war

Strangely enough, Iran is exporting more oil now in the middle of the war than before the conflict

by

The global crude oil market is experiencing “the largest supply disruption in history,” as the International Energy Agency warns. But the almost total blockade of the Strait of Hormuz hides a brutal irony: the same waters that are closed to the rest of the world are being used by Iran to export more oil than it sold before the war. The incessant flow. Far from paralyzing, the Iranian export machinery has accelerated. According to data from Kpler, In recent days, ships have loaded a daily average of 2.1 million barrels of Iranian crude oil, surpassing the barrier of the 2 million daily they exported in February. The big question is where all this crude oil is going. The answer is unanimous: towards China. A graph of Statista illustrates that the Asian giant It is, by an overwhelming margin, Iran’s largest buyer, accounting for 90.8% of its oil exports in 2024. Since the war began in late February, at least 11.7 to 12 million barrels have crossed the strait bound for China, according to estimates from TankerTrackers and Kpler collected by CNBC. In fact, how to detail Wall Street Journal, There is an anecdote that borders on the surreal to illustrate this situation: small Chinese tankers navigate the strait communicating by shortwave radio with the Revolutionary Guard. “We are a Chinese ship. We are going to pass; we are friendly,” they announce in English to ensure safe passage. A question of survival. As an expert explains consulted by Deutsche WelleChina has become the “indispensable lifeline” for Iranian exports in a context of harsh Western sanctions. This has created a “parallel market” where independent Chinese refiners buy discounted crude oil by operating outside the US financial system, according to the agency Anadolu. However, global panic is evident. The crisis promptly shot up oil prices close to $120 per barrel, levels not seen in four years. The impact has been such that, how to explain BloombergBeijing has ordered its refineries to cancel export shipments of refined fuel to ensure domestic supply in the face of the volatility of the conflict. The dilemma of Kharg Island. Although the United States and Israel have bombed thousands of military and strategic targets in Iranian territory, there is one enclave that remains mysteriously intact: Kharg Island. This small piece of land, just about 20 square kilometers, is the true jewel in the energy crown, channeling 90% of the country’s crude oil exports. According to analysts Guardian and France 24the answer is economic terror: an attack on Kharg could catapult the price of a barrel to $150, sending global markets into a “nose dive.” Also, how my colleague Carlos Prego explains in Xatakadestroying the facilities would deprive a hypothetical successor government of the main source of income necessary to rebuild the country once the war ends. Iranian evasion tactics. Iran’s export success is not based only on military intimidation, but on complex sanctions evasion engineering. According to The Wall Street Journalthe regime uses a “shadow fleet” made up of old oil tankers that sail without tracking systems and under false flags, such as those of Comoros or Guyana. On a financial level, the sophistication is just as high. Intelligence documents revealed by Euractiv show that Iran uses shell companies in China to carry out euro-denominated transactions, moving hundreds of millions through accounts at European banks such as Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas. Simultaneously, a report of ACAMS exposes how the Revolutionary Guard uses the cryptocurrency ecosystem (with multi-million dollar transactions in stablecoins such as USDT) to launder money and finance their affinity groups without going through traditional banking. Finally, although Iran is trying to diversify its departures using the Jask terminal in the Gulf of Oman – thus avoiding the Strait of Hormuz -, CNBC warns of its extreme inefficiency: Loading a supertanker there can take up to 10 days, compared to the one or two days it takes in Kharg. Triumph in the midst of chaos. The conflict in the Middle East has drawn a counterintuitive scenario. While the large producers of the Persian Gulf are bleeding economically due to the paralysis of trade routes, Iran has capitalized on the chaos. The panic of a global energy collapse acts as an invisible shield that protects the island of Kharg from Western bombing. Under this umbrella of armed immunity, war has not suffocated the Islamic Republic; On the contrary, it has given it a maritime monopoly that allows its ghost fleet to continue feeding insatiable Chinese demand in broad daylight. Image | Photo by Fredrick F. on Unsplash Xataka | China just found a hole in the US’s quietest weapon: an algorithm has hacked its B-2s in Iran, and they have the audio

