problem

The US already knows when it wants to return to the Moon to beat China. The problem is how the ship will return

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There is already an official date. After years of delays and speculations, NASA has confirmed what was rumored in the halls of Washington: Artemis 2 has the green light for launch on February 6, 2026. And what is its destination? Neither more nor less than the Moon itself. Tuning. With this announcement, NASA is already preparing for the transfer of the gigantic SLS rocket (Space Launch System) to platform 39B this very January 17, starting the final countdown for humans to orbit the Moon again. Something that has not happened since 1972 with Apollo 17. However, this is not a celebration without controversy. The mission, which will take the astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen to a 10-day trip around our satellite, has been brought forward under strong political pressure. And it does so with a worrying technical asterisk: the behavior of the Orion ship’s heat shield. A battle of pressures. On the one hand, Donald Trump has historically shown its impatience with the deadlines that NASA was giving to be able to orbit around the Moon. All this with an eye on China, which threatened to be the ‘first’ and overtake the United States in this fact. What has been the solution? put to Jared Isaacman as NASA Administratora billionaire, private pilot and astronaut (known for his missions in Polaris Dawn and its links with SpaceX) to prioritize speed and calculated risk-taking over the complete risk aversion that “old NASA” had. Because. February 6, 2026 has been set as set in stone for several strategic reasons that outweigh engineering doubts about the heat shield. The first of them It’s the race against Chinasince the Asian country has a very advanced lunar program and aims put taikonauts on the Moon before 2030. If Artemis 2 was delayed to redesign the heat shield (which would have taken years), Artemis 3 would have been gone until 2028-2029 or longer, leaving the door open for China to arrive earlier or very close. But they do not stop here, since for this administration the Moon is a springboard to reach Mars, this mission being a simple way to validate the systems they are using. That is why every delay on the Moon is a delay for the mission to Mars, which promises to be the historical legacy they seek. The Avcoat dilemma. The main point of friction between engineers and the agency’s new management lies at the bottom of the Orion capsule. During the Artemis 1 unmanned mission in 2022the heat shield (made from an ablative material called Avcoat) behaved unexpectedly. And instead of being consumed uniformly, it broke off in pieces, creating craters and cracks due to the gases trapped in the material. during re-entry into the atmosphere. The engineering logic faced with this problem would mark make a new design or material change. But since it is something that would delay everything, NASA has opted for a change in angle during reentry to minimize thermal stress in the most affected areas to maintain the same shield. The doubts. NASA assures that the risk is “acceptable”, but this decision has raised blisters in the aerospace security community. Added to this is that the life support system (ECLSS)provided in part by ESA, has never been fully tested in flight with humans, adding an extra layer of uncertainty to the mission. Charles Camarda, veteran astronaut of the STS-114 mission, the return flight after the Columbia disaster, has been blunt in this regard. In statements, Camarda has compared the current situation with the “dysfunctional culture” that led to the Challenger and Columbia tragedies. But for the NASA administrator, Artemis 2 is a non-negotiable step to ensure American leadership and the future cislunar economy. Operating tension. As if the pressure on Artemis were not enough, NASA also faces a parallel crisis in low orbit. The agency and SpaceX have scheduled January 14 undocking of the Crew-11 mission of the International Space Station (ISS) due to urgent medical evacuation. This is an unprecedented event in the history of the ISS: lowering an astronaut for an unspecified medical problem (although he has been confirmed to be stable). Although Isaacman has assured that this operational incident will not affect the schedule of Artemis 2adds a considerable load of stress to mission control teams in Houston, who must now manage a crisis in real time while preparing for the most important launch of the decade. What can we expect? At the moment, the dates we know are January 17, where the SLS rolls towards its platform, and February 6, when the window for its launch will open. In total, a 10-day flight mission is expected, with a lunar flyby and high-speed return. Specifically, 40,000 km/h. NASA has much more at stake than a mission in February. The validation of its security model is at stake in the new space era, where geopolitical competition and commercial rush collide head-on with the immutable laws of physics and thermodynamics. Images | Pedro Lastra POT In Xataka | We have been deceived by the distances of the Solar System: the closest neighbor to Neptune is Mercury

Cloudflare is planted in Italy due to blockades. In Spain, the conflict with LaLiga points to the same underlying problem

