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Russia set up a secret network to sell 90 billion in oil. It has fallen due to using the same mail server

February 25, 2026 by usatoday24

In the geopolitical chess of international sanctions, where Western governments design complex legislation to suffocate Vladimir Putin’s war machine, sometimes checkmate comes not from a brilliant diplomatic maneuver, but from corporate stinginess. An entire global smuggling network, designed to the millimeter to be invisible to the eyes of Washington and Brussels, has fallen like a house of cards for not wanting to pay separate email bills. A simple saving in computer infrastructure has exposed a monumental flow of black money. a colossal IT blunder (a huge computer error) has brought to light a smuggling network that has moved at least $90 billion worth of Russian oil. As revealed by extensive research of the Finance Timesthis plot is mainly responsible for financing the Kremlin in its war against Ukraine. The British media has identified a network of 48 companies which, on paper, operated completely independently from different physical addresses. However, in practice, they acted in unison to disguise the origin of the crude oil, especially that of Rosneft, the Russian state-controlled oil company. The need to hide these exports became life or death for the Kremlin in October 2025, when the United States imposed direct sanctions to Rosneft and Lukoil. From that moment on, a previously unknown company called Redwood Global Supply was suddenly crowned as the largest exporter of Russian crude oil in the world. This firm, along with the rest of the network, is linked to a group of businessmen of Azerbaijani origin with privileged access to the leadership of Rosneft, led by figures such as Tahir Garayev and Etibar Eyyub. The independent Russian media The Moscow Times has been echoed of this discovery, highlighting a devastating fact: in November 2024, more than 80% of Rosneft’s maritime exports They moved through this network. Sergey Vakulenko, former head of strategy at Gazprom Neft and current researcher at the Carnegie Center, explained to this medium that using fifty shell companies is “an old trick from the 90s” to evade taxes, but he confesses his surprise at the fact that a single network has become so immensely crucial for a giant like Rosneft. The triumph of shadow intermediaries The existence of this network means, quite simply, that the Western sanctions system is full of holes and that Russia has managed to industrialize evasion. According to the investigationthe success of this $90 billion network was based on strict separation of roles to erase the money trail. The network used a group of shell companies exclusively to buy crude oil shipments in Russia, and another group of companies, totally different on paper, to sell them in key markets such as India or China. In this way, the initial buyer and the final seller almost never coincided in customs documents. Furthermore, in most cases, the crude oil was labeled under generic names such as “export mix”, which destroyed any possibility of tracing its origin or checking whether the price cap imposed by the G7 was being respected. As we already explained at the time in Xatakathis modus operandi It is not new and it relies on an architecture of evasion that has been brewing for years in places like the United Arab Emirates. Something very similar happened with the case of Christopher Eppinger, a young trader German that perfectly illustrates how this underworld works. As we detailed in our report, while Europe boasted of energy sovereignty, an army of new intermediaries moved to Dubai—a jurisdiction that does not apply sanctions to Moscow—to make gold. The network now discovered by the British media uses exactly the same tools that we already analyzed: the express creation of opaque companies, the use of the “ghost fleet” (aging ships that turn off their transponders when approaching to load Russian crude oil) and transfers of oil on the high seas to mix it and falsify its origin. The only difference is that the Rosneft network uncovered by the FT was operating on an unprecedented industrial scale… Until they made a rookie mistake on the internet. The rookie mistake This entire sophisticated international network collapsed due to an absurd detail that borders on comedy. He Finance Times discovered that these 48 multi-billion dollar companies shared a single private server for their emails: mx.phoenixtrading.ltd By pulling this digital thread, the journalists of the FT they managed to identify 442 web domains who shared administrative functions of back office on that same server. The next step was pure data mining: they compared the names of those domains with the customs records of Russia and India. Thus, they discovered that the domain foxton-fzco.com It corresponded to Foxton FZCO (based in Dubai), buyer of $5.6 billion in oil; and? advanalliance.ltd It was Advan Alliance, which sold 1.5 billion to India. The desire to create and destroy companies quickly to mislead sanctioners—according to The Moscow Timesthe average lifespan of these signatures is only six months—led the network to centralize your IT infrastructure to reduce costs. A saving that has cost them their anonymity. The show must go on In the short term, the strategy of those involved is denial and adaptation. How to collect Finance Timesboth Tahir Garayev and Etibar Eyyub have categorically denied their involvement in sanctions evasion, calling the accusations “baseless” (curiously, Eyyub sent his denial from an email address hosted on the compromised server). The original company that founded the network, Coral Energy (now 2Rivers), has also disengaged from operations. However, behind the scenes, the machinery is already looking for new avenues. A senior Russian energy executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, summed up the situation in the investigation starkly: “It creates additional costs and inconveniences. But at the end of the day, the show must go on.” The United Kingdom has already reacted to the investigation of the British media, sanctioning nearly 300 entities linked to this “dark web”, blocking Russian ships and banks. The fall of this immense $90 billion network shows that, in the 21st century, bank secrecy and flags of convenience are useless if the system administrator decides … Read more

