Meta Is Making a Big Bet on Nuclear With Oklo1
Alexander C. Kaufman, Jan 9, 2026
Meta will finance Oklo’s purchase of uranium for its reactors. It’s a massive vote of confidence for both the startup and nuclear power, but challenges remain.
There are two ways for tech companies to invest in nuclear power right now. One is to buy power from traditional reactors that are already built, either by purchasing electricity from the plants directly or financing the reconstruction of decommissioned units. The other is to invest in one of the dozens of reactor startups promising to commercialize designs and technologies never before used in the American market to generate electricity.
Microsoft took the former approach with a 2024 deal to buy electricity from a revived Three Mile Island nuclear plant and gambled on Helion, one of the many startups promising to construct America’s first fusion energy station. Amazon chose the other approach, buying a stake in X-energy, the next-generation nuclear company for which the tech behemoth is financing construction of a debut power plant in Washington.
Google split the difference with deals to help bring Iowa’s lone decommissioned nuclear plant online again and back construction of the first plant from next-generation startup Kairos Power, the only reactor company in its class to sign a power purchase agreement with a utility so far.
Meta, on the other hand, has taken a cautious approach to nuclear power. The Facebook owner had previously only agreed to buy power from an existing atomic power station in Illinois for its data centers.
Now, Meta is making an unconventional bet on the widely hyped next-gen nuclear startup Oklo.
On Friday morning, the company announced a deal to pay Oklo cash up front to finance the purchase of fuel for the startup’s reactors.
The agreement will allow Oklo to advance its plans for a 1.2-gigawatt campus in Pike County, Ohio, a rural municipality east of Cincinnati within the grid system from which Meta’s data centers in the region draw power. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. But Oklo CEO Jake DeWitte tells WIRED in an exclusive interview that it represents “one of the biggest deals around the nuclear space as a whole.”
“This is one of the biggest commitments from a hyperscaler into the nuclear side that we’ve seen,” he said. “It’s a huge validator.”
It’s part of a broader new nuclear investment from Meta that also includes deals with the Texas-based nuclear utility Vistra and the Bill Gates–owned next-generation nuclear startup TerraPower, which the centrist advocacy group Third Way calls “the largest such investment in nuclear energy in US history.”……………….
The price of nuclear fuel is on the rise as a federal ban on certain uranium imports from Russia takes effect and investors speculate about the possibility of a renaissance of reactor construction across the US. For next-generation designers such as Oklo, whose reactors depend on unconventional types of fuel, the problem has been particularly acute. Oklo managed to acquire old government stockpiles of high-assay low-enriched uranium, the material known as HALEU (pronounced HAY-loo) that’s enriched roughly four times as much as traditional reactor fuel. The company is also angling for a chunk of some plutonium leftover from mid-century atomic bomb construction, which Oklo’s reactors can burn as a fuel……………………..
It’s not unusual for utilities to negotiate long-term contracts for fuel for reactors. But this is the first known incident where a hyperscaler is purchasing the fuel that will generate the electrons it plans to buy, says Koroush Shirvan, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“The Oklo model that they have advertised is that they build, own, and operate,” says Shirvan. “But I’m trying to think of any other customers who provide fuel other than the U.S. government. I can’t think of any.”
Oklo emerged in the past year as the poster child for a possible revolution in the US on how nuclear plants are built. Until recently, the US hadn’t started and completed any new reactors in a generation. By the time the only new machines came online at a Southern Company power plant in northern Georgia in 2023 and 2024—a pair of 1,100-megawatt Westinghouse AP1000s, the leading design for a traditional reactor in the US—the project was billions of dollars over budget and more than half a decade late……
To fix this problem, a growing faction in the nuclear industry proposed shrinking the size of reactors, so that building a 1,000-megawatt plant would require constructing multiple reactors of the same size, ultimately bringing down the cost. Many of those companies, including NuScale Power and GE Vernova-Hitachi Nuclear Energy, focused on building shrunken-down versions of the water-cooled reactors that make up all of America’s fleet of 94 units. But Oklo and rivals such as X-energy, Google-backed Kairos Power, and Aalo Atomics instead looked for a totally clean slate, seeking to commercialize experimental reactor models that use coolants such as sodium, molten salt, or high-temperature gas rather than water…………..
The company has been a darling of retail investors since going public via a SPAC merger with a blank-check firm in May 2024, soaring to a market capitalization worth tens of billions of dollars last year as traders looked to bet on the future of data centers powered by atomic energy. But Oklo has yet to generate any real revenues, the company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings show, and it hasn’t resubmitted its application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In October, an anonymous former NRC official who oversaw the last attempt at gaining approval in 2022 told Bloomberg Business that the company “is probably the worst applicant the NRC has ever had.” Oklo has, in turn, leveled fierce criticisms against the NRC for standing in the way of new technologies and said it plans to resubmit its application soon. https://www.wired.com/story/meta-is-making-a-big-bet-on-nuclear-with-oklo/
Chris Hedges: Grand Illusion
Gangster states have no need of diplomacy. Trump and Rubio, for this reason, have gutted the State Department, along with other forms of “soft” power that achieve influence without resorting to force, including the U.S. role in the United Nations
By Chris Hedges , ScheerPost
“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” — Stephen Miller to Jake Tapper on CNN, Jan. 5, 2026.
“He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist. Such a saying may sound hard; but, after all, that’s how it is.” — Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf
“The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical… Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit — i.e., in the tendency of nations to expand — a manifestation of their vitality.” — Benito Mussolini in The Doctrine of Fascism
ll empires, when they are dying, worship the idol of war. War will save the empire. War will resurrect past glory. War will teach an unruly world to obey. But those who bow down before the idol of war, blinded by hypermasculinity and hubris, are unaware that while idols begin by calling for the sacrifice of others, they end by demanding self-sacrifice. Ekpyrosis, the inevitable conflagration that destroys the world according to the ancient Stoics, is part of the cyclical nature of time. There is no escape. Fortuna. There is a time for individual death. There is a time for collective death. In the end, with weary citizens yearning for extinction, empires light their own funeral pyre.
Our high priests of war, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, are no different from the fools and charlatans who snuffed out empires of the past — the haughty leaders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the militarists in imperial Germany and the hapless court of Tsarist Russia in World War I. They were followed by the fascists in Italy under Benito Mussolini, Germany under Adolf Hitler and the military rulers of imperial Japan in World War II.
These political entities committed collective suicide.
They drank the same fatal elixir Miller and those in the Trump White House imbibe. They too tried to use industrial violence to reshape the universe. They too considered themselves to be omnipotent. They too saw themselves in the face of the idol of war. They too demanded to be obeyed and worshiped.