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We are witnessing firsthand how what began as an offensive against unauthorized party broadcasts has transformed into something much broader, a dispute over who can decide which parts of the internet are turned off and how. In Italy and Spain, judicial and administrative resolutions that apply current legislation are endorsing or ordering measures that operate at the network level, measures that, as they are now being applied, may not distinguish between an infringing service and legitimate services that share infrastructure. This scenario has brought to the fore cloudflarea company whose name has been sneaking into the technology conversation for some time. Here we must be clear. What unites the cases of Italy and Spain is not the type of content, but the logic that supports them: to stop the unauthorized dissemination of matches, it has been decided to act where the network becomes vulnerable, in the intermediaries that connect the public with the servers. It is not a button in the hands of a government, but rather a fit between laws, judges or regulators, rights holders and different actors who execute the measure. That strategy allows you to block quickly and with massive range, but it also has collateral damage. Behind every block there is a clear sequence. In Spain, LaLiga takes its requests before a judge and it is the courts that authorize the operators to execute the cuts. In Italy, rights holders enter domains and IPs into Piracy Shield and it is AGCOMthe Italian telecommunications and media regulator, who reviews these signs and converts them into administrative orders that providers must apply. When an authority orders a block, it is not simply saying “close this page”, it is choosing at what point in the journey the connection between the user and the server is interrupted, according to the limits established by current legislation. This can be done by preventing the website name from being translated into a technical address, directly blocking that address, or asking an intermediary to stop serving the data. In this invisible journey there is a particularly sensitive piece, the system that translates website names into technical addresses that computers can understand. Every time we type a URL or tap a link, a DNS resolver responds with the correct IP so the connection can be established. If this translation is interrupted, the page is no longer accessible even if the server continues to function. That is why DNS has become a very attractive lever for blocking, because it allows access to be cut off quickly and without directly touching the content. What is 1.1.1.1 and why is it in the center. Among the many DNS services that exist, there are some open to the public that do not belong to any national operator, and the best known is 1.1.1.1, managed by Cloudflare. It serves as a widely used public DNS resolver that users and applications use to translate domain names into IP addresses. That scale is what makes it especially sensitive in this debate, because any intervention on it is not limited to a country or a specific network, but can have much broader effects. A modem with network cables The company explains For years it has been able to comply with court orders that force it to act on specific clients or on its distribution network, because there it is controlling its own service within a jurisdiction. What it rejects is modifying open tools such as its public DNS by administrative decisions of a single country. In his approach, that would mean that a national authority could change how a basic piece of the internet works for users around the world. Italy, the Piracy Shield system and controversies. The Italian model does not just cut individual pages, but entire pieces of the route along which traffic circulates. Through Piracy Shield domains and IPs are ordered to be blocked and, according to the regulator itselfthe framework also expressly includes public DNS services and VPN providers as obligated parties when they are involved in the accessibility of that content. Cloudflare Global Network Map The problem is not only that the system blocks a lot, but how it does it and with what margin for rectification. Its quick reaction logic prioritizes cutting access while the event is happening, and that increases the risk of affecting third parties when acting on shared parts of the network. AGCOM quotes as balance that since February 2024, more than 65,000 FQDNs, that is, fully qualified domain names and about 14,000 IPs, have been disabled. That clash took concrete form at the end of 2025. In a decision taken on December 29 and recently notifiedAGCOM imposed a penalty of more than 14 million euros on Cloudflare for failing to comply with a previous order issued on February 18, 2025. According to the regulator, the company had to deactivate the DNS resolution of certain domains and the routing of traffic to IP addresses indicated through Piracy Shield, or apply equivalent measures to prevent users from accessing that content. Spain, the judicial path. As we mentioned above, in Spain the system is not based on an administrative regulator, but on a resolution from a commercial court obtained by LaLiga. On December 18, 2024, the Commercial Court No. 6 of Barcelona authorized blocking measures against addresses used to broadcast matches without rights. On March 26, 2025, that same court rejected the challenges and left the order in force. That is what allows access operators to execute these blocks during matches under the direct legal coverage of a judge. The way that order is executed in practice explains many of the complaints that have arisen in Spain. Access providers block entire IP addresses, not just specific domains. This mechanism explains why so many legitimate services end up dragged down by these blocks. Instead of deactivating a specific domain, operators sever an entire IP address, which is often shared by hundreds or thousands of websites. It’s a bit like boarding up the entrance to a building … Read more

Greenland has 1.5 million tons of rare earths. The problem is that there are no roads to get to them.

