preparing

The world is preparing to harvest 36% fewer pistachios. This is great news for Spanish farmers

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2025 is not being an easy year for the pistachio. TO the effects of the Iran war, the closure of Hormuz and the swings The price of the fruit now adds a more than likely puncture in the global harvest. This is what at least the main producer organization, the INC, expects, which foresees a drop of 36% in the amount of fruit harvested worldwide. Although it’s not strange that crops rise and fall, conditioned by the climate or the cycles of the trees, the sector’s estimate is interesting for another reason: it confirms that Spain is reinforcing assumption. And everything indicates that it will gain ground this campaign. What has happened? That the International Nuts and Dehydrated Fruits Council (INC) has recognized that the 2026/2027 campaign does not look particularly good for pistachio. At least if we talk about production. Although the sector expects an increase in the cultivation of walnuts, hazelnuts or raisins, in the case of pistachios it anticipates a ‘puncture’ of 36% on a global scale. Translated into tons, that means that production would go from 1.1 million harvested during the 2025/2026 campaign to 701,050 t in the 2026/2027 campaign. Country Campaign 2025/2026 (tons) Campaign 2026/2027 (tons) USA 722,670 350,000 Türkiye 114,600 156,400 Iran 225,000 130,000 Syria 13,350 35,000 Spain 9,500 11,500 Greece 6,500 8,500 Australia 3,000 5,500 Afghanistan 2,600 2,700 Italy 4,700 1,000 China 320 450 World production 1,101,740 701,050 What is the reason? Although a drop of 36% may seem alarming, the data should be handled with caution. Pistachio cultivation is conditioned by the vecería, which means that there are campaigns in which the trees are loaded with fruit and others in which the harvests are much scarcer. It is one of the handicaps with which the sector plays. Hence there are voices, like that of Juan Gallegofrom Ibero Pistacho, who ensure that a drop of 36% “is within the norm.” Nor is it strange that part of the harvests are saved from one year to the next precisely to compensate for the ‘puncture’ of the years highly marked by the harvest. Does only that factor influence? No. The INC data, advanced by the EFE agency, allow us to focus more and observe the great differences that exist between producing countries, each conditioned by its own challenges. For example, in California, the world capital For pistachio, a 52% drop in the harvest is expected due to flowering problems. The ‘photo’ is not good in Iran either, which is suffering the consequences of the high temperatures of the previous campaign and expects its production to be reduced by another 42%. And what happens in Spain? Here the panorama is somewhat different. Although our production is light years away Compared to the US or Türkiye, the INC estimates that in Spain the 2026/2027 campaign will close with 21% more fruit harvested. In practice, this would mean going from 9,500 tons in the 2025/2026 financial year to 11,500 in the 2026/2027 campaign. The data is interesting because it not only consolidates Spain as the fifth world producer, it also allows it to dream of closing the gap on the podium. The forecast of the INC shows a decline in crops in the US and Iran, the first and third producers on a global scale. And although a priori Türkiye (the second supplier) will see its harvest increase by 36%, it remains to be seen if the strong storm that suffered in May has damaged the trees and will reduce the harvest. How is that possible? That the Spanish crop grows while it declines in other countries with large pistachio plantations, such as the US, Türkiye or Iran, is actually little surprising. Spanish farmers They have been increasing for years the number of hectares dedicated to this crop, especially in Castile-La Manchawhich concentrates a large part of the national production and 77% of the surface. The growth of the harvest in Spain during the next campaign (2026/2027) is only a reflection of that bet. The data from the Ministry of Agriculture show that the planted area in Spain has skyrocketed in recent years to exceed 85,800 hectares in the 2024/2025 campaign and that production has grown by more than 70% in just a few years. Looking ahead to the 2026/2027 season, the INC expects a harvest of 11,500 tons. Not all sources agree on this information (in the sector there are those raises it to 16,000 t), but in any case the background photo is always the same: Spanish production is increasing. What to expect now? The million dollar question. For now, and beyond the short-term fall in harvests due to the rainy season, both the US and Iran they hope to increase its production thanks to the increase in plantations. Specifically, California hopes to boost its average capacity by 40% in the coming campaigns and Iran and Türkiye are already considering approaching 300,000 tons in the medium term. Regarding the price of the fruit and whether or not prices will be altered by the 36% drop in production, there are different opinions in the sector. The Italian analysis company Areté warns of a market with “strong tensions on supply and prices” given that the demand for pistachios has been growing for years. Others, like Gallego, acknowledge that “there may be a small increase in cents,” but clarifies: “All of us who are in this sector are interested in the product remaining stable and being consumed.” Not only the generosity of the crops comes into play. The price is also affected by other factorssuch as instability in Iran, the closure of Hormuz or the influence of war on the cost of inputs such as fuel. Images | Brenan Greene (Unsplash), Brad Spry (Flickr) and USDA In Xataka | Fruit seems like the perfect summer dinner. The problem is that it is not as good an idea as it seems.

