drones

Malaysia is tired of its Bitcoin miners ruining its utilities. So he’s chasing them with drones

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Cryptocurrencies continue to boom, but to get them you have to mine and that has significant energy costs associated with it. For some countries it has become a national problem. Kazakhstan closed the door to Bitcoin For this reason and now, the latest example, valued at more than 1 billion dollars, arrives from Malaysia. Malaysia gets seriousto. Malaysian authorities have begun to deploy an unusual surveillance network with the aim of hunt down an illegal Bitcoin mining network. Although the activity is basically legal in this Asian country, there are those who are carrying it out through unorthodox means, something that in turn is causing millionaire losses to the State. How to buy Bitcoins safely and risk-free The hunt. In Malaysia, Police search the streets in search of the hottest spots. They are those in which the alarms go off of its sensors due to irregular power consumption peaks. There are also reinforcements in the skywith autonomous drones and helicopters searching for where unexpected thermal signals occur. The thieves They are protected with heat shields to avoid being discovered and change location from time to time, prioritizing abandoned places, such as ruined houses or disused shopping centers. Behind this peculiar movement is an operation that has become a large-scale “catch-catch” between Bitcoin miners and the country’s police. A 1 billion dollar network. And, although mining in Malaysia is legal, a recent report has found a large-scale fraud. Since 2020, 14,000 illegal Bitcoin miners have been siphoning more than $1 billion worth of electricity from state-owned energy company Tenaga Nasional (TNB). Far from relaxing with the latest fluctuations of this crypto“business” continues to increase. A challenge for the Malaysian network. Beyond the considerable economic cost that these bands are causing in the State, the leaders’ concern lies in the very survival of the energy network infrastructure. The Deputy Minister of Energy Transition and Water Transformation of Malaysia, Akmal Nashrullah Mohd Nasir, has explained that The greatest risk that these fraudulent activities pose for the country is that “they can even damage our facilities. It becomes a challenge for our system.” A legal activity, with asterisks. Bitcoin mining is legal in Malaysia as long as those involved pay their corresponding taxes and do not make irregular use of energy resources. The authorities are not convinced and the debate on a total ban is already on the table. In fact, Akmal has recently stated that “Even if mining operations are compliant, the extreme volatility of the market in which they operate remains a major issue. I don’t believe there is any mining company that can be considered a ‘legally successful operation’ today.” Meanwhile. With the future of Bitcoin mining in doubt in the Malaysian country, the reality today is that the cunning of cybercriminals has become a very lucrative business. From the colossal ElementX shopping center in Melaka, which became another victim of COVID-19, to huge logging yards In Sarawak, miners are occupying unprecedented spaces and causing excessive consumption in the state electricity grid. To hunt them, autonomous drones that search the ground from the sky looking for thermal signals have become another ally of the authorities in Malaysia. A global problem. The electricity consumption of Bitcoin mining worldwide exceeds the total consumption of countries such as South Africa or Thailand, according to a report from the University of Cambridge. And although three quarters of this consumption occurs in the United States, for countries with a more unstable network it can become a serious problem. In Xataka | The latest buzz among drug traffickers is underwater drones. And they are manufacturing them in Spain In Xataka | The first “drone carrier” ship in the world is the new jewel of the Turkish army (and has been designed in Spain)

Shahed drones were a piece of cake for Ukraine’s helicopters. Russia has just transformed them into its biggest nightmare