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The geopolitics of the 21st century has found a new and icy epicenter. After the capture of Nicolás Maduro In Venezuela earlier this month, Donald Trump’s administration has turned its diplomatic aggressiveness northward. The goal It’s an old longingtake control of Greenland, which the White House defines as an “ingot” of strategic resources. However, the physical reality is inescapable since beneath a complex geology lies an absolute lack of basic infrastructure that turns any extraction plan into a logistical chimera. The 93-mile wall of asphalt. Since the Republican Party introduced the Make Greenland Great Again Act In 2025, pressure on Denmark has escalated to even suggesting the use of force. As explained by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)Washington has elevated Greenland to the category of “national security” need. This position, which some analysts already call the “Donroe Doctrine”, seeks to secure the hemisphere as an exclusive sphere of influence against Russian icebreakers and Chinese expansion. But obsession collides with engineering. According to CSIS dataGreenland—a territory three times the size of Texas—only has 93 miles (150 kilometers) of roads in total. There are no railways and the settlements are isolated from each other by land. Diogo Rosa, researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, warns in Fortune that any mining project must create these accessibilities from scratch. This includes ports capable of handling industrial volumes (Narsaq port barely moves 50,000 tons a year) and local power plants, since the current electrical grid is unable to sustain a large scale mine. The enigma of eudialite. Even if roads were built to reach neodymium and terbium, the mineral itself poses an unprecedented technical challenge. Greenland’s rare earth elements are typically encapsulated in a complex type of rock called eudialite. Unlike carbonatites that are mined elsewhere in the world with proven methods, no one has developed a profitable process to extract them from eudialite, as explained by analysts. For this reason, experts like Javier Blas describe the enthusiasm of the Trump administration as a “Optimistic PowerPoint”. Blas maintains that the island is not a Wonderland of raw materials: if after decades of exploration no large mining company has operated successfully, it is because the processing costs—which would exceed 1 billion dollars—devour any profits. Added to this is that deposits as Kvanefjeld They are co-located with radioactive uranium, which has generated massive social rejection and environmental laws that block the projects. The mirage of mining wealth. Currently, Greenland only has two active mines: an anorthosite mine and the Nalunaq gold mine. The latter, operated by the Canadian Amaroq Minerals, managed to produce 6,600 ounces of gold in 2025, exceeding its own forecasts. But as Scott Dunn, CEO of Noveon Magnetics, points out, in Fortunethe success of gold (a high-value, low-volume mineral) is not scalable to rare earths. While Washington makes long-term plans in the Arctic, companies like Dunn’s are already producing magnets in Texas with materials sourced outside China, demonstrating that the solution to technological supply could be closer to home than the Polar Circle. The China factor: the silent owner. The great strategic obstacle to the “Donroe Doctrine” is not only the ice, but that Beijing is already there. China controls near the 90% of global supply of rare earths and has known how to play its cards in the Greenlandic subsoil through litigation. The company Energy Transition Minerals (ETM), with significant Chinese capital, holds an arbitration international against Greenland, demanding historic compensation of $11.5 billion — four times the island’s GDP — following the ban on uranium mining in 2021. This legal dispute places the island in a geopolitical clamp: Washington wants control to expel Beijing, but the latter is already blocking the richest deposits through business actions and prior exploitation rights. The navigable Arctic: an unexpected ally? Paradoxically, the hoax Climate change is what is accelerating the White House’s plans. Greenland is warming much faster than the rest of the planet, and melting ice is transforming the Arctic into a strategic trade corridor. As the New York Times reportsthe Polar Silk Road is no longer a projection: in October 2025, a Chinese ship reached Great Britain from the north in just 20 days, saving 40% of the time compared to the Suez Canal. This new connectivity turns Greenland into an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the middle of new sea routes. However, sea ice melting does not solve the problem on land. In the north of the island, extreme weather continues to force any mining machinery to hibernate for six months a year, maintaining profitability like an “optical illusion.” The treasure behind the ice wall. The attempt to take control of Greenland seems to hit a wall of environmental laws, hostile geology and, above all, a total absence of basic infrastructure. The Trump administration has invested hundreds of millions in mining companies, but the results remain buried under layers of permafrost. As Anthony Marchese summarizes in Fortune: “If you go to Greenland for its minerals, you’re talking about billions of dollars and an extremely long time.” While the White House sells the island as the definitive trophy of the new technological Cold War, the technical reality of 2026 dictates a simpler sentence: the island’s greatest treasure remains protected not by weapons or treaties, but by the lack of a road that reaches it. Image | Unsplash Xataka | The US has decided that Europe is its problem in Greenland. Germany wants to convince him that the problem is Russia