Destruction to them is creation. Dissent is sedition. The world is one-dimensional. The strong versus the weak. Only our nation is great. Other nations, even allies, are dismissed with contempt.
These architects of imperial folly are buffoons and killer clowns. They are ridiculed and hated by those rooted in a reality-based world. They are followed slavishly by the desperate and the disenfranchised. The simplicity of the message is its appeal. A magic incantation will bring back the lost world, the golden age, however mythic. Reality is viewed exclusively through the lens of ultranationalism. The flip side of ultranationalism is racism.
“The nationalist is by definition an ignoramus,” wrote Yugoslav-Serbian novelist Danilo Kiš. “Nationalism is the line of least resistance, the easy way. The nationalist is untroubled, he knows or thinks he knows what his values are, his, that’s to say national, that’s to say the values of the nation he belongs to, ethical and political; he is not interested in others, they are no concern of his, hell — it’s other people (other nations, other tribes). They don’t even need investigating. The nationalist sees other people in his own image — as nationalists.”
These stunted human beings are unable to read others. They threaten. They terrorize. They kill. The art of power politics between nations or individuals is far beyond their tiny imaginations. They lack the intelligence — emotional and intellectual — to cope with the complex, ever-shifting sands of old and new alliances. They cannot see themselves as the world sees them.
Diplomacy is often a dark and deceptive art. It is by its nature manipulative. But it requires an understanding of other cultures and traditions. It requires getting inside the heads of adversaries and allies. For Trump and his minions, this is an impossibility.
Skillful diplomats, such as Prince Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian Empire’s foreign minister who dominated European politics after the defeat of Napoleon, do so by crafting agreements and treaties such as the Concert of Europe and the Congress of Vienna. Metternich, no friend of liberalism, adroitly kept Europe stable until the revolutions of 1848…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Gangster states have no need of diplomacy. Trump and Rubio, for this reason, have gutted the State Department, along with other forms of “soft” power that achieve influence without resorting to force, including the U.S. role in the United Nations, the U.S. Agency of International Development, the U.S. Institute for Peace — renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace after most of the board and staff were fired — and Voice of America.
Diplomats in gangster states are reduced to the role of errand boys. Hitler’s Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, whose primary experience in foreign affairs before 1933 was selling fake German champagne in Britain, appointed party hacks from the SA or Brownshirts — the paramilitary wing of the party — to diplomatic posts abroad. Benito Mussolini’s Foreign Minister was his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano. Mussolini — who believed that “war is to man what maternity is to woman” — later executed Ciano for disloyalty. Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steven Charles Witkoff, is a real estate developer, often accompanied on diplomatic missions by Trump’s feckless son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce quipped that fascism had created a fourth form of government, “onagrocracy,” a government by braying asses, to add to Aristotle’s traditional triumvirate of tyranny, oligarchy and democracy.
Our ruling class, Democrats and Republicans, piece by piece, dismantled democracy. In Germany and Italy, the constitutional state, as well, collapsed long before the arrival of fascism. Trump, who is the symptom, not the disease, inherited the corpse. He is making good use of it. https://scheerpost.com/2026/01/09/chris-hedges-grand-illusion/
Oil Companies Are Key Partners in Trump’s Imperial Plans for Latin America
Stocks in ExxonMobil, Halliburton, and ConocoPhillips surged the day after Trump’s illegal attack on Venezuela.
By Derek Seidman , Truthout January 8, 2026
or months, U.S. President Donald Trump proclaimed that his pressure campaign against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, backed by dozens of illegal killings through drone strikes, was about fighting drugs and cartels. But at his press conference after the U.S. abduction of Maduro, Trump couldn’t stop talking about oil.
“We’re gonna take back the oil,” Trump brazenly said. “Very large United States oil companies” will “go in” and “spend billions of dollars,” he promised. “We’re gonna be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.”
All told, Trump uttered the word “oil” at least 20 times during the press conference. Oil company stocks — ExxonMobil, Halliburton, ConocoPhillips, Valero, Phillips 66 — surged the following day, with Chevron, the only major U.S. oil corporation with a current foothold in Venezuela, seeing its share value jump more than 5 percent.
Further demonstrating the administration’s drug accusations to be mere propaganda, the Justice Department recently dropped its longstanding claim that Maduro was the head of “Cartel de los Soles,” implicitly conceding that it is indeed not a drug cartel but a slang term referring to political officials who have become corrupted by drug money.
The Trump administration’s barefaced imperial grab for Venezuela’s oil is fraught with challenges, and it’s far too early to predict what will happen. But its abduction of Maduro and effort to gain control over Venezuela’s oil industry aligns with the administration’s openly stated vision of reasserting undisputed political and economic hegemony across the Americas and the Caribbean, including control over natural resources and trade routes, through gunboat diplomacy backed by military threats. In doing so, Trump is looking to corporate allies like Chevron, which could stand to benefit handsomely from his administration’s action — though this is far from guaranteed……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………https://truthout.org/articles/oil-companies-are-key-partners-in-trumps-imperial-plans-for-latin-america/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=26a84c82c8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_01_08_10_43&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-26a84c82c8-650192793
Oil in Venezuela: Strangulation, Not a Steal
8 January 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/oil-in-venezuela-strangulation-not-a-steal/
It’s not drill baby drill, after all. Picture a vast, rusting skeletal oil rig off Venezuela’s coast, derricks frozen mid-stroke like the limbs of some colossal fossil. If you’ve heeded Stenographers R Us, the mainstream international media franchise embedded with the rich the powerful and the fabulously ruthless, you’d think Washington’s frenzy over this country boils down to a simple heist. But you’d be wrong.
Put to one side Bull Dust Trump’s buccaneering fantasy, a daring smash and grab raid for the world’s largest proven oil reserves, a tanker-load of cut-price fuel so cheap that every man can run at least one Ram V8 or Ford F-Series truck. And one for the little woman. Above all, it’s the heist that pays for itself. You steal Venezuela’s oil. Take over their country. All free of charge; funded by the plundered oil.
Trump’s lying. Of course. Like his career as a deal-maker, turning Caracas into a McDonald’s hamburger franchise is a fantasy founded on a fiction based on a lie, pure and simple. Behind the headlines, see the levers of power post-Maduro’s Manhattan manacles, muffs and blindfold, the full, Gitmo rig, and a sharper, more sinister pattern swims into view. Not just touring the trophy in a van with the back door open. This isn’t about nicking the black gold. It’s all about the chokehold, a slow but sure squeeze to block off the oil, denying the flow not just to Venezuela, but to anyone who dares defy The Hulk.