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In it huge catalog of innovations improvised measures brought by the war in ukrainefew are as revealing as the decision that Russia has taken to address one of the main vulnerabilities of its drones. In essence, they have turned the Shahed-136 (symbol of its saturation strategy through cheap and disposable platforms) in a rudimentary anti-aircraft fighter. The mutation. What was born as a suicide drone with autonomy to travel hundreds of kilometers following pre-programmed routes has been transformed, in some variants, into a system piloted in real timeequipped with cameras, modems and now with the R-60 missilea veteran infrared-guided missile from the 1970s that, despite its compact size, retains the lethality of a weapon capable of cutting a helicopter in two with its load of continuous rods. The broadcast images by Ukrainian organizations and electronic warfare experts confirm the presence of the R-60 mounted on the Shahed’s noseand the interception of one of them by a Ukrainian Sting drone illustrates that Russia is experimenting with the idea of ​​​​transforming a disposable projectile in a reactive vectorcapable of confronting the devices that, until now, acted as unpunished hunters of these platforms. The new tactical ecosystem. The success of the Ukrainian helicopters in intercepting Shaheds (with devices sporting dozens of shoot-down marks and crews accredited with hundreds of downed drones) had turned these aircraft in key pieces of low-level air defense. The combination of moderate speed, predictable trajectory and total lack of situational awareness made the drone a almost static whitevulnerable to cannon blasts or volleys used at close range. But the introduction of the R-60 upsets that balance: although the platform remains clumsy, slow and limited in maneuver, the simple fact that some drones can carry missiles will force Ukrainian pilots to rethink their proximity to the target. Each interception stops being a procedure and becomes in an unknown about what version of the enemy they will encounter. Extra ball. Even if the actual kill capability of the armed Shahed is small (and the operational window for targeting with a short-range missile is narrow) the statistical nature of swarm warfare change the calculation: In thousands of launches, just getting into a good position will be enough to cause the loss of a valuable helicopter. Technical limitations. The R-60, known by NATO as Aphidwas designed for supersonic fighters, not slow drones intended as loitering munitions. Its integration into the Shahed poses obvious challenges: the operator must manually retarget the drone until it is pointed at the target, achieving an adequate angle to allow the infrared seeker to acquire the thermal signature and maintain alignment long enough to authorize the shot. He narrow field of vision of the missile, the Shahed’s low maneuverability and the possibility of helicopters using infrared flares reduce the chances of success. However, historical experience shows that even imperfect weaponry can achieve victories if the tactical environment favors it. Remains of an intercepted Shahed with the R-60 attached The precedent. If we go back we have the Predator armed american with Stingers in 2002 (failed but deterrent), which reveals that these configurations do not seek air superiority, but rather force the enemy to act with caution. Just as Ukrainian unmanned ships were armed with missiles To scare away the Russian helicopters that were harassing them, Russia adopts the same defensive-offensive logic: a single one of these armed drones, hidden among a swarm of externally identical devices, forces the adversary to increase distance, use more expensive means or modify its interception doctrine. Drones against drones. The Shahed armed with an R-60 is not, by itself, a transformative weapon. It is, however, as symptom of evolution continued unmanned combat. Russia has expanded the Shahed family into versions with real time controljet variants already produced in its own factories and possible improvements based on artificial intelligence for dynamic target identification. Ukraine, for its part, develops interceptors low-cost that allow us to shoot down Russian drones without risking manned aircraft or spending expensive missiles. Every innovation generates a countermeasure: if Ukraine popularizes cheap hunting drones, Russia studies equipping the Shaheds of tiny turrets or new sensors, and if these become reactive, Ukraine adapts its doctrines and strengthens its electronic warfare. The conflict has entered a phase where the value is not in the perfection of each platform, but in the ability to produceadapt and deploy thousands of them in an environment where the line between offensive and defensive becomes blurred. The most dangerous sky. It is the result of these advances. The introduction of Shahed-R-60 marks a turning point because it erodes one of the few stable advantages that Ukraine had maintained: the capacity of its helicopters to hunt drones with relative safety. Now each aircraft must consider the possibility, however remote, of facing a missile that was not foreseen in the original mission design. This not only complicates interceptions, but forces disperse risks and rethink routes, altitudes and speeds. The Ukrainian sky, already saturated with suicide drones, cruise missiles, loitering munitions and manned aircraft operating in densely contested airspace, add another variable to an operational equation in constant mutation. And it is likely that this is just the beginning: the integration of missiles is a first step towards drones that, in addition to attacking by saturation, can defend themselves or even escort other devices in combined waves. Image | Telegram, X In Xataka | There is tourism that flies en masse where tragedies have occurred. So the Low Costs are preparing to travel to Ukraine In Xataka | Ukraine’s problem with peace negotiations is simple: if it rejects them, Russia will get tougher in the next ones.

Russia had managed to manufacture drones and missiles despite the sanctions. So selling Zara clothes was a matter of time

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In recent months, a strange wave of western products has begun to reappear in places where, on paper, it is already they shouldn’t exist. Between geopolitical changes, forced business exits and an increasingly opaque market, certain brands have unexpectedly become visible again, fueling rumors, theories about how they are getting there and who is really pulling the strings of their distribution towards Moscow. Now a giant from Spain has (re)appeared: Inditex. A market that does not close completely. After announcing the end of operations in Russia a few days after the invasion of Ukraine, Inditex left behind its second largest market and sold its business in the country. However, more than two years latergarments with official labels from brands such as Zara, Bershka, Oysho, Stradivarius or Massimo Dutti have once again appeared on the shelves of the Russian channel Tvoenow renamed Tvoe n Ko, which boasts a “constantly updated” selection on social networks and presents the collections as almost clandestine finds. The pieces, which match models from previous seasons and carry prices in euros, are now sold in at least 19 stores Russian companies without there being (according to the official version offered) any contractual relationship between the Spanish company and the local distributor. In fact, they occur two months after the executive director of Inditex, Óscar García Maceiras, will declare to the Financial Times that the conditions “were not met” for his return to Russia. The engineering of the Russian gray market. I was counting a few hours ago the FT that the mechanism that allows the reappearance of these garments is based on the system of “parallel imports” established by Moscow to circumvent the massive departures of Western brands. In this scheme operates Disco Club LLCa Russian company that has recorded 18 statements in accordance, citing Inditex as supplier and presenting itself as its “authorized representative”, despite the fact that Inditex flatly denies having granted such permission. The garments come partly from inventories originally destined for various EU countries and partly from Chinese factories, according to labels and documents customs, in a circuit that takes advantage of legal loopholes and the Kremlin’s lack of inhibition to give formal coverage to a trade that would previously have been considered smuggling. The denial. For its part, Tvoe assures that it does not have direct agreements with Inditex and hides behind confidentiality agreements so as not to detail its suppliers, while Disco Club insist in which he only performed a “punctual technical service.” Burkhard Binder, the businessman linked to the founding of the company and based in Dubai, is disassociating himself from current operations. Inditex, known for its tight control of inventory, distribution and franchises, completely reject any link: he claims not to have authorized Disco Club or any Russian entity to act on his behalf and avoids commenting on how his products arrive in the country since he withdrew. Matter of time. we have been counting: the ability of the Russian economy to adapt in the midst of war has shown that international restrictions, no matter how strict, always find cracks. A country that has rebuilt chains complex supply chains to produce drones, precision ammunition or long-range missiles, despite technological embargoes and industrial vetoes, would not have difficulties reopening the door to much more “simpler” products, such as Western fashion clothing. In that context, the reappearance of garments of Zara in Russian stores is not so much surprising as confirming a trend: Moscow has perfected an ecosystem of parallel imports capable of circumventing almost any blockade, from military components even t-shirts and dresses from past seasons, turning the impossible into routine and the forbidden into a merely logistical problem. Russia, a laboratory of consumption in times of sanctions. The appearance of Zara products in Russia despite the exit from the company illustrates the magnitude of the gray market that Moscow has made official since 2022: an ecosystem that allows consumers to access Western brands through private intermediaries and indirect routes, without participation of the original companies. In this context, the reappearance of the Spanish firm in the Russian commercial landscape is not due to a business return, but rather to a state-run mechanism. commercial evasion that turns its garments into parallel import merchandise. If you like, the phenomenon also reveals the extent to which Russia has rebuilt its global consumption through third countries and front companies, and how even the strictest groups in controlling its supply chain cannot prevent its products from reappearing in a market from which they tried to leave definitely. Image | Pexels In Xataka | Ukraine has opened the Russian ballistic missile that has devastated its cities. Your surprise is a condemnation: your main supplier is untouchable In Xataka | Zara has been selling clothes for years. Now he aspires to sell something more difficult: prestige

