LONDON — Prime Minister Keir Starmer usually goes out of his way not to annoy Donald Trump. So he better hope the windmill-hating U.S. president doesn’t notice what the U.K. just did. In a fillip for the global offshore wind industry, Starmer’s government on Wednesday announced its biggest-ever down payment on the technology. It agreed to price guarantees, funded by billpayers to the tune of up to £1.8 billion (€2.08 billion) a year, for eight major projects in England, Scotland and Wales. The schemes have the capacity to generate 8.4 gigawatts of electricity, the U.K. energy department said — enough to power 12 million homes. It represented the biggest “wind auction in Europe to date,” said industry group WindEurope. It’s also an energy strategy that could have been tailor-made to rankle Trump. The U.S. president has repeatedly expressed a profound loathing for wind turbines and has tried to use his powers to halt construction on projects already underway in the U.S. — sending shockwaves across the global industry. Even when appearing alongside Starmer at press conferences, Trump has been unable to hide his disgust at the very sight of windmills. “You are paying in Scotland and in the U.K. … to have these ugly monsters all over the place,” he said, sitting next to Starmer during a visit to his Turnberry golf course last year. The spinning blades, Trump complained, would “kill all your birds.” At the time, the prime minister explained meekly that the U.K. was seeking a “mix” of energy sources. But this week’s investments speak far louder about his government’s priorities. The U.K.’s strategy — part of a plan to run the British power grid on 95 percent clean electricity by 2030 — is a clear signal that for all Starmer’s attempts to appease Trump, the U.K. will not heed Washington’s assertions that fossil fuels are the only way to deliver affordable bills and secure supply. “With these results, Britain is taking back control of our energy sovereignty,” said Starmer’s Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, a former leader of the Labour party. “With these results, Britain is taking back control of our energy sovereignty,” said Energy Secretary Ed Miliband. | Pool photo by Justin Tallis via Getty Images While not mentioning Trump or the U.S., he said the U.K. wanted to “stand on our two feet” and not depend on “markets controlled by petrostates and dictators.” WIND VS. GAS The goal of the U.K.’s offshore wind drive is to reduce reliance on gas for electricity generation. One of the most gas-dependent countries in Europe, the U.K. was hit hard in 2022 by the regional gas price spike that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The government ended up spending tens of billions of pounds to pay a portion of every household energy bill in the country to fend off widespread hardship. It’s a scenario that Miliband and Starmer want to avoid in future by focusing on producing electricity from domestic sources like offshore wind that are not subject to the ups and downs of global fossil fuel markets. Trump, by contrast, wants to keep Europe hooked on gas — specifically, American gas. The U.S. National Security Strategy, updated late last year, states Trump’s desire to use American fossil fuel exports to “project power.” Trump has already strong-armed the European Union into committing to buy $750 billion worth of American liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a quid pro quo for tariff relief. No one in Starmer’s government explicitly named Trump or the U.S. on Wednesday. But Chris Stark, a senior official in Miliband’s energy department tasked with delivering the 2030 goal, noted that “every megawatt of offshore wind that we’re bringing on is a few more metric tons of LNG that we don’t need to import.” The U.K.’s investment in offshore wind also provides welcome relief to a global industry that has been seriously shaken both by soaring inflation and interest rates — and more recently by a Trump-inspired backlash against net zero and clean energy. “It’s a relief for the offshore sector … It’s a relief generally, that the U.K. government is able to lean into very large positive investment stories in U.K. infrastructure,” said Tom Glover, U.K. country chair of the German energy firm RWE, which was the biggest winner in the latest offshore wind investment, securing contracts for 6.9 gigawatts of capacity. A second energy industry figure, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record, said the U.K.’s plans were a “great signal for the global offshore wind sector” after a difficult few years — “not least the stuff in the U.S.” The other big winner was British firm SSE, which has plans to build one of the world’s largest-ever offshore wind projects, Berwick Bank — off the coast of Donald Trump’s beloved Scotland.

The head of the U.S. oil industry’s top lobbying group said Tuesday that American producers are prepared to be a “stabilizing force” in Iran if the regime there falls — even as they remain skeptical about returning to Venezuela after the capture of leader Nicolás Maduro. “This is good news for the Iranian people — they’re taking freedom into their own hands,” American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers said of the mass protests that have embroiled Iran in recent days. President Donald Trump is said to be weighing his options for potential actions against the Iranian government in response to its violent crackdown on the protests. “Our industry is committed to being a stabilizing force in Iran if they decide to overturn the regime,” Sommers told reporters following API’s annual State of American Energy event in Washington. “It’s an important oil play in the world, about the sixth-largest producer now — they could absolutely do more,” he said of the country. Iran’s oil industry, despite being ravaged by years of U.S. sanctions, is still considered to be structurally sound, unlike that of Venezuela’s. In order for companies to return to Venezuela, on the other hand, they will need long-term investment certainty, operational security and rule of law — all of which will take significant time, Sommers said. “If they get those three big things right, I think there will be investment going to Venezuela,” he said. Background: Experts who spoke earlier from the stage at API’s event also underscored the differences between Iran and Venezuela, whose oil infrastructure has deteriorated under years of neglect from the socialist regime. “Iran was able to add production under the weight of the most aggressive sanctions the U.S. could possibly deploy,” said Kevin Book, managing director at the energy research firm ClearView Energy Partners. “Imagine what they could do with Western engineering.” Bob McNally, a former national security and energy adviser to President George W. Bush who now leads the energy and geopolitics consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group, said the prospects for growing Iran’s oil production are “completely different” from Venezuela’s. “You can imagine our industry going back there — we would get a lot more oil, a lot sooner than we will out of Venezuela,” McNally said. “That’s more conventional oil right near infrastructure, and gas as well.” No equity stakes: Sommers told reporters that API would oppose any efforts by the Trump administration to take a stake in oil companies that invest in Venezuela. The administration has taken direct equity stakes in a range of U.S. companies in a bid to boost the growth of sectors it sees as a geopolitical priority, such as semiconductor manufacturing and critical minerals. “We would be opposed to the United States government taking a stake in any American oil and gas companies, period,” Sommers said. “We’d have to know a little bit more about what the administration is proposing in terms of stake in [Venezuelan state-owned oil company] PdVSA, but we’re not for the nationalization of oil companies or for there to be a national oil company in the United States.”

BRUSSELS — On Greenland’s southern tip, surrounded by snowy peaks and deep fjords, lies Kvanefjeld — a mining project that shows the giant, barren island is more than just a coveted military base. Beneath the icy ground sits a major deposit of neodymium and praseodymium, rare earth elements used to make magnets that are essential to build wind turbines, electric vehicles and high-tech military equipment. If developed, Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of Denmark, would become the first European territory to produce these key strategic metals. Energy Transition Minerals, an Australia-based, China-backed mining company, is ready to break ground. But neither Copenhagen, Brussels nor the Greenlandic government have mobilized their state power to make the project happen. In 2009, Denmark handed Greenland’s inhabitants control of their natural resources; 12 years later the Greenlandic government blocked the mine because the rare earths are mixed with radioactive uranium. Since then the project has been in limbo, bogged down in legal disputes. “Kvanefjeld illustrates how political and regulatory uncertainty — combined with geopolitics and high capital requirements — makes even strategically important projects hard to move from potential to production,” Jeppe Kofod, Denmark’s former foreign minister and now a strategic adviser to Energy Transition Minerals, told POLITICO. Kvanefjeld’s woes are emblematic of Greenland’s broader problems. Despite having enough of some rare earth elements to supply as much as 25 percent of the world’s needs — not to mention oil and gas reserves nearly as great as those of the United States, and lots of other potential clean energy metals including copper, graphite and nickel — these resources are almost entirely undeveloped. Just two small mines, extracting gold and a niche mineral called feldspar used in glassmaking and ceramics, are up and running in Greenland. And until very recently, neither Denmark nor the European Union showed much interest in changing the situation. But that was before 2023, when the EU signed a memorandum of understanding with the Greenland government to cooperate on mining projects. The EU Critical Raw Materials Act, proposed the same year, is an attempt to catch up by building new mines both in and out of the bloc that singles out Greenland’s potential. Last month, the European Commission committed to contribute financing to Greenland’s Malmbjerg molybdenum mine in a bid to shore up a supply of the metal for the EU’s defense sector.  