Wall

While everyone looks at Iran, China is building a nuclear “Great Wall”

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Under the surface of the oceans one of the technological competitions is taking place quieter and more decisive of the planet. The nuclear submarines They can remain submerged for months, travel halfway around the world undetected and launch missiles from thousands of kilometers away. Therefore, each new advance under the sea usually anticipates much bigger changes in the global strategic balance. Washington’s alarm. While much of international attention is focused on the immediate conflicts in the Middle Eastanother much deeper strategic concern is beginning to take shape in Washington. Apparently, the US Navy commanders have warned before Congress that the military balance under the sea is changing rapidly and that China is accelerating a transformation process that could alter the global nuclear deterrent in the coming decades. The underwater race. we have been counting in recent months. China already owns one of the largest submarine fleets in the world and is expanding it at high speed thanks to massive investments in its military shipyards. Production has gone from less than one nuclear submarine a year to significantly higher rateswith forecasts that the fleet will reach around 70 units by the end of this decade and close to 80 by 2035. Although the United States still maintains a technological and operational advantage in submarine warfare, the rapid growth of Chinese industrial capacity is reducing that distance and forcing Washington to rethink the strategic balance in the Pacific. The transition to a nuclear fleet. One of the most important changes is structural. For decades, the Chinese submarine fleet has been based on diesel-electric vessels, which are cheaper, but have less autonomy and must surface frequently. Now Beijing is promoting a strategic shift towards more and more construction focused on nuclear submarinescapable of remaining submerged for long periods and operating at great distances from their bases. This change will allow the Chinese navy to project a presence beyond its immediate environment and complicate US naval operations. in the Pacific and other oceans. The new submarines. The technological leap will come with new generations of submarines that will begin to enter service between the end of this decade and the 1930s. Among them stand out the Type 095 models and, above all, the Type 096designed to transport nuclear ballistic missiles long range. We are talking about equipped boats with JL-4 missilessubmarines that will be able to attack large areas of US territory even operating from waters near China, much more protected by its naval and air defenses. Such a capability would significantly bolster the credibility of China’s nuclear deterrent and reduce the need to patrol more exposed areas of the Pacific. A network to protect the nuclear deterrent. Plus: the Chinese project is not limited to building more submarines. American commanders said that Beijing is developing an extensive sensor network on the seabed, surveillance cables, satellite-connected buoys and unmanned underwater vehicles capable of detecting movements in nearby oceans. This system, described by many analysts as an “underwater Great Wall,” would allow China monitor strategic routestrack foreign submarines, and protect its own nuclear fleet while patrolling in relatively safe waters. The strategic horizon of 2025 and 2040. The result of this transformation should be seen clearly in the next decade. As the number of nuclear submarines grows and this undersea sensor network is deployed, China could greatly expand its underwater presence. beyond the first chain of western Pacific islands. US forecasts suggest that, around 2040Chinese submarines could operate more frequently in the Indian Ocean, the Arctic and even the Atlantic. If this evolution is confirmed, the global naval balance could enter a new phase marked by a fearsome underwater competition between the two greatest powers on the planet. Image | Google Earth, SteKrueBe In Xataka | The US has always been the largest nuclear power on the planet. China has already surpassed it in something: submarines In Xataka | The new fear of Western fleets is not nuclear. They are conventional submarines armed with surprise and a flag: China

In 2025, AI seemed to have hit a wall of progress. A volatilized wall in February 2026

