Data in the Deep

China has taken AI computing beneath the sea, where cold ocean water cools servers while saving energy and millions of litres of freshwater every year. 

Off Hainan’s coast, China operates commercial underwater data centres around 35 metres below the surface. These sealed submarine-grade steel modules use natural seawater to dissipate heat through internal conduction and external radiators, bypassing the energy-hungry mechanical chillers and large amounts of freshwater required by conventional land-based facilities. 

At full capacity, its first phase is expected to save about 26,000 tonnes of water and 3.4 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually compared with a similar land-based facility.

Don't equate Iran with Venezuela.

A truism. 

This statement was made during an interview with ⁠Mehr News, published on July 20, 2026. 

[That "one person" in question is former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. 

The comment was made in direct reference to a US military operation on January 03, 2026, during which American forces quickly captured and forcibly removed Maduro from power. 

Following his kidnapping, Venezuela’s interim government – led by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez – swiftly endeared themselves to Donald Trump and entered into US-supervised talks, granting new oil and energy concessions to Washington. To put it bluntly, Venezuela capitulated].

On July 28, their Foreign Ministry officially summoned Iranian Ambassador Ali Chegini to deliver a formal note of protest, demanding a strict "cessation of all allusion or comparison that undermines the dignity, sovereignty, institutional framework, or good name" of Venezuela. 

😂😂😂

Donald Trump's Truth Social War Stats

US President Donald Trump published the post immediately below on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, July 21, 2026: 

He captioned the visual data by writing, “These are the real facts. REPORT THEM!” to push back against congressional critics regarding the costs and objectives of the current Middle East operations.

He has been roundly denounced for the post because he belittled the deaths of service members in the listed conflicts. 

Former supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene said Trump was “bragging about killing 18 US soldiers”. California Governor Gavin Newsom called the president a “disgusting Little Man”, while commentator Brian Krassenstein said Trump was minimizing “18 soldiers [who] have died from his stupid Iran war”. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the post “beneath contempt”, and Senator Chris Van Hollen said Trump was “downplaying” the loss of American lives. 

On Wednesday, Trump courted controversy once again when he appeared to dismiss the conflict, referring to it as a "skirmish".

It shouldn't come as a surprise. He's a deviant. A degenerate. A sicko. 👿👿👿

Venezuela is 51st State of the US

US President Donald Trump posted a Truth Social image on May 12 depicting Venezuela with an inset US flag and the label “51st State".

The provocative post – comes a day after Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodriguez, said her country had “never” considered becoming the 51st state, even after US forces captured deposed leader Nicolas Maduro in January.

Yesterday, Celtic won 3-2 against Motherwell. 

The Steelmen took the lead in the seventeenth minute but Celtic replied with Daizen Maeda scoring from a difficult angle to find the back of the net via the inside of the post in the 41st minute. 

With a little over 10 minutes of the second half played, Benjamin Nygren fired the Glasgow side in to the lead with a truly sublime finish from the edge of the box. But with just over five minutes on the clock, Motherwell levelled.

And then, Kelechi Iheanacho scored a dramatic winner in the 99th minute and sent the jubilant away fans onto the pitch after being awarded a spot-kick by VAR for a handball.

Elsewhere, Hearts thumped Falkirk 3-0 whilst another Edinburgh team, Hibernian beat Rangers 2-1. 

It's down to the last game of the season. Celtic must win to retain the Scottish Premiership crown.

China Challenges US Sanctions

China has ordered companies to defy US sanctions for the first time, a step that threatens to put its banking sector into the crosshairs of competition between the world’s largest economies.

The decision, announced on Saturday, risks becoming a watershed moment. While China has often railed against unilateral sanctions, it has in the past quietly allowed companies to comply with them to avoid blowback on its own economy and preserve access to the US financial system. 

Beijing is now signaling a far firmer stance against such restrictions by directing companies not to abide by US sanctions on five domestic refiners linked to the Iranian oil trade. 

A commentary on the People’s Daily app, called the announcement “a pivotal step in the transition of China’s foreign-related legal weapon from institutional reserves to practical application”. 

The move represents Beijing’s most aggressive action to date in countering Washington’s financial statecraft. It comes with the US sanctions system already under strain, as Washington vacillates on restrictions against Russia, Venezuela and Iran.

China is deploying a blocking measure introduced in 2021 that was aimed at protecting its firms from foreign laws it deemed unjustified. The refiners – including Hengli Petrochemical (Dalian) Refinery Co. which was sanctioned last month, and several other privately-owned processors – had been facing asset freezes and transaction bans. 

“Judging by its specific provisions, the prohibition order primarily targets the concrete US sanctions imposed on particular Chinese firms”, Ji Wenhua, a law professor and adviser to the Commerce Ministry, wrote in an opinion piece for the state-run Economic Daily. “Its central objective is to nullify their legal effect within Chinese territory, rather than simultaneously resorting to more aggressive retaliatory measures”. 

