war

Kubrick was obsessed with this masterpiece of war cinema

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Stanley Kubrick one of the most demanding directors in the history of cinemawas unable throughout his life to stop talking about a film, to the point that he “spoke enthusiastically about it until shortly before his death.” It was not his, but from an Italian filmmaker practically unknown to the general public. It was filmed in 1966 with non-professional actors and on the streets of Algeria: ‘The Battle of Algiers’. Says who knows. Anthony Frewin worked as Kubrick’s personal assistant between 1965 and 1999, except for short interruptions at times in the 1970s. No one knew the director’s cinematographic tastes better than him, as demonstrated in an interview where he states that Kubrick “was generally very disappointed with Hollywood cinema.” What interested him was something else: international directors who questioned the conventions of the medium and sought new forms of expression. Your favorite. Among all those films, one occupied a separate place. According to Frewin, Kubrick was “excited” by it for decades ‘The Battle of Algiers’by Gillo Pontecorvo. The first time this assistant started working for him, Kubrick already told him that it was impossible to understand what cinema could really do without having seen that film. And he continued saying it until shortly before he died, in 1999. What is ‘The Battle of Algiers’. Winner of the Golden Lion in 1966 at the Venice Festivalreceived three Oscar nominations. Gillo Pontecorvo filmed it in black and white, on the real streets of the Casbah of Algiers, with thousands of local extras and a handful of non-professional actors. The result was so convincing that the film’s advertisements warned that the images did not come from documentary archives. The film reconstructs the most intense years of the Algerian conflict against French colonization, between 1954 and 1957. Pontecorvo based it on the memories of FLN commander Saadi Yacef, who also acted in the film itself, playing a character inspired by himself. The director spent an entire month testing before shooting a single scene, using multiple cameras to make the crowds appear larger, and even repeating some takes more than twenty times to exhaust the actors. The music, signed by Ennio Morricone, flirts with traditional North African percussion and traditional military marches. And finally, the film stands out for its refusal to offer a clear moral perspective: both FLN guerrillas and French paratroopers commit atrocities, and no one plays the role of unequivocal hero. What did Kubrick see in him? In an interview included in the aforementioned article, Kubrick commented that “all films are, in a sense, mockumentaries. You try to get as close to reality as you can, but it is not reality. There are people who do very intelligent things that have fascinated and completely deceived me. For example, ‘The Battle of Algiers’. It is very impressive.” Frewin added a detail: the director went so far as to say that ‘The Battle of Algiers’ and Andrzej Wajda’s ‘Danton’ were the only two films he would have liked to have directed. Parallels with his cinema. Above all from a thematic point of view, the influence of ‘The Battle of Algiers’ on Kubrick’s cinema is indisputable: ‘Paths of Glory’ examines the mechanics of military hierarchy and the corruption it generates, and ‘Full Metal Jacket’ divides its story into two almost incompatible points of view to show that war does not have only one face. In none of these films is there a protagonist who triumphs morally, and in that sense, Pontecorvo and Kubrick shared that war films should not generate catharsis but rather discomfort. At the Pentagon. The influence of ‘The Battle of Algiers’ exceeds the cinematographic sphere. In August 2003the Pentagon’s Directorate of Special Operations organized a screening of the film for senior military and civilian officials. The invitation brochure said: “How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. (…) The French have a plan. It works tactically, but it fails strategically.” The background was the occupation of Iraq: the US army was looking for clues to understand why military victories did not translate into political stability. They weren’t the only thing: the Black Panthers used the film as training material in the 1960s. The IRA also studied it. Argentine intelligence used it in the seventies, for radically different purposes. And today, is screened regularly at West Point, at the Naval War College and at the Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. In the world of cinemaNolan cited him as an influence when he released ‘Dunkirk’ and (2017) and ‘The Dark Knight Rises’. In Xataka | ‘2001: Flashes in the Dark’: An HBO Max immersion in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece that surprises with its visual inventiveness

In the middle of the war, Israel’s underground parking lots have begun to fill with something: tents