Without helium there are no chips or RAM. And the largest producers are in the eye of the Iran war

by

Think of the world as if it were a puppet. It is supported by threads that move, but when one of those threads breaks, the whole wobbles. If several strings break at once, the puppet falls apart. In the technological world, 2026 has started on the wrong foot. The main RAM memory companies They have turned to producing memory for AI, leaving the consumer market. This has caused an unprecedented increase of prices that affects consumers, but also companies. Right now, it’s impossible to guess when it will return to normal because each party involved thinks one thing. And, for a few days now, we have another of those threads that I talked about at the beginning: the iran war. The consequence We are already seeing it immediately: the Strait of Hormuz boilingthe barrel of crude oilreaching stratospheric prices and a gasoline –dieselabove all- through the clouds. But since everything that goes wrong can get worse, now there is another crisis knocking at the door: that of helium. And it is the perfect union between RAM crisis and the war in Iran because without helium… well, without helium there are many things that do not work. Neither does artificial intelligence. RAM crisis + Iran war = no helium For many, helium is that gas that gives us such a funny voice and allows us to inflate balloons that float. For the semiconductor industry, helium is a critical and irreplaceable element in the manufacturing process. Being a noble gas, it does not chemically interfere with the materials of the silicon crystal growth process. inside the huge machines that companies use to create the wafers that are later used to make chips. They prevent materials from reacting with oxygen or other contaminants, so the results are purer. They are like a shield, but helium is also essential to dissipate the heat of the extreme lithography machinesto eliminate waste after each manufacturing cycle and even to identify any leaks in one of these machines. Its particles are among the smallest that exist and are what reveal even the smallest leaks in manufacturing chambers that must be under vacuum. Come on, it is not an element that can be easily replaced. There are two companies that right now have such a deep dependency that any variation in supply would be fatal. What companies? Exactly: Samsung and SK Hynix, the same ones that have dedicated themselves to AI and the same ones that do not plan to lift a finger to alleviate the crisis of RAM memory prices (and therefore of SSDs and any device that has a NAND chip). Both are involved in the manufacturing process of the sophisticated HBM4 memoryand both need helium. The problem is that helium is a byproduct in natural gas production, and some of the world’s largest refineries are in the Middle East. With the war in Iran, it is clear that the civilian targets are data centers and energy producers. If these infrastructures are attacked, the rest of the West is paralyzed, and they have begun to launch kamikaze drones against them. There is the oil company Ras Tanurabut also that of Ras Laffan, from QatarEnergy. It is one of the whales in the production of natural gas and, therefore, in the production of helium. And if the refineries close and the ships do not arrive, the smelters’ reserves begin to run out. There are already voices that they point to problems in the medium term if the situation persists. SK Hynix claims that they have a “diversified supply chain and sufficient helium inventory”something similar to what has commented another of the large chip manufacturers: TSMC. The problem is that these guarantees are short-term. If the situation continues with a prolonged closure of Hormuz, more than 25% of the world’s helium supply will be affected. This will cause the companies that ‘use’ gas the most to begin to see that their reserves are depleted at a faster rate than they are replenished. the market, always so unstablehas already reacted and actions Both Samsung and SK Hynix have fallen in recent hours due to supply concerns. Because we are no longer talking about a price of RAM and runaway gasolinewe are talking about helium being necessary for the manufacturing of any advanced chip, but also in quantum computing or for the numerous space launches. And as Hormuz continues, there will be many entities fighting for an essential, irreplaceable and very valuable good. Faced with SK Hynix’s moderate optimism, more pessimistic voices are already seeing echoes of the component crisis of 2020. Images | VALGO, ASML In Xataka | ‘Focus: The ASML Way’: the book that reveals the secrets of the most powerful European company in the chip industry

Saudi Arabia wants to invest 38 billion dollars to be the capital of gaming. The Iran war is going to ruin everything