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I fondly remember that time in which Intel and AMD fought to create the first CPU capable of reaching 1 GHz clock frequency. That race AMD won it (surprise!)but until that milestone occurred the pace was dizzying. Or so it seemed to us, because with AI the pace of launches is absolutely crazy. What a few weeks we’ve had, dear readers. Let’s see: January 27: Kimi.ai lance Kimi J2.5 February 5: Anthropic lance Claude Opus 4.6 February 5: Same day OpenAI lance GPT-5.3-Codex February 5: Kuaishou lance Kling 3.0 February 12: Z.ai lance GLM-5 February 12: ByteDance lance Seedance 2.0 February 12: MiniMax lance MiniMax 2.5 February 16: Alibaba lance Qwen3.5-397B-A17B Coming soon: DeepSeek v4, Does it call?, Gemini 3.1, … The pace is absolutely frenetic, and the LLMs that a few years ago months weeks seemed to be fantastic now they are not so much. The new versions of these language models do not stop evolving, and AI companies continue to constantly offer new developments. Almost dizzying. That, of course, has its good side and its bad side. We end 2025 with a certain boredom in the face of an AI that promised a lot but ended up changing hardly anything. Only at the end of the year was a palpable revolution seen with that spectacular combination formed by Claude Code and Opus 4.5. The Anthropic binomial amazed the developers, who for the first time seemed to agree when it came to declaring that with this type of platform they could ask the AI ​​for whatever they wanted, and that it would program it for you at once and almost always without problems. Of course there was some exaggeration in that speech, but certainly the capacity of Opus 4.5 and the degree of autonomy and Claude Code’s versatility They seemed to mark a turning point. Then OpenClaw arrived and that expectations for AI agents have once again skyrocketedbut in parallel we are seeing a real fever of launches of new generative AI models, both in video (Kling 3.0 and especially Seedance 2.0 They have been viral phenomena in themselves) as in text/code. And with each new model, the promise of performance surpassing the previous generation. At least, of course, in the benchmarks. On the left, Alibaba’s internal benchmarks for Qwen3.5. On the right, those from Anthropic for Opus 4.6. Each one compares himself with whoever he considers appropriate. Those bar graphs in the image above have become a constant, especially when the model is launched by a Chinese company. If the launcher is OpenAI, Google or Anthropic, tables are preferred. Be that as it may, the result always leads us to the same thing: each model is better than its predecessor and, normally, than many of the competition. AI Subscription Fatigue The problem with this is that this race never seems to end, and a model that seems fantastic today is not so great tomorrowwhen its competitor can barely outperform it, but it can also be considerably cheaper – Chinese models usually are – or offers other advantages such as larger context windows so that we can enter longer and longer texts – for example, large code repositories – as part of the prompt. And of course, that poses a problem for users. If Opus 4.5 was so good, one could sign up for the Pro or Max plan and pay a year in advance, but that is a priori risky, because although you will have access to new models when you release them, you will have dedicated your investment in AI subscriptions to the Anthropic model without having as much room to try those of rivals. Here short subscriptions are required: Subscribe to one model for one month so that I have some leeway in case I want to try another model the next month (or try two or three models in the same month, which is also a common case). The prices of subscriptions to AI services are also not facilitators of these multiple tests. The normal thing is to pay 20 euros for a one-month subscription, and although Chinese models are usually much cheaper, they are also usually one step behind in capacity if one needs maximum performance. But here the problem is repeated again and again: if I subscribe now to GPT-5.3-Codex, which everyone says is fantastic, how long do I pay for it, one month? Or do I also subscribe to GLM-5 to try, and next month I will try Opus 4.6 and MiniMax 2.5? All of these decisions are difficult because the perception of each model depends on each user. Each of them has their needs, their budget and their own experiences with each model, so as much as the benchmarks say one thing, With AI models it is happening to us like with wines: No matter how much they tell us that one is better than the other, we perceive them in a very personal way. And this frenetic advance also means that the expectation for models that really make a difference has been recovered. Vibe coding is not perfect, but it solves our needs better and better, and the same goes for AI agents like OpenClaw, which with their lights and shadows demonstrate that the future in which we have an AI employee—although at first they may be somewhat clumsy—working 24/7 does not seem to be that far away. These are dizzying and fascinating times for AI. Again. Image | Mohammad Rahmani In Xataka | China brought humanoid robots to the country’s biggest television show: it made them practice kung-fu with millimeter precision