The Chokehold Takes Shape
Cast your mind back to the early 2010s. US sanctions began to creep from diplomatic tiffs to industrial strength sabotage. PDVSA, Venezuela’s state oil mammoth, didn’t just falter; it was engineered into failure. Spare parts were embargoed, rigs starved of foreign cash, refineries left to rust in the tropical brine and the sulphur that makes the nation’s heavy, treacle-thick crude, notoriously hard to refine.
Output didn’t dip, it plummeted from three million barrels a day to under 800,000. The Intercept, and Democracy Now! map the blueprint: not haphazard penalties, but a calculated corrosion of the coronary arteries of the economy. And here’s the exquisite irony in the crude itself; that heavy, sour Venezuelan black isn’t some elixir of cheap bounty.
It demands bespoke refineries, the kind that gobble margins unless global prices pitch high, say at the $60-70 per barrel sweet spot for US shale outfits. By idling millions of barrels, Washington doesn’t just punish Caracas; it rigs scarcity, propping up prices for its own patch and Saudi bedfellows.
Why would the planet’s oil glutton sabotage a gusher? Follow the boardroom gaze across the trading floors: scarcity keeps the market taut, volumes crimped, returns plump for the anointed players. The Grayzone and The Real News call it engineered sabotage, with Chevron and Exxon not clamouring for a bargain-bin blowout, but biding time for PDVSA’s orderly dismemberment and disembowelling. It will be privatised, of course, to some asset-stripper, on terms dictated from Foggy Bottom.
The Empire’s Ledger: Workers Foot the Bill
Yet no imperial romp runs on fairy dust, and the tab for this buccaneering lands not in some mythical oil jackpot, but squarely on the brows of ordinary Americans. Imagine the bills: 80 billion dollars a year vanishing into overseas bases, the concrete teeth enforcing sanctions and glowering at rivals across 25 countries since 2001.
Tack on another 62 billion in fossil fuel subsidies; bargain priced pollution, tax loopholes ladled to a coterie of oil titans, as with our gas industry, and the mathematics unmasks itself. The truck driver filling up at dawn, the nurse tallying grocery receipts inflated by freight costs: they’re clobbered doubly, once by the pump’s regressive bite from jacked global crude, again by tax dollars greasing the imperial gears. No plunder’s bounty offsets it; this is a quiet expropriation from wage packets to corner suites.
Now widen the lens to Latin America, where the rogue elephant lumbers, trunk swinging. Step forward Marco Rubio, son of Cuban exiles, his irony bypass a marvel of surgical precision. There he is on ABC’s 7:30 Report, cool as a Miami breeze, labelling Havana a “huge problem” mired in “a lot of trouble” for cradling Maduro; ripe, he implied, for Uncle Sam’s rapture. Rubio has the gall to scorn Cuba’s “senile incompetents” while a demented Donald Trump cheers intervention and why stop with Venezuela?
Trump paints Colombia’s Petro a narco-overlord and Mexico’s Sheinbaum a cartel consort.
Cuba’s original sin harks to 1959, when Fidel Castro’s revolution swept away the neon bordello Washington had bankrolled. Havana wasn’t just a city then; it was an offshore playground for Mafia dons and sugar barons, gangsters and generals carousing amid the roulette wheels while peasants toiled in the cane fields. Paradise Lost. Be not afraid. Trump has the team to turn back the clock.
Socialism didn’t just nationalise assets; Cuba reclaimed dignity, dodging the fate of a permanent Americano brothel. The reprisal? The Bay of Pigs bloodbath, a six-decade embargo tighter than a drum, whispers of invasion perennially on the wind. Rubio’s ire isn’t bungled governance; it’s the gall of autonomy. Now Venezuela’s shell is broken, Havana may well be next; Latin America is no mere backyard, but a type of professional wrestling tournament where Trump shows off US muscle.
China’s Jolt: Crude Hijacked, Chains Rattled
Beijing, too, savours the aftershock. Picture the tankers rerouted: China guzzles 60-90% of Venezuela’s exports, some 470,000 barrels daily. That’s 4-7% of its total crude thirst, a sliver that balloons to strategic heft in a 30-35% import pool menaced by US writ (Iran in the crosshairs too).
Trump’s hijack doesn’t just nick barrels; it disrupts The Panda’s supply lines, spiking costs and forcing frantic diversification. Beijing’s Foreign Ministry thunders condemnation, pledging legal armour for billions in PDVSA loans, but the calculus shifts: no Taiwan gambit while Washington clutches the taps.
Trump: Puppet or Pyromaniac for Neocon Zealots?
Spare us the fairy tale about “transactions”.
Trump isn’t negotiating. He is issuing demands. He is the public face for a crowd that thinks power makes the rules. Stephen Miller says the quiet part out loud: America has “rights” to Greenland, and the military is “always an option”. That is not diplomacy. It is threat.
Greenland is the test case.
If the United States says it can take what it wants from an ally’s territory, then NATO is no longer a defensive pact. It becomes a protection racket. Denmark’s Prime Minister is right to spell out the obvious: if an ally is the aggressor, Article 5 becomes meaningless. The alliance stops. The guarantee dies. The post-war settlement cracks.
Europe can see it. Britain, France, Germany can mouth support for Denmark’s sovereignty, but the damage is already done. You cannot demand unity on Ukraine while leaning on a founding member with a bully’s grin. You cannot preach rules and practise coercion.
This is the return of gunboats.
The language changes first. “Rights” becomes a blank cheque. “Security” becomes a pretext. “Options” becomes a threat. Then the map changes. Resources become the prize: minerals, oil, shipping lanes, bases, ice. Sovereignty becomes conditional. Obedience buys “stability”. Independence buys punishment.
Greenlanders don’t want American rule. Danes are no longer sure America is a safe partner. That is what this behaviour produces: distrust, hedging, rearmament, fragmentation. Not order. Not peace. Not alliance.
And it’s the same playbook in Venezuela.
Venezuela’s mistake was not incompetence alone. It was disobedience. It traded with Russia and China. It tried to keep control of its crude and its policy. For that, it was put in a vise. Sanctions dressed up as morality. Pressure dressed up as rescue. A national oil company turned into a target.
The aim is simple: break the state, break the industry, and decide the terms of recovery. Not to “liberate” Venezuelans, but to control the output, the contracts, and the alignments. To make sure rivals don’t benefit. To make sure the price, and the leverage, stays where Washington wants it.