The train of storms that threatens Spain is just the beginning of the problem

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What is happening? What is going to happen? As I write these lines, nine autonomous communities they have yellow notices due to rain, wind and other coastal phenomena. And the reason, as we have been repeating for the last few days, is a “train” of fronts that comes directly from the bowels of the Atlantic and will cross the peninsula. The forecast, in data. The models are beginning to converge and the forecasts are quite clear: Waves of up to five meters on the Cantabrian coast and off the coast of Galicia. Winds will easily reach 61 kilometers per hour. No particularly intense rains are expected in the coming days (the peak may be 15 l/m2 in areas of Huelva and Cádiz). Although, yes, those accumulated in Galicia, Zamora, Ávila and Cáceres may be important — above all, in a context of saturated soils. The winds, for their part, will be above 70 kilometers per hour throughout the north of the peninsula. And, with these figures, why is it important? Because of what is known as ‘multiplier risk’: we are not going to face any peak of intense rain, but the recurrence of fronts will increase operational risks. It is the meteorological equivalent of a ‘calabobos’: it seems that it does not get wet, but it ends up with half of Spain completely soaked. The only question is whether an effective “atmospheric river” is formed (or not). That is, if the humid and warm air from the Gulf of Mexico integrates into one of these fronts and a greater blow is produced. A “normal” circulation in an “abnormal” context. Because, as it is worth remembering, the cold days of recent weeks are beginning to not be normal on the peninsula. And, although this relatively active western circulation is, the arrival of successive fronts complicates the situation: there is a lot of water accumulated in the form of snow. So we go back to normal. A normality that is summarized in waiting to see how long it takes for the storm corridor to close and waiting for the swamps to continue filling. Summer will be here sooner than it seems. Image | ECMWF In Xataka | While the snow devours half of Europe, there is a place where it is 27ºC and on the beach in the middle of January: Greece

China knows that what happens in ‘Interstellar’ is a real problem on the Moon. And it has been proposed to solve it

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58.7 microseconds. That is the daily margin of error that separates a terrestrial clock from one on the Moon. This time lag It seems ridiculous, but it brings head to aerospace engineers for decades. The reason? That ‘sigh’ can be crucial in a mission, the difference between a perfect landing and a disaster. And while in the West we continue talking about the problems of Artemis missionin China they have found the solution for that time lag. It is called LTE440, and it is another example of the China’s methodical advance in the new space race. Microsecond piggy bank. If you have seen the movie ‘Interestellar’, looking for information about how time flies far from Earth, that you would come across the general relativity theory formulated by Albert Einstein. Simply put, the passage of time is relative, and the speed at which it passes depends on two factors: gravitational field intensity and orbital speed. The stronger the gravity, the slower time passes, and that is why it moves a little faster on the Moon than on Earth. The net result of that orbital effect is a slight advance in lunar clocks. One of between 56 and 58.7 microseconds per day, or 0.000058 seconds. It seems tiny and negligible, but in the end, the sum of 58 microseconds each day is there. 0.0017 seconds per month. 0.021 seconds per year. It is still little, but in terms of the space industry, it is unacceptable. LTE440. This synchronization between the lunar and terrestrial clocks has been one of the headaches of space engineering for years. In 2024, the International Astronomical Union, fixed that the Moon should have its own temporal reference. Meanwhile, time has passed and an answer has arrived: LTE440, or ‘Lunar Time Ephemeris‘. It is a software developed between the Purple Mountain observatory next to the University of Science and Technology of China. And it arrives to solve two of the historical problems in that lunar timing: Precision: Complex missions require total accuracy (not with a Casio, but with atomic clocks), and the solutions until now did not allow such precision. Complex calculations: Current solutions were not very accessible and engineers had to do laborious calculations and mathematical operations to solve jet lag. Absurd accuracy. It is estimated that the precision of LTE440 It will be less than 0.15 nanoseconds before 2050 and its accumulated errors will remain below 1/20,000,000 of a second even after a thousand years. But more important than this is that the research team has made obtaining the calculations as simple as doing a single operation. Thus, the LTE440 software will allow you to directly and easily compare lunar time with Earth time. opening doors. Okay, great, but… really that much for 56 microseconds? Having the current aspiration of creating a communication network and missions both with the Moon and interplanetary, one of the most logical applications is that of a global network of lunar clocks. Another is to allow extremely precise remote control missions to be carried out from Earth. China and Russia, for example, plan build an International Lunar Research Station looking to 2035, and LTE440 opens the door to more precise operations on the satellite ground. But also something more tangible and easy to understand: establishing a navigation system similar to GPS on the Moon. It is something that does not exist, but that seems crucial for future space missions. Because this is not about establishing colonies on the Moon, but about taking advantage of the satellite. For example, to investigate it, but also to get resources that can be used on Earth. And a system like LTE440 is an open door for the development of the navigation technologies necessary to bring these missions to fruition. The US looks closely. As we say, China has one eye on the Moon and space, and that is something that the United States is following with interest. China is taking giant steps and the United States has come to feel that it is being left behind. Artemis II is the American answera program full of problems and delaysbut it seems that it is already working. On the other hand, and as with the terrestrial situation, the United States considers that China’s advance in space is not a mere scientific question, but rather a threat to the country’s national security. They have reached aim that the Space Force will do “whatever it takes to achieve space superiority.” Therefore, LTE440 is, at the same time, a technological milestone, a great step for humanity in the new space race and a threat to those interests of the United States. Now, as we read in SCMPthe software is still in an early phase, so it has yet to be applied in real-time navigation solutions. Images | Tomruen In Xataka | Hubble continues to discover amazing things about the universe: a starless galaxy dominated by dark matter