a Great Wall of fishing barges

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A silent war is being fought in the South China Sea. No weapons are fired, but they are constantly mobilized huge warshipspatrol boats and experimental missile launch platforms. The area is a hotbed in which China claims Japanese and Taiwanese territories as its own, but among so much military maneuver, the movement that China made in mid-January: Hundreds of fishing boats marched to create an artificial reef. It is the ‘Great Fishing Wall’, and the curious thing is that it has not been an isolated event. what has happened. It happened last January 11. In a report of The New York Timesit was exposed how at least 1,400 Chinese fishing boats abandoned their usual tasks to group together in a highly coordinated manner at a midpoint between China and Japan. The result was a ‘wall’ about 300 kilometers long and with a density that forced some transport ships that had to cross the area to carry out maneuvers to avoid or, directly, go around. January 9 | Image from The New York Times January 11 | Image from The New York Times It’s not the first time. The fishing choreography is impressive from a satellite view, but the most curious thing is that the January 11 maneuver was not an isolated event. It has been repeated on at least one occasion. Specifically, on Christmas Day 2025, when more than 2,000 ships gathered to form an inverse “L”. The long “wall” was also located between China and Japan, but the shorter wall was planted at a point that created a division between Taiwan and the mainland’s most important ports. In the NYT article, the analysts consulted they point They had already seen some similar unusual maneuvers, but on a scale of a couple of hundred ships, never something as massive as the operations of December 25 and January 11. Christmas Operation | Image from The New York Times Because. China has been seeking for years to consolidate its control over a large part of that maritime territory. It seeks to legitimize its sovereignty over islands and reefs that Japan and Taiwan They maintain that they are theirs property as part of the “historical territory”. To apply pressure, from time to time China takes its warships out for a walksomething to which Japan also responds with their own (even with plans to rearm as they had not done since World War II). Another way to mark muscle is through dozens of artificial islands that China has been building for decadesand all to ensure strategic trade routes and reinforce its position in the regional system, but also to exercise sovereignty in an area with valuable resources such as fishing (something that China needs like eating), the hydrocarbons and until rare earth (that China already dominatesbut you can always cover more in such a powerful strategic resource). The result is the militarization of that region, with a United States that has joined the ‘call’ seeking to prevent China from covering more than it currently has and taking off state-of-the-art weapons in collaboration with Japan. Maritime Militia. Two factors stand out in this story. The first is the speed at which the ships were organized and the precision with which they headed to the indicated point. The second is how effective the blocking is. Seeing that the transports had to avoid this fishing militia (which is a term that has been used before), in a crisis situation, China could mobilize hundreds of civilian ships to obstruct sea lanes, complicating military operations such as ship deployment and supply. Because the theory indicates that the enemy powers would not shoot at or run over those civilian ships. Lure. And, of course, American analysts have not missed the opportunity to give their vision. Thomas Shugart is a former US naval officer and noted that these masses of small ships could be more than just a blockade: They could act as decoys for missiles and torpedoes. Radars would be overwhelmed by a map full of small targets, camouflaging and protecting the real warships. They do not neglect military force. Faced with such a deployment, other analysts “praised” the coordination capacity to ensure that so many ships entered into a formation like the one seen on both dates and, as usual, China has not said anything about these maneuvers, but from the United States it has been verified that they were real ships, no false signs to confuse. And most importantly, the last maneuver occurred days after China completed some military maneuvers around Taiwan with the aim of blockading the island. Because, although the maneuver of thousands of fishing boats mounting a physical blockade is something striking, the South China Sea has witnessed several more serious movements by China in recent days. For example, it has been reported that The J-16s of the People’s Liberation Army have approached dangerously at Taiwanese F-16s, even launching flares when Taiwanese fighters were going to intercept them. Also the crossing of a red line by China when a military drone, for the first time, invaded Taiwan airspace. And all while the US is convinced that China is doing nuclear tests while calling for calm. The end, military maneuvers on the maritime border have been a constant for years, but the coordinated choreography of fishing boats can be a monumental headache if someone decides to attack civilian vessels, no matter how much they block critical routes. And it is something that seems like a brutal pressure weapon with which it is not necessary to fire a single shot to exert that influence. Images | Ernest Gunasekara-Rockwell In Xataka | China once again shows its spaceship worthy of ‘Star Wars’. It is so beast that it is impossible with current technology

We believed Amazon was already spending too much on AI. Your answer to Wall Street: spend even more

