The US ignored Ukraine’s pleas to Russia, and now Iran has turned the US into Ukraine

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In recent years, something curious has happened in the military world: the most influential drones on the battlefield are not the most advanced, but some of the cheapest. Small devices with triangular wings and simple engines, inspired by Iranian designs, have ended up starring thousands of attacks in several conflicts and forcing entire armies to rethink how to defend their skies. Paradoxically, stopping them usually costs much more than making them. And the United States has realized it late. The war that changed the battle. we have been counting. The Russian invasion of Ukraine inaugurated a new phase in modern warfare marked by the massive use of cheap drones capable of overwhelm the defenses traditional aerials. Since 2022, Russian forces have launched tens of thousands of Shahed drones (of Iranian origin) against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, forcing kyiv to develop an improvised but increasingly sophisticated defense. This experience, acquired in extreme conditions and under constant bombing, has turned the country into the most advanced laboratory in the world to combat this type of weapons. What began as a desperate fight to protect their airspace ended generating new tacticselectronic warfare systems and interceptor drones specifically designed to destroy these low-cost loitering munitions. The weapon that changes the economy of war. The success of Shahed drones is based on brutally simple logic: its price. Each can cost between $20,000 and $50,000, a paltry figure compared to the systems designed to stop them. For years, Ukraine and other countries have been forced to use anti-aircraft missiles that can cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to shoot down a single drone. This asymmetry turns each interception into an economic defeateven when the target is destroyed. To solve the problem, Ukraine began to develop cheaper solutions: interceptor drones that pursue and attack the Shahed, mobile teams with machine guns, electronic jamming systems and surveillance networks adapted to detect these devices before they reach their objectives. The great strategic paradox. Here appears one of the most striking ironies of the current conflict. For years, Ukraine asked for more help to defend against Iranian drone attacks used by Russia and developed specific technology to combat them in view of the fact that no one (or few) paid attention to them. Even now we know who came to offer that experience and those systems to the United States in meetings held at the White House, where he presented proposals to create anti-drone defense networks in the Middle East. That offer was ignored at that time. Ironies of fate, months later, after the start of the war with Iran and the launch of thousands of drones against American bases and allies, Washington has been forced to knock on kyiv’s door and ask for help. In a sense, the conflict has reversed the roles: The most powerful military power in the world is now facing the same dilemma that Ukraine has been trying to solve for years, defending its positions from swarms of cheap drones that force it to spend fortunes to be neutralized. The world calls kyiv. This accumulated experience has turned Ukraine into a unexpectedly valuable partner for countries now suffering similar attacks. Governments in the Middle East, Europe and the United States have begun to request advice, technology and training to defend themselves against Iranian drones. Zelensky himself confirmed that his government has received multiple requests to share knowledge on interceptors, electronic warfare and air defense tactics adapted to this type of threat. kyiv has responded sending experts and systems to some US bases in the region as it tries to balance that aid with its own defensive needs against Russia. From laboratory to export power. The war has also transformed the Ukrainian defense industrial sector. Local companies produce now thousands of interceptor drones every month and have developed models capable of pursuing and destroying Shahed at a fraction of the cost of traditional missiles. Some manufacturers claim to be able manufacture tens of thousands of monthly units, which has aroused enormous international interest. Gulf countries, especially Saudi Arabiahave begun negotiations to acquire Ukrainian interceptors and technology, seeking more sustainable solutions than relying exclusively on extremely expensive Western anti-aircraft systems. A new global race: anti-drone defense. The rise of these technologies reflects a change unimaginable until recently in contemporary military logic. The great powers have discovered that systems designed to intercept ballistic missiles or fighter jets are not necessarily effective against swarms of cheap, mass-produced drones. In the Persian Gulf, Israel and the Arab states have had to spend large quantities of missiles Patriot, THAAD or Iron Dome to stop relatively cheap attacks. This dynamic has caused a global career to develop more economical solutions, from interceptor drones to automatic air defense systems capable of confronting massive threats. A global lesson. In short, what began as a regional war in Eastern Europe it’s over redefining the way many countries understand air defense. Ukraine, which for years fought almost alone against massive Iranian drone attacks operated by Russia, has unexpectedly become the world reference to combat this threat. The paradox is simple and obvious, because the technology and tactics developed by a country that was fighting to survive have become essential to protect some of the most advanced military powers on the planet. In the new drone war that extends from Europe to the Middle East, the experience accumulated in the skies over Ukraine has become one of the most valuable strategic assets of the moment. So much so that even has invested the papers with the United States. Image | ArmyInform, Lycksele-Nord, Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine In Xataka | The United Kingdom has opened the kamikaze drone that exploded at the European base. The surprise is capital: it is not from Iran, it is “made in Russia” In Xataka | Shahed drones are spreading terror in the Gulf. Ukraine has offered the solution and the price to pay has a name