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On the fourth floor of the underground parking lot of the Dizengoff Centerone of the most popular shopping centers in Tel Aviv, the difficult thing these days is seeing cars. There are also not many motorcycles, vans or any other type of vehicle. What has occupied the squares painted on the ground for weeks are dozens of tents, the ‘home’ improvised by Israelis looking for a place to protect themselves from the attacks with which Iran has responded to ‘Operation Epic Fury’ that on February 28 ended the life of its leader, Ali Khamenei. While on the surface the sirens sound warning of the arrival of missiles, there, on the -4 floor, life goes on among removable tents. “Look where I am”. With that phrase I started a few days ago tiktoker Andrea Bisso (@Latinaenisrael96) a video in which it shows the parking lot of a shopping center in Israel. The curious thing is that as you walk through its corridors you don’t see cars or people with shopping carts, but rather tents, an improvised table on pallets where food is distributed, handwritten posters hanging from the columns, clothes hanging from cables… The landscape that marks the daily life of the dozens of families who take refuge there. “People are living here now, in times of war. This is where they have moved. It’s incredible how people started to live in a parking lot. These are people who have small children, can’t run to a shelter, don’t have one nearby or are elderly who can’t go down the stairs… They prefer to live here,” relates Andrea as she walks through the parking lot. “Alternate reality”. The tiktoker is not the only one that has shown how the war has transformed some unexpected places in Israel. A few days ago Zeb Stub also did it on an extensive report for The Times of Israel in which it affects the same idea. In fact, he talks about the “alternative reality” that has been created on the -4th floor of the Dizengoff Center parking lot, where “a city” basically made up of dozens of tents has been deployed. Curiously, life activates beneath the surface while it decays in commercial areas. Stub explains for example that in the Azrieli Centeralso in Tel Aviv, some businesses estimate that activity has fallen by 20% or even 50% in recent weeks. “Many people come simply to get out of the house,” they say from a shoe store. “The normal thing before Passover is that people come to buy new clothes, but this year they are not thinking about that.” Life goes on underground. Gal, a teacher who teaches remotely, explained to the Israeli newspaper that she decided to move to the Dixengoff shelter last week among other reasons because she had to constantly interrupt her work in her apartment. “I teach online classes and having to stop every time the siren sounds is making my work more complicated,” recognize the woman In the shelter you don’t just see people eating, sleeping, working or simply hanging out. a chronicle from the Associated Press (AP) talks about much more casual scenes, such as a bride posing with her family for a wedding photo session or young people dressed up for celebrate the holiday Purim Jewish… There are also spaces for attend to medical emergencieslike the improvised one in a parking lot under the Sheba Medical Center, in Ramant Gan. Are there no conventional shelters? Yes. Israel has public shelters. It is also not unusual to find private spaces designed precisely so that people can take shelter during emergencies. When the alarms sound, people barricade themselves in them, usually for fifteen minutes, half an hour… however long the alert lasts from when the sirens sound. However, there are those who, for one reason or another, choose to put their belongings in a suitcase and temporarily settle in spaces where they feel safer than in their homes, such as parking lots. The Dizengoff Center is an example, but there is more. Under the Tel Aviv bus station there are dozens of families, especially immigrants, who have settled in tents. Crossover attacks. Noah Efron, from the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipal council, claimed these days that the underground shelters in Tel Aviv are designed to house families at times like the current one, when the Middle East is convulsed by the offensive launched by Israel itself and the US on Iran. Over the last few weeks, cities like Tel Aviv have received attacks of the Islamist regime, damaging buildings and causing injuries and even fatalities. Israel is not the only one living under the threat of missiles. His army has also been hitting Iran and Lebanon for weeks. In fact, in cities like Tehran or Kfar Rumman there are a significant balance of wounded and dead. Images | TikTok and Wikipedia In Xataka | Iran has just crossed the great energy red line: Türkiye is the first victim of a blackout that is already looking to Europe

In 1967, a war veteran believed that moving around a computer could be easier. So he created the first mouse