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The honeymoon between AI and Wall Street is over. Amazon knows this very well, having just received that dreaded “we have to talk” message from investors with a drop of more than 10% in its shares yesterday. It seemed that the stock markets rewarded the fact that companies They invested absurd amounts of money in AI. It is just what Amazon announced yesterday, but that strategy has had a totally negative response in the markets. what has happened. Amazon presented yesterday financial results for the last quarter of 2025. Revenue grew by 14% and net profit by 6%, modest figures that were not very popular. But above all, I did not like that Amazon announced that it estimated a capex (capital expenditure) of $200 billion in 2026 in AI. Amazing. Wall Street used to reward, now it punishes. In 2025, that capex was $131 billion, and Amazon is determined to continue betting everything on AI. Before, investors rewarded that audacity. Now they are punishing her: the shares plummeted 11% “after hours“, and it will be today when those actions start with that reflected fall. We want return on investment. That market reaction is not an isolated event. Amazon’s fall comes just hours after Microsoft or Google suffered similar falls. The market before valued the potential of AIbut now he demands return on investment more than ever and has become impatient. Big Tech had operated with a blank check, but when revenue forecasts fall short of estimates, optimism evaporates. Income grows, yes, but not that much. The real problem is the imbalance between capex and revenue growth. AWS grew a spectacular 24% in revenue, but spending is growing at an even greater rate. Google, Amazon and Microsoft are trapped in a kind of infrastructure “arms race”: the first one to stop spending loses, and that is a big problem. He who does not risk, does not gain. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy explained that “this is an extraordinarily rare opportunity to forever change the size of AWS and Amazon as a whole. (…) We are going to invest aggressively to be the leaders.” It is a speech identical to that Mark Zuckerberg said a few months ago when he said he was willing to lose hundreds of billions on AI: not investing them would be worse for Meta. But Amazon is much more than AI. There is another disturbing element in this huge bet by Amazon. The reality is that the company has many expensive fronts. From the Kuiper satellite network to compete with Starlink to the robotization of its Whole Foods logistics and other areas. When adding AI to the equation, the math doesn’t seem to work out. Optimism ends. Historically, large technology companies have taken advantage of the optimism of the market and investors to justify spending forecasts completely unrelated to their income. In 2026, with the macroeconomic situation of “we no longer like risk” —tell it to bitcoin— and the pressure for profitability, “free optimism” has disappeared. If you are going to spend like crazy, you have to raise like crazy too. Amazon is doing well, AI is not. This total commitment to AI is preventing us from seeing that the rest of Amazon’s businesses are doing very well. Online sales grew by 10% and advertising grew by a notable 23%. E-commerce, the cornerstone on which Amazon was built and operates, is funding the AI ​​party, but it is turning into a bottomless pit. Like Qatar’s GDP. According to the world bankQatar’s GDP in 2024 was $219 billion. That Amazon invests almost the same in AI data centers alone is dizzying. It is the same thing that we said yesterday about Google, which also projected a capex of 135 billion dollars by 2026. The figures are no longer dizzying: they are crazy. Beware, obsolescence. And all that investment can end up wasted, especially because there is an implicit risk in the data centers that are built: in three or five years they could become obsolete if the architecture of AI chips changes radically. It is bread for today, and hunger for tomorrow… without counting the energy factor or the water consumption. Xataka | While Silicon Valley seeks electricity, China subsidizes it: this is how it wants to win the AI ​​war