Saudi Arabia’s ace in the hole to break the Iranian blockade in Hormuz

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Iran’s survival strategy in this war is based on a tactic of geopolitical suffocation: strangling the Strait of Hormuz to impose an unbearable economic cost on the West. However, while the financial market blindly speculates with express truces and the price of fuel follows its own dynamics at the pumps, the physical reality on the ground is about to change. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have a logistical “antidote” capable of rescuing up to 7 million of those barrels, radically changing the equation and breaking Iranian blackmail. The “antidote” in the desert. This lifeline was not improvised yesterday. Known as the East-West Pipeline (or Petroline), It began to be built in the 80s for fear that the war between Iran and Iraq will paralyze the Persian Gulf. According to Middle East Eye, It is a pharaonic artery of some 1,200 kilometers that winds through the Arabian desert, connecting the gigantic extraction fields in the east directly with the port terminal of Yanbu, bathed by the waters of the Red Sea. In this way, the crude oil can go out into the world without coming into the range of the Iranian missiles in Hormuz. As confirmed by the CEO of Saudi Aramco, Amin Nasser, in Financial Timesthe company is working around the clock to raise pumping to the pipeline’s maximum capacity: 7 million barrels per day. Before the crisis, only 2.8 million barrels circulated there. Nasser detailed that about 2 million barrels will remain to feed its refineries on the west coast, leaving the not inconsiderable figure of 5 million barrels per day ready for the global market. The machinery in motion. Saudi Arabia has stepped on the accelerator. “We should reach maximum capacity in a couple of days,” said the head of Aramco, according to statements collected by Reuters. If Riyadh manages to consolidate this route, the kingdom will be able to export close to 70% of its usual shipments. The energy analyst Javier Blas underlines in your column for Bloomberg that right now the critical thing is to look at the flow export outside of Hormuz, and not so much in wellhead production. And shipping data supports this frenetic activity: Bloomberg has detailed as an “armada” of at least 25 supertankers (known as VLCCs) have changed course and are sailing towards the port of Yanbu to load this lifesaving crude oil. Adding to this ball of oxygen is the effort of the United Arab Emirates. Through their Habshan-Fujairah pipeline, which also bypasses the dangerous strait to exit the Gulf of Oman, they are providing between 1.5 and 2 million additional barrels per day, according to the data of Wall Street Journal. The small print. However, as with any large-scale emergency logistics operation, there is no magic wand. Experts warn of several blind spots in this strategy: The port funnel: According to the agency Argus MediaAlthough the Saudi pipeline manages to transport 5 million barrels for export, the port of Yanbu has its own limits. Its nominal loading capacity is about 4.5 million barrels per day in two terminals, but market sources place the proven effective capacity closer to 4 million. The fuel crisis (distillates): As Arne Lohmann Rasmussen warns, analyst cited by Middle East Eyethe current problem goes beyond crude oil; It is a diesel and aviation fuel crisis. The pipeline East-West It transports crude oil, not refined products. This leaves markets such as Europe, which were highly dependent on Middle Eastern refineries (such as the gigantic Emirati Ruwais plant, recently hit by a drone). The Houthi threat and the collapse of the tanks: Moving the oil outlet to the Red Sea returns the spotlight to the Houthi rebels in Yemen. As Greg Priddy points outships loading in Yanbu bound for Asia will have to pass through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, exposing themselves to drone attacks. Added to this is that, faced with the inability to remove ships through Hormuz, the Gulf countries are filling their storage reserves to the limit, forcing Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq to drastically cut extraction from their wells, as it has progressed Bloomberg. Buying time in the “Battle of the pipelines”. Nobody in the oil industry deceives anyone. Aramco’s own CEO admitted the “catastrophic consequences” What would a prolongation of this scenario have for the world economy? As Blas concludesthese alternative pipelines do not replace the opening of the Strait of Hormuz permanently. Its main mission is another: to buy valuable time. If the Saudi-Emirati duo manages to get this enormous pipeline to spit millions of barrels into the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman, they will stop the panic at the Western pumps and take away Iran’s main negotiating asset. Far from the political and stock market noise, the resolution of this crisis is being fought in the logistical desert. Image | Aramco Xataka | Light and gas have become luxury items. Europe’s plan is to intervene in prices no matter what the cost

It’s a sign of where Google wants to go.