Russia has shown on video how to hunt drones with shotguns. And he has also revealed what he did not want us to see

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During the years of Russian invasion of Ukraine we had seen many tactics that copied techniques and weapons from the past. For example, the use of the Davis cannon of the First World War, or the application of anchored shotguns on airplane wings. In fact, the use of shotguns and rifles from the last century has become a normalized scenario over the months due to the lack of modern artillery. Russia has now shown in a video how to hunt drones. Although he has also inadvertently revealed another detail. Shotguns in the front. The silent battle that is fought every day between Russian boats and swarms of FPV drones in the Dnieper has revealed now one of the most unexpected tactical turns of the war: the resurrection of the shotgun as a survival tool on a battlefield dominated by sensors, radio waves and munitions costing just a few hundred dollars. The viral sequence recorded from the helmet of a Russian marine, it offers a deceptively heroic portrait of a crew sailing at full speed through narrow channels while shooting down drone after drone (up to 13), although the meticulous analysis of each fragment shows that the initial epic falls apart as soon as the details are examined and what is behind it is understood: a fragmented combat, recorded on different days, in which the probable casualties are left out of the shot and where the electronics have as much weight as the shots. The mirage of the mission. They counted it analysts at Forbes. What seems like a single continuous episode in reality It’s a montage of multiple confrontations, where the sky changes color between shots and where the marines shoot at both real threats and invisible threats, lost among interference and gusts of wind. The barge sails while three shooters with semi-automatic shotguns, an automatic rifle and a light machine gun try to keep at bay drones that explode at the slightest contact. Thirteen devices fall, but the editing hides both the failures and the side effects. Two explosions centimeters from the hull leave doubts about possible injuries that are never shown, while a revealing detail (a Marine who already has a tourniquet placed preventively on his thigh) speaks of very specific expectations: the probability of being hit is not a hypothesis, but an assumed fact. Elite unit supported by electronic warfare. Forehead to the ‘Mobiks’ sent to slaughter with weeks of instruction and precarious material, this unit stands out for modern equipmentfor the shooting discipline and for the hidden arsenal that really explains part of their survival: a antenna constellation electronic warfare mounted on the boat. These inhibitors, with a range of between 50 and 100 meters, turn many drones into uncontrolled projectiles that fall by pure gravity. The shotgun just finish what electronics has already weakened. In an environment where FPV munitions explode even when the operator loses signal, the difference between living or dying depends not solely on aiming, but on the ability to blind the drone before it gets too close. That is why the shots show drones collapsing far from the effective range of the shooters: they did not fall due to an accurate shot, but due to interference. The limits of the shotgun. That a shotgun can take down an FPV at close range is so true as misleading. The scene has fueled a narrative of false confidence that the soldiers themselves deny off camera. There are testimonies of teams that five drones were shot down followed to fall before the sixth when they ran out of ammunition, or patrols that aimed and fired until the last cartridge before a device entered through the window and destroy the vehicle. If you like, the arms industry has also adapted: Benelli already produces models specific “anti-drone”equipped with tungsten ammunition, and foreign donors have sent hundreds of semi-automatic shotguns to Ukrainian units. But the tactical principle does not change: a shotgun does not compete with the mass production of drones. It is a desperate tool to gain seconds in an environment where each drone costs less than a box of ammunition and where both armies manufacture them by the millions. Desperate defense. He video ends with the boat rescuing another group of marines: one is wounded, others advance with two weapons in their hands, and the scene, far from glorifying the resistance, underlines the true tactical message. The shotgun works, yes, but only when the number of drones is small, when the shooters are trained, or when there are active inhibitors and when luck is on the side. The complete story, the one that never goes viral, remembers that for every boat that returns, another does not. In the Dnieper War, the shotgun is not a weapon of air supremacy: it is the final spark that is fired when all else has failed, a defense of last resort against a swarm cheap and numerous which is redesigning the way armies move, attack and survive. A shotgun may give you time, but in an FPV-saturated front, that time may not be enough. Image | RUSSIAN MOD In Xataka | Ukraine has just reduced what took days to two minutes. And then he began to crush the most feared Russian weapon: his kamikazes In Xataka | The new peace plan in Ukraine has been reduced to 19 aspects. The problem is that the key point measures 900 km