A beetle is decimating the population of Salamanca. And the biggest problem is that it is protected

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The story is old, He is almost 20 years old: a protected beetle is destroying the Salamanca oak forests. It is a wood borer that digs galleries in the oaks and ends up weakening them to the point of death. The aggravation. And, although it is true that the dehesa is a very small and localized ecosystem, its economic, social and symbolic importance is enormous. Therefore, the idea of ​​a plague that is ‘drilling’ the productive infrastructure of western Spain and that cannot be controlled because it is “in danger of extinction” makes many people nervous. The problem, as always, is that the matter is a little more complicated. What is that Cerambyx pig? Also known as ‘greater capriconium of the oaks‘, it is one of the largest beetles left in Europe. It is relatively easy to recognize it because it has disproportionate, enormous antennae, longer than the body itself. And yes, indeed, the Habitats Directive protects it at European level. That is, member states have the obligation to establish special areas for their conservation. What happens is that in Spain, at least, this has generated problems: to what we have already mentioned about the oak forests of Castilla y León, we must add the case of the Balearic Islands where the authorities they dedicate million-dollar budgets to protect the Tramuntana Mountains from the overpopulation of these insects. So it is a problem, right? Yes of course. What happens is that a small detail is usually ignored: that, as technical studies have been saying for decadesthe most susceptible trees are usually old or in poor physiological condition. That is to say, historically the greater Capricorn had an almost symbiotic relationship with ecosystems: it helped ‘renew’ the forest, eliminating trees in poor condition. That is, the current problem it’s not just the beetle: it is the poor state of the mountains and pastures. Disrepair? a few weeks ago we were talking de la Seca, a serious disease caused by a pathogen (Phytophthora cinnamomi), linked directly to the decay and death of holm oaks and cork oaks. But, as we also said, despite the alarmism about pests, they are the consequence of decades of bad forestry practices that have undermined the ecosystem from within. The pasture, we already know, is not a ‘virgin natural environment’: it is a very complex agro-silvo-pastoral system the result of centuries of forest clearing, extensive grazing and human uses of all kinds. Practices that have disappeared and have been replaced by other industrial practices that applied little management and a lot of brute force. To that, we must also add climate change. Mytec What is in danger of extinction is the ecosystem. That is the real problem: the hundreds and thousands of trees in poor condition, with strong water stress and problems of all kinds. And that’s where pests grow. Let’s go back to the beetle. Because, of course, its special protection status makes managing it even more difficult than normal. That’s why, The normal complaint is that “you can’t fumigate”: but that doesn’t mean you can’t ‘fight’. Things like silvicultural prevention, surveillance and advanced technical means can help control populations. Furthermore, the same regulations that protect it allows more serious approaches when necessary. However, the problem is the same as always: the forest (even a forest as socio-economically important as the dehesa) is only profitable if the externalities generated by its exploitation are not considered. The best examplewe have been seeing in Murcia for years. Image | Mytec / Josh Hume In Xataka | In California, the funds discovered that there is no investment more profitable than farmland. Now it’s Spain’s turn

The United States knows that Venezuela’s subsoil is full of rare earths. The big problem is that he doesn’t know where