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Alphabet has just tied Sundar Pichai as CEO of the company with one of the more generous salary bonuses of the technology sector. No less than 692 million dollars in the next three years. The figure, without a doubt, draws attention, but what is truly revealing is not the amount of the bonus itself, but rather what variables its collection is conditioned on. Two of the most generous economic blocks depend directly on the value reached by Waymo, the autonomous taxisand Wing, its subsidiary delivery with drones. With this move, Alphabet has made clear in writing what its priorities are for the next three years. A bonus that reveals a strategy. He official document presented before the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), details how Alphabet will incentivize Pichai to develop the company’s strategy through 2029. In this document, Alphabet’s board of directors assures that “further incentivizing Mr. Pichai is in the best interest of Alphabet and its shareholders, and is designed to maximize long-term value for shareholders.” As usually happens in this type of bonuses for senior managers, Pichai’s compensation plan will materialize in the form of a series of share packages that are unlocked as the set objectives are achieved. The base salary of the CEO of Alphabet remains at two million dollars annually, a figure that has remained unchanged since 2020. In reality, he does not care too much since if it increases it will also your tax bill would increase. The important thing about the bonus is the bonus action packages, which are divided into three blocks. The first tranche, valued at $84 million in Alphabet shares, are the easiest to obtain since they are released month by month for three years and all Pichai has to do is remain in his position as CEO. The second block, worth $126 million (with two tranches of $63 million each), is linked to Alphabet’s stock market performance compared to the rest of the S&P 100 companies. This tranche can double if Google’s stock market value exceeds the board of directors’ estimates. Finally, the third block is that of the so-called Bet Performance Units: shares directly linked to the growth of Waymo and Wing, with a joint value of 175 million, but with the possibility of doubling their value to 350 million dollars if estimates are exceeded. Waymo and Wing: what they are and why they matter. Waymo is the company Alphabet autonomous vehicleswhich was born as an internal Google project in 2009. Today it operates robotaxi services without a human driver in cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. In February 2026, it completed a financing round that valued it at $126 billion. In the package of shares that Alphabet has offered to Pichai, the party linked to Waymo has been assigned a block worth $130 million, which can reach up to $260 million if the company reaches double the proposed stock market target for the next three years. Wing, for its part, is not as well-known as Waymo, and focuses its activity on delivering orders with drones. Its operation consists of delivering light packages directly to the customer’s home in a matter of minutes, covering what is called “last mile deliveries“. In January 2026 he announced the extension of your agreement with the Walmart supermarket chain to reach more than 270 stores by 2027, with a potential audience of more than 40 million Americans. In Pichai’s package, Wing is assigned a block worth 45 million dollars, expandable up to 90 million.​ Some go for robots, others for robotaxis. Linking a good part of that salary bonus of the company’s CEO to the success of two projects that until now had been considered minor, suggests that Google is already willing to take its AI one step further and that the next step is to give the definitive support to the models of Autonomous driving AI and air navigation. With this movement, the Mountain View firm seeks to fully immerse itself in the race for robotaxis and autonomous delivery networks to stand up to Tesla, Uber or Amazonand place itself in a dominant position in a sector that promises to move billions of dollars in investments over the next decade. A figure in perspective. If Pichai meets all the objectives by 2029, his salary bonus will be well above those of other large technology CEOs (with the exception of Elon Musk mega bonus at Tesla). Satya Nadella, head of Microsoft, collected 96.5 million dollars in fiscal year 2025, of which about 84 million came from shares; Tim Cook, at Apple, earned 74.3 million in the same period. Pichai’s previous package, approved in December 2022, was $218 million and had a similar target-based structure to this one. Since Pichai took over as CEO in August 2015, Alphabet’s market capitalization has gone from $535 billion to $3.6 trillion, briefly touching $4 trillion in January 2026. Forbes esteem that the head of Google’s parent company has a personal wealth of about $1.5 billion. a figure very far away of the 255.2 billion dollars that Larry Page has or the 235,500 of Sergei Brin. In Xataka | We knew that the CEOs of large companies were very well paid. What we didn’t know was how much their salary had been raised. Image | European UnionWaymo, Wing

The Chinese side has a weapon that is impossible for the European side.