A Ukrainian system has accelerated the death of kamikaze drones. It’s called Delta, and it does in 120 seconds what took days

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The war in Ukraine has turned the drone into the central weapon of the battlefield, but it has also made evident an insurmountable limit: the kamikaze modelswhich dominated the early years of the conflict, are beginning to die due to sheer unsustainability. The almost thousand kilometer front requires a continuous supply of platforms capable of surveillance, harassment, destruction and survival. And Ukraine has realized this. The sunset of a drone. Russia can no longer guarantee that supply with the cheap, single-use drones it previously launched by the thousands. The western sanctions have strangled Moscow’s access to advanced sensors and critical processors. Furthermore, the Ukrainian attacks to assembly plants They have broken production chains, and the cost of losing increasingly sophisticated systems against denser Ukrainian defenses has made the model unviable. of “launch and forget”. For the first time, Moscow recognizes that it cannot replace what it destroys with the same speed. The Russian bet. Faced with this scenario, Russia is reconfiguring its fleet towards reusable drones that combine precision, electronic resistance and multiple attack capacity. Platforms like the Night Witch (capable of carrying twenty kilos, operating for forty minutes, launching up to four munitions and returning to base) mark the shift towards designs that survive the mission. The Bulldog-13 follows the same logic: modular, resistant to interference and with advanced sensors that would be too expensive for a disposable platform. This evolution not only affects offensive drones: russian interceptorspreviously designed to collide and destroy each other along with their objectives, begin to incorporate methods that allow recovery. From improvised loads like food cans thrown over FPV ukrainians up to electrified rods capable of incapacitating several drones in a single flight, the pattern is clear: if the platform is increasingly complex and more expensive, it cannot be lost on each mission. Russia is, out of obligation rather than choice, migrating toward a fleet that looks more like onepersistent unmanned flight than to an infinite store of cheap projectiles. The Russian limit. The operational advantage of these advanced systems it is evident: interference-immune navigation, thermal optics with digital zoom, long-range links and semi-autonomous capabilities allow for more precise and adaptable attacks. However, Russia pays an operational price: every drone that must return to its base sees its time available in the combat zone. reduced by half. The flight cycle shortens, the attack window narrows, and exposure to Ukrainian defenses widens. It’s the paradox of the reusable drone: more valuable, more capable and more vulnerable to logistical wear and tear. But Moscow has no alternative. Without mass replenishment, drone survival becomes a strategic resource. Ukraine breaks the cycle. And while Russia tries to extend the life of its drones to survive the technological blockade, Ukraine is blowing up the very logic of the war of attrition with a digital tool that turns every sensor on the front into a potential trigger. Previously, locating a Russian target, verifying it, transmitting it, and assigning it to a unit could take up to seventy-two hours, enough time for any vehicle, artillery piece, or tank to move or camouflage. Now, with Delta (the system battle management created and iterated over two years of real war) that cycle is reduced to two minutes under optimal conditions. Delta integrates satellite imagery, radar, reconnaissance drones, frontline observers and data from multiple branches into an interactive map that instantly shows where own and enemy forces are. Operating with NATO standardshosted in the cloud and already used by 90% of Ukrainian units, Delta turns warfare into a digitalized and almost automatic process: see, mark, assign and shoot. Drones that “live” too long. The consequence is devastating for Moscow. Their reusable dronesmore complex and expensive, survive by not wasting themselves on suicide attacks, but at the same time they face a battlefield where every exposure, every takeoff and every return can be detected, processed and attacked in a matter of seconds. The old Russian shelter (moving positions from one day to the next) ceases to exist when a Ukrainian FPV can take off, travel kilometers and hit in less than three minutesor a 155mm battery can open fire minutes after receiving verified coordinates. Even long-range systems, which require planning and preparation, now benefit from a flow of intelligence that never sleeps: latency is no longer strategic, only technical. The kamikaze in extinction. The joint result of both transformations (the Russian transition to drones that must survive and the Ukrainian transition to a system that kills in minutes) alters the nature of drone warfare. The russian kamikazes They do not disappear due to lack of usefulness, but because lack of replacement. And the drones that survive must now contend with an environment where survival depends less on their robustness and more on escaping a detection cycle operating at digital speed. What was once a war of saturation is now a war of instant precision. And in that equation, a new paradox arises: each Russian reusable drone is worth more… just when Ukraine can destroy everything it can see faster than ever. Image | Telegram, Dmytro Smolienko/Ukrinform, RawPixel In Xataka | The new peace plan in Ukraine has been reduced to 19 aspects. The problem is that the key point measures 900 km In Xataka | Ukraine’s latest tactic begins with a song. It is the prelude to an unknown trick: “sending” Russian missiles to Peru

China is sending drones to an island 100 km from Taiwan. The problem is that Japan and the US are filling it with missiles