Call it what it is.
Greenland is not a quirky real estate stunt. Venezuela is not a humanitarian project. They are chapters in the same doctrine: America takes, others comply, and law follows power like a dog behind a ute.
If you keep pretending it’s “dealmaking”, you help the fraud along.
Name the grip. Or live inside it.
This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES
Venezuela today. Greenland tomorrow?
9 Jan 26, https://secure.declassifieduk.org/page/email?mid=8c66e2426c734ac1a627c6af5564d142
During the early hours of Saturday morning, US forces bombed Venezuela and kidnapped its president, Nicolás Maduro.
The objective, according to US president Donald Trump, was to secure access to Venezuela’s massive oil reserves and assert US domination over the hemisphere, pushing out geopolitical rivals like China, Russia, and Iran.
Venezuelan authorities will soon be “turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality Oil… to the United States of America”, Trump wrote on social media.
The Trump administration also told Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez that “the country must kick out China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba and sever economic ties”, according to ABC News.
Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, has repeatedly refused to be drawn on whether the kidnapping of a foreign head of state was a violation of international law.
“Are we willing to risk damaging our most important economic and national security partnerships as a result [of condemning Trump]?”, the prime minister reportedly asked colleagues.
Yvette Cooper, Britain’s foreign secretary, could only bring herself to say that she had “raised the importance of complying with international law” with her US counterpart, Marco Rubio.
Yet pressure is mounting on Starmer’s government to respond in concrete terms to the attack, with UN human rights chief Volker Turk now spelling out its brazen illegality.
“It is clear that the operation undermined a fundamental principle of international law – that States must not threaten or use force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”, he said in a statement on Wednesday.
With the dust still settling in Caracas, Trump has now turned his imperial gaze to Greenland, a semi-autonomous Arctic territory of the kingdom of Denmark, which is a member of NATO. The White House says it has been discussing “a range of options” to acquire Greenland, including military force, referring to the issue as a “national security priority”. Greenland might seem quite apart from Venezuela in geographical, political, and cultural terms, but the US government has long folded both regions into its designs for hemispheric domination. After the German invasion of Denmark in April 1940, US secretary of state Cordell Hull declared “Greenland is within the area embraced by the Monroe Doctrine”, an 1823 doctrine which has been repeatedly relied upon to assert US hegemony in the Americas During the Cold War, the US army stationed 48 surface-to-air nuclear weapons and air-to-air missiles at Thule air base on Greenland, while a US army research and development facility was established beneath the territory’s icecap. Washington’s current interest in Greenland, however, has more to do with its location for military purposes, the opening of trade routes in the Arctic Ocean (which will increase in importance amid climate change) and the island’s richness in critical minerals like lithium and cobalt. While Starmer reserved judgment on Trump’s illegal attack on Venezuela, he has signed a joint statement alongside France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Denmark, affirming “Greenland belongs to its people”. But will Starmer actually take any meaningful action to stand up to Trump? “Nobody’s going to fight the US over the future of Greenland”, said Trump’s aide Stephen Miller on Tuesday. He might just be right. |
Golden Dome changes both NATO and the EU.
Now the wording is changed to: “The United States will deter – and defend its citizens and critical infrastructure – against any airstrike against its territory“. The level of ambition has been raised significantly.
Av Ingolf Kiesow, The Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences (Kungliga Krigsvetenskapsakademien 22 dec 2025
SIPRI’s 2024 yearbook is titled “Role of nuclear weapons grows as geopolitical relations deteriorate.” The content of that statement has grown in importance in 2025.
Golden Dome
On January 27, 2025, just a few days after taking office for a new term as President of the United States, Donald Trump signed an “Executive Order” to the US Department of Defense – now called the “War Department” – to build a missile defense system, what he later came to call “The Golden Dome”.
According to a statement by the then Department of Defense (now the “Ministry of War”), the Golden Dome will “unify a range of capabilities to create a system of systems to protect the United States from air attack by any aggressor“. Congress approved $24,5 billion for the purpose on September 5.
Donald Trump has said that this grant should be seen as a first installment and that the entire project should be fully operational before his presidential term ends.
He said in May that the total cost could be estimated at $175 billion. The Congressional Budget Office has since estimated that it will cost more than $500 billion. Other observers argue that the need to continuously replace satellites in the system, as Earth’s gravity pulls them out of orbit, means that the cost will exceed a trillion or several trillion dollars before it can be operational.
A first contract under Golden Dome was signed on November 4. Space X will receive $2 billion to build a system of 600 satellites with Lockheed Martin to create an “Air Moving Target Indicator (AMTI).” These low-altitude satellites will detect and track advanced threats from maneuvering glide missiles and stealth aircraft and then feed the data obtained into the US missile defense targeting system.
Congress has pointed out that the US missile defense strategy has so far been formulated as the US striving afterr “to defend against rogue states as well as against unauthorized or accidental missile launches while relying on nuclear weapons to deter China and Russia from striking American territory“.
Now the wording is changed to: “The United States will deter – and defend its citizens and critical infrastructure – against any airstrike against its territory“. The level of ambition has been raised significantly.
The relationship between the White House and Congress on the Golden Dome is marked by suspicion. In a statement, the Congressional Office laments that the administration has failed to provide the public with a detailed account of the project, has not held meetings with representatives of the business community, and has reportedly instructed military officials not to discuss the Golden Dome publicly.
Reactions to the Golden Dome
On May 8, China and Russia issued a joint statement criticizing the project for undermining the link between strategic offensive weapons and strategic defensive weapons, i.e. the very idea of a nuclear balance. Russian press spokesman Peskov said that while a decision on Golden Dome is a sovereign matter for the United States, it is also in the common interest of both countries to create a new legal framework to replace the no longer functioning nuclear arms treaties between the United States and Russia.
However, as of the end of October 2025, no preparations for negotiations on US-Russian arms control have been initiated. Donald Trump is said to have said that it might be a good idea, but without wanting to discuss the matter in more detail. On January 5, 2026, the only Russian-American arms control agreement still in force, the so-called New START agreement, expires.
In addition to China and Russia, there has also been criticism in the West that the US is trying to make the US invulnerable to nuclear attack with Golden Dome and thereby create a strategic advantage. This would damage the balance that has so far rested on the theory of mutual deterrence, a concept that also presupposes a certain degree of mutual vulnerability.
China shows off its weapons
China celebrated the eightieth anniversary of its victory over Japan in World War II with a military parade in Beijing on October 3 of this year. The parade was characterized by three things: coordination with the authoritarian countries of the world, the focus of Chinese defense on preparations for a war with the United States, and the belief that the next war will be fought globally.
Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un sat on either side of Xi Jinping during the parade, and among the invited guests were a large majority of presidents and prime ministers from the global south.
The new weapons systems on display included new advanced fighter jets, tanks, hypersonic anti-ship missiles and long-range rocket artillery. Three different groups of missile systems were displayed: five nuclear-capable systems, three cruise missile systems and three hypersonic missile systems.
The direction has been interpreted abroad as a warning to the United States not to try to oppose a possible upcoming attempt to invade Taiwan and to keep the United States away from the waters along China’s coasts in the Pacific Ocean.
FOBS has been a headache for the Pentagon
The presence of a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) in both Russia and China has been a particular concern for Western defense forces in recent times. This is especially true since China conducted a pair of test flights in the summer of 2021, when a launch vehicle was launched into orbit around the Earth and a hypersonic glide missile was released, which re-entered the atmosphere on the other side of the world and hit a designated target. The launch vehicle remained in a relatively low-altitude orbit (around 150 kilometers) and the entire crew moved at hypersonic speed the entire way, making them very difficult – almost impossible – to detect and combat.
Some of the missiles displayed at the military parade may be included in FOBS, which would mean that production and supply to units is ongoing.
After China’s first hypersonic missile flight, it took the United States several years to build a similar system and get the missiles flying, which has been a major concern for the Pentagon. The lack of a US system to defend against FOBS has been explicitly cited by the Defense Intelligence Agency as one of the reasons for introducing Golden Dome.
Truce in the trade war with China, but not peace and no deal………………………………………………………………………………….
……………………………………………………………………. Since NATO is designed to function under American leadership, Europe must now create its own organization in peacetime in order to be able to function without or at least with weakened support in wartime. That is the only conclusion that seems logical to draw in the light of this article. Whether such an adaptation can take place within the framework of NATO or can best be done within the EU or through the creation of an entirely new European defense organization has become a pressing question.
How Europe should dispose of its own nuclear weapons assets to deter Russia from attacking is also an issue that is now demanding attention even in peacetime.
Conclusions for Europe.
In any case, the connection between economic and military strength will play a central role. If the US fails to mobilize the financial resources required for Golden Dome and if the EU fails to find the means to both help Ukraine avoid defeat in the war with Russia and at the same time build up our own defenses, the situation may become difficult to manage.
Since Donald Trump came to power, however, the US has committed serious violations of international law, such as the prohibition of genocide in connection with its support for Israel’s war in Gaza and against the rules on freedom of the seas and human rights in connection with the killing of suspected smugglers from Venezuela and Colombia without prior trial. Being part of NATO and being part of the same alliance as the US is beginning to feel embarrassing to a European.
The nonchalance with the rules of international law also raises uncertainty about how serious the US is about its own membership in NATO and its obligations to help the EU preserve sovereignty over its territory.
Donald Trump’s fickleness and the uncertainty about what the investment in Golden Dome will entail create uncertainty for Europe and the rest of the “West”. For Europe, this means having to walk a balance between the desire not to lose the US as an ally in the long term and, on the other hand, the prospect of perhaps having to face a growing threat from Russia alone. In addition, the US may demand help in its power struggle with China, something that it is not in Europe’s interest to allocate resources to.
Can the EU prepare for a period of reduced American support without irreparably damaging the relationship with the US? Can the EU build a partnership with countries in the global south and even with China that resembles the world trade and payments system that functioned before Xi Jinping and Donald Trump came to power in their respective countries?
Puppet dreams? Yes, maybe, but what choice do we have?
The author is an ambassador and member of KKrVA. https://en.kkrva.se/golden-dome-forandrar-bade-nato-och-eu/
US will ‘fix’ Cuba and Nicaragua – Republican senator
7 Jan, 2026. https://www.rt.com/news/630708-us-senator-cuba-colombia-nicaragua-to-be-fixed/
Rick Scott issued threats to the socialist countries after American commandos abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro
Republican US Senator Rick Scott has said that Washington would install a new president in Colombia, as well as “fix” Cuba and Nicaragua.
He made the remarks in an interview with Fox Business, just days after US commandos abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, during a raid in Caracas.
US President Donald Trump described the operation as his enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine, designed to ensure Washington’s domination in the Western Hemisphere and said American companies must gain access to Venezuela’s rich oil reserves.
Trump’s actions would “change Latin America,” Scott told Fox on Wednesday. “We’re gonna fix Cuba, Nicaragua will be fixed. Next year, we’ll get a new president in Colombia,” the senator added, declaring that “democracy is coming back to this hemisphere.”
The US first imposed a trade blockade and sanctions on socialist-run Cuba and Nicaragua during the Cold War. Last year, Washington imposed restrictions on Colombia’s left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, whom Trump accused of aiding drug cartels. Petro denied the allegations and has heavily criticized Trump for ordering strikes on alleged narcotics smuggling boats in the Caribbean.
Asked by journalists aboard Air Force One on Sunday whether he was planning to attack Colombia, Trump replied, “It sounds good to me.”
Petro, a former member of a communist guerrilla group, denounced Trump’s threats. “I swore after the 1989 peace agreement never to touch a weapon again, but for the sake of the homeland, I will take up arms once more, even though I do not want to,” he wrote on X earlier this week.
The US Department of Justice indicted Maduro and Flores on drug-trafficking and weapons charges, to which they pleaded not guilty when they were brought before a New York judge on Monday. Venezuela condemned the US operation as a violation of its sovereignty, with Acting President Delcy Rodriguez denying that the country would be ruled by foreign powers.
Trump Abandonment of Global Treaties, Including Landmark Climate Deal, ‘Threatens All Life on Earth’
“Trump cutting ties with the world’s oldest climate treaty is another despicable effort to let corporate fossil fuel interests run our government.”
Jake Johnson, Jan 08, 2026, https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-withdraws-global-treaties
President Donald Trump on Wednesday withdrew the United States from dozens of international treaties and organizations aimed at promoting cooperation on the world’s most pressing issues, including human rights and the worsening climate emergency.
Among the treaties Trump ditched via a legally dubious executive order was the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), making the US—the world’s largest historical emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases—the first country to abandon the landmark agreement.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday withdrew the United States from dozens of international treaties and organizations aimed at promoting cooperation on the world’s most pressing issues, including human rights and the worsening climate emergency.
Among the treaties Trump ditched via a legally dubious executive order was the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), making the US—the world’s largest historical emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gases—the first country to abandon the landmark agreement.
