🚨🇺🇸🇨🇳 TRUMP'S REAL PLAY - STARVE CHINA'S AI AMBITIONS WITH OIL CUTS
Venezuela provided 5% of China's oil. Cheap, reliable, discounted crude. Trump blockaded it.
Iran's the bigger hit. China buys 80% of Iran's exports. Steep discounts, keeps China's independent refineries and petrochemical sector running. Trump's squeezing Tehran hard - tariffs, sanctions, backing protests.
Beijing's stuck. Keep buying Iranian oil and risk economic retaliation? Or comply and lose cheapest energy available?
AI runs on electricity. Training one large model uses as much power as a mid-sized city. Multiply that by hundreds of data centers.
China imports 70% of its oil. Much of it from politically unstable or sanctioned states like Venezuela and Iran. Cut those flows, AI gets expensive fast.
The kicker: oil's not just fuel. It's in plastics, resins, coolants, lubricants, composites - everything AI hardware needs. Plus it stabilizes power grids.
Cheap oil = cheap AI training. Whoever trains more models faster and cheaper wins the race.
Trump's bet: Don't need to out-build China's data centers if you can out-price and out-power them. US has abundant domestic oil and gas. China's vulnerable on imports.
Energy becomes the hidden AI weapon. Not attacking technology directly - just making it too expensive to scale.
Squeeze Venezuela. Pressure Iran. Reshape global oil flows. Make China's AI ambitions structurally more expensive without firing a shot.
AI dominance won't be decided by who writes the best code. It'll be decided by who can power the most machines, longest, at lowest cost.
The future of AI might get decided in oil fields and shipping lanes, not Silicon Valley.
Source: ZeroHedge, Epoch Times