But with United States President Donald Trump threatening to take Greenland by force, and less likely to offer the island’s inhabitants veto power over mining projects, Europe may be too late to the party. “The EU has for many years had a limited strategic engagement in Greenland’s critical raw materials, meaning that Europe today risks having arrived late, just as the United States and China have intensified their interest,” Kofod said. In a world shaped by Trump’s increasingly belligerent foreign policy and China’s hyperactive development of clean technology and mineral supply chains, Europe’s neglect of Greenland’s natural wealth is looking increasingly like a strategic blunder. With Donald Trump threatening to take Greenland by force, and less likely to offer the island’s inhabitants veto power over mining projects, Europe may be too late to the party. | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images A HOSTILE LAND That’s not to say building mines in Greenland, with its mile-deep permanent ice sheet, would be easy. “Of all the places in the world where you could extract critical raw materials, [Greenland] is very remote and not very easily accessible,” said Ditte Brasso Sørensen, senior analyst on EU climate and industrial policy at Think Tank Europa, pointing to the territory’s “very difficult environmental circumstances.”  The tiny population — fewer than 60,000 — and a lack of infrastructure also make it hard to build mines. “This is a logistical question,” said Eldur Olafsson, CEO of Amaroq, a gold mining company running one of the two operating mines in Greenland and also exploring rare earths and copper extraction opportunities. “How do you build mines? Obviously, with capital, equipment, but also people. [And] you need to build the whole infrastructure around those people because they cannot only be Greenlandic,” he said.  Greenland also has strict environmental policies — including a landmark 2021 uranium mining ban — which restrict resource extraction because of its impact on nature and the environment. The current government, voted in last year, has not shown any signs of changing its stance on the uranium ban, according to Per Kalvig, professor emeritus at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, a Danish government research organization. Uranium is routinely found with rare earths, meaning the ban could frustrate Greenland’s huge potential as a rare earths producer. It’s a similar story with fossil fuels. Despite a 2007 U.S. assessment that the equivalent of over 30 billion barrels in oil and natural gas lies beneath the surface of Greenland and its territorial waters — almost equal to U.S. reserves — 30 years of oil exploration efforts by a group including Chevron, Italy’s ENI and Shell came to nothing. In 2021 the then-leftist government in Greenland banned further oil exploration on environmental grounds.  Danish geologist Flemming Christiansen, who was deputy director of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland until 2020, said the failure had nothing to do with Greenland’s actual potential as an oil producer. Instead, he said, a collapse in oil prices in 2014 along with the high cost of drilling in the Arctic made the venture unprofitable. Popular opposition only complicated matters, he said. THE CLIMATE CHANGE EFFECT From the skies above Greenland Christiansen sees firsthand the dramatic effects of climate change: stretches of clear water as rising temperatures thaw the ice sheets that for centuries have made exploring the territory a cold, costly and hazardous business. “If I fly over the waters in west Greenland I can see the changes,” he said. “There’s open water for much longer periods in west Greenland, in Baffin Bay and in east Greenland.” Climate change is opening up this frozen land. Climate change is opening up this frozen land. | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images Greenland contains the largest body of ice outside Antarctica, but that ice is melting at an alarming rate. One recent study suggests the ice sheet could cease to exist by the end of the century, raising sea levels by as much as seven meters. Losing a permanent ice cap that is several hundred meters deep, though, “gradually improves the business case of resource extraction, both for … fossil fuels and also critical raw materials,” said Jakob Dreyer, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen.   But exploiting Greenland’s resources doesn’t hinge on catastrophic levels of global warming. Even without advanced climate change, Kalvig, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, argues Greenland’s coast doesn’t differ much from that of Norway, where oil has been found and numerous excavation projects operate.     “You can’t penetrate quite as far inland as you can [in Norway], but once access is established, many places are navigable year-round,” Kalvig said. “So, in that sense, it’s not more difficult to operate mines in Greenland than it is in many parts of Norway, Canada or elsewhere — or Russia for that matter. And this has been done before, in years when conditions allowed.”    A European Commission spokesperson said the EU was now working with Greenland’s government to develop its resources, adding that Greenland’s “democratically elected authorities have long favored partnerships with the EU to develop projects beneficial to both sides.” But the spokesperson stressed: “The fate of Greenland’s raw mineral resources is up to the Greenlandic people and their representatives.” The U.S. may be less magnanimous. Washington’s recent military operation in Venezuela showed that Trump is serious about building an empire on natural resources, and is prepared to use force and break international norms in pursuit of that goal. Greenland, with its vast oil and rare earths deposits, may fit neatly into his vision. Where the Greenlandic people fit in is less clear.

T ra i miei messaggi privati, in una chat che condivido con una persona a me cara, circola ormai una nutrita rappresentanza di video frutto dell’intelligenza artificiale (IA). Clip interamente generate da algoritmi, oppure collezioni ibride di vario genere, che mescolano immagini sintetiche e riprese autentiche. Eppure, a prescindere da quanto siano sofisticati o realistici, nessuno di quei video riesce a suscitare in me una qualche reazione: non credo a ciò che vedo. Fare un ritratto esaustivo del fenomeno dei video generati, sembra un’impresa disperata. Le macchine intelligenti sono ovunque: scuola, lavoro, casa; hanno soppiantato i vecchi motori di ricerca, scrivono messaggi per chat romantiche, compilano liste della spesa; appaiono inevitabili. La fenomenologia dei video generati, in particolare, è investita da una mutazione rapidissima, un’estensione inarrestabile: feed automatizzati, nastri trasportatori di clip il cui unico scopo è gonfiare il traffico di visualizzazioni e interazioni. A guardare i social media, si ha l’impressione di stare scivolando da un livello di simulazione a un altro più profondo. Dopo tre anni di entusiasmo, disorientamento e ambivalenza, uno degli effetti culturali riconoscibili dell’IA è esattamente questo: le persone hanno la sensazione di essere in balia di qualcosa che sfugge senza controllo, come se proprio la realtà stesse deragliando da sotto i piedi. Come ogni tecnologia, i video generati da IA hanno attraversato una loro prima fase embrionale, ma brevissima, durata forse appena un paio d’anni. I risultati iniziali delle applicazioni text-to-video ‒ ovvero clip creati a partire da brevi descrizioni testuali ‒ erano spesso stranianti, bizzarri, allucinati e barocchi. Anche i prodotti più accurati trasmettevano un certo profondo senso di inquietudine digitale. In breve tempo, avevamo imparato a decifrarne la grammatica visiva, fino a normalizzarla. Alcuni utenti ne riproducevano le anomalie dinamiche, impersonandole in forma di meme: braccia che si moltiplicano da sotto una maglietta, piatti di pasta che spuntano sul finale di una rissa, improvvisi rallentamenti, espressioni facciali grottesche, arti deformi, sguardi abbacinati, dinamiche emotive incongruenti e ubriache. Il potenziale dei modelli futuri era già evidente, ma la produzione di video da parte degli utenti restava per lo più motivo di burla e sperimentazione estetica. > Il grado di fedeltà raggiunto dalle IA è impressionante. Sempre più gli indizi > a nostra disposizione, i segnali rivelatori rimasti, sono briciole: piccole > incongruenze, dettagli che appartengono all’osservazione di dinamiche fisiche > complesse non immediatamente evidenti. Oggi, senza che quasi si abbia avuto il tempo di registrarne l’evoluzione, il grado di fedeltà raggiunto dalle IA è impressionante. Sempre più gli indizi a nostra disposizione, i segnali rivelatori rimasti, sono briciole: piccole incongruenze, dettagli che appartengono all’osservazione di dinamiche fisiche complesse non immediatamente evidenti. Video familiari, agenti atmosferici bizzarri, assurdi incidenti stradali, influencer e guru del web, e ovviamente video di animali: cacatua che ballano, orsi, agnelli, maiali e procioni che saltano sui trampolini; cani che salvano umani da pericoli incombenti, gatti che impastano la massa lievitata del pane: una categoria di video dal ricercato mimetismo domestico, che inscenano una quotidianità tenera, buffa, rassicurante. Rispetto ad altre produzioni IA ‒ come quelle utilizzate per gli spot natalizi di aziende quali Coca-Cola e McDonald’s, che aprono importanti questioni politiche sul lavoro creativo ‒ in questa fattispecie di video non v’è alcuna aspirazione: solo presentismo, nessun altrove, nessuna frontiera, solo noi che ci parliamo addosso. Proprio questa estetica piatta, priva di profondità e conflitto, si rivela preziosa per oligarchi e governi autoritari: non un difetto da correggere o interpretare, ma una caratteristica anestetica sfruttata nella propaganda, perché abitua lo sguardo a consumare immagini senza posizionarsi o porsi domande. Simulazioni. Pseudoeventi. Narrazioni Una prima analisi dell’oggetto text-to-video non può prescindere dalla rilettura di Jean Baudrillard e la sua riflessione sui simulacri. Il filosofo descrive un regime visivo “democratizzato” in cui immagini vere e false posseggono la stessa dignità. Nel suo libro America (1986), racconta una visita al museo delle cere di Buena Park, in California, dove vede esposte fianco a fianco le repliche di Maria Antonietta e di Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie. Le statue ricevono identico trattamento: cura nei dettagli, realismo espressivo, attenzione scenografica. Le due figure sembrano appartenere allo stesso registro ontologico, quello dei personaggi storici. Nel museo, osserva Baudrillard, accuratezza e realtà storica vengono trattate con atteggiamento casuale, e le questioni dell’aderenza al reale o dell’autenticità non sono prese in considerazione. Applicando queste osservazioni alle macchine algoritmiche dei nostri giorni, dove immagini reali e sintetiche si susseguono indistinguibili