As the U.S. Navy leads the largest fleet ever assembled in the Caribbean Sea to pressure the illegitimate Maduro regime in Venezuela, you’re going to hear a worsening cacophony of Democrats and others screeching about our efforts to pressure that country’s narco-terrorist communist dictator from power.
You’re going to hear that we’re trying to steal Venezuela’s oil, perhaps foremost among the howls.
Like this:
Trump proudly announces an act of piracy, with the US theft of an oil tanker from Venezuela bound for Cuba
This act of financial terrorism was aimed at starving Cuba of energy, worsening its blackout crisis and tormenting its populationpic.twitter.com/5vo65vD59b
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) December 10, 2025
Before we discuss the larger-scale argument here, let’s understand something: Venezuelan oil is sanctioned, just like Iranian oil is sanctioned, and there is an entire fleet of oil tankers trafficking in sanctioned oil to rogue buyers and specifically China. So when President Trump announces a quarantine of those tankers coming and going from Venezuela, he’s enforcing oil sanctions.
Then you see this argument:
Venezuela Defense Minister: “The Armed Forces categorically reject the delusional statements made yesterday by Mr. Trump. He has claimed we have stolen the oil that lies under our land.
The truth has been revealed. It’s not about ‘narco-terrorism’.
It’s all about the oil.” pic.twitter.com/9BIloQkDKh
— COMBATE |🇵🇷 (@upholdreality) December 17, 2025
The thing to understand is that when the Maduro regime lays claim to “the oil that lies under our land,” that’s theft.
It’s theft because the Chávez/Maduro regime stole oil concessions from Exxon Mobil, an American company that had paid richly for them and was forcibly dispossessed. It’s also theft because the Maduro regime stole the 2024 Venezuelan election from the Venezuelan people. To the extent that the government of that country owns the oil of Venezuela, the government must be legitimate for such claims to hold.
So yes, they’re oil thieves. And yes, people shilling for them are in league with that theft.
And contra past statements Trump has made about America “taking” natural resources, mostly as a function of compensation for our efforts at relieving other countries of tyrants like Saddam Hussein or Maduro, there is little percentage in seizing Venezuelan oil at present. Domestic production is sky-high and oil prices are at a low ebb.
The value of seizing tankers carrying sanctioned oil is not in the resale of the oil but rather something else entirely:
Trump is brilliant. Venezuela needs $200 mil/week to fund Maduro govt. It gets $200 mil/week from selling sanctioned oil on ghost tankers. It has $1 bil in reserves. US blockade stops tankers from getting in/out, drying up revenues. Neither Venez or any other country has ability…
— KT McFarland (@realKTMcFarland) December 17, 2025
Without hard currency coming in from those oil sales, and with the export of cocaine being cut off as drug boats are being blown out of the water, the Maduro regime is going to run out of money at the same time the signals to that regime’s backers in Moscow and Beijing become unmistakable — this regime is a bad bet in America’s backyard.
Putin and Xi are not going to fight for Venezuela. Putin can’t even swallow Ukraine. He’s not in much of a position to do anything to help Maduro. And Xi has no ability to project Chinese power in Venezuela; he’s much better off negotiating deals with Edmundo Gonzalez and Mara Corina Machado, the winners of the 2024 Venezuelan election who are due to take power when this drama in the Caribbean plays out to its inevitable conclusion.
Venezuelan oil isn’t intrinsically that valuable to America given the explosion of our domestic supply. We do, however, have refineries in Louisiana and East Texas that are calibrated to turn it into gasoline and plastics and other needful things. Venezuelan crude is heavy and sour, as is oil from Canada’s tar sands; the two are thus related on international markets. Our refineries could do just fine with a larger throughput from Alberta, or if they took in vast quantities from both places and put the U.S. in a position to export refined oil — as gasoline, jet fuel, polymers, plastics or other finished petrochemical products — it would be a big strategic win for us.
But oil is mostly the feedstock for transportation fuel. And while our needs do increase in that respect, the larger problem where energy is concerned lies with the power grid.
And while we focus on oil, we’re missing the worst effects of what I call energy treason.
Consider the plight of Germany:
Germany’s woes stem from its aggressive energy transition, including the phaseout of nuclear and fossil fuels.
Iconic firms like ThyssenKrupp, Volkswagen, and Bosch—once symbols of industrial might—now face mounting losses. Over the past two years, approximately 160,000 industrial jobs have vanished, with projections indicating further erosion.
The Wall Street Journal documented this slowdown as early as March 2025, noting unexpected slumps in industrial production amid tariff uncertainties and energy costs.
Economists describe such losses as a “slow-motion collapse,” with Germany avoiding recession in Q3 2025 but showing weak rebounds in output. The Financial Times warns radical steps are needed to halt the decline, as Europe’s manufacturing champion teeters.
