In an extraordinary, daring, and lucky operation, U.S. special forces disabled Venezuela’s air defenses, captured President Maduro and his wife, and transported them to the U.S. to face drug trafficking charges.
https://www.cfr.org/articles/guide-maduros-capture-and-venezuelas-uncertain-future
Some of the combat was captured on video.
https://youtu.be/OHPdwD69ofM?si=md3JDl9vY3TUhuz3
The Venezuelans failed to set up their new Russian antiaircraft system before the U.S. attack.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/world/americas/venezuela-russian-weapons-fail.html
The EA-18Gs jets I mentioned last month helped disable Venezuelan air defenses during the attack.
https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-news/security/ea-18gs-helped-disable-venezuelan-air-defences-during-us-attack
Trump claimed a “discombobulator” weapon was used to disable enemy electronics during the raid.
https://nypost.com/2026/01/24/us-news/trump-reveals-to-the-post-secret-discombobulator-weapon-was-crucial-to-venezuelan-raid-on-maduro/
Shortly after the Venezuelan operation, President Trump nearly ordered airstrikes on Iran, which is in the grips of economic catastrophe and civil unrest. He relented, allegedly after pressure from his generals and from other Middle East leaders.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/israeli-arab-officials-privately-suggested-us-hold-iran-strikes-rcna253718
The strike might have been called off merely to give U.S. more time to move military forces close to Iran.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/signs-emerge-of-u-s-navy-air-force-push-to-middle-east
Iran’s Supreme Leader admitted his security forces had killed thousands of protesters during the unrest.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/17/middleeast/iran-supreme-leader-khamenei-protests-criminal-trump-intl-latam
As the Ukraine War enters its fourth year, both sides are far apart from agreeing to a peace treaty and, in spite of the heavy losses, both are also willing and able to continue fighting indefinitely, even as both are forced to scale back operations due to worsening equipment shortages. No diplomatic or military breakthrough is on the horizon.
https://youtu.be/E8n1I41PL-k?si=9dhm8MuH9RsQfaD_
This is from 13 months ago. Russia hasn’t had a “hard landing,” but it’s gotten much closer. During 2025, GDP growth turned anemic, inflation soared, and the Ukraine War started consuming half of the federal budget.
‘The combination of a declining currency and a ballooning budget deficit has led to talk of a hard landing for the Russian economy in 2025. After two years of strong growth, which has confounded many analysts’ gloomy predictions, the pace of expansion will slow sharply. The economic bill for the war is at last coming due. It could be a big one’
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2024/12/01/russias-plunging-currency-spells-trouble-for-its-war-effort
Ukraine is incorporating engines from crashed Russian drones to their own drones that are sent to attack Russia.
https://militarnyi.com/uk/news/v-ukrayini-zajnyalysya-restavratsiyeyu-dvyguniv-shahediv-dlya-vlasnyh-droniv/
Russia’s stockpiles of (relatively) modern tanks–T-72Bs and T-80s–have been exhausted: only 329 of them remain in its tank depots, and they are all probably so worn-out that they can only be stripped for spare parts.
https://youtu.be/wCeAW_KWcWQ?si=UgPP0Dzuk8QhAGee
Russian troops surrendered to a Ukrainian ground combat drone. This is believed to be the first time in history such a thing happened.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/38049840/troops-surrender-robot-cowering-russians-ukrainian-drone/
China is experimenting with containerized weapon and radar modules that could be quickly installed on civilian ships. During a war with us, they could use the modules to turn hundreds of their merchant ships into crappy warships that could fire missiles to strike our planes or ships. The conversions would be done inland in safe ports, and the ships would sail down rivers to the Pacific. The problem is, these ad hoc radar and missile platforms would be slow and would still need dozens of crewmen apiece. In other words, they would be easy targets but still expensive enough to not be completely throwaway. Time will be needed to assess the concept’s viability.
https://youtu.be/wyvJF9fmo0g?si=isak9eMagvQtYBK4
China ordered 1,400 of its sailing boats to form into a “wall” in the South China Sea that was 200 miles long and several miles deep. The exercise may be practice for a blockade of Taiwan.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/16/world/asia/china-ships-fishing-militia-blockade.html
From 2023:
‘A four-star Air Force general sent a memo on Friday to the officers he commands that predicts the U.S. will be at war with China in two years and tells them to get ready to prep by firing “a clip” at a target, and “aim for the head.”
In the memo sent Friday and obtained by NBC News, Gen. Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, said, “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me will fight in 2025.”
Air Mobility Command has nearly 50,000 service members and nearly 500 planes and is responsible for transport and refueling.
Minihan said in the memo that because both Taiwan and the U.S. will have presidential elections in 2024, the U.S. will be “distracted,” and Chinese President Xi Jinping will have an opportunity to move on Taiwan.’
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-air-force-general-predicts-war-china-2025-memo-rcna67967
From 2019. The Chinese invasion of Taiwan is forever “just a few years from now”:
‘A former Japanese military officer recently made waves after saying he believes China plans to invade and annex Taiwan by 2025 and Okinawa by 2045.