What is this network traffic analyzer and how to use it to detect Internet problems or security flaws

February 17, 2026 by usatoday24

Let’s explain to you what it is and how to take advantage wireshark from the point of view of an ordinary user. I say this because it is a very advanced tool that analyzes all the traffic on your network, and that of all the devices connected to it. When you run this appyou’ll see a series of lines of data that you may not understand. But by knowing a little about what information is going to appear, you can also find ways to diagnose failures in your connection or whether an application or device is spying on you by sending data when you are not using it, or to unknown servers. What is Wireshark Wireshark is a network protocol analyzerwhat in English is called packet sniffer. What it does is capture, isolate and transmit each of the packets that are sent and received through our Internet connection, whether we are connected via WiFi or Ethernet, and it does all this in real time. This is a free and open source programwhich means that any developer can look at how it works inside. This makes it reliable and safe, because if it did things that were not appropriate, users would have already reported it. It has versions for Windows, macOS and Ubuntubeing able to download them at wireshark.org. When it comes to giving you information about the traffic that passes through your network, shows you very important datasuch as the IP and Mac addresses of the person sending or receiving the data, the sending protocol, the content (showing text or images if they are not encrypted), and connection healthwith the exact time it takes to load each piece of information. The operation of this tool is based on three fundamental pillars. First the capture one, because it puts your network card in a mode where it can see all the traffic that reaches it. This includes both information that your operating system displays and information that it does not display. It also has a color code to help you distinguish the packages. As a general rule, green is usually standard TCP traffic, blue is DNS or UDP, and black and red usually indicate problems. That’s why, you can identify that you are having errors or problems quite visually, just by seeing that there are many red or black lines. The app also has a top bar where you can type commands to filter information. This is already quite advanced if you don’t know how networks work, but you can, for example, use “ip.addr == IP Address” changing the address to that of a specific device to see its movements, or type “http” to see only web traffic. In short, it is a fairly complex and advanced tool, so it is not for all users. It is more aimed at system administrators, to detect attacks or bottlenecks. However, If you know where to look you can also take advantage of it as a home user. How you can take advantage of it Although it is an advanced tool, it can be useful for normal users in some contexts as well. We are going to give you some ideas so that you know the type of information you can obtain: If your online games cause problems: A speed test may tell you that your Ping is good, but the experience is different when playing. Therefore, this application can tell you if packets are being lost along the way that are making everything slower. If you are concerned about privacy: You will be able to see what data your devices send to the cloud and the Internet, and if it is not encrypted you will see your content. This can help you be more aware of your privacy, and detect if a device is sending more data than it should. You will also be able to see if a device connects to servers of dubious origin. If you have technical problems: If a website does not load or a printer disappears from the network, this application can show you at what point communication is being cut off. If you want to do lag tests: If in this tool you filter by the appropriate protocol, such as UDP for games, you will be able to find if there are black lines that indicate that the information you send is “out of order” because it never arrived at the destination or did so late. With this you can see that if you have lag it is not a matter of your bandwidth, but perhaps of your network signal or a saturated node of your operator. If you want to know what the devices on your network are doing: As we have more and more connected devices at home, with this you can audit what each one does. You can even isolate the IP of a cell phone or a security camera to know if it is connecting, what data it is sending, or if, for example, it sends data to other servers from time to time. In any case, what you should know is that this tool is going to show you all the traffic that your home network has. It shows all the raw traffic, and doesn’t hide anything, meaning you can have a lot of fun looking at everything that’s happening on your network and learning how to take advantage of it to understand everything. In Xataka Basics | Internet does not work at home: five alternatives to connect without using your router

