Geopolitical Genius: Trump’s Venezuela Strike Blunts China’s Taiwan Takeover

Trump’s Venezuela oil power play

Nvidia’s robotaxi push

Walz drops re-election bid

The U.S., Canada, and Latin American producers—including a post-intervention Venezuela—collectively supply nearly 40% of world oil output, providing Washington with substantial leverage over existing market flows.

China relies heavily on suppliers vulnerable to U.S. pressure: It purchases 60%-90% of Venezuela's crude exports and 85%-90% of Iran's oil, with the two nations accounting for 30%-35% of China's total imports.

An additional roughly 35% of China's oil comes from Arab Gulf producers subject to varying degrees of U.S. diplomatic or security influence.

Waller estimates that U.S. actions could indirectly affect up to 70% of China's oil supply, complicating Beijing's ability to secure reliable energy for a prolonged Taiwan conflict without facing severe economic or military constraints.

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Sweeping minimum-wage increases took effect across numerous states at the start of 2026, with hikes in places like New Jersey to $15.92, Connecticut to $16.94, and New Mexico to $17 an hour. (WSJ)

San Francisco Fed research suggests that major tariff hikes—like the 2025 increases pushing average U.S. import levies to 17% from under 3%—may exert downward pressure on inflation. (RTS)

Social media influencers and OnlyFans creators are increasingly securing U.S. O-1B "extraordinary ability" artist visas, driving a more than 50% surge in approvals since 2014. (FT)

Greenland declared it "open for business" and seeking to restore strong U.S. ties through direct dialogue with Washington amid renewed American interest in the Arctic territory. (INV)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Wells Fargo unveiled its Q1 2026 list of high-conviction stocks, including Allegro MicroSystems and Synchrony Financial, selected for near-term meaningful upside. (INV)

Morningstar recommended Constellation Brands, Darden Restaurants, Micron Technology, FedEx, and Novo Nordisk as long-term buys in 2026. (MS)

Investor Rick Rule highlighted B2Gold, Amerigo Resources, and SLB as his top picks for 2026, emphasizing opportunities in natural resources amid rising geopolitical pressures. (BNN)

Retail investors are heavily betting on Rocket Lab, Nebius Group and AST SpaceMobile as top opportunities heading into 2026, according to MarketBeat data. (MB)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Hilton distanced itself from an independently owned Hampton Inn in Lakeville, Minnesota, after staff canceled reservations for ICE agents, prompting an apology from hotel management. (FBN)

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting voted to dissolve itself after Congress defunded NPR and PBS. (FOX)

General Motors reported a 5.5% rise in 2025 U.S. vehicle sales to over 2.85 million units, while Stellantis’ Jeep ended with a slight gain—the brand's first annual increase since 2018. (CNBC)

Tech workers are turning to unregulated "Chinese peptides"—gray-market compounds sourced directly from manufacturers—for biohacking benefits like weight loss and enhanced focus. (NYT)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Trump urged major U.S. oil companies to prepare for significant investments in rebuilding Venezuela's oil infrastructure following the capture of Maduro. (OP)

The Department of Energy awarded contracts worth $2.7 billion to three companies to expand domestic uranium enrichment capacity over the next decade. (MIN)

Gold prices rose sharply, advancing 0.2% to around $4,458 an ounce, with U.S. gold futures up 0.4% to $4,469.10 an ounce. (INV)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Major crypto stocks rallied, with Coinbase jumping 8% to close near $255 and Robinhood rising about 7%, as Bitcoin topped $94,000 and Ethereum and XRP hit multi-week highs amid renewed market optimism. (DEC)

Goldman Sachs forecasts that clearer crypto regulations, including pending market structure legislation, will accelerate institutional adoption while enabling new use cases beyond trading in 2026. (PYM)

Bank of America authorized its wealth advisers to recommend select spot Bitcoin ETFs to clients, endorsing a 1%–4% portfolio allocation to crypto. (CT)

Polymarket partnered with onchain real estate platform Parcl to launch prediction markets on U.S. housing price indices. (CN)

Nvidia targets Level 4 driverless operations in defined areas using its Drive platform and chips, with partners including Uber and Mercedes-Benz; Mercedes vehicles with Nvidia tech are due late 2026 for complex urban driving.

CEO Jensen Huang sees automotive and robotics—now ~1% of revenue—as the firm's second-biggest growth driver after data centers, aided by simulation tools that cut partner development costs.