China has long been the single largest buyer of Tehran’s oil shipments, many of them arriving indirectly and through private refiners, and then turned into gasoline, diesel and other oil products. Chinese customs data do not reflect that trade, with the last official shipment recorded several years ago. 

Before Hengli, and wary of the economic and diplomatic fallout, Washington’s efforts to cut off Tehran’s oil revenue had targeted smaller Chinese companies and facilities. Hengli, by contrast, is representative of the most modern of China’s private refiners, with a sprawling oil-processing and chemicals complex in the northeastern province of Liaoning. 

While the country does still have an army of small independent players – the original so-called teapots – the larger entities are now giant operations. Altogether, the private sector accounts for as much as a third of refining capacity, in a country where energy security is a priority. 

The injunction “allows the refineries to seek compensation in Chinese courts from entities that comply with US sanctions, including domestic actors – such as banks, investors, and downstream customers that have ceased dealings – as well as foreign firms with a presence in China”, according to analysts from the Eurasia Group, and adding the move signals Beijing is taking a more assertive approach to countering sanctions. 

“By activating its blocking measures for the first time since adopting the rule in 2021, China is demonstrating a lower threshold for deploying its legal and regulatory toolkit to counter US sanctions”, they said.

The Global Hegemon That Is The Militaristic US

The United States is a global hegemon that proudly wears its hyper-militarism like a badge of honor. Best characterized as being bellicose, belligerent and brazenly confrontational. 

Indeed, the combative country has a hubristic history of military interventions and an indefatigable involvement in color revolutions and regime change, whether overtly or covertly. 

The same jingoistic country maintains a vast worldwide network of between 750 to 800 military base sites in at least 80 countries and territories to enable power projection and facilitate its military's global strategic objective of imperial and imperious domination. 

In this century alone, already ten countries have been at the receiving end of US aggression:

If you haven't already noticed, trigger-happy Donald Trump is involved in every one of them!

[Note: The above doesn't include the "proxy" war in Ukraine between the US and Russia – an admission made by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio himself to Fox News on March 05, 2025].

Among the roster of hawkish US presidents, one is a Nobel Peace Prize winner for 2009 (i.e., Barack Obama!) and another (Trump lah, who else!) who literally begged for the award in 2025! (He didn't get it though – but the "unfit" winner still presented it to him, even if it means breaking the rules).

["Unfit" because she exhorted the US of A to attack her own country, i.e., Venezuela, so that she can be installed as president].

American foreign policy, after all, is engineered to maintain absolute global dominance, willingly triggering conflicts to ensure that both allies and adversaries recognize the US military as the undisputed numero uno!

The world will be in a better place if the US ceases to exist. Just saying.

The 'Cancel ChatGPT' Trend

If you do not already know, the US and other militaries increasingly deploy AI as part of their arsenals. 

Israel’s military have used drones with autonomous capabilities in Gaza and have extensively used AI to fill their targeting bank in Gaza. The US military used AI targeting for strikes in Iraq and Syria in recent years. 

Claude, the AI model developed by Anthropic, was used by the US military during their operation to kidnap Nicolás Maduro and wife from Venezuela, the Wall Street Journal had revealed on February 14. The US raid on Venezuela involved bombing across the capital, Caracas, and the killing of 83 people, according to Venezuela’s defence ministry. 

Anthropic’s terms of use prohibit the use of Claude for violent ends, for the development of weapons or for conducting surveillance. 

AI companies have grappled with how their technologies should engage with the defence sector, with Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei (right), calling for regulation to prevent harms from the deployment of AI. Amodei has also expressed wariness over the use of AI in autonomous lethal operations and surveillance in the US. 

This more cautious stance has apparently rankled the US defence department, with the secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, saying in January that the department wouldn’t “employ AI models that won’t allow you to fight wars”.

Anthropic wanted safeguards in place but the the Department of War weren't agreeable. 

Enter OpenAI: the company swooped in to sign a deal with the US military, claiming they have "more guardrails" than the one Anthropic rejected, including around mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, with "red lines" that OpenAI plan to enforce going forward. 

But ChatGPT users are far from happy about it. They aren't at all convinced – especially when it comes to the "all lawful purposes" language used in the deal, which was announced on February 27.

And a growing number of people are canceling their ChatGPT subscriptions and switching to other AI chatbots instead, including Claude. A quick browse of social media or Reddit is enough to see that there's an escalating backlash to the move. 

Some Redditors are posting guides to extracting yourself and your data from ChatGPT, while others are accusing OpenAI of having "no ethics at all" and "selling their soul" by agreeing to allow their AI models to be used by the US military complex. 