e inseparabili, appare evidente come ci si trovi ora nell’ultima fase dell’evoluzione iconica: la simulazione pura ‒ direbbe Baudrillard ‒ dove ogni nuova immagine replica altre immagini, che a loro volta riferiscono ad altre ancora. Visioni che si pongono come completamente autonome dalla realtà, pur rappresentandola. Le IA generative hanno esasperato questa abilità con una potenza esponenziale, rimescolando liberamente database di miliardi di dati visivi per reiterarne altri identici. È il simulacro perfetto. > Se da anni ripetiamo che “i social non sono la realtà”, perché mai ora > dovremmo scandalizzarci all’idea di interagire apertamente con contenuti > artificiali? La velocità sequenziale nella stimolazione visuale, lo scroll, non consente costitutivamente la distinzione critica del vero dal falso. Esporsi a questo carosello senza confini e linee di separazione, vuol dire “perdere la coscienza storica del mondo”: nelle repliche delle repliche, in cui ognuna possiede identico valore e statuto, il rischio è di smarrire la traccia di quanto realmente accaduto ‒ o  sta ancora accadendo. Scorrendo i commenti che migliaia di utenti lasciano sotto questi video, si nota come a una parte della popolazione preoccupata dall’incapacità di riconoscere i video generati con IA, risponde un pubblico altrettanto numeroso che invece non si pone nemmeno la questione. Non ne ha gli strumenti, oppure crede che distinguere il vero dal falso sarà via via meno rilevante. Da cosa nasce questa adesione immediata ai video generati nell’ecosistema digitale? Molto prima dell’avvento delle IA sapevamo che qualsiasi cosa circolasse online ‒ tra sketch, scenette, trovate marketing, filtri ‒ non era autentica. Se da anni ripetiamo che “i social non sono la realtà”, perché mai ora dovremmo scandalizzarci all’idea di interagire apertamente con contenuti artificiali? La nostra fruizione è divenuta, in certo senso, disincarnata: non ci interessa più che dall’altra parte del video ci sia o meno un corpo reale, una prossimità, un conflitto, un affaccendamento davvero umano o animale. Cosa conta dunque? Nello studio “How do users perceive AI? A dual-process perspective on enhancement and replacement” i ricercatori hanno indagato il valore percepito dell’intelligenza artificiale nelle interazioni uomo-macchina. Gli utenti percepiscono l’IA attraverso due processi cognitivi distinti: uno più immediato/affettivo (sistema 1), l’altro riflessivo (sistema 2). I risultati mostrano come la percezione immediata (sistema 1) prevale nella fruizione sociale. Possiamo applicare questa analisi anche alla ricezione dei video: non passiamo quasi mai al sistema 2 dell’analisi, quello che si chiede “è vero? è reale?”, ma restiamo nel sistema 1, la risposta veloce, emotiva, automatica. Inondati dai video generati, la soglia critica si riduce, ciò che importa è l’effetto: “mi fa ridere”, “provoca tenerezza”, “mi turba”. Una postura volutamente naive, ma destinata a diventare quella prevalente nella fruizione dei social media: effetti tangibili di emozione e risposta. Conta ciò che sento, non ciò che è. Il reale si riduce a un’interfaccia adattativa. > L’origine dei video non è più una condizione per stabilirne la veridicità: > accettiamo contenuti falsi perché riconosciamo in essi qualcosa che crediamo > già appartenere alle cose del mondo. In parte, questa dinamica ricorda il lavoro di Gregory Currie in The Nature of Fiction (1990), il quale a proposito della finzione dice che le nostre emozioni si mobilitano anche per eventi che sappiamo non essere mai accaduti, perché li trattiamo come “veri nella storia”, all’interno di uno spazio di simulazione. Nel nostro caso, però, non chiediamo più chi sia l’autore, e il “fictional author” ‒ quel soggetto, dice Currie, che costruiamo mentalmente come autore implicito al momento della lettura, un soggetto che sta “dietro” al testo, con le sue intenzioni, un certo carattere, sensibilità, visione ‒ si frantuma tra utenti, piattaforme, algoritmi e sistemi di prompt automatici. C’è una realtà che emerge dall’apparenza. La teleogenesi dei video ‒ la loro origine ‒ non è più un a priori, una condizione per stabilirne la veridicità: accettiamo contenuti falsi perché riconosciamo in essi qualcosa che crediamo già appartenere alle cose del mondo. Il messaggio dunque, non il messaggero: il problema non è più “chi parla” o “come è stato prodotto”, ma se ciò che vediamo conferma ciò che conosciamo. La forma non dissolve il contenuto, lo rende solo più in sintonia con le nostre aspettative. I video generati servono proprio a continuare a mostrarci ciò che siamo pronti a vedere. Gag costruite, finte candid camera, immagini riprodotte da telecamere a circuito chiuso, interviste falsificate con deepfake tra politici e celebrità, sono contenuti che richiamano quella categoria che Daniel J. Boorstin definiva come “pseudoeventi”, già nel 1961, in The Image: A Guide to Pseudo Events in America. Eventi non veri o falsi stricto sensu, ma scritti, pianificati, orchestrati o provocati, per avvenire in un preciso momento e luogo, generalmente con l’intento di esaltarne sensazionalismo e drammaticità o, come diremmo oggi, per favorire il click-baiting. Secondo la definizione di Boorstin, gli pseudoeventi non si oppongono ai fatti reali, ma agli eventi spontanei, e proprio queste loro caratteristiche hanno reso sempre più labile la distinzione tra eventi reali e falsi nel panorama mediatico. L’assuefazione alla proliferazione degli pseudoeventi ha fatto sì che tutte le narrazioni vengano recepite come tali. Allo stesso modo, nella proliferazione dei video IA, la ricerca dell’effetto estetico ideale diventa un atto manipolatorio: il valore della testimonianza, nel regime dei video sintetici, perde del tutto la sua efficacia, e la realtà viene letta come cinema ‒ o respinta come una messinscena, anche quando autentica (un caso evidente è stato quanto accaduto con l’omicidio di Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota). La narrazione non si limita a descrivere il mondo ma agisce su di esso. Le tecniche con cui una storia viene raccontata ‒ e oggi promossa, amplificata, mercificata ‒ hanno da sempre la capacità di riscrivere la realtà. Bruce Chatwin ha letterariamente inventato l’identità della sua Patagonia ne In Patagonia (1977), eppure quel racconto è diventato geopoiesi, immaginario condiviso. Chatwin ricorre a un collage di aneddoti, personaggi, leggende e folklore, che mescola realtà e finzione per servire un intento narrativo. Gli esempi in tal senso abbondano: dal turismo che ha riconfigurato le location scelte per la serie Game of Thrones, all’iconografia del manga One Piece di Eiichiro Oda usata come simbolo delle proteste in Nepal, fino alla grande parata del Giorno dei morti a Città del Messico ‒ inesistente prima che fosse immaginata per il film Spectre (2015) di Sam Mendes, e ora istituzionalizzata. La fiction modella l’esperienza. Così fanno i video generati, che forniscono coordinate emotive e culturali. Gli animali IA che saltano sui tappeti elastici plasmano la nostra percezione del possibile, forgiano le nostre aspettative ‒ “perché il mio corgi non usa il mattarello come in quel video?”. La realtà è un effetto narrativo. > È la realtà stessa a non essere più sicura per noi. Per intrattenerci, basterà > che tutto sia “verosimile”: qualcosa che potrebbe essere successo, o che > potrebbe accadere di lì a poco. Tutto sembra dirci che le IA, in fin dei conti, non sono più strane del mondo stesso, o delle creature che lo abitano. Ci arrenderemo perché tutto è ingovernabile. È la realtà stessa a non essere più sicura per noi. Per intrattenerci, basterà che tutto sia “verosimile”: qualcosa che potrebbe essere successo, o che potrebbe accadere di lì a poco. Una questione di verosimiglianza Jakob Süskind, nell’articolo “Verisimilitude or Probability? The history and analysis of a recurring conflation” (2025) esplora il concetto di verisimilitude, ossia “vicinanza alla verità” o “verosimiglianza” dal punto di vista della filosofia della scienza, e sottolinea come alcune teorie, pur false, risultino più verosimili di altre. In quest’ottica, anche un video generato può essere al contempo “meno vero” ma “più verosimile”: può sembrare più vicino alla nostra verità di quanto lo fosse la realtà precedente. Il problema, naturalmente, è che il “verosimile” si fonda su prompt che riflettono la nostra visione del mondo ‒ limitata, parziale, viziata dai nostri bias e caricata delle nostre attese. Secondo la filosofia dell’informazione di Luciano Floridi, la distinzione vero/falso sfuma o viene superata quando subentra l’effetto informativo. Non conta più la corrispondenza con un mondo esterno, quanto la relazione informativa che il soggetto instaura con il contenuto: qualcosa è “verosimile” se è integrato nel flusso informativo che abitiamo. La soglia della verità ontica viene trascesa, il criterio diviene: “mi informa, mi coinvolge, produce effetto”. Il video IA non deve essere “vero”: deve solo funzionare ‒ informare ‒ come se lo fosse. Anche Mario Perniola si è confrontato nei suoi lavori con estetica, media, soggettività tecnologica e simulacro, ma in un’accezione diversa da quella di Baudrillard. Perniola intendeva il simulacro come una forma ludica dell’espressione culturale e artistica, che eccede ‒ o non appartiene ‒ alla dicotomia vero/falso. In questa chiave, il video IA è un simulacro non in quanto imitazione del reale, ma perché obbedisce a una propria logica di esistenza estetica, che è tutta fondata sul “come se” appunto: la coerenza con i nostri immaginari e schemi percettivi. In E: La congiunzione (2021), Franco Berardi “Bifo” scrive che il governo di queste tecnologie è in mano alle “corporation dell’imagineering”, le quali “hanno scavato le trincee immateriali del tecno-schiavismo e del conformismo di massa.” Il semiocapitalismo riconfigura la relazione tra estetica ed economia: l’accumulazione finanziaria oggi coincide con l’accumulazione estetica digitale, con l’intrattenimento. La penetrazione capitalista nell’inconscio collettivo avviene attraverso la saturazione degli spazi di immaginazione, con una “produzione illimitata di realtà visibile”: rendere visibile tutto ciò che si può immaginare. Sospinta dalle multinazionali globali – Meta, TikTok, Google con YouTube, Sora2 di OpenAI, e altre – la stratificazione algoritmica produce un ambiente visivo che appare reale per frequenza e familiarità. In quel suo “funzionare” il sistema costruisce un mondo percettivo riconosciuto come legittimo. Un flusso ininterrotto di filmati che genera simulazioni infinite, alimentando un ambiente semiosferico ‒ cioè uno spazio saturo di segni e riferimenti che forma la nostra percezione condivisa ‒ in grado di colonizzare l’intero immaginario globale. > Nei