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Talk about technological and commercial war leads us to look at United States and China. They are the two who star in the great conflict between vetoes and a race for technological independence. But between the Netherlands and China there is a bunch of look at me and don’t touch me. In the eye of the storm is Nexperia, a Chinese semiconductor company, but based in the Netherlands. After a public breakup and a civil war between the two headquarters, Nexperia China has just threatened something very big: they are capable of manufacturing wafers 12 inches… and the unit in Europe no. And it is something that adds to that technological sovereignty that China pursues. Summary of the sauce. Before getting into the matter, it is worth reviewing because history has gone from 0 to 100 in just a few months. Nexperia is a manufacturer that originated from the split of the Dutch company NXP Semiconductors. They are, as their name indicates, a semiconductor company, the material with which the chips that all our devices contain are created. China has been wanting to consolidate its semiconductor industry for years, even before Trump’s veto, and bought Nexperia in 2017 for $2.75 billion. The headquarters were in the Netherlands, but the owner was a Chinese consortium backed by the country’s government. In October 2025, the surprise arrived: Netherlands confiscated Nexperia by surpriseallowing the country full control of its operations. Aim? Protect Europe’s chips. Consequence? Very risky move in relations with China that were already deteriorating. The next move was breakup of the Chinese part of Nexperia with the European onethe stoppage of chip shipping which threatened world automobile production for a time and totally broken communications between both parties. It is not that the company was divided into two separate entities: it was that it was one body with two brains. And they didn’t speak. Be careful what a mess. With this said, we return to the present. Although relations were still very tense, they seemed to have eased somewhat until, a few days ago, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce warned that tensions between Nexperia Netherlands and Nexperia China were flourishing again. It seems that the Dutch side had disabled the professional accounts of all your employees in China (we are talking about key work systems such as Office 365 and similar) and China said “yes? Well, I’m not sending you materials to make wafers.” From China, this action was classified as unforgivable as it “seriously disrupted the company’s normal production and operations.” And the threat came: “if a new crisis arises in global semiconductor production and supply chains, the Netherlands will be to blame.” This is something that would affect, above all, to the automotive industryand we already have enough with the RAM crisis. Shortly after, on March 6, Nexperia China reported that many operations had already resumed and Nexperia Netherlands, without denying the action, questioned whether it had really been as serious for the Chinese side as they were making it out to be. 12 inch wafers. The Dutch side was very well positioned in wafer manufacturing and was supplying them to Nexperia China before they stopped talking to each other. Since then, the Chinese side has secured suppliers and improved its technology on its own. And they are not doing badly. In a statement published by Nexperia China, the company stated have started small-scale production of 12-inch wafers. In them, it “prints” the same components that are also manufactured in the Dutch part, but with a nuance: the Chinese wafers are larger. The larger the wafer, the more you can “print” on it and the easier it is to develop large-scale production. This means more chips at lower prices due to economies of scale. According to the Chinese side, Nexperia Netherlands cannot manufacture 12-inch wafers in European facilities, so they now have the advantage. a wafer And in detail. The larger the wafer, the more it can be “printed” and the more chips can come off a single wafer. Local supply. This has two implications. On the one hand, what we talked about: economies of scale and the ability for automakers to buy from China instead of the Netherlands. On the other hand, the demonstration that they can manage on their own with other suppliers. Now, it esteem that the Shanghai plant has a production capacity of 30,000 wafers per month compared to Nexperia’s 83,000 in Hamburg, but of course, if they have found the key to producing larger wafers, in the end fewer wafers can yield more. And beyond all, it is a demonstration of the extent to which the two sides are going their separate ways and, in recent communicationsnone of them have any intention of fixing things. And, in the end, it is one more example of something bigger: it is currently impossible to separate global technology from geopolitics. Images | Steve JurvetsonJohn McMaster In Xataka | Spain is betting its future in the semiconductor industry on a single card: gallium chips

What did the philosopher La Rochefoucauld mean when he talked about happiness?