a 300 km “moving wall” to close sea routes instantly

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In the constant pulse between China and TaiwanBeijing has been looking for ways to increase pressure without crossing the threshold of an open conflict. As maneuvers, exercises and actions in gray areas multiply, each new movement points to a key idea: control the environment. If a few days ago it was drone entrynow another formula has appeared. A wall that doesn’t shoot. He told it through images the new york times. China has shown that it can create a gigantic sea barrier without firing a single shot, simply gathering thousands of ships fishing vessels in formations so dense that they disrupt traffic and force other vessels to go around or through them with uncomfortable maneuvers. In one of the recent operations, around of 1,400 boats They suddenly abandoned their routines and concentrated on the East China Sea until they formed a rectangle of more than 300 kmwith a presence so compact that it was seen in the navigation data as a kind of continuous obstacle. The practical effect is obvious. If this is done near key trade routes, chaos pcan arrive very quickly without anyone having to declare a formal block. Maritime militia and war in gray. The relevant thing about the movement is not only how many ships appear, but what does it suggest about who It moves them and for what. Experts and analysts interpret these concentrations as a state-led exercise that dovetails with the use of maritime militia, a network of civilian vessels trained to support strategic objectives. Plus: it is a perfect tool to operate in that ambiguous zone where there is no clear attack, but there is a real pressure on the sea. It is a way of imposing control without showing frigates in the front row and without assuming the political cost of open military action, while the rest are forced to decide whether to treat that mass as civilians or as an organized force. Rehearsal of blocking… without calling it a blocking. In a crisis scenario over Taiwan, a mass like this no need to “enforce” a lock by force to be useful. It is enough to hinder, slow down and complicate the movement of commercial or military support ships. It can force route changes, introduce delays, create points of friction and increase the risk of incidents. It can also serve to mark areas where traffic becomes unsafe or impassable for hours or days. That kind of pressure fits ideas like “quarantine”which seeks to strangle the functioning of an area without completely crossing the threshold of open war. Saturation as a tactic. Another advantage of this “wall” is that it converts the sea into tactical noise. Thousands of small ships together can overwhelm surveillance and complicate the identification of real threats, especially if there are drones, radars and automated systems trying to classify contacts. In a tense situation, this saturation can also act as a screen. It can conceal movements, force the adversary to expend attention and resources, and open space for other operations. Although each ship is weak on its own, value comes when they multiply until they become a problem of management rather than combat. What is revealed. The Times analysts who have followed Chinese activity in disputed seas for years highlighted that it is not usual Seeing such a large and orderly formation, and maintaining relatively stable positions, does not resemble a normal fishing pattern. The important thing here is the organizational muscle. Gathering thousands of ships at a specific point, in a short time, and positioning them with discipline indicates a clear improvement in command, control, communications and planning. This suggests that China is practicing something that you can repeat when you need it, and that does not depend on improvisations or simple crowds. Why does it matter so much? The trainings were given in the east china seaclose to major routes that connect with Shanghai, one of the most important port centers in the world. It’s not just any place. They are maritime corridors through which goods pass daily, including Chinese exports and flows that connect entire economies. Controlling or interrupting these steps is a way strategic pressure first level, on Taiwan, on Japan and also on any actor that has to operate there, including the United States and its allies. Beijing’s official silence fits with the logic of these actions. There is no need to announce anything if what you want is to check capabilities, measure reactions and leave a clear message with facts. A difficult model to answer. The really surprising thing about this is that a fishing barrier It is a relatively cheap instrument compared to deploying large military unitsand it can also be scaled. If today there are 1,400 or 2,000 barges, tomorrow there could be many more in a time of crisis. And for the rival(s), the answer will always be uncomfortable. The main reason is that it is not easy to justify brute force against ships that present themselves as civilians, but it is also not feasible to ignore them if they are effectively blocking a critical path. That’s the value of this “weapon” that does not fire a single projectile. That of forcing a choice between tolerating the pressure or escalating first, while China gains time, control and the ability to shape the pace of the situation. Image | Planet Labs, Ernest Gunasekara-Rockwell, Anna Frodesiak, Micromesistius In Xataka | China has just crossed the same red line as Russia: for the first time, a military drone has invaded Taiwan’s airspace In Xataka | The US has just sent an unprecedented package to Taiwan. Inside are the instructions and weapons against an invasion

Telefónica leaves Wall Street through the back door. Goodbye to almost four decades in the largest market in the world