The Alpamayo release includes a 10-billion-parameter chain-of-thought vision-language-action model (Alpamayo 1 on Hugging Face), open simulation framework (AlpaSim on GitHub), and 1,700+ hours of diverse driving datasets.

These tools enable step-by-step reasoning for novel scenarios with explainable decisions, serving as teacher models for fine-tuning into on-vehicle systems—unlike traditional separated perception-planning setups.

Partners such as Lucid, JLR, Uber, and Berkeley DeepDrive endorsed the open ecosystem for boosting safety, transparency, and AV innovation.

⭐ Editor’s Pick: An AI revolution is transforming drug discovery, cutting development timelines from years to months as firms use advanced models to design novel molecules and predict clinical outcomes with high accuracy. (TE)

EU and Indian authorities launched probes into Elon Musk's X platform after its Grok AI enabled users to generate and share deepfake explicit images, including child sexual abuse material. (CNBC)

AMD unveiled its MI455 AI processors for data centers and the enterprise-focused MI440X at CES 2026, while previewing the MI500 series promising massive performance leaps for 2027. (TO)

Google announced Gemini updates for Google TV, adding Nano Banana and Veo AI tools for generating images and videos, starting with select TCL televisions. (VER)

Amazon opened its Alexa Plus website to early access for all users, enabling web-based interaction with the upgraded AI assistant that handles tasks like document uploads and smart home control. (VER)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Hyundai Motor Group plans to deploy Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid robots at its Georgia factory starting in 2028 for parts sequencing, expanding to assembly and heavy-load tasks by 2030. (WIR)

Chinese robotics firm AGIBOT entered the U.S. market, unveiling three humanoid models—A2, X2, and G2—alongside the D1 quadruped robot dog, with applications in hospitality, logistics, and manufacturing. (IE)

Yarbo's autonomous robotic snow blower, capable of clearing up to 6,000 square feet per charge, is positioning itself as a hands-free alternative to traditional snow removal trucks. (TP)

Las Vegas's Otonomous Hotel deployed Oto—a robot concierge from IntBot—to greet guests, manage housekeeping requests, and provide restaurant recommendations. (EN)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: A U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft conducted repeated circles off Mexico's Pacific coast near Tijuana, as Trump warned of potential military strikes against drug cartels. (ET)

Chinese researchers unveiled a "smart surface" technology that harvests energy from enemy radar beams to generate electricity, enabling self-powered stealth operations for aircraft like the J-20. (NGD)

The U.S. Marine Corps plans to procure 10,000 low-cost FPV drones in 2026—doubling to 20,000 by 2027. (DS)

University of Iowa researchers are pushing deeper into advanced materials research, aiming to lay the groundwork for future quantum technologies with potential defense applications. (DP)

⭐ Editor’s Pick: Data center operator DayOne raised $2 billion in a Series C round led by Coatue to fund hyperscale campus development. (RTS)

Startup Minimus raised $51 million in seed funding co-led by YL Ventures and Mayfield to launch a platform that proactively eliminates over 95% of software supply chain vulnerabilities. (YNET)

Cybersecurity startup Spirit raised $50 million at a $400 million valuation in a round led by Cyberstarts and Sequoia Capital. (CTCH)

The scandal, dubbed the nation's largest COVID-era fraud, involves over 90 charges—mostly against members of Minnesota's Somali community—for alleged money laundering through phony meal programs, daycares, and Medicaid billing, with stolen funds fueling luxury purchases, real estate, and possible transfers to overseas terrorists.

Despite ordering audits and halting some payments, Walz's response has been criticized as too little, too late, especially after Nick Shirley’s viral video further exposed the issue and prompted the Trump administration to freeze federal child-care funds, further straining state resources.

The governor blamed Republican "political gamesmanship" for complicating fixes, but detractors, including GOP lawmakers, argue his leadership enabled the fraud and that his withdrawal is a tacit admission of electoral defeat.

⭐ Editor’s Pick: The CDC overhauled the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule, reducing routine recommendations from covering 18 diseases to 11 in response to a Trump-directed review. (FOX)

The Trump administration froze more than $10 billion in federal funding for child care and social services programs in five Democrat-led states, citing concerns over fraudulent payments to illegal immigrants (NYP)

A Christian student ministry, CounterAct USA, is launching faith-based "cells"—small, disciple-making groups—on college campuses nationwide to embolden young believers. (CFX)

A clarinetist is suing the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, alleging it rescinded a job offer won in a blind audition after discovering his prior opposition to DEI policies. (FOX)