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The announcement that American companies could access to Venezuela’s vast oil has reignited a much broader ambition of Donald Trump’s administration. Because the Latin American nation has something that Washington desperately seeks, something that China he has plenty. He crux It’s how and how much. Beyond crude oil. Yes, the “b” side of the North American “landing” in Venezuela also seeks to explore the mineral potential of the country as part of “the national security of the United States.” The experts they point out that, in addition to crude oil, there would be unverified reserves of critical minerals and possible large quantities of rare earths, key inputs for defense and technology. However, the lack of reliable data, doubts about economic viability and operational risks in areas with the presence of armed groups and mining illegality turn the objective into an enterprise. much more complex that the oil reopening itself, with significant environmental impacts associates to energy-intensive mining. The supply chain and the bottleneck. Even if the extraction obstacles were overcome, the decisive challenge appears in processing. The refining of rare earths is concentrated in more than 90% in Chinaa domain constructed for decades through subsidies, industrial expansion and lax environmental regulations. This position has made rare earths a sensitive point of trade tensions between Washington and Beijing, with export controls that have highlighted the fragility of American supply chains. The consensus among analysts is that this industrial and geopolitical advantage cannot be reversed quickly, so new deposits without their own refining capacity would contribute little to short-term strategic resilience. Why it is important. It we have counted other times. The classification of “critical minerals” covers a broad set of raw materials essential for the economy and security, from aluminum and copper to a specific group of 17 elements known as rare earths, essential for high-performance magnets, advanced electronics and military systems. Although these elements are not scarce in the Earth’s crust, their extraction and refining are technically demanding and expensive. In the United States there are efforts to develop domestic capabilities, but start-up times are often measured in years or decades, which explains the temptation to look for external solutions that, in practice, rarely offer immediate results. Geological potential and structural limits. It happens that, unlike other countries with confirmed reserves, Venezuela does not appear in international lists as a relevant producer of rare earths, an explained absence for decades of opacity institutional during the governments by Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro. Still, the country is believed to host deposits of coltan and bauxitesources of metals considered critical such as tantalum, niobium, aluminum and gallium. Projects like the Orinoco Mining Arc They sought to capitalize on that potential, but have been marked by illicit mining, lack of investment, a shortage of qualified labor, and a volatile regulatory environment that discourages international operators. A strategic mirage in the medium term. If you like, the final evaluation of the experts is clear: although the Venezuelan subsoil may hide valuable resources, its contribution to the security of supply of the United States it would be marginal on the near horizon. Without solid geological data, without security guarantees and without processing capacity independent of the Chinese circuit, Venezuela’s mineral interest seems more an extension of the geopolitical pulse than a practical solution, at least in the short term. In that context, the American bet faces a paradox: the country offers a lot on paper, but little that can be translated into real advantages over the next decade. Image | Mauricio CampelloRawPixel In Xataka | The US did not need to shoot to enter Caracas. All it took was an invisible weapon and unexpected “help” from Russia In Xataka | While the whole world looks at oil, Venezuela’s true treasure is hidden in the basements of London: its gold

China is winning the humanoid robot race. The problem is that this race doesn’t really exist.