The comments by retired Lt. Gen. Kunio Orita, a 35-year veteran of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force and a former commander of the 301st Tactical Fighter Squadron and 6th Air Wing, appeared last month in the English-language Taiwan News.
Orita, who retired in 2009 and is now a guest professor at Toyo Gakuen University in Tokyo, recently told Stars and Stripes he expects Beijing will attempt to expand its sphere of influence by first taking control of Taiwan and then militarizing a key disputed islet in the South China Sea.’
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/retired-japanese-general-predicts-china-will-invade-taiwan-by-2025-okinawa-by-2045-1.569228
China’s military has built replicas of Taiwanese government buildings so its special forces troops can practice raids.
https://www.economist.com/china/2026/01/08/china-and-taiwan-both-see-lessons-in-americas-raid-on-venezuela
Decades of underfunding have left Britain’s military even weaker than it looks: the full commitment it could make to directly fighting in Ukraine would be 7,500 well-equipped men and a suboptimal number of tanks. An identical brigade would be held in reserve, and the two would rotate into theater every six months.
For comparison, Ukraine has at least 300,000 men fighting on its frontlines or directly supporting those units in the field.
The Royal Navy is also less able to protect power to the Falkland Islands than it was in 1982.
https://www.economist.com/britain/2026/01/13/six-months-after-a-big-review-british-defence-is-still-in-trouble
‘Naval experts and insiders debate vigorously over the right balance between large, crewed vessels and small, uncrewed ones. Critics argue that the latter are too small, short-ranged and poorly armed to make a difference in the most demanding scenarios, such as a war over Taiwan. But Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute, a think-tank, argues that wargames and models show that there is a sweet spot: uncrewed ships with 16 to 32 missiles. Any less armament and a drone ship cannot do enough damage to a well-defended target on its own. Any more and the ship becomes too big and easy to detect, and struggles to let loose its weapons before being hit. Within that range, he says, robotic and autonomous ships could indeed “slow and disrupt a Chinese invasion”.’
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2026/01/15/a-naval-strategy-that-needs-rethinking
After the cancellation of the Constellation-class frigate, the U.S. Navy has elected to use an upgraded version of a Coast Guard frigate design. The lack of vertical launch missile launchers is its biggest downside.
https://youtu.be/9cV7Cznpvho?si=CGwv1lonzf4umXqv
‘Last New F/A-18 Aft Fuselages Built As Super Hornet Production End Approaches’
https://www.twz.com/air/last-new-f-a-18-aft-fuselages-built-as-super-hornet-production-end-approaches
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a Derringer handgun with built-in silencers.
https://youtu.be/1HPORxMmqUs?si=RIBMxWvnEFA_GIOU
This is excellent lecture on how guns are manufactured.
https://youtu.be/_9LJ6RPoX3g?si=eO9CkIEO_EpF6Pi_
Peter Zeihan is a bad futurist. Four years ago, he predicted that by now, the U.S. would be so disengaged from the world that it would only have four allies left: Britain, Japan, Singapore, Australia.
https://youtu.be/xD-pj6i4b8A?si=9aftU2iGRDi8HSyw&t=867
Atlantis is a 2019 Ukrainian science fiction movie set in 2025, right after the end of another war between Ukraine and Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis_(2019_film)
This website lets you overlay Meta’s planned “Hyperion” data center over different American cities so you can appreciate how gigantic it will be.
https://sherwood.news/tech/see-for-yourself-just-how-massive-metas-hyperion-data-center-is/
Claims that an LLM cracked an unsolved Erdos math problem spread quickly before being debunked.
https://x.com/ns123abc/status/2013030876683145417
Some top AI companies are now using recursive self-improvement to develop better models. Note the report’s careful refusal to use that term given its connotations.
https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/when-ai-builds-ai/
Here’s proof of AI having a major impact in the computer coding field: visitors to the Stack Overflow website have sharply declined.
https://ppc.land/stack-overflow-traffic-collapses-as-ai-tools-reshape-how-developers-code/
OpenAI has yet to turn a profit and is surviving off of investor faith and huge loans. The company’s fortunes could take a huge hit this year. Google’s AI products are catching up, and the company has much deeper pockets.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/12/30/openais-cash-burn-will-be-one-of-the-big-bubble-questions-of-2026
‘The probable result is that OpenAI will be absorbed by Microsoft, Amazon or another cash-rich behemoth [within the next 18 months]. OpenAI’s investors would take a hit. Chipmakers and data center builders that signed deals with Mr. Altman would scramble for new customers. Social media pundits would report every detail, and frazzled investors may dump the whole A.I. sector. But an OpenAI failure wouldn’t be an indictment of A.I. It would be merely the end of the most hype-driven builder of it.’