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The small Japanese island by Yonagunilocated just over 100 kilometers away from Taiwan, has gone in a matter of months from being a remote enclave with a modest self-defense detachment to becoming one of the most sensitive points of the strategic balance in Asia. The United States, China and Japan itself are carrying their disputes to the small enclave. An island as a front. The intensification of chinese drone flights over the island and the strait, intercepted on two consecutive occasions by Japanese fighters, has reinforced the perception in Tokyo that the first island chain is entering a phase of chronic instability. Japan, aware of the real possibility of a conflict around Taiwan, has decided to turn Yonaguni into a defensive node fully integrated: a place where operates a FARP American that extends the range of Marine Corps helicopters, where capabilities are consolidated electronic surveillance and where the installation of air defense missiles is progressing like the Type 03 Chu-SAM. Weapons and more weapons. This system, capable of tracking one hundred simultaneous targets and shooting down twelve of them with Mach 2.5 missilesimplies that Japan is beginning to give teeth to a position whose mere proximity to the democratic island makes it an advanced platform to detect, deter or even respond to a possible Chinese attack. For Tokyo, reinforcing Yonaguni is not a provocation but a life policy national: any attack on Taiwan, as as stated the new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, would constitute an existential threat to the archipelago. Yonaguni Beijing’s reaction. China, which interprets any Japanese defensive measure as one more step in a strategic siege promoted by the United States, has reacted with increasing hardness. From historical comparisons to veiled threats, including the summoning of the Japanese ambassador and the suspension of economic exchanges, Beijing frames the installation of missiles in Yonaguni as an “offensive act” that violates the spirit of the bilateral normalization of 1972. The rhetoric has gone in crescendo after Takaichi’s words about the possibility of Japan intervening militarily in the event of an attack on Taiwan, something that China considers a space invasion diplomat reserved for Washington. The climate has deteriorated to such a level that a Chinese diplomat even published (and removed) a direct threat against the prime minister, while the central government canceled meetings, stopped imports and called for boycott trips to Japansinking the influx of Chinese tourists who represented almost a third of foreign visitors. In parallel, China has intensified its military demonstrations, spreading videos YKJ-1000 hypersonic missile destroying Japanese targets, a message designed to emphasize that any expansion of the Japanese military footprint will be met with a response. The strategic dilemma. Far from backing down, Japan has adopted a tone unusually firm. Under the leadership of Takaichi, the political heir to Shinzo Abe’s strategic nationalism, Tokyo has made Yonaguni the tangible manifestation of a doctrinal turn: accept that Japanese stability requires preventing China from dominating the Taiwan Strait. from there the proliferation of radar installations, electronic warfare capabilities and additional plans that contemplate systems such as US Patriots, US Army Typhon, HIMARS and the NMESIS equipped with NSM missiles, capable of denying access to Chinese ships around the Taiwanese eastern coast. USA discreetly supports this redesign: approved sales of NASAMS and spare parts to the Taiwan Air Force, deployed CH-53E helicopters in Yonaguni (an unprecedented milestone) and coordinates with Japan a doctrine that assumes that, in the event of an outbreak of hostilities, the Marines must operate from the lethality zone itself of Chinese missiles. All of this positions Yonaguni not only as an advanced observatory, but as a critical point whose defense and survival would determine the first stages of any crisis in the strait. Yonaguni Taiwan’s hardening. While Japan reinforces the front line, Taiwan assumes that time to prepare is running out. President Lai Ching-te has announced a massive increase in military spending, raising it by $40 billion until 2033, with a roadmap that will place it at 3.3% of GDP in 2026 and with the declared ambition of reaching 5% before 2030. What Taipei is proposing is not a simple rearmament, but a comprehensive redesign: new missiles and drones, integrating AI into existing systems, protecting against infiltration operations, dramatically improving procurement (often delayed in the United States), and measures against transnational Chinese repression targeting Taiwanese abroad. For Lai, the most dangerous threat is not a Chinese landing but internal erosion: that Taiwan “gives up” due to psychological or economic pressure. It flatly rejects the “one country, two systems” model and affirms that the only way to maintain peace is to make an invasion too costly for Beijing. The United States, through its de facto representation, has described the decision as a crucial step to strengthen deterrence. A strategic powder keg. The juxtaposition of Japanese military movements, Chinese threats and unprecedented rearmament of Taiwan produces a “traffic” that raises the risk of calculation errors. The experts warn that a poorly calibrated comment, a overflight unreported or a maritime incident could accelerate a spiral that is difficult to contain, especially when Beijing tries to use its contacts with Washington to simultaneously pressure Tokyo and Taipei. In this context, Yonaguni becomes symbol and detonator: too close to Taiwan to be irrelevant, too exposed to be invulnerable, and too strategic for either side to relinquish control or influence. Plus: the island is both within immediate range of Chinese missiles and within the American concept of advanced distributed operationsmeaning it could be both a multiplier of Allied defense and a priority objective in the first minute of a war. A fragile balance. In short, China hardens his stanceJapan resignation definitely to ambiguity, Taiwan accelerate the shielding of its sovereignty and the United States consolidates its role as operational guarantor. In the midst of all this, Yonaguni emerges as a microcosm where the resistance of that regional order is tested. An enclave of barely 1,700 inhabitants that, due to its geographical positionhas become a thermometer, border and barrier. Its immediate … Read more

The war in Ukraine has crossed a red line in Europe. They are no longer drones violating airspace, they are nuclear plants