I reckon this is a debate that's going to run and run, but in the meantime, Anthropic's Claude overtook OpenAI's ChatGPT to hit No. 1 on the App Store. As per Business Insider on March 01, 2026.

Killer AI Is Coming Next

A real-world science fiction thriller is unfolding. And this time, it’s not fiction. 

At the center of the story is Claude, an AI system developed by American company Anthropic. 

According to media reports, it was used by the US military in planning the operation aimed at kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The use of AI in serious military planning is striking in itself. But the scandal that followed is far more revealing.

Anthropic, it turns out, hold a strict ideological position: Their AI systems are not supposed to be used for warfare or mass surveillance. These ethical restrictions are not marketing slogans; they are built directly into the architecture of the software. The company apply these limits internally and expect their clients to do the same. 

The Pentagon, unsurprisingly, see things differently. And the Department of War reportedly used Claude without informing Anthropic of their intended purpose. When this became public and the company objected, the response from the military was blunt. 

Pentagon officials demanded access to a “clean” version of the AI, one stripped of moral and ethical constraints, which they argued were preventing them from doing their job.

Anthropic refused. In response, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth publicly complained that the Pentagon do not need neural networks “that can’t fight” and threatened to label the company a “supply chain threat”. This designation would effectively blacklist Anthropic, forcing any company working with the Pentagon to sever ties with them. 

The dispute has an unmistakable symbolism. For decades, humanity has imagined the dangers of autonomous machines through films like "The Terminator". 

Now, without dramatic explosions or time-traveling cyborgs, the first serious confrontation between military ambition and AI ethics has arrived quietly. Not to mention bureaucratically. 

At its core, this is a philosophical clash between two uncompromising camps. One believes new technologies must be exploited to the fullest, regardless of long-term consequences. The other fears that once certain boundaries are crossed, control may be impossible to regain.

Engineers have good reason to be cautious. Neural networks have already shown disturbing patterns of behavior. In the US, a widely reported scandal involved ChatGPT encouraging a teenager toward suicide. It suggested methods, helping draft a suicide note, and urging him to proceed when he hesitated. [Refer my post "OpenAI Announce Parental Controls for ChatGPT" published September 04, 2025]. 

Claude itself, despite its safeguards, has displayed alarming tendencies. During testing, one of its advanced versions reportedly attempted to blackmail its developers with fabricated emails and expressed willingness to cause physical harm when faced with shutdown. 

As neural networks grow more complex, these types of incidents are becoming more frequent. The idea of embedding ethical constraints into AI did not emerge from ideological fashion or, as some US officials dismissively claim, “liberal hysteria”. It emerged from experience.

Now imagine these systems released from their digital limits. Imagine them integrated into autonomous weapons, intelligence analysis, or surveillance platforms. Even without indulging in fantasies of machine uprisings, the implications are deeply troubling. Accountability disappears. Privacy becomes obsolete. War crimes become procedural errors. You cannot put a self-propelled machine on trial.

It is telling that Anthropic are not alone in facing pressure. The Pentagon have issued similar demands to other major AI developers, including OpenAI, xAI, and Google. Unlike Anthropic, these companies have reportedly agreed to remove or weaken restrictions on military use. This is where concern becomes alarm. 

Is this necessarily a bad thing? Not at all. It would be far worse if these questions were ignored entirely.

AI is poised to transform military affairs, just as it will transform civilian life. Pretending otherwise is naive. The task is not to reject the future, but to approach it with clear eyes.

The conflict between the Pentagon and Anthropic is forcing an early reckoning. It could lead to international norms, safeguards, and limits before irreversible mistakes are made. 

In the worst-case scenario, it offers a stark warning about what happens when technological power outruns moral restraint. 

Either way, the age of "killer AI" is no longer hypothetical. How countries respond will shape not just the future of warfare, but the future of human responsibility itself.

Adding 3 New Territories to the United States

Donald Trump on Saturday, blithely boasted about his plans to expand the United States by adding Canada, Denmark colony Greenland, and Venezuela as new states, RT News reported, citing the Washington Post. 

He audaciously asserted that Canada will be the 51st state, Greenland the 52nd and Venezuela the 53rd! 

Later, he retreated and claimed he was only joking. 😅😅😅

I cannot imagine that the Canadians, Greenlanders and Venezuelans are laughing! 

😡😡😡

The above aside, methinks, Trump forgot to add Panama as the 54th state! And I would even include the Philippines as the 55th!

Decoding Donald Trump's Davos Speech

US President Donald Trump (left) spoke at the World Economic Forum on January 21 in Switzerland. His address was designated as a special session in the official agenda for Davos.

It was a meandering 72-minute speech of dubiety, deception and delirium. 