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Get in the situation. You arrive at the office thinking that it will be just another Wednesday in March when suddenly your boss tells you that the company has decided to promote you and (in the process) double your salary. Not only that. While you are sharing the news with your colleagues you notice that your cell phone vibrates in your pocket, you take it out and find that that girl you have been pining for for months has just invited you to dinner. Dopamine through the roof. Endorphin rush. You feel like the king of mambo and it’s logical, right? After all, if happiness exists, it must be something very similar to that. From 17th century France François de La Rochefoucauldan aristocrat who liked to fill pages with his reflections, has a message for you: “We are never as happy or as unhappy as we believe.” Why do we do what we do? A question similar to that was asked in 17th century France by François de La Rochefoucauld, politician, aristocrat, writer and a keen moralist with a sharp wit. Answering it took time and giving shape to a fascinating work, Maximsa collection of short reflections with which the author basically seeks “portray the heart of man”. It’s curious what he says. And it is also curious how he says it, resorting to a perceptive, irreverent (sometimes even stark) tone, but in which sincerity prevails above all. To show a button. When La Rochefoucauld tries to clarify what friendship is, he comes to the following conclusion: “It is nothing more than a pact, a reciprocal respect of interests and an exchange of favors; in short, a relationship in which self-love always aims to gain something.” Hard? No more than when you observe, in the same workthat “old people like to give good advice to console themselves for no longer being in a position to give bad examples.” Searching for happiness. If there is an idea that is frequently repeated in Maxims It is that of happiness. What is it? How to achieve it? How to act before it? In trying to answer these questions, the French philosopher leaves reflections like this: “Happiness lies in our pleasure and not in things. We are happy for possessing what we love and not for possessing what others consider desirable.” And in case it wasn’t clear enough, insist a few pages later: “When peace is not found within oneself, it is useless to look for it outside.” There is however a ‘maxim’ by La Rochefoucauld that resonates with a special forcefulness in the midst of 2026: “We are never as happy or unhappy as we think.” In it, the philosopher reminds us that it does not matter if we feel overwhelmed with pleasure by a promotion, a raise in salary or the prospect of a date with our partner. crush. Not even if we have low spirits. In both cases, it is most likely that the brain ‘deceives’ us, adulterating reality. And is that true? To answer it, it is good to go back to the example with which we started this article. Imagine that you have actually just been promoted and your salary has multiplied by two. Does that guarantee you eternal happiness? Isn’t it likely that as the weeks go by you will adjust to your new position and salary? Same with your date. If you start a relationship, won’t that romance end up being incorporated into your ‘normal’? We don’t even have to go to such extreme examples. Doesn’t the rush you feel when you buy a car end up evaporating? A few months ago the coach Hailey Magee shared his own experience in Medium. All her life Magee had dreamed of publishing a book, a goal she had fantasized about as a child. The day she closed a contract with a New York publishing house she felt ecstatic, but that feeling was short-lived. Within a few days his brain was occupied by much less edifying questions: Would the book be successful? Was it good enough? What tasks remained before you finished the manuscript? “As I reached each new goal, the promised land vanished beneath my feet,” ironizes. The joys were ephemeral. They did not disappear or break down. They simply gave way to new objectives and purposes. The “hedonic treadmill”. Magee’s experience is hardly surprising. It responds to a human characteristic that experts have known for quite some time: “hedonic adaptation”the tendency that leads us to return again and again to a state of relative and stable happiness. It doesn’t matter if something great or a misfortune happens to you. The normal thing is that you end up returning to a base feeling. Just as if you were moving on a treadmill. “Even our biggest successes become our new normal and we end up chasing the next milestone just to feel the same,” explains the coach. This capacity for adaptation in which desires are modeled drives us to progress, but also represents a gun for those who seek to exploit our capacity to habituate ourselves to pleasure and the search for gratification. Lottery or accident? It may sound abstract, but it is better understood by reviewing the experiment carried out in the 70s by Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell. For their test they chose a group of people who had won the lottery and another group of people who had been left in a wheelchair due to an accident. They then investigated how their happiness levels evolved. What did they discover? Had the lottery winners’ feeling of happiness permanently increased while the second-place winners (those who had suffered serious injuries) experienced the opposite feeling? Answer: no. “They found that study participants adapted to both positive and negative changes and their overall happiness tended to stabilize over time,” remember Magee before clarifying that this ‘hedonistic adaptation’ is the result of a series of psychological processes, which includes the capacity for “habituation”, which reduces our emotional response to stimuli that … Read more

That’s how he got it

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The film directed by Ryan Coogler has broken the absolute record for nominations in the history of the Oscars. It is not a statistical accident: behind its success there is a wave of changes in the industry, seasoned by a decade of silent transformation of the horror genre, a business model with brutal returns and an exhausted industry that has been looking for years to see what comes after superheroes. Victory at the Oscars. ‘Sinners’ (or ‘Los sinners’, as it has also been known in Spain) 0 heads the list of Oscar nominees in 2026 with 16 candidates. In fact tops the lists every year: the previous record was 14, shared between ‘Eve Naked’ (1950), ‘Titanic‘ (1997) and ‘La La Land’ (2016). Ryan Coogler received his first nominations for directing and original screenplay, and Michael B. Jordan, after more than a decade as a headliner, also earned his first nomination as an actor. These numbers aren’t just awards history: They’re a portrait of something broader that’s been moving beneath the surface of the industry for years. The box office. ‘Sinners’ grossed more than $370 million on a budget of between $90 and $100, becoming the first original film to surpass $200 million in the United States alone since ‘Coco’. It is also the biggest box office success in original cinema (that is, one that does not belong to a franchise) since ‘Inception’, fifteen years ago. Coogler shot the film in Ultra Panavision 70 and IMAX, explicitly betting on the theater experience versus the streamingand precisely picking up the baton of another lover of large formats in cinemasChristopher Nolan. Terror and Oscar. Before continuing, let’s make it clear that ‘Sinners’ is a horror film: of course, it has a component of social criticism about the role of African Americans in the culture of their country, but the message is part of the nature of genre cinema. ‘Sinners’ is a vampire movie before anything else. And from that perspective, it is worth noting that only six horror movies have received nominations for Best Picture. ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ among all of them, very notably, won the five main Oscars. What has changed in the last decade is the appearance of a side of horror cinema more tolerated by the academy: they are films like ‘Hereditary’, ‘Midsommar’, ‘Babadook’, ‘The Witch’ or ‘Nope!’, often labeled under the loaded ‘high horror’ label. The 2026 Oscars are its first massive institutional recognition after the fantasy monopolized the nominations in 2025 with films like ‘Dune Part II’, ‘Wicked’ or ‘The Substance’. Devastating at the box office. The blockbuster of ‘Sinners’ It was not an isolated phenomenon.. Horror was the genre with best relative performance of 2025: ’28 Years Later’, the latest ‘Final Destination’ or ‘Weapons’ generated the type of cultural conversation that until recently brought together superhero franchises. Some calculations say that the terror reached 12.1% of ticket sales in the United States in 2025, compared to 9.8% in 2024. The business. The economy of terror explains much of the industry’s renewed interest: average a return on production costs 173%, the highest of any gender. Let’s remember hits like ‘Déjame exit’, which cost 4.5 million and grossed more than 250 million worldwide or ‘Smile’, produced for 17 million and which exceeded 200 at the box office. And they are not extraordinary or out of the ordinary examples: every year we have comparable figures, and always within the genre. ‘Sinners’, however, with its 90-100 million budget, broke the logic of “cheap horror.” Directors such as Robert Eggers, Julia Ducournau and Ari Aster, to name a fewhave been scaling budgets for years, following the path opened by Jordan Peele, who went from 4.5 million for ‘Let Me Out’ to 68 million for ‘Nope’ in just six years. And what fails. The other side of the equation has to do with what is going wrong. Talking about how no gender is a guarantee of anything by itself.Mike Barstow, executive vice president of the ACX Cinemas chain, said that “people have not stopped wanting to see horror or superheroes, they have stopped wanting mediocre films about those worlds. They demand more quality.” And that means fewer clone franchises, although in 2025 the trend was still alive: only one original movie It was among the ten highest grossing films. The canon of franchises and shared universes, which has dominated the industry for more than a decade, is facing IP saturation. Sequels, prequels, spin-offs and reboots have proliferated until the box office has begun to show signs of exhaustion. Horror, paradoxically, has been the refuge of originality for decades precisely because the big studios ignored it. The success of ‘Sinners’ does not show that the public only wants scary movies, but rather that they are betting on something intelligent, fresh and that does not seem assembled in a corporate laboratory. In Xataka | There are two reasons why Generation Z is returning to the movies: subscriptions and moving away from mobile phones