Europe is preparing four measures to become independent from United States technology. The problem is that he doesn’t know how

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The European Union has been ruminating for some time that depending on third parties to manage its data, its chips and its digital infrastructure is a risk that it can no longer afford, so next Wednesday, June 3, it will put on the table a package of measures to achieve its technological sovereignty (or at least, to depend less on countries like the United States or China) whose draft they have already had access to. Financial Times either Political. The sovereignty package is so ambitious that it aims to mark a before and after at the level of the RGPD and it is not something general and intangible: there are four specific measures so that vulnerabilities such as that of Nexperia don’t happen again. But the dependence on the United States is just as worrying, as the slam of the Netherlands on the purchase of Solvinity. Two concrete examples from two different countries for the same problem: European critical infrastructure is in the hands of others. The EU package of measures. Next Wednesday, technology commissioner Henna Virkkunen will present the review of two laws known as the Chips Act and the Cloud and AI Development Actin addition to an open source software strategy and a roadmap for the digitalization of the energy sector. More specifically: The cloud, tested. Audits and stress tests to discover vulnerabilities and thus anticipate a possible US blackout. Chips Act 2. The Commission imposes the power to, in an emergency, cancel semiconductor supply contracts in the event of a shortage, fine companies that hide information about their supply chain and act as a central buyer for the 27 member states, as it did with vaccines during COVID. Open source as an alternative way. The EU wants to promote European free software companies, will encourage collaboration between states and create an instrument to maintain indigenous solutions against US proprietary software. A lot of financing: 200 billion euros are needed to expand data center capacity until 2036 and another 20 billion to execute digitalization and AI plans in the energy sector. Where from? Fundamentally, attracting private investment. Why is it important. Because Europe does not manage its own data or control the core of its critical industry and this has clear and direct consequences. The old continent has already seen the wolf’s ears. A good example is the cloud: three American companies occupy 70% of the European market, according to Sinergy datacompared to a pyrrhic 15% made in Europe. These are hospitals, public administration, defense of all of Europe operating on servers where Washington rules. In terms of chips, it has already experienced it with Nexperia: the Dutch government took control of the company to prevent China from destroying it and Beijing responded by cutting off the supply of chips, which resulted in a shortage of processors and even stops in an industry as essential for the old continent as the automobile. Context. This package of measures comes with clear bases: the recommendations of the Mario Draghi’s competitiveness report of 2024 and the Competitiveness Compass of the EU and in reality it is not more bureaucracy, but a way of simplifying everything to see the objective more clearly. In fact, a year ago the European Parliament defined what he understood as technological sovereignty: “the ability to build capacity, resilience and security by reducing strategic dependencies, avoiding dependence on foreign actors and single suppliers, and safeguarding critical technologies and infrastructure.” Regarding the chip manufacturing industry, a paradigm shift is observed: we have gone from the practical “just in time” to streamline inventories seeking efficiency and low cost to manufacturing “just in case”, something that is already contemplated by both the European chip law and its American counterpart. Europe’s problem is that it arrives late and with a tiny manufacturing muscle. Yes, but. The European record invites us to take this ambitious plan with caution. The different projects to manufacture chips in the old continent have progressed unevenly, the funds from the original law were dispersed among different state projects without a common industrial strategy (for example, Germany negotiated with Intel and France with STMicroelectronics) and the reality today is that chip manufacturing conditions in Europe continue to be worse than in China, South Korea or the United States. That Europe legislates and each state goes to war on its own also applies to the cloud: the government of each state has the power to decide what to do after the relevant audits. The new package of measures starts from the same point and runs the same risks of fragmentation. On the other hand, there is the economic issue: public financing may be dispersed, but private financing for data centers is not yet assured. And finally there is a big underlying problem: Europe has laws, but it lacks a powerful and complete industrial ecosystem to achieve technological sovereignty. In Xataka | Europe has proposed to become technologically independent from the US: And it has started with the most difficult thing: chips In Xataka | Europe is moving from words to action in its “independence” from Microsoft and Google. First step: critical data Cover | Intel and Carl Gruner

China is preparing the most powerful and rare exascale supercomputer on the planet. No GPU: only Chinese CPUs