video generati, ciò che cambia non è tanto il contenuto, quanto il modo in > cui lo guardiamo – o da cui siamo guardati. La simulazione non è “più reale del reale stesso”, come direbbe Baudrillard, ma ‒ almeno nella cultura fondamentalmente visuale dell’Occidente ‒ l’IA risulta reale tanto quanto la realtà irreale nella quale viviamo. In questa superfetazione simbolica gli algoritmi generativi saturano la realtà di simboli, interpretazioni, significati, immagini e dati, facendola sparire dietro a una foresta di copie e rappresentazioni. Un nuovo processo di accumulo mediale e tecnologico si innesta senza fine sui precedenti, prima che si abbia avuto il tempo di assimilarli. “Sembra IA”. La svolta percettiva I video generati da IA rappresentano l’emersione di un nuovo paradigma di simulazione che ha invaso il nostro campo percettivo. Già Marshall McLuhan parlava dei media come estensioni del nervo sensoriale umano, mentre per Bifo, l’infosfera agisce direttamente sul sistema nervoso della società, non si limita più ad ampliare i nostri sensi, modifica ciò che siamo abituati a sentire e a riconoscere in una “natura post-naturale del sensorio”: un sistema percettivo rieducato dai flussi digitali e automazioni inorganiche, più che dal mondo materiale. Questo scenario impone di ripensare il concetto di “post-verità” estendendolo alla sfera estetico-percettiva. In L’occhio della macchina (2018), Simone Arcagni esplora la tecnologia dell’informazione come dispositivo di visione e percezione: l’occhio della macchina media lo sguardo umano secondo meccanismi tecnico‑algoritmici, trasformando la nostra soggettività visiva e rendendoci partecipi di una percezione ibrida, uomo‑macchina. Nei video generati, ciò che cambia non è tanto il contenuto, quanto il modo in cui lo guardiamo – o da cui siamo guardati. Non è la prima volta che ci troviamo di fronte a un punto di svolta percettivo innescato dalla tecnologia dell’immagine. Nel 1994 e nel 1995, Lev Manovich identificava l’emergere del “realismo sintetico” come una cesura fondamentale, citando Jurassic Park (1993) di Steven Spielberg tra i momenti cruciali della transizione dal cinema fotografico al cinema digitale. La settima arte cambiava identità: “Oggi, nell’era dei media informatici, [filmare la realtà fisica] è solo una delle possibilità” annotava Manovich. Il cinema diventava un sottoinsieme dell’animazione, un suo caso particolare, e la CGI non imitava più la realtà, ma la riscriveva, inaugurando una nuova condizione visiva. Poco dopo, Stephen Prince ampliò questa riflessione paradigmatica nel saggio “True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images, and Film Theory” (1996), introducendo il concetto di perceptual realism per descrivere come le immagini digitali stessero rivoluzionando ogni fase della produzione cinematografica. Per il pubblico, l’applicazione più visibile di queste tecnologie risiedeva nella nuova ondata di effetti speciali generati al computer. Prince cita la creatura acquatica in The Abyss (1989) o Terminator 2 (1991) di James Cameron, ma furono soprattutto Jurassic Park e Forrest Gump (1994) di Robert Zemeckis a segnare uno spartiacque percettivo. Film capaci di produrre uno scarto visivo inedito, “diversi da qualsiasi cosa vista in precedenza”. Il realismo percettivo, scrive Prince, “designa una relazione tra l’immagine o il film e lo spettatore, e può comprendere sia immagini irreali che immagini referenzialmente realistiche. […] Le immagini irreali possono essere referenzialmente fittizie ma percettivamente realistiche”. Nel 2007, durante il pieno sviluppo del cinema in CGI, Tom Gunning, nel saggio “Moving Away from the Index”, ribalta l’idea secondo cui il potere del cinema (e della fotografia) risiederebbe nella sua “impronta” diretta dal reale. Se in semiotica, un “indice” è un segno che mantiene un legame fisico con ciò che rappresenta: il fumo con il fuoco, l’impronta con il piede, la fotografia con il corpo che è stato davanti all’obiettivo, per Gunning, il cinema non seduce lo spettatore grazie a quel legame fotografico e indiciale tra immagine e mondo, ma piuttosto attraverso l’“impressione di realtà”: un effetto costruito, intenzionale, performativo. Propone di spostare l’attenzione da questa garanzia ontologica dell’indice (l’immagine fotografica considerata come traccia diretta del mondo) alla capacità delle immagini di simulare la percezione del reale. Ancora una volta: ciò che conta non è la verità dell’immagine, ma la sua efficacia percettiva. > Software come Sora non registrano, piuttosto restituiscono idee in forma di > immagine, spostando il baricentro dal filmato alla ricostruzione digitale > totale, senza alcuna mediazione umana. Oggi anche il cinema comincia a subire l’accerchiamento metanarrativo dei video IA, con gli utenti che scrivono prompt per generare nuovi attori, ambientazioni inedite o riscrivere film adeguandoli alle proprie esigenze estetiche. In un articolo per The New Yorker, già due anni fa, Joshua Rothman si interrogava sul significato stesso della parola ‘video’ in un’epoca in cui l’IA è in grado di generare un intero film. Software come Sora non registrano, piuttosto restituiscono idee in forma di immagini, spostano il baricentro dal filmato alla ricostruzione digitale totale, senza alcuna mediazione umana. Il video IA è un render concettuale che mima causalità e durata, esaudendo le nostre pretese. Il film è ora nello sguardo di tutti. Nel suo procedere per tentativi e scoperte casuali l’umanità ha sempre accolto, quasi senza resistenza, la compenetrazione tecnologica. Non solo la grande macchina informatica o il robot umanoide, anche la più modesta estensione dello strumento quotidiano è stata integrata nella forma‑vita umana, trasformando abitudini e capacità. Oggi il test di Turing non solo è superato, ma abbiamo raggiunto il paradosso per cui intelligenze artificiali con tecnologia LLM e CoT, sono riconoscibili come non-umane, non per via dei loro limiti, ma in quanto troppo capaci. Fino a meno di un decennio addietro sembrava impossibile che un chatbot potesse esprimersi come noi, gestendo lo stesso livello di flessibilità argomentativa; ora invece le IA dominano in brevi istanti un tale volume di informazioni e campi di competenza differenti, da svelare la loro natura non-umana, anzi oltre-umana. Eppure questo non ci ha impedito di adottarle in ogni ambito della vita quotidiana, professionale, persino affettiva. In questo processo di mutazione cognitiva, sviluppiamo nuove competenze mentre altre si atrofizzano. La “fusione cyborg” teorizzata tra gli anni Ottanta e Novanta non è solo quella tra corpo e macchina, ma tra soggetto e mediazione. > Oggi il test di Turing non solo è superato, ma siamo a un punto in cui le > intelligenze artificiali sono riconoscibili come non-umane non per via dei > loro limiti, ma in quanto troppo capaci. Mentre Manovich, Prince e Gunning riflettono sulla materialità e la percettologia dell’immagine digitale, Marco Dinoi, in Lo sguardo e l’evento. I media, la memoria, il cinema (2008), si concentra sull’epistemologia dello sguardo: il ruolo del cinema nella costruzione della memoria e della testimonianza, e il rapporto tra evento e trasposizione mediatica. Nell’introduzione, Dinoi ricorda l’accoglienza delle prime proiezioni dei fratelli Lumière al Grand Café nel 1895, e individua un passaggio decisivo: dallo stupore del “Sembra vero!” davanti al cinema, all’angoscia del “Sembra un film!” davanti alla realtà mediatizzata, culminata con la trasmissione televisiva dell’11 settembre 2001, dove l’attentato alle torri gemelle viene spontaneamente letto attraverso una grammatica cinematografica. Dinoi definisce questa cesura come “salto cognitivo”: l’incredulità nei confronti del reale, l’istantaneità della sua trasmissione, la sua dilatazione nel tempo, la sensazione di spettatorialità collettiva. L’11/9 diventa il punto di non ritorno per la nostra competenza spettatoriale. Nel regime mediale, la finzione non si limita a ridurre la distanza tra significante e significato: diventa lente attraverso cui leggiamo e interpretiamo il reale. Se la realtà appare oggi iperbolica e fantasmagorica, tanto da richiedere strumenti di finzione narrativa per essere compresa, allora la distinzione tra reale e immaginario sembra essere esplosa del tutto. Dal passaggio iniziale del “Sembra vero” (cinema → sospensione dell’incredulità), siamo transitati al “Sembra un film” (mediatizzazione della realtà → sospensione del reale), mentre oggi siamo in una fase che può definirsi post-mimetica: il punto di partenza non è più la riproduzione di un pezzo di mondo, ma un processo cognitivo, una descrizione mentale o testuale – il prompt – a partire dalla quale generiamo un contenuto che ha a che fare, quindi, con l’interpretazione di categorie e riferimenti astratti, più che in relazione con il mondo. L’effetto visivo, come dicevo sopra, non nasce più dal confronto con il reale – la cui riproposizione fotografica è ormai superata – ma dal semplice soddisfacimento delle sue categorie. Davanti a contenuti generati da IA, assistiamo a nuovo salto cognitivo: “Sembra IA”, dove non si indica la simulazione, ma nuove forme di autenticità e riconoscibilità postumana. “Sembra IA” equivale a: “sembra vero per come immaginiamo che il vero debba apparire”. La domanda ‒ spesso inconscia ‒ non è più: “è successo davvero?”, ma: “rispetta i miei parametri estetici, emotivi, cognitivi?”