by

First it was footballafter video games. Saudi Arabia wants to become the world capital of entertainment at the stroke of a checkbook (and at the same time whitewash his authoritarian regime). Now their plans are in jeopardy because of the war in Iran. 38,000 million. This is what Saudi Arabia plans Invest to become a gaming powerhouse. However, the conflict in the region and Iran’s attacks have put their plans in check. In an interview during the Game Developers Conference echoed by Bloombergthe CEO of Savvy Games has said that “This escalation clearly does not benefit the region and will likely change or cool the perception of it as a stable and calm place where people want to go.” He hopes that the war will end soon and they can continue with their business plans. Entertainment capital. Savvy Games Group, subsidiary of the Saudi Sovereign Fund (the same as bought Electronic Arts for 50,000 million), has very ambitious plans for the region, such as the esports district in Qiddiya Citya megaproject focused on entertainment where there is giant amusement parksstadiums for video game competitions and much more. Their plans go beyond buying companies, they want to hold events that attract gaming enthusiasts. In 2025, Rihyad hosted the Esports World Cup, an event that lasted seven weeks and featured events related to up to 25 esports. They also want to attract foreign investment and large video game companies to move there. It sounds great, until the threat of Iranian drones appears and the dream is shattered. Vision 2030. All this is part of a long term plan promoted by Prince Mohamed bin Salmán since 2016, whose main objective is to diversify its wealth beyond oil and turn the country into an attractive destination for investors. This serves another purpose: to project a more moderate image beyond its borders. Iran attacks. Iran has targeted key infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, such as the Ras Tanura refinery and the Shaybah sitemilitary bases with American presence such as Prince Sultan and, on the rebound, even residential neighborhoods and diplomatic areas of Riyadh. Several of these attacks were intercepted, but it is clear that Saudi Arabia is a target for Iran. There are other companies concerned, such as Wynn Resorts, which is building the country’s first casino on the artificial island Al Marjan. They had to stop the works a few days ago due to the conflict, but They have already resumed work. Image | Wikipedia In Xataka | The US has turned off the tap on satellite images of the Iran war. A Chinese startup has left it open

While in the US there is a civil war over military AI, a European one has sneaked into the French Armed Forces: Mistral

by

One of the big topics of conversation in recent weeks is the civil war in the United States. between two of the AI ​​giants and the Government itself. To sum up, Anthropic gave in his artificial intelligence Claude to the Pentagon to integrate it into all its systems along with Palantir. It is estimated that it has been a key tool for capture Nicolás Madurobut also to attack Iranbut since the US wanted to go further and Anthropic refused, OpenAI took its place. It is a very strange situation because the result could be that The US blacklists Anthropic as if it were Huawei. It would be the first time they have done that to an American company and it is something that tells us two things. The first is that governments need big technology companies and their tools. The second is that technology companies also have a lot to gain. And, while all that noise is happening in the United States, in Europe another AI company has ‘sneaked’ into its country’s security systems. We refer to a Mistral that, without making noisehas been building its portfolio of contacts in European defense systems for some time. A local AI for the security of Europe With all the spotlights pointing to ChatGPT, Claude and Chinese equivalents such as DeepSeekothers have been carving out a niche for themselves. Almost without a sound, and overnight, a French company called Mistral was building multilingual models that rivaled the American alternatives that captured all eyes. Founded in June 2023, Mistral will soon converted in the French technological jewel, but also in the Europe’s AI gem. Its managers, engineers who came from Google (deepmind) and Meta, managed to attract the attention of NVIDIA, ASML, Samsung, IBM, Salesforce or a Microsoft that invested 15 million euros and incorporated Mistral models into Azure. Mistral’s policy is to release the code of its models so that anyone can analyze, use and adapt it. According to them, it is something that will accelerate innovation and, without the muscle of the American giants, their approach is to a large model with other smaller and specialized ones. At the beginning of this year, the bombshell arrived. The Ministry of the Armed Forces of France arrive to an agreement with Mistral AI to integrate the company’s models, software and services in public entities related to the ministry. For example, the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Office of Aerospace Studies and Research, the Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service of the Navy and, also, the Armed Forces. It is the Ministry of Defense Artificial Intelligence Agency that will supervise all operations, but the idea is to “deploy Mistral tools in France’s infrastructure, ensuring full control over data and critical technologies.” From the Government, it was noted that, with these new tools, they can prepare the Armed Forces for the challenges of the future. However, the fact that Mistral is the Defense model in France may matter little to us… unless we take two things into account. The first: shortly after this agreement became known, public information on how Mistral is seeking Defense contracts outside France. They are getting more and more into this path, signing agreements with Helsinga German defense startup, and Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral, argued that its AI models will be “instrumental in the development of a new generation of defense systems.” Here comes the second thing to take into account. Mensch himself commented that these tools “will ensure Europe’s strategic advantage on the global stage”. This is important because Europe is now at a point where it has realized that the partners and allies of the past may not be the same as those of the future. European sovereignty At the user level we see movements like those of independence from American technologiesbut at a political level, Mistral responds to that search for European sovereignty. Instead of leaving your Defense-related systems in the hands of a foreign company, these agreements mean that it is a European company that is on the inside. And, in the end, this is not just about AI. In recent months we are seeing how Europe is moving to have a more powerful voice in terms of semiconductors, computing for artificial intelligence and even in the new space race. For a long time it has been said that others innovate and Europe legislates, but the current situation It has caused Europe to continue legislating while doing everything else. Images | Mistral AI, Amio Cajander In Xataka | The United States wants to be “sovereign” on a technological level. The problem is that everything it builds depends on other countries