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An exascale supercomputer is one capable of performing at least 1 exaflop (10¹⁸) of floating point operations per second. These machines are the most powerful currently available if we stick to classic computers and leave aside the prototypes of quantum computers. The classification TOP500 identifies the most capable supercomputers on the planetand, as expected, four exascale machines appear at the top of this list: The Captain, FrontierAurora and Jupiter. The first three reside in the United States and the fourth in Germany. Curiously, no Chinese supercomputer appears in the top ten positions of this classification, although we know that some of its most powerful machines are not officially reported to the TOP500 for geopolitical reasons. Be that as it may, the Government led by Xi Jinping is determined to change this scenario. And the Shenzhen National Supercomputing Center has announced that is going to build a supercomputer called Lingshen that, according to this institution, will have a sustained performance of more than 2 exaflops and will integrate only components designed and manufactured in China. Lingshen supercomputer architecture is very unusual The supercomputer ‘The Captain’ from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (USA) is a real beast. This machine exceeds 1.8 exaflops, making it currently the most powerful on the planet. The APUs are responsible for its brute force. Instinct MI300A from AMD, which work hand in hand with the EPYC 9005 processors. However, the most surprising thing is that it brings together no less than 11,340,000 cores and delivers 1,809 PFlops/s Rmax and 2,821.10 PFlops/s Rpeak. Lingshen will bring together 47,000 processors of Chinese origin that will be distributed in Huawei Kunpeng servers The architecture of ‘El Capitan’ is very similar to that of the other supercomputers in the TOP500 classification, but the machine being prepared by the Shenzhen National Supercomputing Center is going to take different paths. And it is that according to Lu Yutongthe director of this center, the Lingshen supercomputer will use only general purpose processors (CPU), and will not use GPU. Not a single one. It is a very unusual decision, and it is surprising that in theory it will exceed 2 exaflops only with this type of chips. Be that as it may, this is not the only thing we know. Lingshen will bring together 47,000 processors of Chinese origin that will be distributed in servers Huawei Kunpeng equipped with Taishan cores with ARM architecture. Lu Yutong has also confirmed that this machine will have 650PB of storage and a million-port interconnection. Everything that the Shenzhen National Supercomputing Center has announced sounds great, but this project also leaves us with some very reasonable doubts. The most obvious is that Lingshen is just a project at the moment. It has not yet been built, so its theoretical maximum performance comes from an estimate and not from a measurement provided by a real test bench. On the other hand, it is very surprising that the Shenzhen National Supercomputing Center has chosen to integrate only CPU. Huawei, Moore Threads and Cambricon Technologies are three of the chinese companies which have domestically made GPUs that could presumably fit into this machine. In any case, it is worth keeping track of this project to see if Lingshen finally lives up to the expectations it has raised. Image | TOP500.org More information | Shenzhen National Supercomputing Center In Xataka | The Frontier supercomputer is the second most powerful exascale machine on the planet. And it has a mission: nuclear fusion

Samsung is tired of being second in the chip race. Now they are preparing to dethrone the titan of Taiwan

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When we talk about artificial intelligence, there are several proper names that star in the conversation. NVIDIA has become the foundation and cement of AI thanks both to their products as, above all, your money. But it’s impossible to leave Samsung out of the equation. Your HBM4 memories They are the ones that will allow NVIDIA and AMD manufacture their platforms new generation, but South Koreans do not want to stop there. They seek to be the largest advanced factory in the world and have launched a plan to wipe TSMC where it hurts the most. In the expansion throughout the United States. An x8 thanks to AI. 2025 was a transition year for Samsung. While its great rival in the memoir segment –SK Hynix– dominated the HBM chip marketSamsung is preparing to make the leap with HBM4 chips. This is the new generation of high-bandwidth memory designed to power the new AI platforms from both NVIDIA and Samsung. The effort paid off by overtaking SK and becoming the supplier of the two giants, and it is something that is already materializing. At least in estimates profit, of course. Now the company forecast profits of about 38 billion dollars for the first quarter of the year, something that destroys the profits of the same period last year, being eight times more. Texas. The company does not stop manufacturing the new HBM4 memory, but even so it cannot satisfy the enormous demand of its customers and there are already those who expect that the prices of these chips will increase by more than 50%. To meet demand, Samsung is moving, and The United States is key in its ambitious expansion. The South Korean company seeks to invest 37,000 million dollars in US soil, and 17,000 million of them they will stop to the Taylor, Texas plant. According to Korea Heraldthe company is finalizing hiring for this semiconductor plant where they hope to produce cutting-edge 2-nanometer chips. It is estimated that 1,500 people will be directly employed and the idea is to produce transistors with gate-all-around architecture. TSMC in the spotlight. Recent reports indicate that Samsung has already begun producing test units of chips in that lithography with the aim of beginning mass production by 2027. But this expansion is not only occurring in the United States. At the Pyeongtaek Campus, Samsung’s operations center, building a new factory for which Samsung has just ordered 20 EUV lithography machines valued at almost $8 billion. As it could not be otherwise, they are from ASML and it is estimated that the plant will have 70 units in total to support the production of HBM4 memory chips. And these two movements have one goal in mind: to dethrone the queen of semiconductors. Currently, TSMC takes the lead with NVIDIA and Apple as its best clientsbut Samsung is another industry giant that may not take the global throne, but is aiming for something more concrete: to be the one who leads the way in the United States. Both Samsung and TSMC are in full expansion throughout the United States, but if Samsung manages to start mass manufacturing of 2nm chips by 2027, it would overtake TSMC -focused on 2/3nm chips– in that development of advanced chips in the United States. It is still a vital race, since Tesla, Apple, NVIDIA or AMD are trying to get chips manufactured in the US and thus meet the demands of Donald Trump’s government. Trojan horse. In the end, it’s a move that Samsung can only win from. On the one hand, expand its HBM4 chip capacity to power AI platforms that do not seem to stop increasing in the short term. On the other hand, continuing to settle on American soil where it maintains a battle with the Taiwanese giant. But, also, Samsung is one of the founding members of the EPIC program of Applied Materials together with SK Hynix. They are positioning themselves to be the big player in semiconductors both as a factory and when it comes to designing machines and processes that allow for shorter development times for cutting-edge chips. and all this foreign companies are doing it on US soil when what the current government wanted was for were American companies those who will take the lead. In fact, Samsung’s plans are so ambitious that they are already looking for master 1nm chip production by 2030. In Xataka | ASML has discovered a way to further improve its SVU machines. This is terrible news for China and the US.