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Ukraine has once again placed the nuclear alarm at the center of the European conflict after denouncing that Russia is deliberately attacking the electrical substations that feed the Khmelnitsky and Rivne power plants. According to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, drone attacks are not isolated incidents, but planned operations to endanger continental nuclear security. It happens that drones are reaching European power plants. The drone offensive. Over the past weekend, Moscow launched more than 450 drones and 45 missiles against various regions of Ukraine, causing at least seven dead and damage to critical infrastructure. In Dnipro, a drone hit a residential building, killing three people, while other attacks occurred in Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. kyiv accuses Russia of instrumentalizing the atomic risk as a psychological weapon and trying to cause an accident in plants that still depend on external electricity supply to avoid a collapse of the cooling system. Nuclear risk. In parallel, Moscow is advancing with its own nuclear agenda: the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, confirmed that the Kremlin is working on proposals for a possible nuclear test on the direct order of Vladimir Putin, a response to US President Donald Trump’s recent statement that Washington could resume their own tests. The atomic stress between both powers, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, has plunged Europe into a scenario of unprecedented vulnerability since the Cold War. The epicenter of the threat: Belgium. While Ukraine try to contain the Russian offensive on its own territory, Western Europe has begun to feel the echoes of a hybrid war that expands beyond the front. In Belgium, one of the countries with the highest density of critical infrastructure on the continent, there has been a wave of raids of drones over strategic installations. The most alarming took place at the Doel nuclear power plant, located next to the port of Antwerp, when three drones were initially detected at dusk on November 9, which were later confirmed as five different devices flying over the complex for almost an hour. The energy company Engie, which manages the plant, assured that operations were not affected, but authorities activated the National Crisis Center and reinforced security in the area. Belgium nuclear plant near Doel And more. Hours before, air traffic at Liège airport was had suspended briefly after multiple reports of drones, and in the previous days both Brussels airport and the Kleine Brogel air base (where NATO nuclear weapons are stored) had been targeted of similar sightings. Research points to a coordinated pattern affecting several northern European countries, including Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, where unidentified aerial intrusions have also been reported. Suspicions of espionage. Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken has linked sightings with possible foreign espionage operations and pointed to Russia as the most plausible suspect, although without conclusive evidence. The country’s intelligence services consider that drones could be part of a recognition strategy aimed at evaluating the European response capacity to combined attacks on critical infrastructure. The accumulation of incidents led the Belgian government to convene a National Security Council, after which the Minister of the Interior, Bernard Quintin, assured that the situation was “under control”although he recognized the seriousness of the incursions. The United Kingdom, France and Germany announced sending specialized personnel and equipment to assist Belgium in the detection and neutralization of hostile drones, a gesture that underlines the shared fear that the border between visible war and covert war is becoming dangerously blurred. Technological epicenter. Faced with this new dimension of the conflict, Ukraine has positioned itself as a key actor in the technological response. President Volodymyr Zelensky advertisement the upcoming opening of defense production offices in Berlin and Copenhagen before the end of the year, with the aim of strengthening industrial cooperation on drones and electronic weapons. These “export capitals”, according to his wordsthey will finance the domestic production of scarce equipment and help European allies build their own defensive systems. kyiv, which has made the use of drones one of the pillars of its military strategy, now offers your experience to countries that are beginning to suffer firsthand the effects of the Russian hybrid war. Ukraine as a test. In parallel, Ukrainian creativity in the improvised field of defense is reflected even in unusual solutions: old fishing nets French drones, made from horse hair, are being reused to create tunnels where the propellers of Russian drones become trapped. In contemporary warfare, technology intersects with craftsmanship, and ingenuity has become a form of national survival. Nuclear vulnerability. The incidents in Belgium and Ukraine reveal the same constant: the European nuclear infrastructure (plant, wiring, energy, logistics) has become a target symbolic and strategic. The attacks on Ukrainian substations that feed power plants and the drones that fly over Belgian reactors expose the fragility of a continent that depends on complex systems where any sabotage can multiply its effects. The threat no longer comes only from missiles, but from invisible swarms of drones, of disinformation, of political and technological engineering that undermines stability from within. Russia, faced with isolation and with a still powerful military industry, seems willing to use this asymmetry as an instrument of prolonged pressure. The European responsestill fragmentary, is beginning to be articulated between military cooperation, technological innovation and civil defense. Plus: the lesson left by this sequence of attacks and suspicions seems clear. In the Europe of 2025, the border between energy security and military security has fadedand the future of continental stability could depend less on the size of armies than on how quickly a drone is detected on radar before reaching a nuclear power plant. Image | Trougnouf, Wwuyts In Xataka | The latest tactic of the Russians in Ukraine breaks with the previous one: they have gone from appearing “out of nowhere” to directly disappearing In Xataka | Orion was the Russian version of the US’s most lethal drone. Ukraine can’t believe it when it opens: it’s not a version, it’s the work of the US