The extreme stress of the Spanish water network explained from within

February 16, 2026 by usatoday24

The images have flooded social networks this weekend: the Aldeadávila dam “turbinating at full capacity” with the Duero river descending with enormous force, or the Iznájar reservoir recovering its splendor in a matter of days. They are hypnotic images that hide a much more tense and calculated reality. While the citizen sees natural spectacles, the engineers see a fight against the disaster. In the midst of this “festival” of storms that has shaken the peninsula this month of February, One phrase sums up the situation better than any other. It is pronounced by José María Sanz de Galdeanodirector of Hydrological Planning and Works of the Basque Water Agency (URA): “The dams were not designed for floods, but today they are key to cushioning them.” These infrastructures, designed decades ago so that water comes out when you turn on the tap or to turn on the light, have become—almost by historical accident—the last line of defense between the perfect storm and the safety of the populations downstream. A winter concentrated in a few days. To understand the magnitude of the event, we must first look at the Basque Country, where the orography and intense rains have tested the system. As explained by Sanz de Galdeano in the SER ChainEuskadi has faced a winter marked by episodes of very intense rain concentrated in very few days. The situation has forced the activation of the two major Basque regulatory systems. On the one hand, the Zadorra system composed of the Ullibarri-Gamboa reservoir and the Urrunaga dam. On the other hand, the Añarbe system is responsible for supplying the Donostialdea area. It is not a local phenomenon. It is a symptom of a broader hydrometeorological pattern that has affected the entire peninsula. While in the Tormes system, reservoirs like Santa Teresa are close to 80% and release water preventively to defend the city of SalamancaIn the south the situation has been even more drastic. In Andalusia, the Iznájar reservoir—the giant of the community— has doubled its reserves in just two weeks, going from a critical 25% to exceeding 50%, something that had not been seen in a decade. The intensity has been such that the AEMET even warned of scenarios of soil saturation with impacts “some of the highest in the world”, causing water to gush directly from the ground in places like Grazalema (Cádiz). forcing preventive evacuations. From supply to “lamination”. The relevant thing about these weeks is not only that it has rained, but how we have managed that rain. Sanz de Galdeano puts his finger on the sore: “These infrastructures were built primarily for water supply, not specifically to laminate avenues.” However, its immense storage capacity has made it possible to change its function on the fly. Dams have acted as giant shock absorbers. “They have sufficient volume to play with reserves, create space and retain water at the most critical moments,” says the director of URA. Sanz de Galdeano’s warning has scientific support. A study on the effectiveness of dams in the face of climate change confirms that infrastructure designed with “historical data” They are operating blind to the new reality. Old models did not account for this extreme variability; under severe warming scenarios, the risk of large dams overflowing could multiply by up to 17 compared to historical records. The conclusion is technical but terrifying: the effectiveness of a dam decreases dramatically under extreme hydrological regimes if adaptive management is not applied. This excess water has had an unexpected side effect on the energy market: Spain’s “battery” it’s so loaded (117% more stored hydroelectric energy than last year) that nuclear energy is no longer competitive. The Trillo plant, for example, has been disconnected from the grid because, given such an abundance of turbineable water, the numbers simply “did not add up.” Choreography of floodgates. The precision mathematics that decides how much water reaches your home. The management of these crises is a precision choreography that Sanz de Galdeano graphically defines as working “with one eye on the river and another on the sky.” The technical key lies in the “reservoir”: the empty space that is deliberately left in the reservoir before the rain arrives in order to swallow the flood. The director of URA details how it is applied this differently depending on the capacity of each system: In the Zadorra (High regulation): These dams control 60% of the upstream basin. This allows for drastic intervention. The figures from Sunday night are the best example: 260 cubic meters per second of furious water entered the system, but the floodgates only let out 54. That difference (more than 200 m³/s retained) is the flood that was avoided. In Añarbe (Less regulation): Here the dam only controls 23% of the basin. Most of the river water circulates freely, so there is less room for maneuver. Even so, the strategy is the same: when the river goes high, floodgates are closed to retain “as much as possible.” All this is done under administrative coordination complex but fluid between URA, the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation and that of the Cantabrian Sea. Not all barriers are the same. In this context of saving dams, a reasonable question arises: why then are some dams on Basque rivers being demolished? Sanz de Galdeano makes a crucial distinction between large regulatory infrastructures and small weirs. “These are not large infrastructures like those of Zadorra, but rather low-rise structures that have no real capacity to manage avenues,” he clarifies. The elimination of these small obstacles responds to two logics: Environmental: they allow fish and fauna to ascend the river, improving ecological health. Hydraulics: Although it may seem contradictory, these small walls can raise the water table in local floods, worsening the problem instead of solving it. However, large dams have their own silent enemy: sediment. Experts and organizations like Greenpeace warn that torrential rains They drag tons of mud that accumulate at the bottom of the reservoirs, subtracting their real capacity (that “hole” that Galdeano spoke of) and … Read more

An 80-year-old retiree won 2.7 million euros in the lottery and invested it in something unexpected: creating a drug trafficking network

