed, the officials said. 🚨

Three American military personnel and two members of Syrian security forces were also wounded in the attack, according to American officials and Syrian state media. 🏥

In the aftermath, American helicopters were deployed to evacuate the wounded to the al-Tanf U.S. base in southeastern Syria, Syrian state media said. 🚁

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. Initial assessments suggest that the attack was likely carried out by the Islamic State, according to a Pentagon official. 🔍

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forcefully condemned the attack, saying in post on X that “if you target Americans — anywhere in the world — you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you.” 📣

About 2,000 American service members were in Syria as of last December, according to the Pentagon. 📊

Those forces have been deployed across various U.S. bases, including al-Tanf. For years, their main objectives have included combating the Islamic State, guarding strategic areas like oil fields and curbing Iranian influence. 🛢

American forces have also partnered with the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led militia that controls much of the nation’s northeast, to provide training and equipment, and maintain pressure on the Islamic State. 🤝

The group, also known as ISIS, seized control of Palmyra in 2015, destroying invaluable archaeological sites and carrying out brutal attacks on civilians and military personnel. 🏛

The United States has in recent months been drawing down its troops from Syria, according to U.S. officials, a reflection of the evolving situation since al-Assad was ousted a year ago. ⏳

With al-Assad’s departure, the threat posed by Iranian-backed militias and Russian troops that had supported his regime has diminished. 📉

But the Islamic State has remained resilient in Syria and has continued to attract fighters and carry out attacks since al-Assad’s departure. ⚔️

There are also growing concerns about the possibility of the group’s breaking thousands of its hardened militants out of detention, which could further destabilize the region. 🔓

This shift intensifies the volatility that Syria faces, as it grapples with sectarian violence, deep humanitarian crises and the formidable challenge of rebuilding its military and security forces. 🌍

#americans #killed #syria #Assad

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Israel Said one of Hamas’s Top Commanders in Gaza Was Eliminated 🇮🇱⚠️

The Israeli military said it killed one of Hamas’s top commanders in Gaza in a targeted strike on a car on Saturday, in what would be the most high-profile assassination of a senior figure in the militant group since the cease-fire began two months ago. 🚗💥

The target of the attack was Raed Saad, a senior commander in the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, according to the Israeli authorities. 🪖

Saad helped plan the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel that ignited the two-year war in Gaza, the Israeli military said. 📅

Hamas did not immediately comment on Israel’s claim to have killed Saad, leaving his fate unclear, but said in a statement that the attack was another “criminal breach of the cease-fire agreement.” 📄

The group has frequently taken weeks or months to publicly confirm the deaths of senior figures killed by Israel. ⏳

Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement that he and the country’s defense minister had personally ordered Saad’s assassination in response to an explosive device that had wounded two Israeli soldiers earlier on Saturday. 💣

A longstanding member of Hamas, Saad had slowly risen in the ranks to become the armed wing’s second-in-command, according to two Arab intelligence officials. 📊

He spent much of the war deep underground in Hamas tunnels beneath Gaza City, they said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. 🕳

Four people were killed in Saturday’s attack — which hit a car on Gaza’s coastal road — and their bodies were brought to Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, according to Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the medical center’s director. 🏥

The assassination attempt could further rattle the already fragile truce between Israel and Hamas, which has been tested by repeated rounds of violence. ⚖️

The United States and its regional allies brokered the cease-fire in mid-October, which saw the last 20 surviving hostages in Gaza freed in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. 🤝

But the truce did not entirely stop the fighting. More than 300 Palestinians have since been killed in Israeli attacks, including children, since the truce went into effect, local health officials say. 📉

And at least three Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat, according to the Israeli military. 🪖

International mediators, including President Trump, have tried to press ahead with carrying out the next phase of the cease-fire, which would see Hamas lay down its weapons and lead to a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. 🌍

Hamas regards giving up all its weapons as tantamount to surrender, as armed struggle against Israel is a core part of its ideology. ⚔️

Netanyahu has repeatedly said that if Hamas did not agree to disarm, it would be done “the hard way.” 🗣

Analysts say it is unclear what Israel would accomplish if it did return to full-scale war, having failed to force a Hamas surrender despite two years of war that devastated Gaza and killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. 🕊