TSMC and SK Hynix are suffocating Samsung. To defend itself, it is already preparing a brutal weapon: 1 nm chips

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Samsung Electronics has two major competitors in the semiconductor industry: TSMC and SK Hynix. The Taiwanese company TSMC leads the market for manufacturing integrated circuits for third parties with a share close to 70%, according to the consulting firm. TrendForce. Samsung is the second largest chip producer for third parties, although with a market share of 7.2% It is positioned very far from the leader of this industry. And the Chinese company SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp) is hot on his heels in third position with a share of 5.32%. Samsung’s other big business is memory chips. In this market it competes with the American company Micron Technology, but its biggest rival is the also South Korean company SK Hynix. In recent years, Samsung has led the DRAM memory integrated circuit manufacturing market with an approximate 40% share, while SK Hynix defended a very worthy 29%. Behind both was Micron Technology, with 26% approximately. However, during the first quarter of 2025 a very important setback occurred. SK Hynix controls none other than 70% of the market of HBM memory ICs (High Bandwidth Memory), so its leadership in this sector is overwhelming. If we look at the DRAM memory chips the figures are much more even, although SK Hynix also leads. TSMC and SK Hynix. SK Hynix and TSMC. These two competitors are two big headaches for Samsung, but the latter company seems unwilling to throw in the towel. Samsung plans to have its 1nm photolithography ready in 2030 In February 2025 the Taiwan Economic Daily published a report in which he assured that TSMC plans to develop a cutting-edge semiconductor plant that will be expressly designed to produce 1nm chips. It will be housed in the Taiwanese town of Tainan, and will be called ‘Fab 25’. It will work with 12-inch wafers, have six production lines and will begin large-scale manufacturing in 2030. It may seem like there is still a lot of time, but that is not the case. In fact, according to the newspaper Korea Economic DailySamsung is making efforts to step on the heels of TSMC. And, incidentally, surpass SK Hynix. Samsung’s future 1nm production lines will benefit from the refinements that the company is going to introduce to its 2nm nodes And Samsung engineers have already been working on their 1 nm photolithography for many months with the aim of concluding the research and development phase in 2030 to be able to start mass manufacturing in 2031. There is a lot at stakebut the development of this technology is by no means a piece of cake. In fact, this company is currently trying to optimize the performance of its 2nm nodes because its Exynos 2600 processor in smartphones Galaxy S26 and S26+ suffers when we compare its performance and energy efficiency with those of comparable chips manufactured by TSMC in its 3nm nodes. Be that as it may, Samsung’s future 1nm semiconductor production lines will benefit from the refinements that this company is going to introduce in its 2nm nodes. And, above all, they will take advantage of Fork Sheet technology with which its engineers seek to leave behind the limitations of Gate-All-Around technology (GAA). Fork Sheet It will allow them, roughly speaking, to dramatically optimize the space on 1nm chips by adding a non-conductive element between the transistors with one purpose: to eliminate empty spaces and pack a higher density of transistors on the same surface. It sounds really good. We will tell you more as soon as we have detailed information about this innovation. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | Korea Economic Daily In Xataka | We already know what the chips that will arrive until 2039 will be like. The machine that will allow them to be manufactured is close