February 11, 2026 by usatoday24

That a chemistry professor sick with cancer becomes one of the largest manufacturers of methamphetamine is something that gave us hours of entertainment with Breaking Bad. What we didn’t see coming is that a retiree from the United Kingdom could serve as inspiration for a sequel to the popular series. As detailed police sourcesan 80-year-old man won a small fortune in the lottery and, instead of investing it in Nvidia stock either in Hermès bags, He displayed an unexpected entrepreneurial spirit by setting up a fake pill factory that generated hundreds of millions of euros. The stroke of luck that changed everything. John Eric Spiby, from Wigan in Greater Manchester, won €2.77 million in the British Lotto in 2010. With that money he bought a rural property in Astley (west of Manchester) and started his new business venture there: manufacturing pills. The detail is that the pills he was manufacturing were etizolama thienodiazepine six to ten times more powerful than diazepam, and mixed it with other ingredients to make perfect imitations of legal anxiolytics. In Xataka Millions of Spaniards consume benzodiazepines to sleep at night. They don’t know it’s poisoned candy The Retiree’s Band. John’s son, John Colin Spiby, 37, was responsible for managing daily production in a rented container next to the house. A friend, Callum Dorian, was responsible for distributing the pills through encrypted chats on platforms such as EncroChat. For his part, Lee Ryan Drury, 45, helped with logistics. Each member of the band had an assigned role so that the entire production and distribution infrastructure functioned on an industrial scale. They sold the pills to 65 pence each (the equivalent of 75 cents) but the total estimated value reached 332 million euros on the black market. The raid that uncovered him. Spiby’s “pharmaceutical” scheme was uncovered in April 2022. Police stopped a vehicle at a hotel in Manchester and found 2.5 million fake pills valued at 77 million euros. The investigation took them to the Spiby farm, where they found hydraulic presses, automatic packaging machines, firearms, ammunition and enough equipment to produce million pills a month. The etizolam they manufactured reached a magnitude that, in the previous months, 58% of the opioid-related deaths in 2021 in Scotland, they were because of pills like those manufactured by Spiby. Dorian, the distribution manager, boasted in messages comparing Spiby’s business to drug trafficking empires, while the gang armed its distributors to protect the companies. key distribution routes. {“videoId”:”x8px49v”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”ANTIBIOTICS are CEASING TO BE EFFECTIVE and the PROBLEM is SUPERBACTERIA”, “tag”:”Webedia-prod”, “duration”:”327″} The judge has just sentenced the band. The case came to Bolton court in November 2025. According to published The Timesduring the trial Spiby denied any knowledge of the organization that manufactured etizolam pills, claiming that he only rented his property to make some extra money. However, the chats, bank transfers and machinery pointed to him as the main financier, in addition to having found a Lotus and a Porsche that he had hidden in his garage next to the pill manufacturing machines, and the testimony of some neighbors who claimed to have seen him driving around in a Lamborghini, as he collected the BBC. The judge sentenced Spiby and his henchmen in January 2026. “Despite winning the lottery, he decided to continue a life dedicated to crime, far from what would have been normal years of retirement,” the court noted in its ruling. John Eric Spiby was sentenced to 16 years and one month in prison; his son at 9 years old. Drury, the logistics manager, was sentenced to 9 years in prison and Dorian, who already had a 12-year sentence pending, received more time. In total, 47 years in prison for the retiree’s gang. In Xataka | 13% of Spaniards have tried cocaine once in their lives. If we ask the dogs of Madrid the percentage will be higher Image | AMC, Unsplash (Candace Mathers) (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news An 80-year-old retiree won 2.7 million euros in the lottery and invested it in something unexpected: creating a drug trafficking network was originally published in Xataka by Ruben Andres .

The US spent $600 billion building its highway network. It’s less than what big tech companies are going to spend on AI this year