Thousands of people were following the Iran war with satellite images from Planet Labs. So the US has closed it

by

The satellite images are a key piece for modern military intelligence. They are the eyes on the ground, they allow you to see where the enemy is, their supply routes, their defenses and plan more precise attacks. For the public, they are the direct window to the battlefield and in the Iran conflict there are two companies that are deciding whether to let us watch or not, one is American and one is Chinese. Guess who is who. The Planet Labs blackout. It is a satellite earth imaging company based in San Francisco. It operates a network of more than 200 satellites that allows them to provide global coverage of the planet, recording more than 300 million square kilometers of images collected every day. Planet Labs images have been key in conflicts such as the ukrainian war or the escalation of tensions between China and Taiwan. However, when it comes to a conflict in which the US is the protagonist, things change. The restriction: On March 6, Planet Labs announced a four-day delay in the publication of its images of the Middle East, a measure they described as “temporary and intended to protect personnel and operations.” The controversy: What is striking is that the delay affected countries with a US military presence (Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), while the images of Iran continued to be published almost in real time. This unleashed reviews on Xcalling it a measure to manipulate public opinion by hiding the damage to US bases, while only showing the damage caused to Iran. The extension: The company recently extended this delay to 14 days. According to statements to Reutersseek to ensure that your data “does not contribute in any way to attacks against allied, NATO personnel or civilian populations.” Mizar Vision. Given the Planet Labs blackout, there is a company that continues to offer satellite images almost in real time. It is about Mizar Vision, a Chinese startup based in Shanghai that does not have its own satellites, but instead purchases commercial images. Its value is that it applies an AI layer that detects, geolocates and tags military assets in almost real time and publishes them on Weibo, the Chinese social network. There is an account on X with the same name, but the company has already confirmed that It is not an official account. Attack prediction. Two days before the attack on Iran, Mizar Vision published images which showed planes lined up on the runway of the Diego García base, signaling that the attack was imminent. They were high resolution images in which details such as the model of the aircraft could be distinguished. They also identified other key infrastructures such as the anti-missile systems that the US has in Jordan and the al-Udeid base in Qatar, all of them. attacked by Iran days later. Mizar Vision is the open window to the battlefield, but we can all look, the Iranian army too. The shadow of Beijing. The images prior to the attack were shared by accounts with links to Chinese People’s Liberation Army. They count in The Country That analysts wonder to what extent the Chinese government is encouraging the publication of such detailed images, with such precision and in real time in a context of such tension. The company continues to publish images of US military movements in the region. In Xataka | A creepy sound is being repeated in the Middle East: it is called C-RAM, it comes from the US, and it is the prelude to a firestorm Image | Mizar Vision

“Six. Four. Zero. Nine.” A mysterious radio has been repeating numbers in Iran since the start of the war, and no one knows why