China has been patiently preparing for a major global energy crisis for years. And now it reaps its fruits

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The Third Gulf War is here and the global oil market looks into the abyss. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has unleashed an unprecedented logistical panic and has catapulted the barrel of Brent well above $100. The panic is palpable throughout the Asian continent: The Philippines cuts working hours, Singapore sends its office workers to telework and Thailand intervenes in diesel prices in desperation. Just a few thousand kilometers away, China observes the global chaos with an almost insulting coldness. The Asian giant has not been saved by providence, but by millimetric planning. Just as centuries ago it built a vast stone infrastructure to stop nomadic invasions, Beijing has been building an invisible Great Wall for more than a decade to isolate itself from fossil volatility. The seed of this resistance must be found five years ago. In 2021, during a visit to an oil field, President Xi Jinping ruled that China should keep the “energy rice bowl” firmly in its own hands. According to The Economisttransferring this traditional metaphor (historically used to appeal to food sovereignty) to energy, made clear a state obsession: the country was going to prepare tirelessly for the worst possible scenario. Is patience a good bet? There are several popular proverbs and sayings that say that whoever waits, victory will be sweeter. In the case of China it is a pure and simple pragmatic and geostrategic application. As we analyze in Xatakathis shielding is the direct result of the strategy “Made in China 2025” designed a decade ago. The Chinese government understood that dependence on foreign oil and gas was its greatest military and economic vulnerability. Mass electrification was not an environmental whim, but a matter of national survival. Today, China generates more than a quarter of its electricity with sun and wind, rewriting the world order and dividing the board between the old “petrostates” and the new “electrostates.” But while that transition is complete, Beijing has not neglected the fossil economy. The Chinese model puts raw resilience before the efficiency of Western markets, As a column points out Five Days. The best example is what happened last year. While global markets debated an alleged oil oversupply, China took advantage of the low prices to spend $10 billion buying heavily sanctioned oil from Russia, Venezuela and Iran; a crude oil that, in reality, I did not need immediately. The result of this silent hoarding is that today China has massive Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR), estimated between 900 and 1.4 billion barrels. This mattress is enough to cover between 96 and 140 days of your internal demand without caring for a single drop from the outside. The shield in action This long-term preparation has allowed China to deploy an arsenal of almost immediate containment measures since the conflict in the Gulf broke out: Closing energy borders: The first lightning order from the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission was to demand from their state giants of refining (PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC) to immediately suspend gasoline and diesel exports to protect the supply of the domestic market. The “shadow fleet”: Despite the war and the blockade, oil continues to flow to China. Iran is exporting a daily average of 2.1 million barrels using a fleet of old oil tankers without tracking systems that operate outside the US financial system. Land alternatives: To completely avoid the vulnerable Strait of Hormuz, the Asian power is squeezing to the maximum the land pipelines that connect it directly with Russia and Kazakhstan. Renewable bestiality: This is your shield more impenetrable: The price of solar panels and electric cars does not rise when there is a war in the Persian Gulf. In July 2024, China reached its goal of 1,200 GW of wind and solar capacity, achieving it six years ahead of schedule. In addition, new energy vehicles have already exceeded 60% of total car sales in the country by the end of 2025. Megainfrastructures and market reform: To manage the intermittency of renewables, increased their storage capacity by batteries 75% in 2025. Furthermore, the political response does not stop, as detailed ChinaDailyhave announced that the National Energy Administration will launch urgent reforms ahead of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) to create a “unified national energy market” capable of managing the volatility of having so much green energy on the grid. The dominance of uranium: Faced with the need to fuel its 58 operational nuclear reactors and the 27 under construction, Beijing has budgeted about $16 billion for resource storage in 2026. This includes the exploitation of gigantic deposits in the Ordos Desert and the pioneering extraction of uranium from seawater. The small print However, China’s energy “rice bowl” still has cracks. To keep the system afloat, the country remains dependent on an immense, dirty safety net: the coal. In 2024, this mineral supplied 56% of its energy primary and, currently, they have more than 300 plants under construction. As emphasized a report of ChinaPower Projectdespite the pollution, the vast and abundant supply of coal offers Chinese policymakers a true final “safety net” against disruptions from other sources. But the real battle for survival is not only fought in the oil wells, but in the semiconductor laboratories. Although the country manufactured an astronomical 484 billion chips in 2024, still no access to the UVE lithography machines of the European company ASML. However, the Asian giant is finding cracks in the Western blockade. China already has two companies, SMIC and Huali Microelectronics, capable of producing advanced 7-nanometer chips using engineering techniques ‘multiple patterning’ using machines from previous generations. It is a more expensive and less efficient process, but it shows that sanctions only accelerate their quest for sovereignty. The next bottleneck to overcome is chemical. The country depends almost entirely on Japan (specifically from JSR Corporation) to obtain the hyper-specialized photoresist liquids needed in chip lithography. The new Chinese five-year plan has already set a five-year deadline to also break this Japanese monopoly. And while China weaves this net of absolute … Read more