a temporary robot with AI, drones and without labor rights

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The “robots eat us” is far away for some jobs. In others, that science fiction scenario became a reality a long time ago. Every time it is more common to see that department stores are operated by robots and that automated or remote-controlled machines they have made a space in a framework in which there is a lack of labor. The countryside does not escape from that reality and in a country as dependent on agriculture as Spain, there are already those who are testing self-employed seasonal workers with artificial intelligence who They work tirelessly. And the controversy is served. Temporary with AI. A few days ago there was XXX IRTA Fruit Daysa meeting in which agricultural companies present technical innovations for the sector. One of the participants was Moreno Intec del Pla, a distributor and manufacturer of agricultural machinery specialized in fruit harvesting that has to its credit the Tecnofruit: a picking platform with conveyor belts on which human workers manually place the fruit. At this year’s event, the company presented a robot that has been in development for four years. It is a kind of huge container that has the fruit tanks, diesel tank, engine and wheels, but that has eight drones hooked to its upper part. Each of them is armed with an arm that they use to pick up the fruit (apples, in this case) and place it in the containers. The main advantage? They don’t get tired and each unit has integrated lighting to continue working, whatever the time of day. How it works. Each drone has cameras that allow the specimens to be identified, and a artificial intelligence It is responsible for analyzing whether the piece fits the parameters predefined by the farmer. This system can be configured to harvest all units or to discriminate based on size or color, and although it has remote control so that a single person can control up to five harvesters with the tablet, operation is autonomous. Apart from harvesting, it can also perform other functions such as the selective elimination of small fruits and, although the system currently uses a diesel engine with the aim of guaranteeing long autonomy, there are plans to create electrified versions. Costs and labor. Lluís Asín is responsible for the IRTA Fruit Growing program and, as we read in Segrecomments that systems like this represent “an important leap in the competitiveness of the sector.” He states that between 30% and 40% of the production cost of a plantation corresponds to the harvest and that platforms like this can help improve the profitability of the fields. And, of course, the debate is on the table because the robot arrives to directly replace human labor. Sergi Moreno is the technical director of Tallers Moreno, promoters of this robot, and assures that “it replaces the human part of the process. Each drone acts as if it were a person, but with the ability to operate day and night without rest.” He continues by pointing out that “the main problem of the sector is the lack of labor at the time of harvest”, but it is not perfect and can be seen in the demonstration video: “the same productivity as in manual work has not yet been achieved.” Japanese impulse. Now, Moreno is clear that “the future of the field depends on this automation,” and although Tallers Moreno have been the promoters, the robot has the impulse from Kubota Corporation. This is a Japanese agricultural machinery manufacturer that is developing and marketing autonomous drones for fruit and vegetable harvesting. plantation care. It is not unusual for proposals like this come from Japansince the country is going through a deep birth crisis that is affecting all sectors of society, and work in the field is not left out of this. This automation, in addition to reducing labor costs by 30% (a figure that coincides with IRTA’s estimate), allows increase the height of trees so that they produce more and they claim that the return on investment occurs in just three weeks. World. The development of this machinery is not isolated and Kubota is working hand in hand with the Israeli company Tevel Aerobotics Technologies. Like many other countries, Israel has a problem with agricultural labor, which is why it is looking to accelerate the development of these autonomous drones. It is one of the epicenters of both development and testing, but there are other countries involved. In the United States, states such as California or Washington are already integrating drones in fruit and vegetable harvesting. lettuce. In Europe, Italy and Spain have pilot collection programs underway and are also creating development and collaboration platforms, such as Tallers Moreno. Chile is evaluating the implementation for apple and grape farms. Debate. There are other countries in which putting drones to work is being well developed or valued, and the debate is served for the reason you can imagine: it is something that directly replaces the human worker. There are already voices that warn of a future in which the majority of these seasonal jobs will be absorbed by local automation, threatening livelihood of thousands of workers around the world. Furthermore, there are those who point to a unequal access because it will be the large producers that, with more means, will access this machinery, further strangling the small plantations. There is also the opposite argument, the one that defends robotic labor, pointing that there is no one who wants to work in the field and that new jobs will be created, with people who will have to train to control and maintain these robots. We continually talk about robots in facilities like car megafactoriesdepartment stores of companies such as Amazon and even in the kitchenbut now the field can be that place where robots perform another silent surprise. Although it will be necessary to see if the collection speed improves, because currently it is far from optimal. Images | Tevel In Xataka | You cannot get on the … Read more

A new threat has arrived in the skies of Europe. They are not drones or fighters, and the order is to shoot before you ask

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For weeks now, the European sky has has converted in a silent front of hybrid war: brief incursions, weak signals, ambiguous trajectories and objects that, without carrying clear flags, force airport closures, diversions of trade routes and military responses that consume resources and erode civil normality. The pattern is repeated from the Baltics to Central Europe and seems designed to measure the NATO reflexes. Now something else has arrived, and it’s not drones or fighter jets. Balloon waves. Lithuania has announced that will bring down any balloon that crosses from Belarus after detecting in one go 66 night intrusions and chain closures of Vilnius airport. The government described the phenomenon as hybrid attack and activated the closure of the eastern border, initially temporary but set to become indefinite, with minimal exceptions for diplomats and EU citizens in transit. The decision marks a turning point on NATO’s eastern flank, where violations of airspace by drones, balloons and Russian aircraft are increasing. have become recurring in recent weeks, from Estonia and Poland to Denmark, Norway and Germany, fueling the impression of a sustained campaign of provocations calibrated to measure reflexes, saturate defenses and erode political tolerance at the cost of deterrence. Nature and sign. The balloons (some weighing more than 50 kilos, also used for tobacco smuggling) are interpreted not only as a criminal economy but also as a cheap instrument. psychological warfare and technical rehearsal: they stretch the “gray zone” five kilometers inward, force airport closures, degrade logistics, strain the civil and military decision chain and expose the friction of activating rules of engagement against targets no classic military sign. Lithuania will involve NASAMS, RBS-70, Avengers and MANPADS in neutralization, despite stocks depleted by transfers to Ukraine and the intrinsic difficulty of shooting down balloons with low radar signature and low kinetic energy. The political message is deliberate: any permeability (even if it seems marginal) will be treated as a strategic precedent. Escalation in NATO. We said it at the beginning, the episode arrives after penetrations of Su-30, Il-78 and MiG-31 in the Baltics, and after the recording of swarms of drones over Poland, Denmark, Munich or the Baltic, with more than 170 flights disrupted in one week in Vilnius and almost 14,000 passengers affected. Reiteration converts the episodic in pattern: state actors exploit loopholes in regulations (civil balloons, meteorological assumptions, smuggling) to degrade the continuity of European civil aviation and test the elasticity of ROE and allied cohesion without crossing explicit thresholds of article 5. Lithuania, in fact, studies consultations under article 4and has hinted that the closure could extend to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, raising the economic-logistical vector of the pulse. Hybrid war as a framework. Vilnius is clearand describes the phenomenon as a psychological operation aimed at disrupting daily life, testing NATO-EU synchrony and normalizing aggression (of low lethality, of course) as noise permanent. The background signal (at no point is Moscow explicitly named) fits into the repertoire hybrid warfare: discreet sabotage, information manipulation, low signal intrusion, erosion of trust and critical infrastructure, in conjunction with the war in Ukraine and under the plausible protection of Belarus. Plus: the closure of borders is accompanied by tougher criminal penalties against smuggling and coordination with Poland and Latvia to shield the eastern edge as a strategic unit, given the calculation that firmness, the earlier, will define how much the enemy will dare later. Image | LITHUANIAN MINISTRY OF DEFENSE In Xataka | Europe has decided to take action against Moscow’s hybrid war. So Germany has started hunting for Russian drones In Xataka | The Spanish invention that simplifies the hunt for Europe’s biggest threat: how to detect the arrival of drones in a matter of seconds