three new stations with connection to a new neighborhood

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Plans to bring Madrid Metro Line 1 north are already underway. The Department of Transport of the Community of Madrid has published the informative study with the alternatives to take the metro to Madrid Nuevo Norte, which is where the capital is focusing its efforts on transforming the entire Chamartín station. Taking L1 to the north has been one of the five options on the table of the regional administration, and at the moment the favorite. The idea is to create three new stations and reorganize the current final section of the line to integrate with L4. We tell you all the details. What exactly is proposed. The alternative proposes extending L1 from Chamartín–Clara Campoamor about three kilometers to the north, with three new stops that have been nicknamed with provisional names: Business Center, Fuencarral Sur and Fuencarral Norte. The first would cover the office area planned next to Chamartín; The other two would serve the new residential neighborhoods that will be built on the old Castellana roads, and also the residents who already live in Fuencarral. The preferred option. The Ministry describes it, according to collect 20 Minutes, as “the most favorable option for carrying out this project after analyzing the different functional, environmental, territorial and economic issues.” The other four alternatives were committed to creating an independent driverless line exclusively for Madrid Nuevo Norte, but technicians ruled it out for being less efficient and more expensive in comparison. Of course, the initial budget of the chosen option is not exactly modest: the study, to which Somos Madrid had access, estimates it at 401 million euros (VAT included). The change that affects Line 4. This solution has a direct consequence on the current network, since the Bambú and Pinar de Chamartín stations, which today belong to L1, will become part of Line 4. This line, which currently ends in Pinar de Chamartín, will be extended to Chamartín, where it will connect with L1 and L10. On paper it is a reorganization that aims to benefit everyone, since L4 users will gain direct access to the train station, and L1 will become a continuous axis between the center of Madrid (Sol, Gran Vía, Atocha) and the new northern neighborhood. How and when it will be built. The works will not be done with a tunnel boring machine. As it is a short section and on land that has not yet been developed, the Belgian method (or classic Madrid method) will be used, which involves excavating from the surface. Just like they count from 20 Minutes, the cut and cover technique will be used for the stations (the same one that is being used in the expansion of L11) and for connections with L4 the German method will be applied. It is projected in two phases: First the redistribution of lines 1 and 4. Then the extension to Madrid Nuevo Norte. Work on the first phase is expected to be completed around 2030. Who will benefit. According to the estimates of demand from the studio itself, the extension will serve an environment with more than 200,000 residents and 140,000 jobs. The Community also estimates that the expansion will generate about 175,000 new daily users for L1. Where is the project now? With the publication of the five alternativesthe Ministry has opened a 20-day public information period so that citizens, associations and administrations can present allegations from the Transparency Portal of the Community of Madrid. Once the proposals have been studied, the final informative study must be approved, and from there the project would advance. Along with this, a tender has also been put out to draft the draft the future garageswhich would have a capacity of about 15,000 m² on the surface and 26,000 m² below ground, and also the commission to develop the construction project for the expansion, although for the latter we must first wait for the final study to be approved. Cover image | Madrid Metro In Xataka | Mayrit, the 1,500-ton “underground factory”, is about to start its engines with one objective: to transform Madrid’s L11