The US Senate ratified the convention in 1992 by unanimous consent, but lawmakers have repeatedly failed to assert their constitutional authority to stop presidents from unilaterally withdrawing from global treaties.
Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that “Trump cutting ties with the world’s oldest climate treaty is another despicable effort to let corporate fossil fuel interests run our government.”
“Given deeply polarized US politics, it’s going to be nearly impossible for the U.S. to rejoin the UNFCCC with a two-thirds majority vote. Letting this lawless move stand could shut the US out of climate diplomacy forever,” Su warned. “Withdrawing from the world’s leading climate, biodiversity, and scientific institutions threatens all life on Earth.”
Trump also pulled the US out of the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the UN International Law Commission, the UN Democracy Fund, UN Oceans, and dozens of other global bodies, deeming them “contrary to the interests of the United States.”
The president’s move came as he continued to steamroll domestic and international law with an illegal assault on Venezuela and threats to seize Greenland with military force, among other grave abuses.
Below is the full list of international organizations that Trump abandoned with the stroke of a pen:
(a) Non-United Nations Organizations:
(i) 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact;
(ii) Colombo Plan Council;
(iii) Commission for Environmental Cooperation;
(iv) Education Cannot Wait;
(v) European Centre of Excellence for Countering
Hybrid Threats;
(vi) Forum of European National Highway Research Laboratories;
(vii) Freedom Online Coalition;
(viii) Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund;
(ix) Global Counterterrorism Forum;
(x) Global Forum on Cyber Expertise;
(xi) Global Forum on Migration and Development;
(xii) Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research;
(xiii) Intergovernmental Forum onMining, Minerals, Metals, and Sustainable Development;
(xiv) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change;
(xv) Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services;
(xvi) International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property;
(xvii) International Cotton Advisory Committee;
(xviii) International Development Law Organization;
(xix) International Energy Forum;
(xx) International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies;
(xxi) International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance;
(xxii) International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law;
(xxiii) International Lead and Zinc Study Group;
(xxiv) InternationalRenewable Energy Agency;
(xxv) International Solar Alliance;
(xxvi) International Tropical Timber Organization;
(xxvii) International Union for Conservation of Nature;
(xxviii) Pan American Institute of Geography and History;
(xxix) Partnership for Atlantic Cooperation;
(xxx) Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combatting Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia;
(xxxi) Regional Cooperation Council;
(xxxii) Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century;
(xxxiii)Science and Technology Center in Ukraine;
(xxxiv) Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme; and
(xxxv) Venice Commission of the Council of Europe.
(b) United Nations (UN) Organizations:
(i) Department of Economic and Social Affairs;
(ii) UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) — Economic Commission forAfrica;
(iii) ECOSOC — Economic Commission forLatin America and the Caribbean;
(iv) ECOSOC — Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific;
(v) ECOSOC — Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia;
(vi) International Law Commission;
(vii) International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals;
(viii) InternationalTrade Centre;
(ix) Office of the Special Adviser on Africa;
(x) Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General forChildren in Armed Conflict;
(xi) Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict;
(xii) Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children;
(xiii) Peacebuilding Commission;
(xiv) Peacebuilding Fund;
(xv) Permanent Forum on People of African Descent;
(xvi) UN Alliance of Civilizations;
(xvii) UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions fromDeforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries;
(xviii) UN Conference on Trade and Development;
(xix) UN Democracy Fund;
(xx) UN Energy;
(xxi) UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women;
(xxii) UN Framework Convention on Climate Change;
(xxiii) UN Human Settlements Programme;
(xxiv) UN Institute for Training and Research;
(xxv) UN Oceans;
(xxvi) UN Population Fund;
(xxvii) UN Register of Conventional Arms;
(xxviii) UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination;
(xxix) UN System Staff College;
(xxx) UNWater; and
(xxxi) UN University.
Rachel Cleetus, policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Trump’s withdrawal from the world’s bedrock climate treaty marks “a new low and yet another sign that this authoritarian, anti-science administration is determined to sacrifice people’s well-being and destabilize global cooperation.”
“Withdrawal from the global climate convention will only serve to further isolate the United States and diminish its standing in the world following a spate of deplorable actions that have already sent our nation’s credibility plummeting, jeopardized ties with some of our closest historical allies, and made the world far more unsafe,” said Cleetus. “This administration remains cruelly indifferent to the unassailable facts on climate while pandering to fossil fuel polluters.”
Analysts Warn Venezuela Invasion Could Empower Trump to Take Actions Elsewhere.
“The invasion of Venezuela is a blatant violation of international law,” “It is a prelude, potentially, to a long and violent conflict within Venezuela. And it’s a throwback to other times when leaders who had broken democracy, who had exploited their peoples in Haiti in 1915 or in Panama in 1989, became the fodder for further U.S. invasions and occupation.”
“We’re ready to go again if we have to,” Trump said in a press conference after the invasion. And not just against Venezuela. Trump has threatened military action in Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico.
The US’s first unilateral invasion in South America is Trump’s testing ground for military supremacy in the region.
By Michael Fox , Truthout, January 6, 2026
The bombs fell in the early hours of January 3. They cascaded over the city, one and then another. The bright orange explosions rocked Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, shaking people awake.
“The bombs lasted a while,” Caracas resident and community organizer Yanahir Reyes told Truthout. “And you could hear the helicopters, the planes. It was terrifying.”
The U.S. forces rained down fire — focused on the military barracks in the capital and nearby states, but also hitting surrounding neighborhoods.
Videos of the invading forces spiraled quickly onto social media. Countless videos of the bombs falling, people screaming, trying to make sense of it all, while the explosions shook buildings and destroyed homes. And the sound of the arrival of the U.S. forces echoed across the city.
Shock. Fear. Confusion………………………………………
This was the invasion that Donald Trump had vowed for months. An invasion that U.S. administrations had threatened for years and decades, going all the way back to President George W. Bush.
And it marked the U.S. once again deploying direct military action in other countries in the region. A return to President Theodore Roosevelt’s gunboat diplomacy, where the United States pushes its agenda and its interests by force. The Monroe Doctrine on steroids, or what Trump has called it his own “Donroe Doctrine” — Donald plus Monroe.
It is a terrifying precedent. It is the first time the United States has taken unilateral military action against a nation in Latin America in more than 35 years. Many analysts and Latin Americans had hoped this bellicose foreign policy and direct U.S. aggression had been relegated to the history books.
But those playbooks have been dusted off and are being used again, echoing the December 20, 1989, U.S. invasion of Panama. And it was a copy and paste job — give or take some minor alterations.