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/opinion/openai-ai-bubble-financing.html
‘The $100 Billion Megadeal Between OpenAI and Nvidia Is on Ice’
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-100-billion-megadeal-between-openai-and-nvidia-is-on-ice-aa3025e3?mod=mhp
Among the “Magnificent Seven” top tech stocks, only two are still performing well.
https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/mag-7-stocks-ai-trade-766bf561
This is a fancy essay that mostly centers around a simple point: once intelligent machines and cheap robots exist, all humans will lose their jobs and only the richest humans who already own factories, data centers, and power plants will still make money. To keep the 0.01% of humans from gradually accumulating all the wealth in the economy, the government will have to use taxes and other laws to redistribute their money to the 99.99%.
https://philiptrammell.substack.com/p/capital-in-the-22nd-century
Let’s say you make a “digital clone” of yourself–an intelligent machine that has your personality profile. Off the bat, it will be better than you since it won’t need to sleep or eat. Of course, you’ll naturally want to make tweaks to it, like having it be more patient than you or not having a mental illness you have. In that respect, it gets still better. Maybe you think of it as “the best of you.”
And if you use the clone to work on your behalf and make money for yourself, you’ll feel pressure to make more improvements to it that bolster its productivity, like giving it a higher IQ, perfect memory, and a friendlier attitude. One logical step at a time, you will make your digital “clone” into a being that only slightly resembles you, and everyone else does the same to their “clones.” The result is convergence across many domains.
https://futuristspeaker.com/artificial-intelligence/digital-clones-the-coming-transformation-that-will-remake-human-identity-by-2035/
ChatGPT says the predictions in the famous essay “AI 2027” have been mostly accurate so far. Where there are errors, they result from slight overoptimism. It’s noteworthy that one of the essay’s authors recently said he stood by the predictions, but thought they would take 1 – 2 years longer to come true.
https://chatgpt.com/share/696d48ac-c0a8-8000-ba72-ac36456ddea6
Elon Musk faced furious controversy after users of X started using the inbuilt Grok AI to undress photos of people (mostly women) and repost the results. After a few days, he restricted access to that feature. This brings a prediction of mine one step closer to reality: ‘“[By 2030] Deepfake” pornography will reach new levels of sophistication and perversion as it becomes possible to seamlessly graft the heads of real people onto still photos and videos of nude bodies that closely match the physiques of the actual people. New technology for doing this will let amateurs make high-quality deepfakes, meaning any person could be targeted.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-15448997/Musk-Grok-chatbot-restricts-image-generation.html
A few years ago, I predicted that humanoid robots “will be able to move their bodies in unnatural ways.” Hyundai’s new Atlas robot does so.
https://youtu.be/wR2JG_vMXHA?si=QqPY3pLNEa08fQvb
https://youtu.be/9e0SQn9uUlw?si=yB1lFccvJ7ruGnEl
‘Unitree H2 humanoid robot’s daily training: soaring kicks and mid-air spins’
https://youtu.be/IOEfVuV2chM?si=xlVtm9FZdMpGKe8V
The Unitree G1 has human-like agility and balance.
https://youtube.com/shorts/jIzrHJD9boA?si=2ESmnoX-Sp-qhq8t
‘Using a mocap suit to kick yourself in the balls with a robot is a great metaphor to close out 2025.’
https://youtu.be/v4tKGq_B6-w?si=YDjYAhfl3WGv-Agx
‘Elon Musk says Tesla will stop producing its S and X models as it shifts to making robots’
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/elon-musk-says-tesla-will-stop-producing-s-x-models-shifts-making-robo-rcna256409
A Chinese company now sells the most electric cars globally. Musk’s alliance with Trump was disastrous.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/tesla-loses-title-worlds-biggest-ev-maker-sales-fall-rcna251932
These predictions about Trump’s second term are eerily accurate so far.
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/11/07/donald-trumps-victory-was-resounding-his-second-term-will-be-too
Fourteen out of 15 (!) of these predictions for 2025 failed to happen. The only one that came true was Trump helping to bring peace to Syria, Gaza, and Lebanon.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/03/15-unpredictable-scenarios-for-2025-00196309
‘California completely drought-free for 1st time in 25 years after winter storms’
https://abc7.com/post/california-has-zero-areas-dryness-first-time-25-years-following-winter-storms/18374526/
‘Landscape beneath Antarctica’s icy surface revealed in unprecedented detail’
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9qpx2qqeq7o
It’s common for dead trees in the taiga to fall over into rivers in Alaska, Canada and Russia and to be swept into the Arctic Ocean, where they sink to the seafloor and take thousands of years (maybe tens of thousands) to decompose. To fight global warming, this scientist proposes that the countries accelerate the process by deliberately cutting down trees in those areas and dumping them into the rivers. (I thought of something like this in 2013)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44168-025-00327-1
Consumption of seed oils could be driving the obesity epidemic.
https://x.com/trikomes/status/2001831574904684597
RFK Jr. has failed to fulfill his promise to turbocharge approvals of psychedelic drugs for as medical treatments.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/28/rfk-psychedelics-medicine-veterans-mdma-ptsd-00750414
‘A person’s lifespan may be up to 55% heritable, according to new research.’
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/longevity-genetics-play-large-role-lifespan-study-rcna256502
“Within two decades, we will have a detailed understanding of how all the regions of the human brain work.”
–Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near (2005)