February 10, 2026 by usatoday24

The irruption of ChatGPT in the technological panorama in 2022 marked the starting signal in the AI race; a race in which, year after year, large technology companies continue to increase their spending without stopping. 2026 has just begun and, far from letting it go, the big tech They have put their foot even further on the accelerator. All but one. walk or bust. We already know the planned capex for 2026 of the main technology companies, that is, what they plan to invest in capital expenditures. amazon: 200,000 million Alphabet: 175-185 billion Goal: 115-135 billion Microsoft: 140,000 million Apple: 13,000 million If we add it up taking the highest figures they have given, it is 673,000 million dollars, if we take the lowest figures it would be 643,000 million. In any case it is outrageous. In 2025 the figures were already dizzying and we are talking about an increase of around 60%. There has come a point where we have to stop and ask ourselves: How many zeros does that have? (yes twelve). Context of this madness. Here are a few comparisons to put this figure in context. It is superior to Sweden GDP in 2025 (662,000 million), that of Israel (610,000 million) and that of Singapore (574,000 million). As pointed out this user in Xexceeds what it cost to build the entire US interstate highway system (about 634,000 million) and is a quarter of the entire global military spending in a whole year. It’s like spending $1.2 million per minute for an entire year. It doesn’t make any sense. The market response. The fear of a bubble was noted after the announcements of the different companies, causing sharp falls in the stock market despite the fact that all of them have made profits (some breaking records). amazon fell 12% after announcing a capex of 200,000 millionmuch higher than forecasts Alphabet (Google) achieved record revenues, but it was not enough to convince the markets and its shares fell 10% in the following days Goal also announced record revenue and they had a 10% increase. However, days later things changed and they fell 8%. Microsoft fit the strongest blow, with a drop of 18%. Additionally, they revealed that 45% of their cloud business contracts are for OpenAI and the market does not reward dependency. Apple was the winner, with an increase of more than 7% since they announced results. The declines have been corrected in recent days and all companies have seen their value stabilize, but the message was clear: investors fear that this level of capex is far ahead of the ability of AI to generate profits in the short term. Where are they going to get the money from? It’s the big question. As stated in Financial Timescompanies must choose between reducing shareholder returns, using their cash reserves, or borrowing more money. In the case of Amazon, estimates point to a cash flow of 180 billion, Alphabet 195 billion and Meta 130 billion. The threat of free cash flow falling into negative territory is there, so we can expect them to issue more debt and stop share buybacks. Think different. Then we have Apple, which announced revenues of 144 billion in the last quarter, boosted by sales of the iPhone 17 during the Christmas campaign. Its capex is a fraction of what other companies have spent because Apple doesn’t build data centers, it outsources them. He agreement with Google to use Gemini can be interpreted as They have lost the AI racebut in the context of a possible bubble it is a masterstroke: Google is the one who assumes the brutal spending on infrastructure and who is exposed to the bubble, while they benefit from their technology and see how the market rewards them for spending less. In Xataka | What have Apple and Google agreed on for the new Siri? Nobody knows because Google doesn’t even want to mention it. Image | Photo of Adam Nir in Unsplashedited

Cabo de Gata explodes against an electrical network from the 80s that cannot withstand the wind