“The invasion of Venezuela is a blatant violation of international law,” John Lindsay-Poland told Truthout. He’s the author of the book Emperors in the Jungle, about the history of U.S. intervention in Panama and the 1989 invasion. “It is a prelude, potentially, to a long and violent conflict within Venezuela. And it’s a throwback to other times when leaders who had broken democracy, who had exploited their peoples in Haiti in 1915 or in Panama in 1989, became the fodder for further U.S. invasions and occupation.”
As the 1989 invasion of Panama would be considered a training exercise for the ensuing U.S. wars in the Middle East, the Venezuelan invasion on January 3 was Trump’s testing ground for military supremacy in the region.
“We’re ready to go again if we have to,” Trump said in a press conference after the invasion. And not just against Venezuela. Trump has threatened military action in Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico.
“We should be concerned,” says Steve Ellner, an associate managing editor of the journal Latin American Perspectives, who taught for decades at the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela. “And we should be concerned because this is meant to send a message way beyond Venezuela, not only way beyond Venezuela in the region, but worldwide.”
1989 Panama Invasion
On December 20, 1989, U.S. President George H.W. Bush ordered the U.S. invasion of Panama. Twenty-six thousand U.S. troops invaded the country. They rained down fire and bombs — attacking the barracks of the Panama Defense Forces in the capital of Panama City and other areas.
The U.S.’s goal was to capture President Manuel Noriega on drug trafficking charges.
Neighborhoods like Panama City’s El Chorrillo went up in smoke. Twenty-thousand homes burned. U.S. forces killed hundreds of people. They dumped bodies into mass graves.
When I visited El Chorrillo in late 2023 to report for the episode of my podcast Under the Shadow about the U.S. invasion, I saw the open wounds that still remain. The bullet holes left by U.S. troops. The pain in people’s voices as they remember that night and the subsequent U.S. occupation.
“So many innocent people died,” said resident Omar Gonzalez, who was only 12 at the time and watched fires engulf homes. “Friends of ours. Children we knew. People. Men and women. Some people who were sleeping at that moment. Elderly people who couldn’t stand up or run away because they lived close to the barracks. And this is the history. It’s painful, more than anything else.”
U.S. forces killed more than 500 people. Victims and their families are still demanding justice. Large murals cover walls, like one depicting a U.S. helicopter flying over rubble engulfed in flames. It reads: “Never forget. Never forgive.”
The Panama invasion marked a new era for U.S. foreign policy in the region in a number of ways………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://truthout.org/articles/analysts-warn-venezuela-invasion-could-empower-trump-to-take-actions-elsewhere/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=7f1612e76d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_01_06_10_12&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-7f1612e76d-650192793
Academic Freedom on Life Support: Trump’s War on Knowledge Exposed
January 6, 2026 https://scheerpost.com/2026/01/06/academic-freedom-on-life-support-trumps-war-on-knowledge-exposed/
In this episode of Scheer Intelligence, Robert Scheer speaks with Professor Steve Macek about what he calls an unprecedented assault on academic freedom in the United States. From federal investigations into Columbia and UCLA to state‑level crackdowns in Florida and Texas, Macek argues that the country is witnessing a new form of political interference — one that targets universities, scholars, and even entire fields of study.
Scheer and Macek trace the historical lineage from McCarthyism to the present, examining how both major political parties have contributed to a climate of fear, surveillance, and self‑censorship on campus. They discuss the weaponization of antisemitism accusations, the precariousness of adjunct faculty, the chilling effect on student activism, and the broader erosion of institutions that produce knowledge.
This conversation is essential for anyone concerned about free inquiry, democratic debate, and the future of higher education.
The cost of America’s nuclear revival
On an industrial site on the shores of Lake Michigan, hundreds of workers
are racing to do something that has never been achieved before: restart a
US nuclear power plant scheduled to be decommissioned.
The revival is being
driven by power demand from artificial intelligence data centres and
reshoring of manufacturing, which is straining energy grids and pushing up
electricity prices. Big Tech is attracted to nuclear because it provides
[?] clean power that does not suffer from the intermittency that is a feature
of solar and wind energy.
Concerned that a power crunch could delay the
roll out of data centres, Microsoft and Google have signed long-term power
deals to support the reopening of shuttered nuclear plants in Iowa and
Pennsylvania.
President Donald Trump has also embraced atomic energy,
pledging to slash regulation and invest tens of billions of dollars to
reopen and build new fleets of reactors to provide the power needed to
“win” the global AI race. In May he set a goal of quadrupling US atomic
energy capacity by 2050, a massive undertaking that would involve building
hundreds of new plants.
And in October Washington inked an $80bn
partnership with private equity group Brookfield and reactor designer
Westinghouse, which aims to kick-start construction of eight large-scale
nuclear plants.
Last year private investors funnelled a record $3bn into
start-ups building smaller modular reactors, technologies that provide a
third or less of the power of large-scale nuclear plants. In 2024, Amazon
bought a stake in X-energy, a reactor developer with power supply
agreements to support the construction of 144 small modular reactors (SMRs)
in the US and UK.
But in an industry subject to high financing, regulatory
and reputational risks, not everyone is convinced the resurgence will be
sustained. Only a handful of mothballed nuclear plants in the US are
capable of being restarted, critics warn, and building large-scale reactors
from scratch is a highly complex undertaking prone to delays and cost
overruns in western nations.
None of the more than 50 SMRs under
development in the US has proved they are commercially viable yet nor
obtained an operating licence from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“The industry is boasting about how things are different now and they are
going to build fleets of new reactors, large and small,” says Edwin
Lyman, a physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and critic of
nuclear energy. “But the fundamentals haven’t changed: nuclear is more
expensive than other forms of energy and still poses a risk of accidents
and proliferation. You can’t wish these problems away, so I think
Trump’s so-called nuclear renaissance is built on a house of cards.”
FT 7th Jan 2026,
https://www.ft.com/content/9f6c4db1-559f-48e1-8c21-ac0bc1a1237c
US 21st Century regime change ops: Failure, Failure, Failure, Failure, Failure… To Be Determined
5 January 2026 AIMN Editorial , By Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn, IL, https://theaimn.net/us-21st-century-regime-change-ops-failure-failure-failure-failure-failure-to-be-determined/
The US has spent the entire 21st century toppling regimes it hates. Every one up to Saturday’s removal of Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro has ended in failure.