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Things were clear from minute one. When Douglas Engelbarthead of the Augmentation Research Center (ARC), at Stanford, wanted to interview a new recruit, gave him a pencil attached to a brick and then asked him to write his name on a piece of paper. Difficult, right?, joked Engelbart, a doctor in electrical engineering and a pioneer in computer development. Well, people would encounter the same problems, he explained to the candidates, if they were not able to offer them more agile and simple tools to use computers. He wasn’t talking just to talk. Engelbart, together with one of his colleagues, also an engineer William Englishwas the father of the first mouse computer in the 1960s. Only that one was not called a mouse, but XY Position Indicator for a Display System; and its design was quite different from the modern peripherals that we use today. To begin with, it was made of wood and had a pair of metal wheels. This is your story. Make it easy for people: “Click” In the early 1960s, Engelbart, a World War II veteran, recent PhD and with just a couple of years of experience at the Stanford Research Institute —today known as SRI— had a clear idea: he wanted accessible technology. And simple. In 1945, while serving in the US Navy, he had read an article by the inventor Vannevar Bush who encouraged scientists to bring knowledge to the streets and he was determined to transfer that slogan to his own field. The golden opportunity came when the Department of Defense, through DARPAgave him the necessary support to set up his own center in the SRI, the ARC. There he had nearly fifty people working for him and efforts were focused on answering a question: What would the future of computer communication be like? At that time, computing had been in development for decades; IBM had manufactured the IBM 650 and the team was convinced of the enormous potential of the sector. The question was how to use it and prevent the systems from being as unwieldy as a pencil stuck to a brick. At that time the most popular devices for pointing on a screen were optical pencilsa system similar to that used in military radars. Since 1961 Engelbart, however, ruminated on an alternative. To make interaction with computers more efficient: install a pair of small wheels across a table so that the user could operate the screen cursor with them. One would rotate horizontally and the other vertically and its operation would be very similar to that of the planimeter commonly used by surveyors, geographers and architects. The idea had been recorded in his notebook, but already in the 1960s, with the financial backing of DARPA, his own team and extra help from NASAEngelbart was able to delve into it. The veteran and his colleagues gathered the best signaling equipment that existed and made a kind of brainstorming which left half a dozen proposals for working with monitors, some of the most curious, such as a joystick or a light pen. Perhaps the most striking of all was a mechanism that was fixed under the table and operated with the knee. A prototype nicknamed “mouse” Also included among that amalgam was a small device manufactured by Bill English after reviewing his notes from the beginning of the decade with Engelbart. The prototype basically consisted of a carved redwood block which included two wheels crimped at the bottom and a button at the top. Your name: XY Position Indicator for a Display System. Its appearance, compact and with a cable protruding, However, it ended up earning him the nickname “mouse.”. It was so comfortable that it prevailed over the rest of the laboratory’s alternatives and the team included it as a standard piece in their research. The SRI applied for the mouse patent in 1967 and received it in 1970. Engelbart and his companions did not stop there. They continued looking for a “companion” for the mouse, another device that the user could operate with their free hand and could use to enter commands and text. After several tests they opted for a device similar to a telephone with five keys. They also carried out tests to perfect the mouse design as much as possible. “We did a lot of experiments to see how many buttons it should have. We tried up to five. We decided on three. That’s all we could fit in. Now, the three-button mouse has become standard, except for the Mac,” Engelbart himself recalled in 2004, in an interview with Wired. With all this material and the rest of the inventions developed by his team, the war veteran decided to put on a gala performance. One like a beast. In 1968 they organized known as “mother of all demos”a historic conference held in San Francisco in which Engelbart showed all the functions they had developed over the last few years. “For 90 minutes, the stunned audience of more than a thousand professionals witnessed many of the features of modern computing for the first time: live video conferencing, document sharing, word processing, windows, and a strange pointing device jokingly referred to as “the mouse“The elements of the screen were linked to others through associative links or hypertexts,” explains the Computer History Museum. “People were amazed. In one hour, it defined the era of modern computing,” English commented to New York Times in 1996. Shortly after that historic achievement, however, the team began to lose its drive. Some staff questioned the lab’s drift, DARPA cut its funding, and other research centers began to emerge, such as the Xerox in Palo Alto (PARC). Result? Many of Engelbart’s employees sought new destinations. With them went the very concept of the mouse. The device, with a trackball, ended up being incorporated into the Xerox Alto computer and in 1983 Apple marketed it with its computer Lisa. After a while –as you remember Washington Post— Steve Jobs’ company was behind almost half of … Read more

The US has sent Iran 15 points to end the war. He has also sent a plan B as explosive as it is disconcerting through the air