The US is preparing for what comes next

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If something is becoming clear these days, it is that very few kilometers of sea can condition everything the world economy. There are strategic passages through which a large part of the global oil circulates nearby, and when one of those points is blocked, the impact quickly spreads to markets, transportation and the price (and bill) of energy across the planet. A trap retreat. It we count a few days ago. In the midst of a conflict in which the Strait of Hormuz is practically closed and under constant threat, the United States took a striking decision: withdraw two of its three main specialized mine warfare vessels from the area and send them thousands of kilometers, first to Malaysia and now arrived in Singapore. These units are not accessory, but key to any attempt to reopen the sea route. Its absence in the immediate scenario breaks with the usual logic of concentrating capacities where the crisis develops and forces us to seek an explanation on another level. Possibly for this reason, the movement is not what it may seem at first glance. The real value. I remembered this week the wall street journal in a report that naval mines are one of the most effective tools to block maritime traffic, especially in a narrow point like Hormuz. They do not require large deployments, are difficult to detect and can keep a route closed for long periods. Cleaning them is, therefore, a slow, technical and risky process that requires very specific means. The ships of the Independence classwith their unmanned systems, helicopters and advanced sensors, represent precisely that capability. Without them, any operation to restore oil tanker transit becomes much more complex. View from the USS Tulsa upon arrival at Changi Naval Base Shortage at the most critical moment. The problem from the side of the United States is that it reaches this phase cwith limited resources. For years it has reduced its fleet of traditional minesweepers, retiring units without their replacements being available. fully deployed or tested in combat. New solutions based on drones and autonomous systems exist, but their number is small and their effectiveness in a real environment has yet to be demonstrated. In parallel, Iran has shown that it can sow mines and combine that threat with missiles, drones and attacks on ships, making the strait an especially difficult environment to operate in. Plan B. In this context, the analysts recalled by TWZ that the movement of these ships out of the conflict zone suggests a very different priority: preserve demining capacity in the face of a possible further deterioration of the current situation. The idea would be simple. Keep them away from attack range avoids the risk of losing hard-to-replace assets at a time when they are already scarce. In other words, it is a way to ensure that, when the time comes to reopen the strait, these very fundamental means remain available and operational. File image of an Avenger-class minehunter during an exercise Reopen, not just fight. Because the closure of Hormuz is not just a military problem, but economic. How have we been countinga significant part of the world’s oil and gas circulates through this route, and its prolonged blockage has immediate effects in prices, supplies and logistics chains. It happens that reopening it does not depend only on escorting ships, but on guaranteeing that the canal is threat free persistent like mines. This phase, slower and less visible, can be decisive in normalizing maritime traffic. The strategic signal. Precisely for this reason, the fact that these ships are now more than 6,000 kilometers of the conflict does not indicate that they have ceased to be relevant, but rather the opposite. Their value lies in the fact that they are necessary and fundamental for the next stage, not so much for the current one. Instead of using them in the most dangerous environment, the United States seems to choose to keep them intact for a time when their use will be essential. The evolution of the conflict. If you also want, the decision fits with a two-stage planning: first, manage the phase direct confrontation. And then, ensure the reopening of critical routes. He minesweeper movement It points out that Washington is not only focused on the immediate development of the war, but also on avoiding a prolonged blockade that would have global consequences. In that sense, more than a withdrawal, the current position of the minesweepers is an indication of how the end of the conflict is being planned and the conditions necessary to stabilize it… if that is possible. Image | USN In Xataka | If there was any “red line” left, Iran has decided to cross it just where it hurts the world economy the most: in Qatar In Xataka | Russia is not sending troops or weapons to Iran: it is sending something much more important to take down the US

We believed that machines could only beat us at chess or Go, but now they are preparing to beat us at tennis