Germany’s energy traitors literally turned the lights off and destroyed its industrial sector, and at this point it’s likely to take a revolution to make that country relevant again.
The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy document, released earlier this year, expresses extreme concern over the same thing happening here and stresses the importance of preventing American energy traitors from having the ability to stop our own economic development:
This new strategy makes one point clear: energy security is national security. It states that America can no longer rely on foreign powers for the critical minerals, components, and energy that underpin both our economy and our defense. Instead of relying on global supply chains run by potential adversaries, the new strategy calls for reindustrializing the country, reshoring production, and using tools like tariffs to ensure we can produce what matters here at home.
At the center of that effort is energy dominance. The strategy elevates oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear production as top strategic priorities—linking abundant, affordable energy to good jobs, lower costs for families, a revived industrial base, and the technological edge needed for fields like AI and advanced manufacturing. A national defense built to win depends on a reliable energy system behind it.
Europe is failing to understand this troublesome dynamic. Even though the Russian invasion of Ukraine is nearly four years old, the European Union still spent €21.9 billion on Russian energy last year or €3.2 billion more than the EU gave to Ukraine in aid during the same period. Relying on adversaries for energy is not an option for rational countries.
In a crisis, energy becomes leverage. By expanding U.S. energy exports, the Trump Administration’s strategy strengthens our alliances and limits the ability of adversaries to pressure other nations. When our partners can buy fuel from America, they are less vulnerable to Moscow, Beijing, or Tehran.
And this cannot possibly prevail if America is going to win the AI race against China. Which, regardless of what you think of AI, is an existential fight. Chinese control of artificial intelligence means Chinese global dominance. It means social credit scores, predictive law enforcement, reeducation on the fly, and the iron hand of the nanny state even in countries not ruled by the Chinese Communist Party:
To understand the rivalry, consider a recent announcement by the U.S. Justice Department: on November 20, it charged two Americans, and two Chinese nationals, with a conspiracy to illegally export about 400 high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) to China. Federal law requires that a license be secured for export of these technologies, which can be used to develop and strengthen AI.
The co-conspirators didn’t have a license – and never even applied for one. In fact, they lied about the destination of the GPUs when shipping them. And for their services, they received a cool $3.89 million in wire transfers from China.
The backdrop to this smuggling scheme is Beijing having set a goal for China to be the world’s leader in AI by 2030. And it’s made considerable headway. “China is the global leader in AI research publications and is neck and neck with the United States on generative AI,” points out the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. It adds that China is “advancing rapidly in AI research and application, challenging the United States’ dominance in this critical field.”
This progress stems from massive investments by the Chinese government in the 21st century. From 2000 to 2023, venture capital funds connected to the Chinese government made $184 billion in investments in China-based companies in the AI sector, according to study published last year and conducted by professors at Harvard, MIT, and Oxford.
Not to mention it means the energy traitors will be traitors in other respects.
Dominating AI is a function of several things, but most importantly it’s a function of having enough available, affordable electricity to power the grid, because data centers require very, very large quantities of juice.
China currently has 381 data centers across 64 markets, with more than 500 data center projects announced. The country’s data center market has grown at an annual rate exceeding 30 percent from 2018 to 2023, and that’s projected to increase.
And Chinese data centers are going to be powered, chiefly, by coal. They’re building them mostly in the western part of China, away from the population centers near the coast and closer to the natural resource base. But a Goldman Sachs report says Chinese AI providers are expected to invest over $70 billion in data centers by 2026, with plans to expand into Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Which means China plans to export its AI across the world.
How does that compare to us?
The good news is we’re currently far ahead of China in the sheer volume of data centers we have — it’s not known exactly how many are in operation here, but estimates range from around 4,300 to around 5,400. There are some 650 in Northern Virginia alone.
But where data centers are being built in America, local citizens are freaking out over fears they’ll drive electric rates through the sky. Data centers consumed about 4.4 percent of total U.S. electricity in 2023, and that’s projected to rise to 6.7 percent to 12 percent by 2028,. In some places, that demand will more than double.
We have to increase power output.
It’s easy in China. They’ll just build a coal power plant that 1928 Pittsburgh wouldn’t sneeze at, and they’ll build it wherever they damned well please. And the ChiComs will stand up a data center wherever they want using construction methods and materials no American in his right mind would tolerate. Here it’s a three- to five-year slog to build either a data center or a power plant to supply it with juice; in China, they’ll have it up in a few weeks.
And it ought to be easy here.
We have a lot more coal than China can get access to. We have a lot more natural gas than they do.
But the energy traitors don’t want us to use either. Nor are they interested in developing nuclear energy, which would meet their stated demands.
And who benefits from the advocacy of the energy traitors?
You can answer that one for yourself.
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