by

The short waves They were for decades one of the strangest territories on the radio planet: anyone with a cheap radio could hear metallic voices reciting meaningless numbers, repetitive melodies or absurd phrases that seemed straight out of a spy movie. During the Cold War, thousands of radio amateurs recorded these emissions mysterious things spread all over the world, many of them active for years without anyone officially knowing who was behind them. Some disappeared after the fall of the Soviet bloc. Others, surprisingly, they never left altogether. A voice in the middle of the war. I told the story this morning the financial times and begins shortly after the United States and Israel They will start their attacks against Iran on February 28. Then a sound began to be heard strange transmission on short wave directed at the country: a male voice in Persian that bursts through the static repeating “Tavajjoh” (attention) three times before reciting long sequences of numbers with an almost mechanical cadence. The emissions, detected by radio amateurs and signal trackers, apparently come from somewhere in Western Europe and are repeated twice a day for about an hour and a half. Although its exact origin has not been confirmed, former US intelligence officials consider it very likely that it is a emergency communication system to maintain contact with agents inside Iran at an especially sensitive time, when the war has raised the risks for any informant and the Iranian government has restricted access to the internet and other international communications. What the V32 station really is. The mysterious emission has been identified by observers like V32a call “number station”a type of shortwave transmission historically used by intelligence agencies to send encrypted orders to spies on the ground. The system works in an extremely simple way: the agent only needs a radio and a code book (the so-called one-time pads) to convert the figures heard into understandable messages. The station began broadcasting in Persian exactly coinciding with the start of the war and has already tried to be interfered with through electronic noises which probably come from Iranian jamming systems, but the mysterious voice has been limited to change frequency and continue with his reading of numbers. These types of broadcasts are almost impossible to completely neutralize, because anyone can tune in and because counterintelligence can only act if it detects a spy transcribing the message or if the operators make mistakes. The shadow of the Cold War. The pattern that this station follows is directly reminiscent of one of the most disturbing elements of 20th century espionage: the digital radios that proliferated during the cold war. For decades, services like the CIAthe KGB or the Stasi emitted metallic voices that recited numbers, letters or even melodies followed by coded sequences aimed at agents infiltrating enemy territory. These transmissions could heard around the world and yet its meaning was indecipherable to anyone who did not possess the proper key. Some stations became famous among radio amateurs for its peculiarities (childish voices, strange music or seemingly absurd phrases), but its logic was always the same: to offer an untraceable and extremely secure communication system. The method survived for decades because it was cheap, discreet and resistant even the most sophisticated espionage systems, and although the phenomenon decreased after the end of the Cold War never disappeared full. The Cold War Morse/Voice Generator is a machine that has been used in many well-known number stations Old, but it works. The reason why these stations continue to be useful in the 21st century is precisely their simplicity. If the internet goes down, if phones are tapped, or if digital communications are blocked, a simple shortwave radio still works and allows orders to be transmitted without leaving an electronic trace. For the secret services, it also offers additional benefits: The recipient can listen to the message in seconds, destroy their codebook immediately afterwards, and disappear without leaving any evidence. That simplicity makes even a single person well located can receive instructions capable of causing enormous consequences, from sabotage to more complex intelligence operations. By the way, messages are usually repeated several times to minimize the risk that the agent in question will have to expose himself for too long listening to the transmission. What could the mysterious voice be saying. Although they are all hypotheses and no one outside of their operators knows the real meaning of the sequences, former intelligence officials they point to several plausible possibilities. Emissions could serve to activate agents who remained waiting inside Iran, order evacuations to meeting points or even coordinate operations covered up during the conflict. There is also another more strategic interpretation: that the station is deliberately designed to sow doubts within Iranian counterintelligence, suggesting that there are high-level infiltrators awaiting instructions from the West. In that case, even without transmitting specific orders, the very existence of the station would force Tehran to mobilize cryptographers, researchers and resources to try to decipher a message that may never be understood. Weird, but still alive. Number stations are one of the few times when the normally invisible work of intelligence services becomes audible for anyone with a radio. Although they are much less common today than during the confrontation between blocs of the 20th century, they still there are transmissions regulars associated with countries such as Russia, Poland, Taiwan or North Korea. Some even preserve an almost ceremonial style, such as the Taiwanese station known as New Star Broadcastingwhich begins with a flute melody and ends by wishing “health and happiness” to its listeners before issuing coded numbers intended for agents on extremely sensitive missions. Iran and the difficulty. For the United States, maintaining intelligence networks inside Iran has always been especially complicatedpartly because it does not have an embassy in the country and because the Iranian security apparatus is one of the most vigilant in the world. That forces Western services to retain emergency communication methods capable of working when all else fails. … Read more