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In the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union held open negotiations while, at the same time, deploying thousands of troops and nuclear weapons in key points of the planet. In reality, that logic of talking and putting pressure at the same time has never disappeared and continues to be one of the most recognizable constants of modern conflicts. The 15 points. First the official route. The United States has sent Iran a 15 point plan to try to end the war, using Pakistan as an intermediary and with the intention of stopping a conflict that already affects energy markets and regional stability. The document addresses key issues like the nuclear programballistic missiles and maritime security in the Strait of Hormuz. However, it is not clear whether Iran has even agreed to discuss it or whether Israel endorses the content. Furthermore, much of the plan appears to be based in previous proposals which have already been rejected, which casts serious doubt on their real viability. Diplomacy does not stop war. Although Washington presents the plan as a way out, the reality on the ground is very different. military operations have continued without pause within that campaign named after a Michael Bay movie, Epic Fury. In fact, the United States and Israel have continued attacking infrastructure Iranian military while Iran maintains the launch of missiles and pressure on maritime traffic. The White House itself has made it clear that the negotiations they do not replace to military objectives. In other words, the situation generates a scenario in which diplomacy advances in parallel with an escalation that does not stop. F 35c The ground deployment. At the same time that there is talk of agreements, the United States continues sending and increasing its military presence in the region. There are already nearly 7,000 new troops sent in a few days, including units of the 82nd Airborne Division and marines prepared for rapid operations. So that? In theory, these forces can act in specific scenarios such as the capture of strategic points or the reopening of maritime routes in Hormuz. There is no doubt, its deployment does not respond to a withdrawal, but to the expansion of military options available if the negotiation fails. Advanced capabilities by air. The reinforcement is not limited to ground troops. New fighter planes have also appeared like the F-35Cunits that are being deployed to the area of ​​operations, adding to an already very large air force. These systems provide precision strike, close support and air superiority capabilities. Not only that. Movements of other assets such as airplanes have also been detected special operations and deception systems against anti-aircraft defenses. In short, everything points to preparation for more complex scenarios that a simple containment. If the 15-point plan does not work, plan B is ready to act. The strange B2s of plan B. In this context, the B-2 bomberswhich are operating from US territory and have appeared with some visible modifications on its wings that have not been explained by military sources. They counted the TWZ analysts that these changes could be related to sensors, electronic warfare or improvements in its survivability, but there is no official confirmation. Your role, as almost alwaysseems key for Washington because they are the only ones capable of attacking highly protected targets long distance. Its presence, along with these modifications, reinforces the idea that the United States is preparing specific capabilities for more demanding phases of the conflict. A plan that does not resemble a negotiation. The combination of all these movements paints a fairly clear scenario. While presenting a peace proposal publicly, a military architecture is deployed at the same time increasingly widerwith units like those B2 with additions that had rarely been seen in other conflicts. A troop contingentfighters, strategic bombers and naval reinforcements accumulating in the region, suggesting that Washington is not betting solely on a negotiated solution. Rather, an alternative is being prepared in which military pressure increases if talks do not progress. A disconcerting war. In recent months we have seen scenes of soldiers controlling machine guns mounted on drones with devices like a Steam Deckremote operations that seemed to mark the definitive course of modern warfare. It has been spoken artificial intelligenceof drone swarms and remote combat as the new standard. However, in parallel, the United States is preparing to send thousands of paratroopers (around 3,000), a capability designed in the 20th century to take key positions quickly. The image is difficult to fit because of its anachronism. While one part of the conflict aims at total automation, another recovers classic forms of massive troop deployment. This coexistence is not an anomaly, it is the sign that the current war does not replace what came before, or not at all, but rather accumulates it. Two open roads. The result of all this is a strategy that advances in parallel. On the one hand, an attempt to reach an agreement with multiple conditions extremely difficult for Iran to accept. On the other hand, a deployment which allows the war to be rapidly escalated if necessary. The key at this time and in the coming days will be whether one of these paths prevails over the other. Because, for now, the United States has sent two diametrically different messages at the same time, and both they are still active. Image | USAF, US Army In Xataka | Drones and ballistic missiles have revolutionized warfare. Iran suspects there is another weapon: rain theft In Xataka | There are four days left for the US to make a momentous decision: whether it wants to turn Iran into its own Ukraine

YouTube invests a million in AI content for children just as it has just declared war on AI content for children

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Google’s AI Futures Fund just injected a million dollars at Animaj, a Parisian studio that produces children’s animation generated with artificial intelligence for YouTube. The decision comes seven weeks after the platform’s CEO publicly stated that combating AI sloplow-quality content generated with AI, was the priority of the year. Down the slop. On January 21, 2026, Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube, published his annual message about resolutions for the new year, including an unambiguous directive: combat AI slop It was the priority of the year for the platform. Seven weeks later, Google’s AI Futures Fund injected $1 million into Animaj, a Parisian animation studio that produces AI-generated children’s videos for YouTube. The problem. A analysis of more than 15,000 channels identified 278 dedicated exclusively to produce AI slop: Together they accumulated 63,000 million visits, 221 million subscribers and advertising revenues estimated at 117 million dollars annually. A user who opens Shorts finds that one in five recommended videos belongs to that category. He children’s segment concentrates the worst: YouTubers with more than a million followers explain in tutorials how to generate “simple and repetitive” children’s songs with ChatGPT, run them through a video generator and obtain content that could bring in “hundreds of dollars a day.” The channel JoJo Funlandfor example, published more than 10,000 videos in its first seven months (50 per day on average), a figure that took Sesame Street twenty years to reach on its YouTube channel. The volume would be worrying in itself, but what makes it a problematic issue is that many of these videos pass as educational, and in reality, There are psychologists who describe them as “AI disinformation for babies on an industrial scale”: they promise to teach vowels and show consonants or recite made-up country names. The solution. In July 2025, YouTube renamed its “Repetitive Content” policy as “Inauthentic Content”, which expanded the scope of moderation teams, who could now take action against channels that published videos that were technically different from each other but manufactured without human intervention. In January 2026, the first wave of large-scale application arrived. The platform removed 16 channels with a total of 35 million subscribers and 4.7 billion accumulated visits, which represents a sum of 10 million dollars in annual income. What is Animaj? Animaj was founded in 2022 by Gregory Dray (veteran director of YouTube Kids in Europe) and Sixte de Vauplane, convinced that low-quality children’s content on digital platforms was a problem before generative AI, and well-applied AI could be part of the solution. The company has acquired brands with proven prestige, such as Pocoyo and Maya the Bee. Its channels have 22 billion annual views and 242 million unique monthly viewers, making it the fifth largest children’s digital audience in the world. according to the company itself. The million from the AI ​​Futures Fund is also strategic: Animaj is the first children’s content studio to receive direct support from Alphabet’s technology accelerator. The deal includes early access to unreleased versions of Veo, Gemini, and Imagen, plus direct support from the Google DeepMind and Google Labs teams. With those tools, Animaj says it can go from concept to published episode in less than five weeks (four times faster than traditional animation) and aims to reduce the production cycle of a feature film from six years to eighteen months. In Xataka | The future of the Internet is to be flooded with AI. And there are those who have already seen a business niche: content made by humans Header | edward stojakovic