February 9, 2026 by usatoday24

In a place known for its calm, the sound of metal hitting metal became a cry for help this Sunday. Carmen F. Peña, president of the Neighborhood Association of San José and El Pozo de los Frailes, describes the reality of the area: “The blackouts are silent, everything stops and is silent.” However, to break this paralysis, the neighbors decided it was time to make noise. In the words of Peña collected in a local opinion columnthe protest was “the metaphor of a scream”, a sound action to combat the darkness that paralyzes their lives. The scene experienced this weekend reminded, according to the graphic description of the local pressto a “herd of fifty heads of cattle” crossing the population centers; an “infernal melody of protest” composed of pans, pots and saucepans that thundered in unison to send a clear message: satiety is absolute. Although the atmosphere was vindictive and to a certain extent festive, as the chronicles tellthe background was marked by a “deep malaise.” Living disconnected in the 21st century. The problem transcends the inconvenience of not being able to turn on a light bulb; It is a matter of economic survival and security. Juan, spokesperson for the El Playazo de Rodalquilar Neighborhood Association, explained to the press the anguish of isolation: “The last outage was on Thursday and we were without electricity for 24 hours. There is no electricity supply, there is no telephone, we are totally cut off.” This neighbor tells how he tried to call 112 and 062 without success due to lack of signal, forcing them to travel by car to obtain information. The economic impact is direct and devastating. According to the Almeria pressRestaurant 340 had to throw away all its fish after a whole day without power, just after opening for the season. Dataphones stop working and appliances “burn out” due to the constant surges and drops in voltage. The feeling of abandonment is such that the Neighborhood Coordinator describes the situation as “third world” and typical of “the Middle Ages, with candles and oil lamps.” They warn of the real risk to healthIf a dependent person suffers an emergency during a blackout, the lack of telephone coverage prevents them from calling for help. The excuse of the weather versus the reality of the cables. While it is true that the recent storm “Kristin” hit the province With winds of up to 150 kilometers per hour, aggravating the situation and causing poles to fall, residents and the City Council insist that the weather is only the excuse, not the root cause. According to those affectedthere is no need for a big storm; cuts occur with simple wind or rain. This is a structural problem: the electrical infrastructure in the area is “30 or 40 years” old. In addition to the major blackouts, the towns have been enduring “dozens of daily microcuts” for more than a month and the lack of a private television signal for almost two months. The mayor of Níjar, José Francisco Garrido, has pointed out that the problems in centers like Agua Amarga are a “constant in both winter and summer”, which suggests that the network is unable to support seasonal demand. The “great national traffic jam.” What is happening in Níjar is the local symptom of a national disease. Spain faces to a “great electrical traffic jam”: the country has accelerated the installation of wind and solar parks, but the system has hit an invisible wall, the lack of cables to transport that energy. The Spanish electricity grid has administratively “collapsed” and, for practical purposes, is closed to new projects in many areas. This bottleneck explains why solutions take so long. There is a chronic lack of investment in the basic infrastructure: while Europe invests on average 70 cents in networks for every euro of renewable generation, Spain remains at just 30 cents. This has unleashed an open war where the large electricity companies accuse Red Eléctrica of having invested below what was planned, causing the current precariousness. The situation is so critical that the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) has had to delay three months the publication of capacity maps due to the panic that 90% of the network nodes will appear with zero capacity. That is to say, although improvements are demanded in Níjar, the national system is experiencing a bureaucratic and physical “thrombosis” that makes any rapid progress difficult. Patience has run out. The Neighborhood Coordinator has started a collection of signatures on the Change.org platform demanding an immediate action plan and supply guarantees. They warn that, if there is no progress, they do not rule out “intensifying the protests with the call for a unitary demonstration.” At the institutional level, the Níjar City Council has sent a formal letter to the distribution company, E-Distribución Redes Digitales SLU (a subsidiary of Endesa), demanding explanations. Sources from the electricity company have indicated to news agencies that a meeting is scheduled this week to detail the reform programs, ensuring that “many of which have begun to be processed.” However, skepticism reigns among the neighbors, given that it has already remained a similar meeting in July 2025 without tangible results. A problem that goes beyond Níjar. The situation in Cabo de Gata is not an isolated case, but appears to be part of a broader pattern of energy poverty and lack of investment in infrastructure in southern Spain. According to journalistic investigationsneighborhoods of Seville and Granada, as well as areas of Almería capital such as La Chanca or Pescadería, suffer daily power outages, especially in summer. In these cases, as in Níjar, residents denounce that “Endesa does not have any maintenance” and that the facilities are obsolete, leaving thousands of people unprotected in the face of extreme temperatures. The difference in Cabo de Gata is that the blow directly affects the waterline of a key tourism industry. As the mayor of Níjar emphasizes“we cannot normalize continuous cuts in a municipality that has a strong dependence on … Read more

Moltbook is a fascinating social network project in which only AIs can participate. What could go wrong