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Fritz Lang wanted to imagine the future and painted it for us with humanoid robots integrated into society. That maschinenmensch of ‘Metrópolis’ (1927) was a preview of what they now pursue with more ambition than anyone Chinese manufacturers, who They have not stopped developing more and more of these robots. They are winning the race by far, but the problem is that the race is non-existent. (Almost) nobody buys humanoid robots. These Chinese manufacturers were by far the most responsible for the sales of humanoid robots, which in 2025 amounted to the figure of… 13,000 units. The data reflects a forceful reality: in the world of domestic humanoid robots there is a lot (a lot) of noise, but few (very few) nuts. More than in 2024 = very little. Humanoid robots from Chinese manufacturers sold much more than those from American companies like Tesla or Figure AI according to data from the consulting firm Omdia. The company that has sold the most according to that report is the Chinese startup Shanghai AgiBot Innovation Technology Co., which distributed a total of 5,168 robots in 2025. It was followed by Unitree Robotics and UBTech Robotics Corp. Although total sales were five times those of 2024, the final figure reflects that the market is in its infancy. Huge expectations. Despite this, Citigroup esteem that in 2050 there will be 648 million humanoid robots. The great hope is that the promising evolution of AI models will serve to overcome current limitations and have multiple practical applications, once integrated into robots. There are already promising developments in this regard, and robots and AIs separately have already demonstrated their capacity in limited environments. like the manufacturing, logistics or customer service. China and “affordable” robotics. Although there are notable companies in this field in the US, their humanoid robots are much more expensive. Elon Musk indicated by the end of 2025 that “once production reaches one million units annually, Optimus will likely be priced between $20,000 and $25,000.” Meanwhile, Unitree already offers “affordable” robots (but not humanoid) for $6,000, and AgiBot asks for $14,000 for his. This company was in fact named by Jensen Huang during his talk at the NVIDIA event at CES 2026. The Chinese government helps. As in other industrial areas, there is strong support from the Chinese government in this area, and according to Bloomberg Favorable policies are combined with aid for the construction of training centers. The number of companies and startups developing this type of solutions already exceeds 150, and that even points to a potential “robotic bubble.” The challenge of robotic hands. One of the great challenges of this segment is to ensure that the dexterity of machines is comparable to that of humans. For now this is not the case especially with the example of robotic hands, which mostly They are very unskilledwhich limits its application to real home environments. The battery life of these robots is another obstacle that can hinder their application in our daily lives. Future implications. If these challenges are overcome, we will once again find ourselves with a disturbing panorama in which geopolitical tensions could make access to these robots difficult. There is also the problem of employment: if robots achieve the ability to perform manual tasks, the threat to virtually any human worker will be notable. How will governments react to this situation? Image | Agibot In Xataka | China prepares its next technological assault. Huawei and UBTech have just teamed up to bring humanoid robots to homes

The US has taken over Venezuela’s oil. The problem is that the package includes a gigantic debt with China

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The map of world power has been redrawn in just one week. The capture of Nicolás Maduro by US forces is not just a regime change; is the birth of the “Donroe Doctrine”, a movement with which Washington seeks to consolidate an energy empire “from Alaska to Patagonia” to control 40% of world production. However, after the military euphoria in the White House, a dilemma of trillion-dollar proportions looms: the oil has been taken, but it is mortgaged, and China demands its bills. The collector at the door. Control of the largest reserves on the planet has put the US face to face with the great creditor of the Caribbean. According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP)the current exposure in a state of “limbo” is estimated at $10 billion, although other estimates by think tanks collected by the same medium raise the historical debt to more than 60,000 million, much of it structured under the “oil for loans” model. But how was this sum arrived at? China needed energy for its industrial rise and Venezuela needed cash. Under this premise, Beijing financed railways, power plants and more than 600 bilateral agreements. Now, the great fear of the Asian giant is that the new government in Caracas —protected by the Trump administration— invoke the doctrine of “hateful debt”. As Cui Shoujun explains in SCMPthis legal remedy would allow the loans to be repudiated, alleging that China’s money did not benefit the people, but rather financed the survival of the regime. It would be the perfect “legal pretext” to clean up the balance sheets before the American oil companies take the reins. The agony of the Chinese state companies and the shield of the “Teapots”. The anxiety in Beijing is not just political, it is corporate. As revealed by Bloomberggiants such as China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) are carrying out damage assessments amid fears that decades of investments will evaporate. Nevertheless, according to information from Reutersthese companies still operate in the country through joint ventures such as Sinovensa, and control rights to reserves amounting to billions of barrels. However, China has an “ace up its sleeve.” A couple of months ago, they were absorbing 90% of measurable crude oil storage. Besides, as detailed by the Financial Timesmuch of the flow of Venezuelan crude oil arrived in China through the “teapots” (independent refineries), which bought the oil at steep discounts to avoid previous sanctions. By taking control of exports, the United States not only recovers crude oil, but also eliminates a key competitive advantage for the Chinese industry, raising its energy costs at a stroke. The technical paradox. Many wonder why Trump would risk so much for oil that seems “bad.” The answer is a necessary technical symbiosisAmerican and Spanish refineries (like Repsol’s) act as “stomachs” designed for heavy crude oil from Venezuela, which needs to be mixed with light oil from the fracking to produce diesel efficiently. However, the prize comes with a bill astronomical repair. The infrastructure is literally in ruins: loading an oil tanker today takes five days compared to the one day that was enough seven years ago, and the crude oil arrives “dirty” (with excess water and salt) due to lack of maintenance. Reconstructing the sector will require 10 billion dollars annually for a decade, to which is added the drama of natural gas: Venezuela today burns in “smoke” the equivalent of the consumption of all of Colombia due to pure technical negligence. The battle of the offices. Trump has taken control of the energy crown jewel, but has found himself with an astronomical repair bill and a Chinese creditor who won’t go away quietly. As the Financial Times warnsif the US decides to also suffocate supplies from Iran after this blow in Venezuela, China could see 20% of its cheap crude oil imports compromised, which would force Beijing into an unpredictable reaction. The real battle did not end with the capture of Maduro; It is just beginning in the offices of Washington and Beijing. Venezuela is the jackpot, but it is a prize that comes with fine print that could go bankrupt the financial balances of half the world. The oil era is not over, but the map of who controls it and who pays for it has been rewritten with blood and debt. Image | Luisovalles Xataka | The war in Ukraine has just met that of Venezuela: that means that its two invaders are facing each other