The most unexpected blow of the Iran war is not the price of oil. It’s the one with the chips

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The Strait of Hormuz does not manufacture semiconductors or host data centers. However, its closure effective March 4 threatens to destabilize the heart of the global technology economy. Taiwan, which through TSMC manufactures around 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors, runs on imported energy, and a large part of it flowed through that strait. The connection between a conflict in the Middle East and the price of a GPU It is not metaphorical. It is totally physical. Why is it important. What Trump has described as a “minor excursion” began on February 28 as a military intervention against the Iranian leadership and has led to the almost total closure of the passage that connects the Persian Gulf with the Indian Ocean. 20% of the world’s natural gas and 25% of the global oil usually pass through there. Now, practically nothing happens. Between the lines. The problem for the chip industry is not oil, but two much less visible resources: The LNG. The Middle East supplies 37% of the fuel that powers the Taiwanese electrical grid, and that electricity is what TSMC’s factories consume with an energy hunger that demands continuous supply. And helium, which is even more delicate: it is essential in the process of photolithography and has no viable substitute. Taiwan only has LNG reserves for 11 days without external imports. South Korea has 52; Japan, three weeks. The contrast. South Korea and Japan have been building energy security buffers for years precisely because they know how much they depend on abroad. Taiwan, on the other hand, has historically prioritized cost over resilience: its LNG storage capacity is much lower than that of its neighbors, and that is now taking its toll. It’s not just a matter of reserve days. The thing is that Samsung and SK Hynix operate in a country with more robust emergency infrastructure, while TSMC, the company on which practically the entire global technological ecosystem depends, turns out to be the most exposed of all. Yes, but. Companies are not sitting idly by: TSMC has secured LNG supplies until mid-May. As for helium, Australia and the United States have the capacity to partially compensate for Qatar’s decline. Morgan Stanley estimates that several additional shipments are already heading to the islandalthough Taiwan has probably paid a notable premium for them. That premium will most likely translate into a price increase. The big question. The real risk is not the immediate cut, but how long this lasts. Consumers expecting GPUs for gaming They will be the last in line. In Xataka | Chinese airlines are the only ones still flying over Russia. And that is why they are the winners of the Iran crisis Featured image | Xataka

The war in Iran has given China an unprecedented opportunity. And she has just been transferred to Taiwan so she can think twice