. La soglia critica non è tanto l’evento reale, né la sua estetizzazione, ma la sintetizzabilità e la riconoscibilità dei loro effetti. Go and touch grass Siamo a un solo aggiornamento di distanza dalla prossima generazione di IA text-to-video, e con essa, dalla totale indistinguibilità tra immagine e realtà, tra ciò che è avvenuto e ciò che è stato generato. Non è chiaro se la plasticità cognitiva che finora ha permesso di adattarci ai salti percettivi dell’immagine mediale, riuscirà ancora una volta a elaborare una via d’uscita interpretativa. È plausibile che il pubblico, davanti ai video generati con IA, semplicemente, smetta di interrogarsi. La discussione – o il sospetto – su cosa sia vero, falso o possibile, potrebbe presto apparire come uno sforzo sterile, esausto, svuotato da ogni possibile resistenza, se non addirittura un atteggiamento reazionario. > La discussione – o il sospetto – su cosa sia vero, falso o possibile, potrebbe > presto apparire come uno sforzo sterile, esausto, svuotato da ogni possibile > resistenza, se non addirittura un atteggiamento reazionario. Le piattaforme non hanno alcun interesse a segnalare ciò che è stato generato. Il capitale della nostra attenzione viene cooptato da un contenuto generato all’altro. Le IA monopolizzano la scena divenendo creatrici, providers, e persino fact-checkers di quanto vediamo. Continuando a scrollare, la promessa che finalmente “qualcosa accada davvero” si sposta da un video a quello successivo, lasciandoci davanti allo schermo come consumatori, tragici, speranzosi, assopiti. Ma anche questa rischia di essere una narrazione egemonica. In The Most Radical Gesture (1992) Sadie Plant ci ricorda come il capitalismo ami la liquefazione di ogni referenza, la frattalizzazione, l’ambiguità, la sovrapposizione tra Marie Antoinette e Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie. Non solo perché confonde, ma perché tale confusione è parte integrante del suo raccontarsi. Lo stesso Baudrillard, proprio all’indomani dell’11 settembre, riconobbe come simulacri e simulazioni non avessero azzerato la Storia: la produzione delle immagini non riesce ancora a nascondere e contenere la materialità viscerale del mondo. Dobbiamo ricordare che le immagini che ci raggiungono non invadono tutti allo stesso modo. In Davanti al dolore degli altri (2003), Susan Sontag analizza la rappresentazione della guerra e della violenza attraverso la fotografia e i media, ma a partire dalla sua esperienza nei Balcani, durante l’assedio di Sarajevo. Sontag sottolinea come esista una condizione materiale del dolore che non può essere ridotta alla relazione spettacolo/spettatore, e della quale dobbiamo farci carico. Le IA godono di una pervasiva ubiquità, ma i text-to-video generati convivono con milioni di corpi ostinati: chi manifesta per il genocidio a Gaza, chi per il movimento No King negli Sati Uniti; con chi lotta in Iran e in Myanmar, e con chi sopravvive alla catastrofe umanitaria in Sudan. Esiste una materialità viva nella nostra condizione esistenziale ‒ nel dolore, nella sofferenza, nella violenza, nel trauma, ma anche nella rabbia, nella gioia, nell’orgoglio ‒ che non è stata ancora sussunta, annichilita o neutralizzata dalle IA. Sulle orme di Plant, dobbiamo chiederci chi abbia interesse a che si pensi alle intelligenze artificiali come a un destino ineluttabile. Le intelligenze artificiali non saranno mai perfette, ma sono già abbastanza avanzate da rappresentare una sfida decisiva. Le aziende che si occupano di intelligenza artificiale non vogliono sostituirci, vogliono tutta la nostra attenzione. Per questo motivo, prima di cedere del tutto alla deriva percettiva indotta dagli algoritmi, abbiamo due possibilità. La prima è quella di un gesto radicale e immediato: disconnettersi. Oppure, la seconda: pretendere un uso creativo e il più orizzontale possibile delle tecnologie generative, cercando di liberare l’IA dalle logiche di monopolio. Valentina Tanni, in Antimacchine (2025), rileggendo Jon Ippolito, lo definisce misuse: imparare a usare male la tecnologia, a giocare contro l’apparecchio, deviare le sue funzioni, stortarlo in maniera conflittuale, produrre scarti, glitch, narrazioni che espongano il programma sottostante. Costringere l’IA contro la sua natura statistica e la tendenza alla simulazione onnisciente. Una forma di détournement digitale, atti di deviazione e riuso tattico dei loro stessi strumenti, per sottrarre immaginazione alle piattaforme e spostare altrove il potere simbolico. Infine, possiamo provare a contrapporre alla simulazione generativa un altro tipo di simulazione, una forma che esercitiamo da centinaia di migliaia di anni. Martha Nussbaum, in libri come  Love’s Knowledge (1990) e Poetic Justice (1995), parla di “immaginazione narrativa” come capacità di entrare nelle vite altrui, di usare la finzione non per evadere dal mondo, ma per rispondergli eticamente. Parafrasandola, possiamo chiamare questo processo mentale come “simulazione morale”. In questa prospettiva, il rifiuto della simulazione perfetta prodotta dalle macchine non è solo un tentativo di “non farsi ingannare”, né una semplice reazione tecnofobica. È la decisione di tenere aperto uno spazio in cui la distanza tra immagine e realtà resta discutibile, un laboratorio etico in cui continuiamo a esercitare la nostra capacità morale. Una controsimulazione che non si accontenta dell’effetto ma insiste nel chiedere dove sia l’altro e quali siano le sue condizioni. A patto che l’altro esista. L'articolo Sembra IA proviene da Il Tascabile.

President Donald Trump’s promise to revive the Venezuelan oil industry drew praise from U.S. energy executives on Friday — but no firm commitments to invest the vast sums of money needed to bring the country’s oil output back from the doldrums. The lack of firm pledges from the heads of the companies such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips that Trump summoned to the White House raised doubts about the president’s claim that U.S. oil producers were ready to spend $100 billion or more to rebuild Venezuela’s crude oil infrastructure. The country boasts the world’s largest oil reserves, but its production has cratered since the regime pushed most of those companies out decades ago. Exxon CEO Darren Woods offered the starkest assessment, telling Trump in the live-streamed meeting in the East Room that Venezuela is “uninvestable” under current conditions. He said major changes were needed before his company would return to the country, and that big questions remain about what return Exxon could expect from any investments. “If we look at the legal and commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela today, it’s uninvestable,” Woods told Trump. “Significant changes have to be made to those commercial frameworks, the legal system. There has to be durable investment protections, and there has to be a change to the hydrocarbon laws in the country.” Still, Woods said he was confident the U.S. can help make those changes, and said he expected Exxon could put a technical team on the ground in Venezuela soon to assess the state of its oil infrastructure. Harold Hamm, a fracking executive and major Trump ally, expressed more enthusiasm but still fell short of making any commitments. “It excites me as an explorationist,” Hamm, whose experience has centered on oil production inside the U.S., said of the opportunity to invest in Venezuela. “It is a very exciting country and a lot of reserves — it’s got its challenges and the industry knows how to handle that.” Still, Energy Secretary Chris Wright pointed reporters after the meeting to a statement from Chevron — the only major U.S. oil company still operating in Venezuela — that it was ready to raise its output as a concrete sign the industry was willing to put more money into the country. Chevron currently produces about 240,000 barrels a day there with its partner, the Venezuelan state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA. Mark Nelson, Chevron’s vice chairman, told the gathering the company sees “a path forward” to increase production from its existing operations by 50 percent over the next 18 to 24 months. He did not commit to a dollar figure, however. Wright indicated that the $100 billion figure cited by Trump on Thursday was an estimate for the cost of reconstructing Venezuela’s dilapidated oil sector — rather than a firm spending commitment made by producing companies. “If you look at what’s a positive trajectory for Venezuela’s oil industry in the next decade, that’s probably going to take about $100 billion investment,” said Wright, who later told Bloomberg Television he is likely to travel to Venezuela “before too long.” Most of the nearly two dozen companies in attendance at Friday’s meeting expressed tepid support for the administration’s plan, though others indicated they were eager to jump back quickly. Wael Sawan, the CEO of the European energy giant Shell, said the company had been pushed out in Venezuela’s nationalization program in the 1970s, giving up 1 million barrels per day of oil production. Now it was seeking U.S. permits to go back, he said. “We are ready to go and looking forward to the investment in support of the Venezuelan people,” he said. Jeffery Hildebrand, CEO of independent oil and gas producer Hilcorp Energy and a major Trump donor, said his company was “fully committed and ready to go to rebuild the infrastructure in Venezuela.” Trump said during the meeting that companies that invest in Venezuela would be assured “total safety, total security,” without the U.S. government spending taxpayer dollars or putting boots on the ground. He indicated that Venezuela would provide security for the U.S. companies, and that the companies would bring their own protection as well. “These are tough people. They go into areas that you wouldn’t want to go. They go into areas that if they invited me, I’d say, ‘No, thanks. I’ll see you back in Palm Beach,’” Trump said of the oil companies. Before the executives spoke, Trump insisted that oil executives are lining up to take the administration up on the opportunity. “If you don’t want to go in, just let me know,” he said. “There are 25 people not here today willing to take your place.” Following the public meeting, the companies stayed for further discussions with administration officials behind closed doors. The president also dismissed speculation that the administration may offer financial guarantees to back up what he acknowledged would be a risky investment. “I hope I don’t have to give a backstop,” he said. “These are the biggest companies in the world sitting around this table — they know the risks.” Trump also laughed off the billions that Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips are owed for the assets seized by the Venezuelan regime decades ago. “Nice write-off,” he quipped. “You’ll get a lot of your money back,” Trump told ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance. “We’re going to start with an even plate, though — we’re not going to look at what people lost in the past because that was their fault.” ConocoPhillips spokesperson Dennis Nuss said in a statement that Lance “appreciates today’s valuable opportunity to engage with President Trump in a discussion about preparing Venezuela to be investment ready.” The White House at the last minute shifted the meeting from a closed-door session in the Cabinet Room to a live-televised spectacle in the East Room. “Everybody wants to be there,” the president wrote of the oil executives on social media just ahead of the meeting. POLITICO reported on Thursday that the White House had scrambled to invite additional companies to the meeting because of skepticism from the top oil majors about reentering the country. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent acknowledged in an appearance Thursday that “big oil companies who move slowly … are not interested,” but said the administration’s “phones are ringing off the hook” with calls from smaller players. Bethany Williams, a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, called Friday’s meeting “a constructive, initial conversation that highlighted both the energy potential and the challenges presented in Venezuela, including the importance of rule of law, security, and stable governance.” Venezuela — even with strongman Nicolás Maduro in custody in New York — remains under the rule of the same socialist government that appropriated the rigs, pipelines and property of foreign oil companies two decades ago. Questions remain about who would guarantee the companies’ workers’ safety, particularly since Trump has publicly ruled out sending in troops. Kevin Book, a managing director at the energy research firm ClearView Energy Partners, noted that few CEOs in the meeting outright rejected the notion of returning to or investing in Venezuela, instead couching any sort of presence on several conditions. Some of those might be nearer term, such as security guarantees. Others, like reestablishing legal stability in Venezuela, appear more distant. “They need to understand the risk and they need to understand the return,” Book said. “What it sounded like most of the companies were saying … is that they want to understand the risk and the return and then they’ll look at the investment.” Evanan Romero, a Houston-based oil consultant involved in the Trump administration’s effort to bring U.S. oil producers back to Venezuela, said international oil companies will not return to the country under the same laws and government that expropriated their assets decades earlier. “The main contribution that [interim president] Delcy [Rodríguez] and her government can do is make a bonfire of those laws and put it on fire in the Venezuelan Bolivar Square,” Romero said. “With those, we cannot do any reconstruction of the oil industry.” Zack Colman and Irie Sentner contributed to this report.

Just as Cyprus’ government should be concentrating on its presidency of the Council of the EU, it has to firefight controversy at home over a video circulating online that alleges top-level corruption. The furor centers on a mysterious video posted on X with a montage of senior figures filmed apparently describing ways to bypass campaign spending caps with cash donations, and seemingly discussing a scheme allowing businesspeople to access the president and first lady. One segment made reference to helping Russians avoid EU sanctions. The government denies the allegations made in the video and calls it “hybrid activity” aimed at harming “the image of the government and the country.” The government does not say the video is a fake, but insists the comments have been spliced together misleadingly. The footage appears to have been shot using hidden cameras in private meetings. Unconvinced, opposition parties are now calling for further action. Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides hit back hard against the suggestion of illicit campaign funding in remarks to local media on Friday. “I would like to publicly call on anyone who has evidence of direct or indirect financial gains during the election campaign or during my time as President of the Republic to submit it immediately to the competent state authorities,” he said. “I will not give anyone, absolutely anyone, the right to accuse me of corruption.” In relation to the reference to payments made by businesses, he said companies “must also offer social benefits within the framework of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for the state, I want to repeat, for the state. And they do so in the areas of health, welfare, defense, and many other areas.” The contentious video was posted on Thursday afternoon on social media platform X on an account under the name “Emily Thompson,” who is described as an “independent researcher, analyst and lecturer focused mainly on American domestic and foreign policies.” It was not immediately possible to find public and verifiable information confirming the real identity of the person behind the account. The video includes footage of former Energy Minister George Lakkotrypis and the director of the president’s office, Charalambos Charalambous. In the recordings, Lakkotrypis is presented as a point of contact for people seeking access to Christodoulides. He appears to walk his interlocutor through the process on payments above the €1 million campaign limit. In a written statement, Lakkotrypis said it is “self-evident” from the video that remarks attributed to him were edited in order to distort the context of the discussions, with the aim of harming Cyprus and himself personally. He added that he filed a complaint with the police. The police have launched an investigation into the video, after Lakkotrypis’ complaint, its spokesman Vyron Vyronos told the Cyprus News Agency. The video then shows Charalambous, Christodoulides’ brother-in-law, who explains gaining access to the presidential palace. “We are the main, the two, contacts here at the palace, next to the president,” he says, adding that interested parties could approach the president with a proposal and money that could be directed toward social contributions. There was no official statement from Charalambous. The video alleges that social contributions made by companies through a fund run by the first lady are being misused to win preferential treatment from the presidency. Concern over this fund is not new. The Cypriot parliament last year voted through legislation that called for the publication of the names of the donors to that fund. The president vetoed that move, however, and took the matter to court, arguing that publicly disclosing the list of donors would be a personal data breach. The court ruled in favor of the president and the names were not revealed. Stefanos Stefanou, leader of the main opposition AKEL party, said the video raised “serious political, ethical, and institutional issues” which compromised the president and his entourage politically and personally. He called on the president to dismiss Charalambous, abolish the social support fund and — after the donors have been made public — transfer its responsibilities to another institution. AKEL also submitted a bill on Friday to abolish the fund within the next three months and called for the first lady to resign as head of the fund. AKEL also requested that the allegations from the video be discussed in the parliament’s institutions’ committee. Another opposition party, Democratic Rally, said: “What is revealed in the video is shocking and extremely serious … Society is watching in shock and demanding clear and convincing answers from the government. Answers that have not yet been given.” Cyprus has parliamentary elections in May and the next presidential election is in 2028.

LONDON — The U.K. should follow Donald Trump’s example and quit the United Nations treaty that underpins global action to combat climate change, the deputy leader of Reform UK said. Richard Tice, energy spokesperson for Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist party, said the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the linked U.N. climate science body the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were “failing British voters.” Asked if the U.K. should follow the U.S. — which announced its withdrawal from the institutions, plus 64 other multilateral bodies, on Wednesday — Tice told POLITICO: “Yes I do. They are deeply flawed, unaccountable, and expensive institutions.” The 1992 UNFCCC serves as the international structure for efforts by 198 countries to slow the rate of greenhouse gas emissions. It also underpins the system of annual COP climate conferences. The U.S. will be the only country ever to leave the convention. Reform UK has led in U.K. polls for nearly a year, but the country’s next election is not expected until 2029. A theoretical U.K. exit from the UNFCCC would represent an extraordinary volteface for a country which has long boasted about global leadership on climate. Under former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the U.K. hosted COP26 in 2021. It has been one of the most active participants in recent summits under Prime Minister Keir Starmer. It was also the first major economy in the world to legislate for a net zero goal by 2050, in line with the findings of IPCC reports. Tice has repeatedly referred to the target as “net stupid zero.” The U.K. government was approached for comment on the U.S. withdrawal. Pippa Heylings, energy and net zero spokesperson for the U.K.’s centrist Liberal Democrat party, said Trump’s decision would “make the world less secure.”

KYIV — The Russian army attacked Ukraine with more than 90 killer drones in the early hours of Thursday morning, causing complete blackouts in the key industrial regions of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv’s energy ministry reported. “While energy workers managed to restore power in the Zaporizhzhia region in the morning, some 800,000 households in the nearby Dnipro region were still without electricity and heating on Thursday morning,” Artem Nekrasov, acting energy minister of Ukraine, said during a morning briefing. In Dnipro, eight coal mines stopped working because of a power outage. All the miners were safely evacuated to the surface, Nekrasov added. Power outages were also reported in Chernihiv, Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Poltava and other regions. Freezing weather is coming to Ukraine over the next three days, with temperatures forecast to drop to minus 20° C during the night, when Russia often launches massive missile and drone attacks. Precipitation and cold could cause additional electricity supply disruptions due to snow accumulating on power lines, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Wednesday evening. “Ukraine’s energy system is under enemy attack every day, and energy workers work in extremely difficult conditions to provide people with light and heat. Deteriorating weather conditions create additional stress on critical infrastructure. We are working to minimize the consequences of bad weather,” Svyrydenko added. Local governors in the eastern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro reported that hospitals and other critical infrastructure had to turn to emergency power supplies because of the latest Russian attack. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Ukrainian energy workers for the speedy power restoration in Zaporizhzhia, and used the opportunity to remind Kyiv’s partners around the world they need to respond “to this deliberate torment of the Ukrainian people by Russia.” “There is absolutely no military rationale in such strikes on the energy sector and infrastructure that leave people without electricity and heating in wintertime. This is Russia’s war specifically against our people, against life in Ukraine — an attempt to break Ukraine,” Zelenskyy added.

Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.” He writes POLITICO’s From Across the Pond column In justifying his military operation against Venezuela, U.S. President Donald Trump reached back in time over two centuries and grabbed hold of the Monroe Doctrine. But it’s another 19th-century interest that propelled his extraordinary gambit in the first place — oil. According to the New York Times, what started as an effort to press the Venezuelan regime to cede power and end the flow of drugs and immigrants into the U.S., began shifting into a determination to seize the country’s oil last fall. And the president was the driving force behind this shift. That’s hardly surprising though — Trump has been obsessed with oil for decades, even as most of the world is actively trying to leave it behind. As far back as the 1980s, Trump was complaining about the U.S. protecting Japan, Saudi Arabia and others to secure the free flow of oil. “The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help,” he wrote in a 1987 newspaper ad. Having supported the Iraq War from the outset, he later complained that the U.S. hadn’t sufficiently benefited from it. “I would take the oil,” he told the Wall Street Journal in 2011. “I would not leave Iraq and let Iran take the oil.” That same year, he also dismissed humanitarian concerns in Libya, saying: “I am only interested in Libya if we take the oil.” In justifying his military operation against Venezuela, U.S. President Donald Trump reached back in time over two centuries and grabbed hold of the Monroe Doctrine. | Henry Chirinos/EPA Unsurprisingly, “take the oil” later became the mantra for Trump’s first presidential campaign — and for his first term in office. Complaining that the U.S. got “nothing” for all the money it spent invading Iraq: “It used to be, ‘To the victor belong the spoils’ … I always said, ‘Take the oil,’” he griped during a Commander in Chief Forum in 2016. As president, he also insisted on keeping U.S. forces in Syria for that very reason in 2019. “I like oil,” he said, “we’re keeping the oil.” But while Iraq, Libya and even Syria were all conflicts initiated by Trump’s predecessors, Venezuela is quite another matter. Weeks before seizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump made clear what needed to happen: On Dec. 16, 2025, he announced an oil blockade of the country “until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.” Then, after capturing Maduro, Trump declared the U.S. would “run the country” in order to get its oil. “We’re in the oil business,” he stated. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies … go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, and start making money.” “We’re going to be taking out a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,” Trump insisted. “It goes also to the United States of America in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused us by that country.” On Wednesday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced that Venezuela would ship its oil to the U.S. “and then infinitely, going forward, we will sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace,” effectively declaring the expropriation of Venezuela’s most important national resources. All of this reeks of 19th-century imperialism. But the problem with Trump’s oil obsession goes deeper than his urge to steal it from others — by force if necessary. He is fixated on a depleting resource of steadily declining importance. And yet, this doesn’t seem to matter. Throughout his reelection campaign, Trump still emphasized the need to produce more oil. “Drill, baby, drill” became as central to his energy policy as “take the oil” was to his views on military intervention. He called on oil executives to raise $1 billion for his campaign, promising his administration would be “a great deal” for their industry. And he talked incessantly of the large reservoirs of “liquid gold” in the U.S., claiming: “We’re going to make a fortune.” But these weren’t just campaign promises. Upon his return to office, Trump unleashed the full force of the U.S. government to boost oil production at home and exports abroad. He established a National Energy Dominance Council, opened protected lands in Alaska and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas exploration, signed a mandate for immediate offshore oil and gas leases into law, and accelerated permitting reforms to speed up pipeline construction, refinery expansion and liquid natural gas exports. At the same time, he’s been castigating efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions as part of a climate change “hoax,” he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement once again, and he took a series of steps to end the long-term transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. He signed a law ending credits and subsidies to encourage residential solar and electric vehicle purchases, invoked national security to halt offshore wind production and terminated grants encouraging renewable energy production. Then, after capturing Nicolás Maduro, Trump declared the U.S. would “run the country” in order to get its oil. | Henry Chirinos/EPA The problem with all these efforts is that the U.S. is now banking on fossil fuels, precisely as their global future is waning. Today, oil production is already outpacing consumption, and global demand is expected to peak later this decade. Over the last 12 months, the cost of oil has decreased by over 23 percent, pricing further exploration and production increasingly out of the market. Meanwhile, renewable energy is becoming vastly more cost-effective. The future, increasingly, lies in renewables to drive our cars; heat, cool and light up our homes; power our data centers, advanced manufacturing factories and everything else that sustains our lives on Earth. By harnessing the power of the sun, the force of wind and the heat of the Earth, China is building its future on inexhaustible resources. And while Beijing is leading the way, many others are following in its footsteps. All this, just as the U.S. goes back to relying on an exhaustive fossil fuel supply. What Trump is betting on is becoming the world’s largest — and last — petrostate. China is betting on becoming its largest and lasting electrostate. Which side would you rather be on?

AVENTURA, Florida — Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Wednesday that the United States will sell Venezuelan oil “indefinitely” after completing sales of the crude currently accumulating in storage there. Wright said the proceeds from those sales would be “deposited into accounts controlled by the U.S. government” and then “flow back into Venezuela to benefit the Venezuelan people.” Wright made the statements even as the United States the same morning seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker that was linked to Venezuela. “Instead of the oil being blockaded, as it is right now, we’re gonna let the oil flow … to United States refineries and around the world to bring better oil supplies, but have those sales done by the U.S. government,” he said at Goldman Sachs’ Energy, CleanTech & Utilities Conference. “We’re going to market the crude coming out of Venezuela, first this backed-up stored oil, and then indefinitely, going forward, we will sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace,” Wright added. The move would be a huge step up in the Trump administration’s moves to pressure Venezuela’s interim government and essentially have the United States take over the country’s oil industry. President Donald Trump announced late Tuesday that Wright would lead a U.S. plan to sell up to 50 million barrels of sanctioned Venezuelan crude turned over to the U.S. by the country’s interim authorities, an amount market analysts estimated could yield up to $2.5 billion. Wright said he has been in discussions with U.S. oil companies about the conditions they will require to return to Venezuela, acknowledging that restoring historic production levels in the country will require “tens of millions of dollars and significant time.” The industry remains hesitant, however, given the capital — projected by analysts to be in the billions — and risk required to revive Venezuela’s dilapidated oil sector. Wright said the U.S. would initially supply the chemicals required to get Venezuela’s sludgy crude flowing again, and it plans to work with the government to send supplies and equipment needed for a larger-scale revitalization. Wright is expected to meet with several industry executives about Venezuela on the sidelines of the conference Wednesday. He is also expected to meet with oil companies Friday at the White House, along with Trump and other top administration officials.