The Iran war is making the best possible advertisement for Chinese renewables. And China knows it

by

Oil has skyrocketed again. Brent has crossed 90 dollars, WTI is around 87, and the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly 20% of the world’s oil transits, has reduced its traffic from 138 ships a day to just two. The most interesting thing here is not the price of crude oil but who wins when that happens. Why is it important. Each shock oil is, for China, a free advertisement on a planetary scale of its energy value proposition. Solar panels, electric cars and batteries do not rise in price when there is a war in the Persian Gulf. Natural gas and gasoline, yes. For countries that have been buying Chinese clean technology for years, this week has been the practical demonstration that they got it right. For those who have not yet done so, it is the best sales argument that China could wish for, and on top of that it has not involved a direct expense. The contrast. The US economy is structurally more vulnerable to the shocks of oil than China. The oil intensity of US GDP, that is, how much oil is needed to generate each dollar of economic activity, is notably higher than that of China, the EU or Russia. When crude oil soars, the blow is felt harder by the American consumer, who fills the tank of his car with gasoline, than by the Chinese consumer, whose fleet of vehicles is already almost 50% electric in new sales. In November 2025, electric cars They exceeded 60% of total sales in China. It is not a country in energy transition: it is a country that has already changed fuel in its largest vehicle fleet. And that is without counting the traffic of motorcycles, all electric for many years in several of its large cities, and with much greater volume than in other countries. Between the lines. China produces more than twice as many solar panels as the world is capable of absorbingand its batteries and electric cars are already reaching Western Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. When oil rises, the economic equation for those exports improves automatically, without your government having to lift a finger. An energy crisis in the Gulf acts as an indirect subsidy to its clean industries: it makes everything China sells more attractive and everything it doesn’t sell more expensive. In figures. The clean energy sector already represents 11.4% of Chinese GDP, according to The analysis published by Carbon Brief last month. Without those industries, China would have grown 3.5% in 2025 instead of the 5% recorded. Electric cars and batteries explain 44% of the economic impact of that sector. China installed 315 GW of solar and 119 GW of wind in 2025, more than the rest of the world combined in both categories. Yes, but. China also imports oil, a lot. It remains one of the world’s largest buyers of crude oil, and the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz complicates its short-term supply. In fact, in recent weeks China has increased its oil imports by almost 16% due to uncertainty. That said, In September it already began to make an unusual collection. What changes the long-term equation is not that China is immune to the shocks oil producers, but each crisis accelerates the internal conversion towards renewables and reinforces the export argument against third countries. It is a temporary pain that finances a structural advantage. Furthermore, this scenario leaves a question in the air: whether the world, by purchasing Chinese clean technology, is ultimately exchanging an energy dependency for a technological dependency. In both the United States and Europe this will end up becoming a question as uncomfortable as it is inevitable. In Xataka | On the roof of the world, China is building the largest solar park on the planet Featured image | Nuno Marques