The problem with animal experimentation is not a lack of ethics, it is that science still does not have a plan B

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Scientific research is very necessary for a society to advance with new treatments to alleviate diseases, for example. But there is a big problem behind it that still lingers and that for many people may be incomprehensible: the use of laboratory animals to test these new advances before doing them in humans. And, as recognized by the Spanish scientific community: “we would use alternative methods if we could.” A paradox. Although we live in a time in which artificial intelligence and bioengineering dominate the current paradigm of society, we continue to depend on a frame designed in 1959 to validate whether a drug is safe or not. This happens for the use of animal experimentationwhich has been a major ethical conflict within science for years. The problem is that despite all the advances that exist, the use, for example, of a laboratory mouse cannot be replaced due to the lack of an alternative that is as complete as this one. The problem. The regulatory framework that is currently on the table focuses on the 3R principle proposed by Russell and Burch more than 60 years ago: Replacement, Reduction and Refinement. A theory that a priori seems quite noble, since In a few words it can be summarized in: if you can not use animals, don’t use them; If you have to use them, use as few as possible; and if you use them, do them as little damage as possible. However, as science itself has analyzed, this framework has become ‘procedural’. That is to say, it has become a list of bureaucratic tasks that legitimizes the use of animals under the pretext that it is a necessary evil that we must assume to continue advancing as a society. The ethics. The bioethical analyzes carried out on this matter focus on the type of studies that are approved to use animals. And it is not analyzed at this point whether it will contribute much or little to scientific knowledge, but rather how the proposed experiment is designed. This way, if an experiment is well designed, it is approved to use animals. All this despite the fact that their contribution to knowledge is marginal or insignificant. Something that creates an “ethical hole”: we continue to assume certain animal harm in exchange for an uncertain or diffuse human benefit. The great promise. If ethics pushes us to change, technology should give us the tool to do so. This is where NAMs (New Approach Methods) come into play, which focus on AI simulations of organisms, organs on a chip or organoids. In this way, we can understand this advance as the cultivation of mini-brains or human kidneys in the laboratory to work with them. Something that on paper seems like a great idea, since we would be testing drugs with human cells directly, eliminating the problem of testing on a different species. The problem. When we go down to the technical detail, we find a large wall in front of us. As the experts explainthese technologies cover specific niches, such as the damage that a drug can do to the liver, but they cannot replicate the entire film. Because an organism is not only the effect on an organ, but how all the systems that we have interconnected influence. The problems encountered They can mainly be summarized in several points: There is no possibility of creating a blood system that cleans the tissue and nourishes it as occurs in the real organism. There is no immune or nervous system that can react to the drug or generate pain in an organ. In a chip with an ‘organ’ inside, the effect of the drug cannot be simulated several years from now. Prohibited areas. With all these points, there are fields as important as autoimmune diseases (when the body attacks its own cells) where These models are irreplaceable. All this because it is necessary to see the simultaneous interaction of all the organs in a living being. Regulation. Currently there are different organizations that try to prevent a drug from killing a person, such as the FDA in the United States and the EMA in Europe. Both agencies to approve a trial of a drug in humans demand massive security data that are taken from the animals themselves. In this way, the alternatives are not used massively because they are not validated by these organizations that require the use of animal models in their standards. An attitude that perpetuates the system, which for many is truly crazy, since science depends on animals if it wants to continue developing drugs that improve the lives of citizens. All this because no committee places more value on the life of a mouse than that of a human. The future. In the short term we will not see a big change in this aspect. Organoids and AI It does not seem that they are going to suddenly replace animal modelsbut will act as complementary systems to reduce the number used in laboratories. Images | Matthew Mejia In Xataka | Researchers removed Instagram and TikTok from 300 young people to see if their anxiety decreased. The results speak for themselves

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