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Taiwan is one of the most advanced economies in the world, yet it produces less than 5% of the energy it consumes. In just a few days, it can go from being a key center of global technology to depend completely of what happens thousands of kilometers from its coasts. And China has seen an opportunity. Energy as a geopolitical weapon. The war in the Middle East has triggered a chain reaction that goes far beyond the battlefield: with energy routes strained and the Strait of Hormuz turned into a global bottleneckcountries have set out to ensure supplies at any price. In this context of urgency, energy has ceased to be just an economic resource and has become a direct tool of political pressure, one capable of reconfiguring alliances, dependencies and strategic balances in a matter of weeks. The offer that changes the board. And it is precisely in that scenario where China has reformulated your proposal towards Taiwan with a much more pragmatic approach: instead of appealing so much to national identity, the offer is aimed at a concrete and urgent need, energy security. The idea? Beijing offers guaranteed access to stable, cheaper and less exposed resources to external crises in exchange for peaceful “reunification”presenting integration as a technical solution to a structural problem. The message leaves no room for doubt: under the umbrella of a “strong power,” the island could free yourself from uncertainty of global markets and their dependence on vulnerable maritime routes. Gas station in Taiwan A known vulnerability. The proposal is not coincidental, of course, but rather points directly to a critical weakness what was known: Taiwan almost all the energy matters that consumes and depends largely on supplies that pass through areas of high geopolitical risk. Beijing not only presents itself as an alternative supplier, but also suggests that this exposure can get worse if the conflict is prolonged, reinforcing the idea that the solution is to reduce this external dependence. At the same time, it proposes a future of energy integration (electrical networks, gas pipelines, interconnections) that would eliminate a large part of that vulnerability. Between seducing and pressuring. There is no doubt, this strategy of “energy persuasion” It does not replace the rest of the pressure tools that China has had active for a long time. It we have counted before, those military maneuvers around the island, the blockade drills and the constant presence of Chinese forces are part of an environment of sustained pressure that seeks to wear down without provoking open conflict. Under this scenario, the energy adds thus to a set of levers (military, economic and diplomatic) designed to progressively reduce Taiwan’s room for maneuver. Taiwanese rejection and calculation. Taiwan’s response remained to be known. Faced with the suggestive offer, the island has officially responded firmlyrefusing to exchange sovereignty for energy supply and defending that it has sufficient reserves and diversified sources, especially with the support of the United States. As analysts point out, beyond the technical feasibility of the Chinese proposal, the problem is more credibility: The Hong Kong experience has eroded confidence in the model of “one country, two systems”and for a large part of Taiwanese society accepting this agreement would mean beginning a process of gradual loss of autonomy. Long term play. This “no” from Taiwan has not been interpreted in Beijing as something resounding. Possibly, because deep down, the Beijing proposal reflects a much broader strategy: taking advantage of global crises to present itself as a provider of stability in the face of an increasingly volatile environment. There is, therefore, no urgency or immediate rush to force reunification, but rather an accumulation of advantages that, over time, make the option of integrating less costly than resisting. The war in the East has thus opened an unexpected window for that narrative, turning energy into a political argument first order and demonstrating that, in the new geopolitical situation, the control of resources can be as decisive as that of territories. Image | 總統府, Picryl In Xataka | The same day that the US sent its marines to Iran, Taiwan woke up with déjà vu: China has surrounded it with 26 planes and 7 warships In Xataka | US experts are clear about the year in which China will try its luck with Taiwan: the countdown has already begun

Spaniards, the price war at gas stations has begun. And Repsol is the first to launch its attack