enter Iran to remove a buried “treasure” of 441 kg that gives meaning to the war

by

Since 1921 when the Italian general Giulio Douhet argued that bombers could win wars by destroying the “vital centers” of a country, air power has fascinated strategists and politicians. However, more than a century of conflict has left a lingering paradox: even the most devastating bombing campaigns in history have, sooner or later, required something much riskier than airplanes to truly decide a war. Especially if, as in almost all wars, one seeks to give meaning to the nonsense. The historical limit. They told it this morning in a special report from the Wall Street Journal. The war started with intense bombing campaign on Iran has once again put on the table an uncomfortable lesson from military history: planes, missiles and bombs can destroy infrastructure, armies and arsenals, but they rarely bring down a regime on their own. Despite the wishes expressed in Washington to bring about political change in Tehran, the military commanders themselves have lowered expectations and they have insisted that the real objective of the campaign is to degrade Iranian offensive capabilities, whether missiles, drones or naval forces, and to wear down its nuclear program. The reason is simple. Even after weeks of attacks, the power structures of the Iranian state they are still intactbacked by military and paramilitary forces that number hundreds of thousands of troops and whose main interest is to maintain the system as it is. Nor does historical precedent help support the idea that strategic bombing alone can decide a war: neither World War II, nor Kosovo, nor Libya. they managed to change governments only from the air. In all cases there were forces on the ground, local insurgencies or invasions that ended up tipping the balance. Members of the US Army using nuclear material detection tools during an exercise No main objective. That air power limit has a immediate strategic consequence: Although the bombings may reduce Iran’s military capacity, they do not guarantee that what gave rise to the conflict will disappear, if there ever was something tangible. The central official concern remains nuclear material that the country has accumulated for years and that represents a latent option to manufacture atomic weapons in a short time. The air campaign can destroy facilities, seal access or delay the program, but it cannot guarantee anything much more complicated: locate, control and neutralize fissile material that already exists. The dilemma is especially serious if the regime survives the conflict or if the Iranian State enters a phase of internal chaos, because that scenario would open the door for some of that material to end up in the hands of regional militias, non-state actors or even black market networks. In other words, war can weaken the adversary without solving the problem that caused it. U.S. Army Soldiers with the 128th Chemical Company, 337th Engineer Battalion conduct reconnaissance in an underground tunnel during an exercise in Lithuania in 2025 The buried “treasure” that gives meaning to war. At the center of this dilemma is a specific piece of information that summarizes all the strategic tension: some 441 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60%, enough to produce material for various nuclear weapons if taken to levels of military purity. This material, stored mainly in underground facilities deeply protected, is the true objective that explains the military campaign. As long as it exists and remains out of control, any aerial victory will be incomplete. The paradox is that this nuclear “treasure” is designed precisely to withstand the type of war that the United States and Israel have been fighting: buried facilities, protected by layers of concrete and rock, designed to survive bombings. Destroying buildings is relatively easy, but destroying or capture nuclear material stored underground is another story entirely. The last mission: enter Iran. Thus we come to a stage which is closer than ever to the rhetoric that the United States has tried to inoculate the planet through a species trailer hollywood. Because an idea has begun to appear that until recently seemed extreme: the possibility of a ground raid of special forces to physically seize Iranian nuclear material or neutralize it in situ. The reasoning is brutally simple. If bombing cannot guarantee control of the enriched uranium, someone will have to go looking for it. They counted the TWZ analysts that, in American strategic circles, there is talk of operations in which elite commandos would penetrate facilities underground, they would secure the material and decide on the spot whether to transport it out of the country or reduce its purity to make it unusable. There is no doubt, it would be a extremely complex operationalmost movie makerwhich would combine special forces, nuclear experts and possibly specialized technical personnel, with the aim of securing material that cannot simply be destroyed with explosives without causing radiological risks. Possible, but almost suicidal. The problem is that such a mission would be one of the military operations riskiest imaginable. The material weighs hundreds of kilos and it is probably stored in armored containers, which would greatly complicate its transportation. The facilities are buried, protected and defended by forces that consider these facilities one of the country’s most important strategic assets. To access them it may be necessary open tunnels or remove tons of earth and concrete as the Iranian army tries to react. The longer the assault force remains on the ground, the more likely the Iranian forces will organize a counterattack with artillery, missiles or ground units. Added to this is the difficulty of infiltrating and extracting a relatively large contingent of operators loaded with specialized equipment in the middle of an open conflict. The logic that moves it. Despite everything, strategic logic pushes towards that direction. If nuclear material is dispersed, hidden, or moved to multiple locations, the problem will multiply and any attempt to neutralize it will be even more difficult. Furthermore, bombing convoys or depots from the air could disperse radioactive material without eliminating the threat. In that context, physically securing uranium becomes the solution to … Read more

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

by

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

If an all-out war breaks out between the US and Iran, the ultimate weapon will be desalination plants