ban octopus farms worldwide

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On February 25, Mexico presented a reform of federal law of fishing to prohibit cephalopod farms throughout the national territory. It may seem strange, but when Maki Esther Ortiz Dominguez stood in front of the Senate of the Republic and defended the moratorium on aquaculture farming of octopuses, squid and cuttlefish, what she said made sense. Not only is it that they are a terribly difficult business, it is that there is more than firm evidence (always according to the senator) about the enormous problems of cannibalism and risks to public health that these farms bring. So much so that Mexico is not alone. Chili approved a similar ban in October 2025 and seven US states also have it. And it’s curious because what is being banned, in reality, doesn’t even exist on a commercial scale. The world (also Spain) is trying to prohibit something that is not being done. Which does not mean that it is not being tried. In fact, the Mexican initiative to prohibit “the reproduction, pre-fattening and fattening of cephalopods” in captivity is based on data from the Sisal facilities (Yucatán)the only farm of this type that is operational on the entire American continent. There, with the collaboration of UNAM, they have been trying to make octopus fish farms viable for 12 years. AND the data is terrible: mortality rates higher than 52%, 30% of deaths attributable to cannibalism, extremely inefficient conversion rates (three kilos of fish are needed to produce one kilo of octopus) and systematic mistreatment of these species that, if that were not enough, are considered especially intelligent. Especially intelligent? And ‘sentient’: in recent years, there has been no shortage of statements on the subject (Cambridge, 2012 and New York, 2024); but there is also extensive bibliographical reviews which point out that when we talk about cephalopods, we are talking about animals that are cognitively much closer to us. And that, of course, has generated consequences. In the same way as the publication of ‘Animal Liberation‘ contributed to creating the animal rights movement, all this research on octopuses has led to an unprecedented legislative trend. “Unprecedented” because, perhaps for the first time, the legislation comes before farms are a reality beyond experimental centers. And it’s coming very quickly: this regulatory wave has come together in a couple of years. And who would want farmed octopus? The simple answer is everyone. If the resulting problems are not made visible and affordable cephalopods are available, everyone will eat farmed octopus in a few years. Above all, because they are running out. At least in Spain, there is a whole combination of factors that They have made the octopus migrate north. In Spain, in fact, a proposal in this regard was already presented in the summer of 2025 and the European Parliament discussed the issue in December of the same year. It’s a matter of time, it seems. And, for now, Mexico and Chile are in the lead. Image | Milada Vigerova In Xataka | England is experiencing an unprecedented invasion. The problem is that they are octopuses, and they are devouring everything they can find.

insurance doesn’t cover it

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In almost all Western armies there is a little-known paradox: private insurers rarely cover the most obvious risk of the military profession. For decades, protection systems for soldiers have combined commercial policies with special state regimes, because combat (due to its unpredictable nature and enormous potential cost) is often left out of conventional insurance almost everywhere in the world. Controversy at the heart of the military profession. The beginning of 2026 has unleashed a strong controversy around collective life and accident insurance for personnel of the Armed Forces and the Civil Guard in Spain. The reason is a clause that excludes deaths or disabilities derived directly from acts of war, which has caused outrage between military associations and families of soldiers deployed on missions abroad. The discussion has gained special strength in an international context increasingly unstablewith Spanish troops present in sensitive regions like Lebanon or the eastern flank of Europe, where the possibility of serious incidents is not theoretical but real. The small print. The controversy revolves around the technical concept of “risk of war”a common exclusion in the private insurance sector. Standard life and accident policies are designed to cover death or disability due to accident or illness, but they usually leave out events derived from armed conflictsconsidered extraordinary risks that are difficult to insure commercially. In the case of group insurance contracted for 2026, the clause establishes that private compensation will not be activated if death or disability is direct consequence of war declared or armed hostilities, which means that coverage is limited to ordinary service situations or non-war accidents. What happens when a soldier dies in combat. As They counted in MoncloaAlthough the exclusion has generated public alarm, the protection system for military personnel is not based solely on private insurance. In Spain (as in most NATO countries) coverage against combat or war actions is not articulated through commercial policies, but rather through compensation state pensions, extraordinary pensions and specific regimes for acts of service. This means that, if a soldier dies in combat or in a military operation, the main compensation comes of the public system of benefits and not of the group insurance contracted with an insurer. The role of private insurance. Group insurance managed by 2026 by insurance company MetLife It functions as an additional layer of protection designed to cover common service risks: accidents, non-war deaths or permanent disabilities. These types of policies are used in many armies to complement the public system, but rarely include explicit coverage of war because the actuarial cost would be extremely high. In practice, insurance acts as additional compensation for certain circumstances, while combat risks are integrated into the state compensation system. A model repeated in NATO. The truth is that the Spanish scheme is not an exception within Western military alliances. The United States, for example, covers its soldiers through federal programs such as the Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurancefinanced and supported by the State. In the case of the United Kingdom, the Armed Forces Compensation Schemean administrative compensation regime. For their part, France and Germany resort to systems of military pensions and compensation legal. Be that as it may, in all these models the logic is similar: war is not insured as a commercial risk, but is compensated through public legislation. The debate and controversy. Even so, the controversy has opened a deeper debate on the economic protection of military personnel and their families. Professional associations maintain that the war exclusion in private policy leaves a symbolic and financial void which can affect the perception of security of deployed personnel. In short, and although from the Ministry of Defense it is insisted in which no soldier is left unprotected thanks to the system of extraordinary pensions and compensation for acts of service, the truth is that the episode has highlighted a structural tension: the difficulty of fitting into the insurance market a risk that precisely defines the essence of the military profession. Image | Navy, Air and Space Army Ministry of Defense Spain In Xataka | The same day that the US threatened Spain and said it did not need the Rota base, the US invested 13 million in expanding the Rota base In Xataka | The great paradox of Spain is 7,000 million euros: nobody wants to take up weapons, but they are making money by selling them