not only its drones come from China, but also Ukraine’s latest army

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In the month of October there was an anomaly for Ukrainian troops. Reconnaissance drones began to spot unknown figures among Moscow’s soldiers. It was known that there were north koreansbut a new front began to increase as the days went by: Cubans. Now, in an unpredictable turn of events, kyiv is being joined by a most unexpected group: Chinese. Why are there Chinese? The story was told in an extensive report by The Guardian newspaper. Although the contingent is still small, they speak of a few dozen, the very existence of Chinese fighting on the Ukrainian side is politically significant because contradicts the story that Beijing, as a social bloc, massively supports the invasion of Russia. Most of these volunteers did not set out as combatants from the beginning, but rather as observers or humanitarian volunteers: they arrived, saw direct damage to civilians, and concluded that simply donating or showing compassion was not enough. Cases like Tim’swho was scarred after seeing the bodies in the kyiv children’s hospital, and jumped into combat from the simple idea that his inaction would have been worse than the risk. There is no epic in his story: there is a feeling of moral urgency and the point of no return once the violence is seen in the first person. Disenchantment as a driving force. He explained the British media that these decisions are not only born from the war, but from a previous trajectory of personal wear within China: unemployment structural, feeling of vital stagnation, deterioration of freedoms and closure of civic space after the pandemic. Both Tim and Fan, another of the combatants, they express the same with different languages: to stay was to remain tied to a life that for them was not moving forward and that, as they saycould not be questioned publicly. War, paradoxically, offers them what they lacked: the ability to act, a real transformation of their own destiny and an environment where, although there is enormous physical risk, there is also room for personal decision. At least for them, it is more rational to risk their lives on a foreign front than to remain “frozen” in their country with no option to change. Public opinion. A investigation Tao Wang of Manchester Metropolitan University concluded that 80% of Chinese Respondents held pro-Russian views during the first year of the war and that “government-controlled media managed to influence public opinion in favor of Russia” as the war progressed. The volunteers they described an ecosystem where the pro-Kremlin narrative seemed the only one that circulated without cost, while sympathizing with Ukraine was seen as “deviation” and could bring social or legal consequences. That is why dissent seems like a rare bird: not because it does not exist, but because, according to the studyit is not safe to express it. Prudential asymmetry. Plus: the operating path is not symmetrical. There is a lot of pro-mercenary content for Russia that circulate in Chinese networks without brakes (video above), while finding instructions for enlisting in Ukraine requires bypassing censorship, using VPN and, as In the case of Fangetting to ask an AI where to start. Furthermore, the Guardian indicated that the risk to coming back is real: relatives questioned, possible ambiguous charges, surveillance. In other words, the State tolerates (and sometimes facilitates) the pro-Russian participationbut forces those who decide otherwise to go underground. This difference in cost explains why the pronuclear group with Ukraine is small, although it does not invalidate its relevance as a symptom. Limited military value. There is no doubt, militarily, these few dozen do not change the balance of the conflict. Symbolically, they confront part of the official discourse. They demonstrate that the legitimacy of the Beijing-Moscow alliance It is not socially homogeneous, or it is not always so, and that there is also a layer that rejects it when it has room to act. For Ukraine, its value possibly lies in proving that even in China there are citizens who consider the invasion unjustifiable and enough to risk their lives to stop it. What are they looking for? When the Guardian I asked them why take risks for a foreign country, the answers were not geopolitical but vital: the idea of ​​building a life in another environment, giving a different future to your children and/or demonstrating that your identity as Chinese is not automatically tied to the State or its foreign policy. In it Tim’s caseis also a message towards prejudices: nothing should be taken for granted about any society, much less just because the State is going in the opposite direction. Thus, the gesture of these unlikely recruits in the Ukrainian war once again demonstrates that the sides are invisible. If the Cubans went to Ukraine for an issue purely economicthe Chinese seem to do it for a much more vital issue. Image | LAC Chad Sharman, IToldYa In Xataka | Ukraine brought its drones closer to the Russian army. Their surprise is capital: the North Koreans are now Cubans with an irresistible promise In Xataka | In 2023, a pilot from Ukraine had an idea for Star Wars. Not only did it go well: his kamikaze plan has rewritten the war manual

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