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Telefónica has started the procedures to delist your shares from the New York Stock Exchangewhere it has been listed since 1987. The securities will stop trading on Wall Street in a matter of days once the documentation is filed with the SEC. The telecom will only maintain its listing in Madrid, in the Spanish continuous market. Why is it important. The movement closes a symbolic chapter that began when Telefónica became the first Spanish company to be listed on the largest market in the world. But the symbolism was left behind: today maintaining that presence involves high administrative costs and regulatory demands that no longer compensate. The trading volume in New York is residual and investor interest is practically non-existent. The context. Telefónica’s stock has fallen more than 90% in the last fifteen years. Its current valuation is on the floor, very far from that giant that in the nineties became the most valuable company in Spain. The dividend, which for years was the main attraction for conservative investors, has been successively cut, the last time this quarter. Buying in Madrid is more direct, cheaper and with the same liquidity as in New York, where securities are hardly traded. Between the lines. This decision fits into the strategic plan presented in November by Marc Murtra, focused on aggressively reducing costs. Telefónica has been lowering its blinds on all fronts: Sold subsidiaries throughout Latin America except Brazil. Reduced the dividend. Presented an ERE which is ending its negotiation phase. And now it is abandoning stock markets where being present no longer adds value. Also will stop trading in Lima. The figure. 4,554 departures are contemplated by the ERE that was agreed this Wednesday with the unions, 26% of the workforce in Spain. Cost savings are the obsession of the new management: 3 billion annually until 2030. Yes, but. Investors who have ADR certificates (American Depositary Receipts) will be able to exchange them for common shares in Spain or hold and trade them in US over-the-counter markets. Telefónica will provide both options, although it is evident that it prefers the first. The background. The exit from Wall Street is not an isolated or recent decision: The telecommunications sector has lost interest from investors, especially in Europe. It is a mature business, highly regulated, with tight margins and little ability to surprise. Telefónica today is a very different company from the one that debuted on Wall Street: smaller, more regional, more European. Its new strategy focuses on four markets (Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom and Brazil) and on consolidating itself as a reference operator with profitable scale, in addition to increasing its focus on technological solutions. Marking agenda. Wednesday’s day at the Distrito Telefónica offices north of Madrid was hectic. The contrast. When Telefónica went public in New York in 1987, it placed certificates worth $375 million, the largest influx of European capital on Wall Street up to that time. The telecom was then majority owned by the State and its debut was seen as a milestone of internationalization. Today it leaves unnoticed, recognizing that the regulatory burden and administrative costs of the SEC outweigh any benefits. Go deeper. The obligation to report detailed information to the SEC was useful at the time: thanks to it, data such as the price that STC or SEPI paid to enter the capital were known, information that the Spanish CNMV would never have required to reveal. But that level of transparency also has a cost, and Telefónica has decided that it is no longer worth paying for. In Xataka | The Government has had an idea so that the next blackout does not leave us without mobile data: let the operators pay Featured image | Telefónica, Lo Lo