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Kasparov succumbed to Deep Blue and that showed that machines could finally surpass humans. Then came defeats in other fields (Go, StarCraft), but always with algorithms as the protagonists. Now those who want to surpass us are the robots, and after some disappointments and also amazing previewsare wanting to conquer a sport that poses an exceptional challenge: tennis. Be careful, Alcaraz, the robots are coming. Researchers from Tsinghua University and Peking University, among others, have collaborated to develop a robot capable of playing tennis. The project has been named LATENT (Learn Athlethic humanoid TEnnis skills from imperfect human Motion daTa) and it is surprising because the principle is very similar to that of developments like AlphaZero: the machine (the robot) practically learns to play by itself. We have already seen similar advances with sports like ping pong or with kung fu demonstrationsbut this milestone has been achieved in a different and striking way. imperfect movements. Until now, getting a robot to react at the speed of a tennis ball was an almost insurmountable challenge due to the lack of perfect movement data, but the advances made by these researchers are especially striking. Especially since these machines now use “imperfect” information captured from humans to learn how to play. Mini tennis. Capturing accurate data from a real tennis match is very expensive and complex due to the size of the court and the subtlety of the tennis players’ wrist movements. To solve this, the LATENT team chose to collect “primitive skills” data. That is, the robot was shown basic movements such as the forehand drive, backhand, or lateral movements. In addition, an area 17 times smaller than a professional court was used precisely to reduce the complexity of the initial system. The objective: that from there the robot could develop its own technique. Learn from your mistakes. The striking thing about this development is that with those few data the robot was capable of making corrections on the fly when moving or hitting the ball. Thus, he was able to maintain the stability of his body following the style of human movements, but he was also able to finely adjust the angle of the racket to impact the ball appropriately. No strange things. The researchers also wanted to prevent the robot from starting to “make up” strange movements during its reinforcement training. Thus, they created a technique that forced the AI ​​to explore only human-like movements based on the initial data distribution. Unitree G1 already plays tennis. To translate their system into reality, the researchers installed this system on a Unitree G1 robot. This model of humanoid robot It has 29 degrees of freedom and a racket was attached using a 3D printed part. The physical tests were surprising: the G1 was able to return balls thrown at more than 15 m/s (54 km/h), but it was also able to maintain rallies with human players on a real court. The robot was capable of covering a large part of the court and dynamically adapting its posture according to the trajectory of the ball. The beginning of something bigger. These tennis robots are very far from being able to compete with human players—much less with professionals—but they demonstrate that reinforcement learning techniques that have been applied in games such as chess or Go may be valid for physical environments with robots. In fact, this advance raises the possibility that robots can learn any physical discipline (whether sports or not) from a limited learning of basic movements. In Xataka | And finally the human being beat, with much drama, a robot playing ping pong

In 2021 a man made a military prediction and since then Taiwan and the US have been preparing for a date: 2027

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In a military sense, there are few things as influential as a date that no one has officially set. Sometimes one sentence in a parliamentary hearing is enough for governments, armies and analysts to begin reorganizing budgets, exercises and strategies for years. In the Indo-Pacific, a figure pronounced some time ago ended up becoming a kind geopolitical clock. In fact, today marks the planning of various powers. The prediction on the calendar. In March 2021, a seemingly technical testimony before the US Senate ended up becoming one of the most influential points of reference in the Indo-Pacific military strategy. Then Admiral Philip Davidson warned that the rapid growth of Chinese military power could endanger Taiwan “within the next six years,” a statement that implicitly set a date: 2027. That estimate, based on intelligence analysis on the modernization of the People’s Liberation Army, quickly became what many strategists called the “Davidson window”. Since then, the number was installed in military planning of Washington, Taipei and their allies, triggering an investment careerwar exercises and military reinforcements throughout the Pacific. 2027 and the centenary. Of course, the reason why that date seemed plausible was closely related to the people themselves. Beijing’s strategic objectives. 2027 marks the centenary of the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Liberation Army, and Xi Jinping’s leadership has set that year as a key stage to complete a major phase of military modernization. The plan is part of a broader calendar that seeks to have “basically modernized” armed forces by 2035 and capable of rivaling any world power around 2049. Although Beijing has never officially announced that this anniversary is linked to an invasion of Taiwan, the temporal coincidence between military modernization and increasing demonstrations of strength around the island has reinforced the perception that 2027 could become a critical moment. The strategy in the Pacific. As the years went by, that prediction took on a life of its own. Washington increased significantly its military spending aimed at competing with China and began to reinforce strategic infrastructure on Pacific islands to facilitate the deployment of forces. At the same time, the United States approved billions of dollars in arms sales to Taiwan, while Taipei began to adjust its military planning around a possible invasion scenario towards the end of the decade. Even the major Taiwanese military exercises have passed to simulate explicitly a Chinese attack in 2027, reflecting how a single strategic estimate ended up becoming a true geopolitical clock for the entire region. A surprise attack. For a long time, military analysis assumed that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be impossible to conceal. A deployment of hundreds or thousands of ships, troops and equipment along the Chinese coast would generate obvious signals detectable by satellites and intelligence services weeks before the start of the operation. However, some analysts now warn that this assumption could be too optimistic. Recent research has suggested that China could attempt forms of attack faster or surprisingleveraging new tactics and technologies to reduce advance notice time. This scenario is especially worrying to Taiwan, which has historically relied on having enough time to react and mobilize its defenses. Increasingly intense military career. Meanwhile, Chinese military power has continued to expand at great speed. Beijing’s defense budget has increased steadily over the last decade and the country has introduced new capabilities that could be key in an eventual conflict: long-range missiles, advanced drones, new aircraft carriers and ships designed to transport troops and material to hostile coasts. These transformations do not guarantee that an invasion is imminent, of course, but they are changing the balance military in the Taiwan Strait and fueling concerns about the future of the region. The domino effect of other wars. The international context adds another layer of uncertainty to this strategic calculation. Conflicts in other regions, especially the Middle East, are forcing the United States to consume large quantities of ammunition, interceptors and military resources that were originally intended to reinforce deterrence in Asia. Analysts warn that a prolonged war in other theaters could delay deliveries of weapons to Taiwan and further strain US defense industrial capacity, where there is already a significant delay in military orders destined for the island. A strategic watch. Although neither China nor the United States have officially set a timetable for a conflict, the idea of ​​2027 has become a point psychological reference for governments, military and analysts. Some believe that this date has fueled unnecessary fears and an arms race in the region, while others believe that it has served to wake up Washington and its allies facing a historic change in the balance of power. In any case, the prediction made in 2021 has left a more than profound mark: today, in the barracks, offices and strategy centers of the Indo-Pacific, the calendar advances with a figure marked in red. 2027… and China. Image | 中文（臺灣）：​中華民國總統府, 總統府, Al Jazeera In Xataka | “We have never seen anything like this”: if China invades Taiwan, Taiwan will not notice because a drone has been disguised as an optical illusion for months In Xataka | An island has become the new red line against China: it has Taiwan in front of it and Japan is going to fill it with missiles