China has turned OpenClaw into a viral phenomenon. And then it has prohibited its officials from using it

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The appearance of the AI ​​agent OpenClaw has meant that we are living in a kind of second “DeepSeek moment“They know it well in China, where its use has exploded in such a way that the Government has had to act. And it has probably done well. An absolutely viral AI. The OpenClaw project has caused a real earthquake in China. In cities like Shenzhen there are queues to physically install it and people paying for others to install it remotely or in person. The AI ​​agent is breaking all popularity records for programming projects, and for example has already surpassed two legends such as React or Linux in terms of stars awarded on GitHub, a measure of the popularity of open source projects. In just three months, OpenClaw has managed to surpass the legendary leaders of this ranking in GitHub stars: react and linux. Source: Star-History.com Solution to Chinese fragmentation. The secret of this success in the Asian giant is not based only on the curiosity of users, but also on the fact that OpenClaw provides a striking solution to an endemic problem in the country: the fragmentation of business software. With an average of 150 independent IT systems per company and 60% of them without APIs or documentation, AI integration seemed to be an insurmountable wall. OpenClaw solves the problem because you can take control of the machine, “see” buttons and text boxes, click and type in browsers, and operate as if you were a human. Tokens everywhere. That ability has turned this project into an absolute “token hole.” Unlike a conventional chatbot like ChatGPT, OpenClaw works continuously and autonomously, and it is not uncommon to see an advanced user consume 50 million tokens daily. The impact has been massive: at the end of February, Chinese models such as Kimi 2.5 or DeepSeek were already devouring 61% of the global OpenRouter tokens, a platform that allows you to easily use APIs from dozens of AI models. The fever has been such that Kimi has generated in 20 days more income than all expected by its creator, Moonshot IA, by 2025. Alarm. The problem is precisely that: when software has the ability to “see” everything that happens on a screen and execute commands by itself, the security risks are enormous. This has made the Beijing government go from enthusiasm—cities like Shenzhen offer million-dollar subsidies for their development—to a policy that is now totally restrictive. Government agencies, state-owned companies and large national banks have received urgent notices prohibiting the installation of OpenClaw in office devices and even in mobile phones that are used in this type of segments. Be careful with your data. Practically since it went viral, many have warned of the cybersecurity risks involved in using OpenClaw. An initial audit of the skills available on ClawdHub detected hundreds of them as malicious. That was the germ of the OpenClaw alliance with the Spanish cybersecurity firm VirusTotalpart of Google. The risk with this project is threefold: You have access to private data Can communicate with the outside You are exposed to untrustworthy content and attacks from prompt injection One of lime and one of sand. For large Chinese technology companies, the government’s measures are bittersweet. On the one hand, they have rushed to offer one-click OpenClaw deployments in their clouds for interested users. On the other hand, state restriction has meant that some of the AI ​​startups such as Zhipu (Knowledge Atlas Technology JSC Ltd.) or MiniMax Group have quickly fallen on the stock market for the news. China and control. There is another key element in that political movement: the loss of control. The Beijing government has already fought a battle in the past to curb the power of giants like Alibaba, and that caused the “Asian Jeff Bezos”, Jack Ma, came out very badly. An autonomous AI agent that operates outside of that government control represents a challenge to the mechanisms that China has been perfecting, especially with its Great Firewall. An uncertain future. These new restrictions pose a complex future for the project in China. The Asian giant has embraced AI more than anyone else, but the security risks in this case are so clear that limits had to be set before things got out of control. Even so, the project is Open Source, which will make it difficult for its deployment to be halted by end users and enthusiasts, no matter how much the Chinese Government wants it. Image | OpenClaw | Paul Kagame In Xataka | Every time Facebook had a competitor, it bought it: it is exactly the same thing that OpenAI is doing

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