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

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

It is much more. And that terrifies Wall Street

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The first sentence of this headline is not of its own origin, but of Axios in his wonderful portrait of technological dependence on OpenAI. Altman is receiving pressure from several fronts: Google eating ground since Gemini 3. The demands that accumulate. AND more than $1 trillion in investment commitments that depend on the success of the company. Why is it importantand. ChatGPT was born as the product of a startupbut now it is the axis that supports an entire industry. If it fails to balance the accounts, it would not only drag down OpenAI, but also dozens of companies, investors and projects with many zeros that have opted for the permanence of the current AI paradigm. Between the lines. The situation is, in itself, a paradox: OpenAI introduced generative AI into the collective imagination and convinced Wall Street that this revolution was real and imminent. Now that same dominant position makes it a single point of systemic failure. As Paul Kedrosky explainsMIT researcher, underestimating their individual role would be “a serious misunderstanding of what is happening in the market.” The context. The company faces rising costs, a brutal war for talent and so many doubts about your consumption strategy that porn is starting to be an option. Altman has refocused priorities on improving ChatGPT and the models that power it, he said The Wall Street Journal after the arrival of Gemini 3. But the problem goes beyond the technical: it is a network of intertwined agreements between a few giant companies, where the weakness of one threatens to paralyze the rest. Yes, but. A technical failure seems very unlikely. OpenAI continues to progress with ChatGPT despite the competition. The real risk is financial and psychological: Microsoft and Meta buy chips wildly for fear of being left behind. If OpenAI falters, that chip-buying FOMO evaporates. NVIDIA chips serve as collateral for billions in loans. If demand falls, the value of the collateral falls. And if those loans go bad, lenders are left with depreciated assets. Trust is everything. OpenAI and ChatGPT popularized AI among users and investors. This sentimental position amplifies any perception of weakness. The threat. The debate over whether OpenAI is “too big to fail” is gaining momentum. Chief Financial Officer, Sarah Friar, last month he somewhat awkwardly suggested the possibility of federal backingfueling the debate. Being “too big to fail” (the famous too big to fail) implies that the government would intervene because the economic and political consequences would be unaffordable. On the other side. Altman took it upon himself to categorically reject any government support. “If we screw up and can’t fix it, we should go bankrupt. Other companies will continue to do good work and serve customers. That’s how capitalism works,” said in X a few weeks ago. behind the scenes. OpenAI’s leadership is part narrative and part technical. They were the ones who introduced the idea of ​​generative AI to the masses, they have a role in AI similar to that of Google in searches or email, and that cultural penetration means that any slippage can be magnified. What’s at stake isn’t just the future of a company valued at half a billion and counting. It is the credibility of the entire narrative about AI. If OpenAI stumbles, investors could conclude that they overestimated the speed of adoption and profitability of the sector. This readjustment of expectations would have immediate consequences on valuations, capital flows and projects in development. Featured image | Dima SolominXataka In Xataka | We have been enjoying AI without ads for three years. That is about to end for obvious reasons.

China has been building the Great Green Wall for 50 years. What I had not planned was to alter the rains

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The China’s forests are growing. It has nothing to do with a natural process, but with a meticulously followed strategy to contain the desert expansion and reforest the country with billions of trees. The consequence of this reforestation is not limited to having more trees and two studies have just shown the counterpart of massive ecological engineering. This is not good news: the continental hydrological cycle is being altered. The Green Wall. Of China’s deserts, the Gobi may be the best known, but the Taklamakan It is one of the most problematic. 85% of this 337,600 km² desert are dunes, which at certain times of the year generates sand storms that leave the surrounding towns without crops. And countries like the two Koreas or Japan too they suffered the effects of storms. Furthermore, it was growing, so in 1978, the country launched march the Refugio Tres Norte Forest Program. The strategy: a series of tree belts to contain the expansion of its largest deserts. The objective: to go from forest cover in the country of 5.05% in 1997 to almost 15%, and the idea is complete that belt by 2050 with a total of 4,500 kilometers long. At the moment, the Great Green Wall has completed the shield around Taklamakan with a belt of about 3,000 km, observing a decrease in sandstorms. Consequences in water. Apart from that desert, in others such as Ulanbuh, Korqin, Hunshandake, Maowusu and Kubuqi, tens of thousands of square kilometers of forest and pasture have been built. And, although the storms have decreased, different investigations are noticing a secondary effect: an alteration of the water cycle throughout the continent. Published in Earth’s Future, a study carried out by Chinese researchers shows how new vegetation has increased evapotranspiration in the region. Bottom line: More water is being pumped from the ground into the atmosphere, meaning winds are transporting water to regions like the Tibetan Plateau as rain while the monsoon regions of the northwest and east are suffering a decrease in its net water availability. Non-uniform redistribution. This greater green cover causes restored forests and grasslands to transpire more water than bare soil or traditional crops. This additional moisture It enters the atmosphere, which falls in other regions as rain. According to the study, the consequences at the national level were the following: Evapotranspiration increased by 1.71 mm/year. Precipitation also increased by 1.24 mm/year. Water availability (from aquifers and springs, for example) decreased by 0.46 mm/year. And, as we say, the process is not uniform because the water is moving from one area to another. Greening/conserving water. It is not the only study published on the subject, but it is one that coincides in time with another published in August of this year in which, after analyzing 1,046 hydrological stations and their data from the last 60 years, they discovered that the flow of the rivers decreased by more than 70%. Their conclusion is that it is not an effect of climate change, but of changes in the landscape caused by human intervention. It makes perfect sense: trees need water to grow, and that amount of new trees makes them act like a giant pump, reducing the amount of water that feeds the rivers. Thus, there is a tension between greening China and conserving its water, since once in the clouds, it precipitates air currents wherever you go. Implications. In the end, the researchers conclude that the strategy when managing water must be changed and that hydrographic plans must take into account both the land basins and the “air basin”, anticipating where the water evaporated by the forests will travel. Because the ambitious reforestation plan has 24 years left and the country has invested a lot in it directly – by planting trees – but also with policies that prohibit the felling of forests or with incentives for farmers to convert their croplands into pastures. And, well, the consequences not only have to do with water. That the Natural Forest Protection Program prohibited logging in primary forests provoked that Chinese loggers would ‘loot’ the Burmese forests. Something that adds to the conflict between both nations. Images | Siggy Nowak, Janwillemvanaalst, Kanenori In Xataka | In China they already have room for the first city with a vertical forest: a million plants and trees