Spain is preparing a data center specifically designed to have AI for war. The surprise: it is in Soria

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More than two thousand years ago, on the hill of Numanciaits inhabitants preferred to resist to the end rather than surrender to the siege of the legions of Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus. That story of defiance against a superior enemy has remained engraved in Soria’s memory as a symbol of resistance. Now, a few kilometers from that place, in the Valcorba industrial estate, the Ministry of Defense wants to build another kind of fortress: a data center named Numant-IA, where defense will no longer be measured in walls or swords, but in servers, algorithms and artificial intelligence. A unique project. While we live a technological-military schism in the USSpain accelerates in a project that precisely combines both sections. The Government has launched Numant-IA, a data center with a notable investment and totally dedicated to offering computing for AI. Here there are, yes, two notes that stand out. The full name of the project will be the Center for Advanced Defense Technological Capabilities, and its investment is part of the Annual Contracting Plan of the Ministry of Defense (Pacdef) from 2026. It includes 7,868 proposals and 156 framework agreements with a combined value of 10,102 million euros. Soria, new technological capital. The data center announced by the Government last September and that already it was outlined months before, it will have its headquarters in Soria. The project will take advantage of a space provided by the Soria City Council and that covers an area of ​​almost four hectares in the Valcorba industrial estate. Lieutenant General José María Millán, director of CESTIC, already warned then that said center will carry out the “incorporation of artificial intelligence systems for the benefit of the Armed Forces.” Military applications. The initial investment, which was 70 million euros, has been increased to almost 130 million euros according to El Heraldo de Soriaand will be assumed by the Ministry of Defense. Its resources will be used for applications that will process classified data in the area of ​​operations and logistics, and military applications will be an integral part of its mission. This project confirms other movements of the Armed Forces such as the development of Gonzalo, that “ChatGPT” for the army which is precisely designed to support this type of tasks safely. Employment and template. About 20 people will be a permanent part of the staff of this center that will operate 24/7 once it is operational. The construction of the data center, the Department of Defense states, will generate “a significant economic and employment impact on the city.” We know when, but we don’t know what. The Ministry of Defense has indicated that the project has a construction period of 24 months, and therefore they hope that it will theoretically be ready by early 2028. What we do not know is what type of infrastructure it will house or what the real capacity of the data center will be. 67.88 million euros will be dedicated to information systems and servers – unspecified, perhaps because they are not yet defined – while construction will be allocated 58.68 million euros and a third item of 1.65 million euros has no specified purpose. Sovereignty and decentralization. Choosing Soria as the location for this data center responds to the decentralization strategy of the Armed Forces. The defense budgets demonstrate this with a distribution of these funds throughout Spain in different projects that try to avoid the danger of excessive centralization of critical centers. The movement also answers to others that we have been seeing for months and that make it clear that in Spain and Europe they are trying to find solutions that allow us to have the highest possible degree of digital sovereignty. Image | Ministry of Defense In Xataka | Spain’s main problem is not weapons, fighters or drones: it is the number of hands it lacks to use them

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