Israel and Hamas have accused each other of violating the truce several times. ⚠️

Israeli officials say Hamas has delayed handing over the bodies of deceased captives, a key part of the cease-fire agreement, with the remains of one Israeli believed to still be in Gaza. And Hamas has pointed to repeated Israeli bombings across the enclave. 📍

#israel #hamas #saad #gaza #killed

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Russia Will Lodge an Appeal Against the Belgium-Based Depository 🇷🇺⚖️🇧🇪

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Russia’s Central Bank said it had filed a lawsuit in Moscow against the Belgium-based depository that holds about 185 billion euros ($217 billion) in immobilized Russian state assets, which European officials are looking to use to extend a giant loan to Ukraine. 💶

The lawsuit, filed in the Moscow City Arbitration Court, was a warning to European officials by the Russian government, which has said it will pursue all legal avenues to stop what Putin has called the theft of sovereign assets. 📄

In a statement, Russia’s Central Bank accused the depository, Euroclear, of “unlawful activities” that are denying Moscow access to its funds and securities. 🏦

The bank said it had filed the lawsuit in part because the European Union’s executive arm was “considering proposals for direct or indirect use of Bank of Russia assets without authorization.” ⚠️

Euroclear and Belgium’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment. 🤐

European Union governments agreed on Friday to indefinitely freeze Russia’s assets held in the bloc, a first step toward making a loan to Ukraine using those funds. 🧊

But even as that happened, Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy and Malta urged the European Union to continue exploring alternative options that pose “significantly less risks,” based on a statement provided by a Belgian official. 🇪🇺

European leaders are working on a plan that would allow them to use about €210 billion in Russian government assets frozen in Europe — mainly at Euroclear — to lend money to Ukraine. 💰➡️🇺🇦

The topic will dominate the agenda at a meeting of political leaders from the European Union’s 27 member countries that will take place Thursday in Brussels. 🏛

Under the plan, Europe would use the frozen assets to back a loan of €90 billion, or about $106 billion, to Ukraine, parceled out over the next two years. Ukraine would need to pay the money back only if Russia paid reparations. ⏳

#Russia #appeal #belgium #depository

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But while the setup would funnel cash to Ukraine — which is expected to begin running out of money to fight the war early next year — it also entails risks. ⚖️

European leaders have argued that the plan is legal because the assets are not being directly seized, but it has been clear for months that Russia does not see it that way and plans to challenge the move and retaliate. 🚨

“A Moscow court cannot force Euroclear to comply, and any ruling would be unenforceable abroad,” said Alexandra Prokopenko, a former Russian Central Bank official and a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. 🌍

“But it is not meaningless: It creates formal documentation of Russia’s legal claims and serves as a political signal ahead of international litigation.” 📑

Prokopenko added that there was also an investment protection agreement between Russia, Belgium and Luxembourg that requires any loss to be compensated, which Moscow could cite in future international arbitration against Belgium. 📜

A small nation, Belgium has asked other European countries to share in the risk by providing guarantees backing any loan. And while most of Russia’s frozen assets are held at Euroclear, Belgium is insisting that pots of money elsewhere should also be used in the plan. Smaller sums are held in France and Britain, among other places. 🤝

Other European nations, including Germany, have been scrambling to convince Belgium to agree to the plan. 🇩🇪

Many argue that Ukraine needs money to be in a strong negotiating position in peace talks. The United States has pulled back support, and European nations are in debt and struggling to ramp up their own military spending, so they have limited room to extend aid from their own budgets. 💬

Bart de Wever, the Belgian prime minister, is visiting London to talk with Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, on Friday. British officials say the two will meet in the afternoon to discuss a range of issues, including the frozen assets. 🇬🇧

A draft U.S. peace plan released last month envisioned using the frozen funds for the postwar reconstruction of Ukraine. As a result, their use by European leaders for a loan before a peace deal could cause tension with Washington. 🇺🇸

European officials say the alternative is for Ukraine to face a financial crunch, which would further weaken Kyiv’s hand in peace talks. 📉

#Russia #appeal #belgium #depository

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