by

The whole world holds its breath looking at the same point on the map: the Strait of Hormuz. With markets trembling at the possibility of a barrel of oil breaking the $100 barrier and exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) paralyzing, the global narrative has turned this conflict into a purely energy crisis. But the reality is much more primary and terrifying. As the analyst Javier Blas warns in a forceful report for Bloombergthe real threat in the military escalation between the coalition led by the United States and Israel against Iran lies not in the oil wells, but in thirst. Oil, Blas points out, is essential for the global economy, but water is simply irreplaceable. If total war breaks out, the definitive weapon will not be energy, but biological survival. This vulnerability is not a secret. As the analyst himself revealsthe American CIA has been warning its policymakers about this matter for decades. In a secret evaluation in the early 1980s —now declassified—, the intelligence agency made it clear that the true “strategic product” (strategic commodity) of the Middle East is not black gold, but drinking water. Unable to engage in a head-on, symmetrical clash with the combined war machine of the United States and Israel, Iran has adopted a survival strategy based on attacking what are known in military jargon as “soft targets.” And they have already started. As detailed in another report by BloombergIran recently attacked a power plant in Fujairah, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is responsible for keeping one of the largest desalination plants in the world in operation. In neighboring Kuwait, debris from an intercepted drone caused a fire at another of its water facilities in Doha West. The offense doesn’t stop there. As we have explained in Xatakathe Saudi Ras Tanura refinery was hit by Iranian drones twice in a single week. The truly alarming thing is that this refinery is only 80 kilometers from Ras Al Khairthe largest hybrid desalination complex on the planet. The risk is physical and mathematical: attacks on the port of Jebel Ali in Dubai fell just 20 kilometers from a critical complex with 43 desalination units, according to Michael Christopher Low in The Conversation. The level of aggressiveness is overwhelming the region. The UAE have already faced more than 800 missile and drone attacks (exceeding in volume those received by Israel). Although most are intercepted, the impacts have caused fires in the Burj Al Arab and have damaged data centers of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in UAE and Bahrain. This last point is critical: As experts warn Chosun Dailythese data centers digitally manage the energy and water distribution network; A digital blackout is equivalent to a physical power outage. Survival hangs by a thread for 72 hours The region’s monarchies are “saltwater kingdoms,” How do you define them? The Conversation. Eight of the ten largest desalination plants in the world are in the Arabian Peninsula, concentrating 60% of global capacity. The population’s dependence on this technology, according to data from W.G.I. Worldis absolute: Kuwait: 90% of its drinking water comes from desalination. Oman: 86%. Saudi Arabia: 70%. United Arab Emirates: 42% (almost 100% in metropolises like Dubai). If Iran decides to target these plants, human collapse would be devastating. A great report of House of Saudbased on a 2008 US diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaksreveals a terrifying scenario about Riyadh. The Saudi capital, with more than 8 million inhabitants, receives more than 90% of its drinking water from the Jubail plant through a single 500 kilometer pipeline. The report is blunt: if the plant or its pipeline were destroyed, “Riyadh would have to be evacuated within a week.” There is not even room to improvise. As an analysis in Iran InternationalQatar admitted that, in a scenario of massive water pollution, the country estimated to run out of drinking water in just three days, which forced them to build 15 giant emergency reservoirs. However, as researcher Bailey Schwab points out in WGI Worldwater cannot be politically rationed for long in cities that depend on the State to survive extreme temperatures. The energy-water nexus: the asymmetric calculation The system’s vulnerability is asymmetric and deeply technical. As explained by the analysis of House of Sauddesalination plants consume massive amounts of electricity (they represent almost 6% of total consumption in Saudi Arabia) and are co-located with mega power plants. If a missile takes down the power plant, the water supply dies instantly with it. Additionally, there is an unsustainable gap in recovery times. While an oil refinery can restore part of its production in a couple of weeks (as happened after the attack on Abqaiq in 2019), as Bailey Schwab warns, the components of a reverse osmosis plant are extremely high-precision parts that, if destroyed, would take months to replace. And defending this is economically unsustainable. Iran is using Shahed-136 droneswhich cost between $15,000 and $50,000 per unit. Opposite, the monumental Ras Al Khair plant cost 7.2 billion dollars and sits just 250 kilometers from the Iranian coast. It is a trivial flight for drones that have a range of 2,500 kilometers. As if that were not enough, this vulnerability drags food security down with it. There is one fact that goes unnoticed in the economic press: 70% of food imports of the GCC transits through the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia imports almost 80% of its food (wheat, corn and barley) by sea. With marine insurers canceling war risk policies for merchant ships, Gulf countries not only face dying of thirst, but also food isolation. The paradox: Iran, a country drowned by its own drought If the situation in the Gulf is critical, that of the aggressor country is equally desperate, although for different reasons. An analysis by Fred Pearce in Yale Environment 360 (Yale E360) details that Iran faces its own “water bankruptcy.” The crisis has reached such a point that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned last November that the country “has no choice” but to … Read more

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.