LineageOS 23 brings Android 16 to a wave of abandoned mobile phones, with more difficulties than ever. Google put a wall in the way

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There is a feeling of betrayal that runs through the most veteran Android community. The reason is Google’s strategy, which has been closing a system that was born completely free: the development of AOSP (the source code of Android) now it’s more privateand the publication of the source code suffer delays that didn’t happen before. While many feel that “the soul of Android has disappeared”the community responds. And the biggest banner of that Open Source resistance has just been updated. In the image, Murena’s /e/ OS alternative ROM, which is based on the popular LineageOS Lifesaver for an abandoned mobile. The life cycle of an Android smartphone is usually not as long as the competition, although that is changing in recent times. From this premise, alternatives emerged such as LineageOS, which is actually the spiritual heir to the mythical CyanogenMod. For many users, it is the only way to have the latest version of Google’s OS and extend the useful life of their devices. LineageOS 23 expands. The LineageOS team has announced a new batch of devices that receive official support for LineageOS 23, its version based on Android 16. This update not only brings the news of Android 16, but also self-developed improvements. For example, “Catapult” and “Aperture 2.0”. The first is a new launcher for Android TV with a clear objective: replace the Google TV interface with a clean, fast and ad-free one. Instead, Aperture is the ROM’s camera app that has now been rewritten from the ground up with support for Ultra HDR and RAW capture. Google has changed the rules. The LineageOS team has confirmed on their official blog that this has been a complicated launch. As we have been saying, the more closed development of AOSP and the fact that Google no longer publishes the Pixel code with total transparency, has caused Google phones to no longer be as easy to support compared to those of any other manufacturer. Despite the difference with respect to the extinct Nexus, the Pixels have been the reference for Open Source development. That’s over too. Consequences. The change in strategy has materialized in delays to the Android 16 code: Google released Android 16 QPR1 for the Pixel (first quarterly update) but never published the source code on AOSP. For this reason, LineageOS has been forced to launch its version 23.0 based on the initial version of Android 16. In practice, ROM users do not currently receive news as notable as the Material 3 Expressive redesign. There are also uncertainty regarding security. Google has changed the way it releases system security patches. They are no longer monthly and complete; most corrections are now quarterly. For its part, the team behind LineageOS warns that this means that its ROM security patch levels could inevitably be delayed. The basis of Android “resistance” without Google. Despite all these difficulties, LineageOS continues to be one of the pillars of the “degoogleized” community. Not only is it an alternative view for the end user, but its AOSP code serves as the basis for privacy projects like the popular GrapheneOS either the European /e/ OS. Keeping LineageOS alive is keeping alive the possibility of an Android without Google in an increasingly controlled ecosystem. New devices. The latest batch of devices that join the official support of LineageOS 23 focuses, curiously, on the Google family and flagships from OnePlus and Xiaomi. Some of them are the Pixel 6, 7, 8 and 9 series, the OnePlus 13 or the Redmi Note 9 Pro 5G. They add to the long list of those that debuted when LineageOS 23 was released a few weeks ago. Cover image | Composition with LineageOS images and generated by Nano Banana In Xataka | Google believes it has the key to compete with Windows, Linux and macOS in laptops. That key is called Android

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