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The price of gasoline has skyrocketed. Diesel is through the roof. It has already been dropped that The Government has studied discounts on purchases of fuel as it already did in 2022. And while the Spanish are looking for the cheapest gas stations to refuel, service stations have just opened a war to continue attracting customers. through the clouds. If we talk about average prices, we are still far from the figures that we end up paying for gasoline and diesel in 2022. In the days that followed the first stages of the Ukrainian War, gasoline came to reflect an average price in Spain of 2.152 euros/liter and diesel 2.106 euros/liter, according to the portal dieselgasolina.com which monitors the price of all service stations in the country. Today, March 19, gasoline reflects an average price of 1,784 euros/liter on average. 98 gasoline already scales at 1,938 euros/liter. The basic diesel is already paid at 1,906 euros/liter and the “premium” at 1,988 euros/liter. With these data, gasoline is about 40 cents/liter of what was paid in 2022 but diesel is already at 20 cents/liter. Not only that. If we look back we find a brutal increase in prices. On March 1, the average price of gasoline was 1.495 euros/liter. That is, in 19 days the average price has increased by almost 30 cents/liter. Diesel is even more worrying, rising almost 50 cents/liter from the 1,447 that it reflected on average on March 1. A relief to the pocket. At least cosmetically. That is what happened in 2022 when the Government applied a fuel reduction of 20 cents/liter. It was a flat rate for all drivers which partially alleviated the effect of rising fuel prices, without taking into account if the client was doing it for recreational useto go to work or because he was a professional who needed it to provide his services. However, prices continued to rise and just a few days after the aid began to be applied, which arrived when gasoline was 1.84 euros/liter, we were already paying the same than before the subsidy. Did the marketers take advantage to continue raising prices and increase their business? The CNMC suspected so. Repsol tightens. Although rumors point to a possible subsidy again, oil companies have already begun to take positions in the face of a new price war. The most ambitious has been Repsol, which has in its Waylet program the best tool to build customer loyalty. The company has announced that double your discounts with Waylet. That is, now they deduct 10 cents/liter for each refueling. But Repsol has turned Waylet into its own ecosystem from which it is difficult to get out. If you have electricity contracted with Repsol, the savings double and go from 10 cents/liter to 20 cents/liter. And if you have other contracted services, such as car or home insurance, the discount is 40 cents/liter. Added to this are the discounts with every electric car recharge and domestic rates or subscriptions outside the home, which is why they have managed to position themselves as a very attractive option for those who have both technologies at home, combustion and electricity. A price war. Repsol, yes, is the company that has the highest prices on the market, according to dieselgasolina.com. On average, gasoline at Repsol costs 1,763 euros/liter and diesel 1,861 euros/liter. Moeve, the second most expensive supplier, is very far away, with an average price of 1,693 euros/liter and 1,760 euros/liter for gasoline and diesel respectively. The gap with low cost is gigantic. Alcampo currently sells gasoline at 1,594 euros/liter and diesel at 1,706 euros/liter. However, Repsol has a reason to push: low cost. They explain in Expansion that these service stations are more sensitive to price increases because the volume of each purchase is smaller. They do not have the storage capacity of large companies, which forces them to buy more often and, therefore, increasingly more expensive when the price skyrockets. This reduces your profit margins. And although in the middle they assure that the low cost ones continue to be cheaper, the truth is that the margin is narrowing. When the difference is small, it is easier for Repsol to gain followers and build customer loyalty with large discounts since “cheap gasoline” loses much of its appeal. This loss of competitiveness translates into the results of dieselgasolina.com that collects that Ballenoil has, right now, gasoline more expensive than Moeve, just one step below Repsol. under the magnifying glass. The aggressive discounts on gasoline have fueled the debate about the extent to which oil companies are taking advantage of the situation. In 2022, Repsol has already taken the opportunity to make aggressive discounts. Those, according to the CNMCthey took advantage to try to take smaller gas stations out of the market. Those days, low-cost service stations already assured that the Government subsidy was suffocating them due to the particularities of their business model. Just a few days ago, The OCU has already filed a complaint with the CNMC that the increases that were occurring in the price of fuel were being abusive. They noted that according to the Official Gazette of the European Union, Spain was the third country in which prices had increased the most and that the cost of diesel was higher than the European average. As in the case of Expansion According to his calculations, the low cost ones were the ones that reflected the most striking increases. It remains to be seen what the response of the rest of the service stations is. Repsol has already shown that it has room for maneuver. In 2022, the oil companies that entered the game did so in the same way, with wide discounts within their loyalty plans. And that has some clear losers: the low cost ones. Photo | Juanedc In Xataka | Fear of gasoline at 2 euros per liter: the sector is already preparing for the worst after the start of the war in Iran

has confirmed that this war is going to haunt us for a long time

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Every day they circulate around the planet more than 100 million of barrels of oil and enormous volumes of gas that depend on a few strategic points to reach their destination. It only takes one of those nodes to fail for the markets to react in chain in a matter of hours and the impact is noticeable from large industries to the final price of energy in homes. The red line that no longer exists. Because he latest attack on Iran He has not been just another member of the war: he has crossed a border that until now everyone avoided, that of directly striking energy productionnot just its transportation or its peripheral facilities. The sequence is clear and extremely dangerous, because first the gas fields are attacked, then immediate retaliation comes. against equivalent infrastructures in neighboring countries, and in a matter of hours the conflict can enter a logic of “eye for an eye” that has no turning back. In fact, what for years was the worst possible scenario for analysts and strategists (an open war against the energy heart of the Gulf) is no longer a hypothesis for become realityand that changes the very nature of the conflict. War against the system, not against objectives. attack the South Pars gas field It’s not just hitting one more facility, it’s hitting a central piece of the global energy system and Iran’s own internal workings, and the Iranian response. on Ras Laffan confirms that the message has been understood throughout the region. It is no longer about destroying military capabilities or putting political pressure, but rather directly damage the pillars that support states: we are talking about income, social stability and supply capacity. When a facility that concentrates near a fifth of natural gas liquefied planet can be engulfed in flames, the war stops being regional and becomes become systemicbecause its effects spread far beyond the battlefield. A war with the face of Iraq. Plus: the dynamic that has been activated is dangerously reminiscent of the gulf war 1991, when burning oil fields became a symbol of total war against energy infrastructure. If the current escalation continues, it is not difficult to imagine the next step: refineries, petrochemical plants and entire fields become priority targets, with prolonged fires and damage that can take years to repair. The difference is that now global interdependence is much olderwhich amplifies the impact and can turn each attack into a direct hit to the global economy. In other words, the war is no longer fought only with missiles and drones, but with the destruction of the capacity to produce and sustain the energy that moves the planet. An expanding goal board. The Iranian response It also hints at a deeper strategic change: one where, if its energy base is hit, any equivalent infrastructure in the region becomes legitimate objectiveincluding facilities in Saudi Arabia, the Emirates or Qatar itself in the equation. If you like, beyond the energy, the implicit message is even more disturbing: if this taboo is broken, other, perhaps more dangerous ones can also be broken. Because Iran still has the capacity to climb in other directionsfrom attacks on political and symbolic centers to more direct blows against power structures. In other words, if they touch the economic heart, they can begin to point to the political heart, and that opens up a range of scenarios that are much more difficult to contain. The war after the combat. From that perspective, the real problem is not only what is happening now, but what this implies for medium and long term. Destroying energy infrastructure is not something that can be repaired in weeks, and each impact can leave scars that most likely they will last for yearsaltering trade flows, regional relations and power balances. Therefore, possibly this moment be so decisive in the war conflict: because it confirms that we have entered in a phase of the same whose consequences will persist long after the bombings stop. It’s not just another war in the Middle East, it never really has been, but now it’s the beginning of a dynamic that can redefine how conflicts are fought in a region where, from now on, the limits are no longer clear. And that is what makes it more dangerous than any other. Image | nara In Xataka | If the question is where Russia is in the Iran war, satellite images leave no doubt: helping to bring down the US In Xataka | A trick is unblocking the passage of ships in Hormuz without the need for drones or escorts, and the US is not going to be amused