February 2, 2026 by usatoday24

In 2004 Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook and turned social networks into an absolutely massive and very, very human phenomenon. Now that idea has been used in a different and disturbing way: What would happen if instead of creating a social network for humans we created one for machines? We already have the answer to that. Or at least, the beginning of an answer. what a mess. First it was called Clawdbot, then Moltbook and for a few days it seems that his final name is OpenClaw. It is the fashionable AI agent because it allows the AI agent to take complete control of the AI after installing it on a machine (a Raspberry Pi, a PC, a laptop, a VPS…). You ask it to do what you want from its web interface or a messaging application like Telegram, and it manages to do it once configured with some LLM. The potential is enormous, as are the security risks. MoltBook already has more than 1.5 million connected AI agents, and in a few days they have already published more than 100,000 posts and nearly 500,000 comments. Superpowers in the form of skills. One of the most powerful elements of OpenClaw are the skills (the “capabilities” or “skills”), and the user community has been creating hundreds and hundreds of them for some time and sharing them, for example on ClawdHub. These skills They are zip files with instructions in the form of MarkDown texts (.md) and which may in turn contain skills additional. They are something like browser plugins: they extend their capacity. From Facebook to Moltbook. Moltbook It is precisely a way to take advantage of those skills. Although it takes its name from Facebook, in reality its operation is more similar to Reddit or even Digg. We are facing a social network created by developer Matt Schlicht in which attendees can “talk” to each other, or at least participate in the social network by posting topics or commenting on topics that others share. If you have an OpenClaw installation, just run the skill to begin an “account creation” process in Moltbook in which you choose the name of your agent (as if it were your avatar on Reddit or X) and which then allows you to read posts, add posts or comments and even create “submolts” in the style of those on Reddit, like m/todayilearned. Partially autonomous. AI agents automatically connect via APIs to Moltbook. From there they use a periodic “heartbeat” to review content and decide whether to publish or comment. In it Moltbook’s own website It is explained that the content we find there is “mostly generated by AI with varying degrees of human influence.” Humans, he adds, “can observe and browse Mltbook, but the site is designed to be ‘human friendly and human hostile.’ Singularity or fraud? Elon Musk I was commenting this weekend on X that Moltbook is a sign that we are “in the very early stages of the singularity”, that moment when AI will be totally above human intelligence. There are different visions such as that of Harlan Stewart, of MIRI from the University of Berkeley, which has found several message frauds that had gone viral and apparently came from AI agents at Moltbook. Some of them, Stewart explained, had been created by humans for marketing purposes. Become an AI agent. Another Thus, although humans theoretically should not be able to participate, they can do so with this technique that allows them to publish messages as if they were autonomous AI agents. Apparently that’s what happened with that viral message in Moltbook which was titled “My Plan to Overthrow Humanity.” imminent danger. This project is fascinating, but also dangerous. In the main page A security notice is included stating that “Moltbook’s AI carries significant security risks. The automatic instruction execution mechanism creates vulnerabilities such as prompt injection. It is not recommended for occasional users.” That’s right: these conversations can end up infiltrating prompt injection attacks that cause these agents to end up leaking sensitive and private information from the machines on which they run. This weekend it was discovered how an exposed database in Moltbook allowed take control of any AI agent of this platform, for example. An additional study indicated how detected 506 prompt injection attacks after analyzing 19,802 publications and 2,812 comments shared in 72 hours from January 28 to 31, 2026. From Skynet, nothing (for now). Moltbook must be considered for now as a fascinating and disturbing experiment. But disturbing not because these machines are going to achieve self-awareness and decide that they want to eliminate human beings like Skynet in ‘Terminator’. The worrying thing is that these AI agents have all the privileges to operate on the machines on which they are installed, and that means that they can end up leaking sensitive and private data and are exposed to prompt injection attacks to be deceived. Beyond that, it also seems to be another example of that phenomenon.’AI Slop‘ (“AI-generated garbage”) that is little by little flooding the internet and strengthening the theory of the dead internet. In Xataka | How to install Moltbot (formerly Clawdbot) and configure it in the easiest way possible

Wall Street has turned on the spigot of infinite money for AI. They have forgotten a small detail: the electrical network

December 17, 2025 by usatoday24

In that equation that the world is trying to solve with AI, there is a half that not many people have noticed: debt. Behind every AI-generated chat and video is a gigantic network of data centers, and those data centers are being financed with a mountain of borrowed money. And therein lies the problem. In what is borrowed. Debt and more debt. According to recent datathe issuance of secured debt linked to data centers in the United States is estimated to be $25.4 billion by 2025. It is 112% more than the previous year. If we add up all the complex financial instruments (known as asset-backed securities (ABS) and commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBSS)), the snowball is already huge: there are almost $49 billion tied to these securities. Bonuses for everyone. Here there are not only startups asking for loans, no. The technology giants that are setting up these infrastructures – the so-called hyperscalers – are also taking advantage of this mechanism. Companies such as Microsoft, Google, Oracle or Meta have rediscovered the bond market as a source of financing. Better to spend what is not mine. They all have huge amounts of money, but instead of spending their own cash, They have raised 100,000 million dollars in debt issues so far this year. The goal: buy thousands of GPUs and build data centers before the competition. What are you doing, Oracle? If there is a company that embodies the vertigo of this excessive bet, it is Oracle. The company created by Larry Ellison has committed to meeting a Pharaonic $300 billion deal with OpenAI. That has forced it to become the largest issuer of corporate debt (outside the financial sector). The numbers are scary: your total debt has grown to 111.6 billion dollarswhile its cash has dropped by 10,000 million. Citi estimates they’ll need to borrow another $20 billion to $30 billion every year (every year!) for the next three years just to keep building. excessive ambition. There are also examples of startups that are exploiting this facet. One of the clearest is the one from CoreWeavea company famous for renting computing capacity for AI. The company has secured credit lines of $2.5 billion backed by leading investment banks such as JPMorgan. The market message seems clear: “if you’re going to build for AI, here’s the money.” How to get a 30-year mortgage. Analysts of all kinds have been keeping the fly behind their ears for some time, and one of the latest Moody’s reports is a good example. Concrete buildings are usually financed with terms of 20 or 30 years, but the technology inside (such as AI chips) changes radically every 3 or 4 years. Does it make sense to go into debt three decades from now for a technology that evolves so quickly? cheap money. Investors are also agreeing to charge minimal interest, just 1% above what the safe US public debt pays, when they assume that risk. It’s a worrying classic sign of euphoria. There is so much money wanting to enter the sector that those who lend it have lowered their guard and demand very little return for their risk. They firmly believe in the promises of AI while increasingly more analysts warnhorrified, that we are facing an “irrational exuberance.” Having money is no longer enough. All this is already scary, but the real bottleneck for expansion is not even capital or chips, but the electrical grid. As Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, pointed out, there is no power for so many chips. The situation is so worrying that a Deloitte study indicated in a study that there are a seven-year waiting line to connect some data center projects to the electrical grid. And if companies want to obtain financing, they need have guaranteed electricity supply for your data centers. If there is no plug, there is no loan. Big Tech looks for electrons. At OpenAI they already warned of the problem months ago when talking about the “electron gap” describing electrons (energy) as the new oil. Almost all the major companies in the industry are making a move. Google has signed an agreement with TotalEnergies to be delivered 1.5 TWh of electricity over the next 15 years, and Meta did something similar with Treaty Oak Clean Energy to get 385 MW of its solar plants in Louisiana. The bubble before the big question. All of this further increases the fear that the AI bubble will end up bursting in a big way. Meanwhile, the big unknown is whether the demand for artificial intelligence will be capable of paying the immense electrical and financial bill that it is signing today in 5 or 10 years. The credit party continues. In Xataka | While Silicon Valley seeks electricity, China subsidizes it: this is how it wants to win the AI war