2001 Afghanistan
President George W. Bush kicked off the 21st century by changing out the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. America could not confront the real culprit of 911, ally Saudi Arabia, so we picked an easy scapegoat to extract our revenge. It only took 5 weeks to topple the Taliban, allowing installation of a US puppet government. Result? Taliban regrouped to win their country back. Took 20 years but this time it was the hated Yankees ousted, killing 2,461 Americans in the process. America left the failed state of Afghanistan with over 150,000 dead and Afghanistan’s 42 million people worse off than before American’s criminal regime change operation.
2003 Iraq
Bush turned next to hated Iraq to one up Poppy Bush’s failure to oust Saddam Hussein 1991. His regime change turned Iraq into a failed state with over 500,000 Iraqis and 5,984 American soldiers and contractors killed. Over 100,000 Americans were injured in body and mind from in a totally made up, senseless war. Twenty-three years later the US is still defiling Iraqi sovereignty with a couple of thousand soldiers stuck in the Iraq war roach motel.
2011 Libya
George W. Bush’s successor Barack Obama got into regime change business to knock off Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi. He employed so called defense alliance NATO to bomb Libby during the Libyan civil war to tip the scales against Gaddafi. Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gloated, “We came, we saw, he died”, failing to mention this death resulted from a bayonet to the butt. The US achieved the complete opposite of its intended goal of Libyan and regional stability by turning Libya into one of the most chaotic, failed states on the planet.
2013 Syria
Just 2 years later Obama was at it again, this time intervening in the Syrian civil war, supporting jihadist terrorists to depose hated Syrian President Bashar Assad. Neither Obama nor successor Trump could complete the task finally achieved by President Joe Biden in his last 2 months. US intervention was primarily designed to rid puppet master Israel of one of its regional hegemonic rivals. By prolonging the Syrian civil war for 11 years, the US contributed mightily to the civil war’s half million deaths. Led by new US pal, former US designated al-Qaeda terrorist Ahmed al-Sharaa, Christians, Druze and Alawites are being systematically hunted down and killed by the US backed al-Sharaa regime.
2022 Russia
The US and NATO spent 14 years under 4 presidents provoking Russia to invade Ukraine to keep Ukraine out of NATO. The US knew Russia would eventually invade; indeed, also knew Ukraine could not prevail against the Russian goliath. Didn’t matter. The US believed the war would so weaken Russia it might topple despised President Vladimir Putin, bringing in a Russian puppet amenable to US influence. Four years on Russia and Putin are stronger than ever, pivoting away from Europe to the non-aligned world seeking independence from a war and sanctions crazed America. Ukraine is now a failed state near totally dependent on US, NATO treasure to survive. A fifth of its land is gone forever, soon to be joined by its last warm water port. Looks like the only regime to be removed is Ukraine’s, not Russia’s.
2026 Venezuela
In his first solo adventure in regime change, President Trump kicked off 2026 with a lightning assault that snatched Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro out of Venezuela to face a Trump style show trial in the US. Trump and his war cabinet are positively ecstatic about completing America’s two decade crusade to snuff out socialism in Venezuela and gobble up its 300 billion barrels of heavy crude in the process. But they might look back at America’s 21st century regime change failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Russia, and ponder whether they’re simply following previous administrations down the rabbit hole of regime change failure.
US DOE Awards $2.7B for Uranium Enrichment in Nuclear Power Push
Rigzone, by Jov Onsat. Tuesday, January 06, 2026
The United States Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded $2.7 billion orders to three companies for enrichment services to enable the production of low-enriched uranium (LEU) and high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)…………….
American Centrifuge Operating LLC and General Matter Inc each won $900 million to establish domestic HALEU enrichment capacity for advanced reactors. Orano Federal Services LLC also won $900 million to expand the U.S.’ LEU enrichment capacity.
……………….Currently only China and Russia can produce HALEU at a commercial scale, according to the World Nuclear Association.
Fears of Wider War Over Venezuela Oil as US Seizes Russian-Flagged Tanker
“That is a confrontation of Cold War proportions,” warned one observer.
Jake Johnson, January 7, 2026 https://www.commondreams.org/news/venezuela-russia-oil-tanker
US forces have now boarded and seized control of the Russian-flagged oil vessel in the North Atlantic, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.United States military forces on Wednesday attempted to board and seize control of a Venezuela-linked and Russian-flagged oil tanker after a weekslong pursuit across the Atlantic, sparking fears of a broader conflict stemming from US President Donald Trump’s assault on the South American country.
Reuters reported that the US Coast Guard and military are leading the takeover operation, which came “after the tanker, originally known as the Bella-1, slipped through a US maritime ‘blockade’ of sanctioned tankers and rebuffed US Coast Guard efforts to board it.” According to the Wall Street Journal, “Helicopters and at least one Coast Guard vessel were being used to take control of the tanker.”.
The vessel is reportedly being escorted by a Russian submarine, fueling concerns of a direct confrontation between two nuclear powers.
Video footage published Tuesday by RT purports to show US forces pursuing the tanker, whose name was recently changed to the Marinera.
The New York Times reported that US forces first stopped the tanker in the Caribbean on December 21.
According to the Times:
The ship, which started its journey in Iran, had been on its way to pick up oil in Venezuela.
At the time, the United States said it had a seizure warrant on the vessel because it was not flying a valid national flag. But the Bella 1 refused to be boarded and sailed into the Atlantic, with the United States in pursuit.
Then came a series of moves to ward off the United States. The fleeing crew painted a Russian flag on the hull, the tanker was renamed and added to an official Russian ship database, and Russia made a formal diplomatic request that the United States stop its chase.
Observers voiced alarm over the tense and fast-moving situation.
“Don’t wish to be hyperbolic, but if—if—US special forces are intercepting and seeking to board a now Russian-flagged tanker, apparently with submarine escort, then that is a confrontation of Cold War proportions,” warned British journalist Jon Sopel.
A game of chicken between the US and Denmark
The people of Greenland are merely pawns on a neo-colonial chessboard
Ian Proud, Jan 08, 2026, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/a-game-of-chicken-between-the-us?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=183816648&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Trump’s attempt to claim Greenland as his own is running up against plucky Denmark. This is a David v Goliath game of chicken in which Trump hopes the Danes will back down and they, in turn, are waiting Trump out, hoping that his increasingly unhinged foreign policy leads to a change in power in 2029, whereupon the issue will go away.
Until then, the people of Greenland will remain pawns on a neo-colonial chessboard.
Even though they’ll get no support from European military powers, Denmark should call Trump’s bluff over military action and signal a willingness to defend, even though they would be quickly defeated. Their biggest ally is US public opinion.
But whatever happens, the Greenlanders have the right to self-determination under the 2009 Act and may ultimately be swayed by Trump’s cash.
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