China has started a battle against the US and Japan that no one is talking about. And it is crucial to winning the chip war

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In the semiconductor war that the US and China are fighting Companies that specialize in the manufacture of photolithography equipment tend to attract attention, such as ASML; those that design the chips, such as NVIDIA or AMD; and the companies that produce them, such as TSMC or Samsung. However, in this complex network there are other much less known companies that also play an essential role in the integrated circuit industry. One of them is the Japanese company JSR Corporation. This entity is one of the industrial strongholds of Japan. And it is because it supplies its photoresist liquids to most of the semiconductor manufacturers that produce cutting-edge chips, helping to sustain Japan’s leadership in a very important area that usually goes unnoticed: that of the manufacture of advanced materials to produce integrated circuits. For China to have its own advanced photoresist liquids in your path to total independence of its chip industry is crucial, so its plan involves break Japan’s monopoly in no more than five years. China prepares to intimidate Japan The photolithography equipment designed and produced by ASML is responsible, very roughly, for transferring the geometric pattern described by the mask with great precision to the surface of the silicon wafer. In this area we can observe the pattern as the “drawing” that delimits the distribution of the transistors, the connections and the other elements that make up an integrated circuit. Before transferring the geometric pattern to the wafer, it is necessary to pour a liquid capable of absorbing light and preserving the pattern on it. However, before reaching this very important step, it is necessary to subject the wafers to a process known as deposition. It usually involves equipment manufactured by Tokyo Electron or Applied Materials. Its purpose is prepare silicon wafers for the transfer of the geometric pattern by depositing a very thin layer of material on them. Depending on the type of chip being manufactured, it will be necessary to use one material or another. One of the most used deposition techniques is known as oxidation, and consists of taking advantage of the ability of silicon to form a very thin layer of oxide when reacting with water. Its purpose is to protect the transistors and other chip components from external contamination. However, before transferring the geometric pattern to the wafer using lithography equipment, it is necessary to pour a liquid capable of absorbing light and preserving the pattern on it. This is the function of the photoresist fluid. During the last two decades, all companies specialized in the production of photoresist materials have been Japanese. In fact, Japan has since then the monopoly of this marketwhich is currently led by JSR Corporation. For the US, one of its main allies should lead this market not a problembut the possibility of China developing the capacity to produce its own advanced photoresist materials on its path to cutting-edge chip manufacturing is an issue. The Chinese government knows that photoresist production is a critical bottleneck, which is why its latest five-year plan has set out to resolve it. Xuzhou B&C Chemical, which is one of the leading photoresist materials manufacturers in China, anticipates that in at most five years will have the capacity to produce large-scale advanced KrF photoresists (Krypton Fluoride) and ArF (Argon Fluoride). Precisely this last material is commonly used in nodes equipped with deep ultraviolet (UVP) lithography equipment. However, the great challenge facing China is the development of photoresists suitable for the production of integrated circuits in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) nodes. We will see what achievements it achieves over the next five years. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | SCMP In Xataka | Japan takes the lead with nuclear fusion and sets an extremely ambitious date: the 2030s

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