President Donald Trump’s Cabinet officials are scheduling their first formal calls with oil company CEOs to press them to revive Venezuela’s flagging oil production, four people familiar with the conversations told POLITICO. Calls that Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum are planning with chief executives represent some of the first official outreach that the administration has made to the U.S. companies after months of informal discussions with people in the sector, these people said — days after President Donald Trump told reporters that “our very large United States oil companies” will “spend billions of dollars” in Venezuela. However, the companies’ executives remain wary of entering a socialist-ruled country that was plunged into political upheaval after U.S. forces took strongman Nicolás Maduro into custody over the weekend, following decades of neglect in its nationalized oil fields, according to market analysts and industry officials. Industry officials are also discussing what types of incentives would be needed to get them to return to the country, according to two industry officials familiar with the plans who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Those could include having the U.S. government signing contracts guaranteeing payment and security or forming public-private joint ventures. Even if they don’t yet have fully formed ideas for what would get them to invest in Venezuela, Trump’s insistence is difficult to ignore, said one former administration agency head who was granted anonymity to discuss the evolving matters. “Most companies have been thinking about this for a while. All of the big folks are probably thinking about it — and very, very, very hard,” the person said. “It’s a pretty powerful thing when the president of the United States says, ‘I need you to do this.’” Publicly, the White House expressed confidence. “All of our oil companies are ready and willing to make big investments in Venezuela that will rebuild their oil infrastructure, which was destroyed by the illegitimate Maduro regime,” spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement. “American oil companies will do an incredible job for the people of Venezuela and will represent the United States well.” One person said the administration also “hopes” the American Petroleum Institute, the powerful trade association representing oil companies working in the United States, would form a task force to advise the White House on how best to revive Venezuelan oil production. “In nearly all cases, these calls are the first outreach from the administration on Venezuela,” the person said. API is “closely watching developments involving Venezuela and any potential implications for global energy markets,” group spokesperson Justin Prendergast said in response to questions. “Events like this underscore the importance of strong U.S. energy leadership. Globally, energy companies make investment decisions based on stability, the rule of law, market forces and long-term operational considerations,” Prendergast said. Trump told reporters on Sunday that he had spoken to U.S. oil companies “before and after” the military operation that seized Maduro and brought him to New York, where the former Venezuelan leader made his first court appearance on Monday. “And they want to go in, and they’re going to do a great job for the people of Venezuela, and they’re going to represent us well,” Trump continued. Industry executives on Monday told Reuters no such outreach had occurred to oil majors Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, all of which have experience working in Venezuela’s oil fields. Bringing Venezuela’s oil production — now around 1 million barrels a day — back to its glory-days’ height of 3 million barrels a day would require at least $183 billion and more than a decade of effort, industry analyst firm Rystad Energy said Monday. While the Venezuelan government might supply some of that money, international companies would need to spend $35 billion in the next few years to reach that goal. “Rystad Energy believes that around $53 billion of oil and gas upstream and infrastructure investment is needed over the next 15 years just to keep Venezuela’s crude oil production flat at 1.1 million” barrels a day, the firm said in a client note. “Going beyond 1.4 million [barrels a day] is possible but would require a stable investment of $8 [billion]-$9 billion per year from 2026 to 2040, on top of ‘hold-flat’ capital requirements.” ConocoPhillips spokesperson Dennis Nuss said in a statement that it would be “premature to speculate on any future business activities or investments,” but said the company is monitoring the “potential implications for global energy supply and stability” from the events in Venezuela. ConocoPhillips is continuing its efforts to collect more than $10 billion in compensation it was awarded in arbitration for the Venezuelan government’s seizure of the company’s assets in 2007, Nuss said. Exxon Mobil and Chevron did not respond to requests for comment. Oil field services companies Halliburton and Baker Hughes did not respond for comment, and SLB declined to comment. The only company to publicly indicate interest in Venezuela has been Continental Resources, a firm led by Trump ally and informal energy adviser Harold Hamm. Hamm told the Financial Times on Sunday that “with improved regulatory and governmental stability we would definitely consider future investment.” Continental, which played a key role in developing oil fracking technology, has never operated outside the United States — though it announced on Monday a deal in which it would buy assets in Argentina. People in the oil industry have said a major concern is that Venezuela is not stable enough to guarantee the safety of any workers and equipment they might send there. Companies are asking that the U.S. government contract directly with them before they commit to entering the country. “We need some boots-on-the-ground security and some financial security. That’s on top of the list,” said a second industry executive familiar with the talks who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. Trump’s decision to allow Maduro’s second-in-command, acting President Delcy Rodríguez, and other members of the regime to remain in charge of the country’s government has also made industry executives wary of taking on the job, this person added. Rodríguez and her family had been part of the Venezuelan government under Hugo Chávez in the mid-2000s when the regime seized the assets of foreign oil companies. Colombia, Canada, the EU and the United States have levied sanctions against her after accusing her of undermining the Venezuelan elections. “Who’s running the game here?” the second industry executive said. “If she’s going to be in charge — plus the guys who have been there all along — what guarantee can you give us that stuff is going to change? Those three issues — physical, financial and political security — have to be settled before anyone goes in.” Longtime Republican foreign policy hand Elliott Abrams, who served as Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela during his first term, said the president is “exaggerating” the likelihood that companies will return to the country, given the risk and capital required. “The president seems to suggest that he will make the decision, but that is not right — the boards of these companies will make the decisions,” said Abrams, who is now senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I expect that you’ll see all of them now say, ‘This is fantastic, it’s a great opportunity, and we have a team ready to go to Venezuela,’ but that’s politics,” he added. “That doesn’t mean they’re going to invest.”

With his lightning raid to snatch Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, U.S. President Donald Trump has shown that President Vladimir Putin’s self-proclaimed “multipolar” world of anti-Western dictatorial alliances from Caracas to Tehran is essentially toothless. Beyond the humiliation of the world seeing that Putin isn’t a dependable ally when the chips are down — something already witnessed in Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria and Iran — there’s now also the added insult that Trump appears more effective and bolder in pulling off the sort of maverick superpower interventions the Kremlin wishes it could achieve. In short, Putin has been upstaged at being a law unto himself. While the Russian leader would presumably have loved to remove Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a blitz attack, he’s instead been locked in a brutal war for four years, suffering over 1 million Russian dead and wounded. “Putin must be unbearably jealous [of Trump],” political analyst and former Kremlin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov told POLITICO. “What Putin promised to do in Ukraine, Trump did in half an hour [in Venezuela].” The sense that Moscow has lost face was one of the few things independent analysts and Russia’s ultranationalists seemed to agree on.    Discussing the Caracas raid on his Telegram account, the nationalist spy-turned-soldier and war blogger Igor Girkin, now jailed in a penal colony, wrote: “We’ve suffered another blow to our image. Another country that was counting on Russia’s help hasn’t received it.” UNRELIABLE ALLY For years, Russia has sought to project itself as the main force resisting American-led Western hegemony, pioneering an alliance loosely united by the idea of a common enemy in Washington. Under Putin, Russia presented itself as the chief proponent of this “multipolar” world, which like the Soviet Union would help defend those in its camp.  Invading Ukraine in 2022, Moscow called upon its allies to rally to its side.  They largely heeded the call. Iran sold Russia drones. China and India bought its oil. The leaders of those countries in Latin America and Africa, with less to offer economically and militarily, gave symbolic support that lent credence to Moscow’s claim it wasn’t an international pariah and in fact had plenty of friends.  Recent events, however, have shown those to be a one-way friendships to the benefit of Moscow. Russia, it appears, won’t be riding to the rescue. The first to realise that cozying up to Russia had been a waste of time were the Armenians. Distracted by the Ukraine war, Moscow didn’t lift a finger to stop Azerbaijan from seizing the ethnic-Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh in a lightning war in 2023. Russian peacekeepers just stood by.   A year later, the Kremlin was similarly helpless as it watched the collapse of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, which it had propped up for years. Russia even had to abandon Tartous, its vital port on the Mediterranean. Moscow didn’t lift a finger to stop Azerbaijan from seizing the ethnic-Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh in a lightning war in 2023. | Anthony Pizzoferrato/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images Further undermining its status in the Middle East, Russia was unable to help Iran when Israel and the U.S. last year bombed the Islamic Republic at will. Russia has long been an important strategic partner to Iran in nuclear technology, but it had no answer to the overwhelming display of military aviation used to strike Iran’s atomic facilities. Now, Venezuela, another of Putin’s longtime allies, has been humiliated, eliciting haughty condemnation (but no action) from Moscow. GREEN WITH ENVY Moscow’s energy and military ties to Caracas run deep. Since 1999 Russia has supplied more than $20 billion in military equipment — financed through loans and secured in part by control over Venezuela’s oil industry — investments that will now be of little avail to Moscow. Maduro’s capture is particularly galling for the Russians, as in the past they have managed to whisk their man to safety — securing a dacha after your escape being among the attractions of any dictator’s pact with Russia. But while ousted Ukrainian leader Viktor Yakunovych and Assad secured refuge in Russia, Maduro on Monday appeared in a New York court dressed in prison garb. Russian officials, predictably, have denounced the American attack. Russia’s foreign ministry described it as “an unacceptable violation of the sovereignty of an independent state,” while senator Alexei Puskov said Trump’s actions heralded a return to the “wild imperialism of the 19th century.” Sovereignty violations and anachronistic imperialism, of course, are exactly what the Russians themselves are accused of in Ukraine.   There has also been the usual saber-rattling.  “All of Russia is asking itself why we don’t deal with our enemies in a similar way,” wrote Aleksandr Dugin, a prominent ultranationalist | Matt Cardy/Getty Images Alexei Zhuravlev, deputy chairman of Russia’s parliamentary defense committee, said Russia should consider providing Venezuela with a nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile.  And the military-themed channel ‘Two Majors,’ which has more than 1.2 million followers, posted on Telegram that “Washington’s actions have effectively given Moscow free rein to resolve its own issues by any means necessary.” (As if Moscow had not been doing so already.) The more optimistic quarters of the Russian camp argue that Trump’s actions in Caracas show international law has been jettisoned, allowing Moscow to justify its own behavior. Others suggest, despite evidence to the contrary in the Middle East, that Trump is adhering to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine and will be content to focus on dominance of the Americas, leaving Russia to its old European and Central Asian spheres of influence. In truth, however, Putin has followed the might-is-right model for years. What’s embarrassing is that he hasn’t proving as successful at it as Trump. Indeed, the dominant emotion among Russia’s nationalists appears to be envy, both veiled and undisguised.  “All of Russia is asking itself why we don’t deal with our enemies in a similar way,” wrote Aleksandr Dugin, a prominent ultranationalist. Russia, he continued, should take a leaf out of Trump’s playbook. “Do like Trump, do it better than Trump. And faster.” Pro-Kremlin mouthpiece Margarita Simonyan was even more explicit, saying there was reason to “be jealous.” Various pro-Kremlin commentators also noted tartly that, unlike Russia, the U.S. was unlikely to face repercussions in the form of international sanctions or being “cancelled.”  To many in Russia, Trump’s audacious move is likely to confirm, rather than upend their world view, said Gallyamov, the analyst. Russian officials and state media have long proclaimed that the world is ruled by strength rather than laws. The irony, though, is that Trump is showing himself to be more skillful at navigating the law of the jungle than Putin. “Putin himself created a world where the only thing that matters is success,” Gallyamov added. “And now the Americans have shown how it’s done, while Putin’s humiliation is obvious for everyone to see.”