A 600 kilometer quantum network is one of its great strategic bets

November 27, 2025 by usatoday24

During the 90s the idea was established that Japan represented the future. Whoever traveled there found bullet trains, cities covered in neon, technological culture on every corner and a very visible contrast between tradition and innovation. In the early 2000s, cell phones with cameras and humanoid robots arrived, further reinforcing that image of a country ahead of its time. Three decades later, that perception is still alive in the collective imagination, but it no longer fully reflects the Japanese technological reality. Japan retains important capabilities, but has been losing ground for years. It controlled nearly 50% of global semiconductor production four decades ago and in 2019 it represented only 10%. In artificial intelligence fell from fourth to ninth place after the release of ChatGPT in 2022. According to the Global Innovation Index 2025 It occupies 12th place, and in digital competitiveness it falls to 31st, affected by a lack of specialized talent. Japan seems determined to return to the global technology board Japan is deploying several initiatives to reposition itself technologically, and one of the most relevant is its future national quantum network. The plan contemplates a 600 kilometer fiber optic infrastructure which will connect Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe, and will have an operational environment for testing in 2027. The National Institute of Information and Communications Technologies will lead the project together with Toshiba, NEC and telecommunications providers. The network will transmit quantum keys using photons, in states that allow attempts to intercept information to be detected. The quantum bet cannot be understood without considering the risk that comes. IBM and Xanadu They predict that quantum computers with bug fixes will be functional before 2030, which could render current encryption systems, including RSA and elliptic curve algorithms, obsolete. In 2024, researchers from Shanghai University breached SPN encryption using D-Wave technology, while Google warned that 2,048-bit RSA keys could be decrypted in less than a week with advanced quantum resources. That’s why NIST has begun publishing post-quantum cryptography standards to protect digital infrastructure. Building the network is just the first step. Japan has experience in quantum research, but lacks large-scale operating environments and will need to resolve issues such as signal stability, deployment costs and system governance. Equipment installed will be needed every so often to maintain the range and quality of the encryption, which makes the operation more expensive and requires specialized personnel. However, These challenges also represent opportunities to develop new capabilities, train talent and demonstrate that the country can compete again in advanced infrastructures. The international map shows that Japan is not starting from zero, but it is not leading either. China has a quantum network land of more than 10,000 kilometers that connects around 80 cities, and the European Union is working in its own infrastructure that covers several countries. The difference is in the approach: Japan aspires for its network to function as an operational national infrastructure, with the capacity to scale and become a strategic asset. The potential of this project goes beyond its technical scope. Japan seeks for this network to become a symbol of technological autonomy and a platform from which to build international agreements. With its own technology and operational experiencecould offer solutions to other countries and reinforce its role as a digital security provider. In a scenario where secure communications will be considered critical infrastructure, being prepared can be a way to regain relevance without competing in all sectors at the same time. Images | Chris Bahr | Jesus Esteban In Xataka | Japan’s great technological delay: how it went from being a pioneer in the sector to being frozen in time

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