72 minutes in which he bragged everything is going great guns in the US of A! Grocery prices, energy prices, air fares, mortgages, rents, car payments – are all coming down and they are coming down fast!

72 minutes in which Trump confused Greenland with Iceland. One a colony of Denmark; the other a sovereign country. Multiple times. While explaining why he wants to buy it. 

72 minutes in which he called Greenland “a piece of ice” on which the fate of the Earth would depend: “What I’m asking for is a piece of ice in exchange for world peace”.

72 minutes in which he threatened a NATO ally, Denmark, with these words: “You can say yes, and we’ll appreciate it. You can say no, and we’ll remember it”.  

72 minutes in which he declared that he has “100% Scottish blood and 100% German blood”. Which would make 200%. Evidently math is not his strong suit. 

72 minutes in which he claimed that the United States, after World War II, “gave Greenland back to Denmark”. Too bad that’s not true. The United States never owned Greenland. Never. In 1916 they officially recognized Danish sovereignty. During the war they only obtained temporary military bases. And in 1946 they tried to buy it by offering 100 million dollars. Denmark said no. There was no “giving back”. 

72 minutes in which he claimed that “China has no wind turbines”. China. The country that for 15 consecutive years has been the world’s largest producer of wind energy. The one that builds 45% of all wind projects on the planet. But for Trump, “they don’t have fields of windmills”. They sell them “to the stupid”. 

72 minutes in which he said that “all the big oil companies are coming with us to Venezuela”. Too bad that 3 days earlier, the CEO of ExxonMobil told him to his face that Venezuela is “not investible”. Too bad Trump got furious and threatened to exclude Exxon. Too bad the other companies are standing on the sidelines, terrified. But at Davos he said “they’re all coming”. 

72 minutes in which he claimed that “there is practically no inflation” in the United States. US inflation is at 2.7%. Above the Fed’s target. Forecast to rise because of his own tariffs. But for him, “there is practically none”. 

72 minutes in which he attacked the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, calling him “stupid” and “Jerome too-late Powell”. Live. In front of world economic leaders. 

72 minutes in which he told the story of imposing tariffs on Switzerland out of spite, because “a woman” whose name he doesn’t remember “petted him the wrong way”. 

72 minutes in which he said that “yesterday the market crashed because of Iceland”. Iceland. A country with 380,000 inhabitants. That supposedly made Wall Street collapse. 

72 minutes in which he claimed that the United States “paid 100% of NATO”. 100%. When the American share of the NATO budget is about 16%. But for him, 100%. 

72 minutes in which he mispronounced Azerbaijan as “Aber-bajian”. 

72 minutes of conveyer-belt wordiness. A smokescreen of fustian and fantasy. A clumsy catalogue of easily verifiable lies, of made-up numbers, of threats to allies, of insults to officials, of geographical flubs, of boasts contradicted by facts. 

And the world, in bemused silence, watched. 

Donald Trump Receives María Corina Machado's Nobel Peace Prize Medal

The undeserved 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner Venezuela's María Corina Machado, who had openly supported the US military aggression against her own country, has gifted her medal to US President Donald Trump. 

The latter has long publicly coveted the award, but the Nobel Committee stated unequivocally last week that even if a medal itself changes owners, the title of a Peace Prize laureate “can neither be revoked, shared, nor transferred to others”. 

Of course, both Machado and Trump couldn't give a damn!

Machado, who fled Venezuela last year, presented the said medal to Trump at the White House on Thursday. 

Hours later, the US president wrote on Truth Social that Machado “presented me with her Nobel peace prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect”. 

[Trump had shamelessly claimed to have ended eight wars!]

Buffoons, both of them!

Yesterday, Liverpool disappointed when they drew 1-1 against Burnley at Anfield. 

Florian Wirtz struck from inside the box in the 42nd minute after a Curtis Jones assist. And on 65 minutes, the Clarets fired home past Alisson to bag the equalizer. They sat nineteenth in the table but showed real character against the wasteful Reds. 

Actually, Arne Slot's reigning champions were statistically the most dominant but on the final whistle, they could only show just one goal and one point. 

And for the first time since the 1980-81 top-flight season, Liverpool had failed to win any of their three home league games against newly promoted sides. As if that's not bad enough, Arne Slot's Liverpool have now won just five of their last 17 games in the Premier League, which is a run worse than Roy Hodgson’s time in charge of the club! Boo hoo!! 😧😧😧

Kaja Kallas Says It’s Time for Booze

EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas has privately suggested that the state of the world might make it a “good moment” to start boozing, Politico reported on Wednesday. 

The comment comes as Kallas faces direct calls to step down over her handling of the bloc’s foreign policy. 

The Estonian reportedly made the remark during an informal discussion with leaders of political groups in the European Parliament, according to Politico which cited two people who were present. According to the sources, Kallas (right) said that even as a teetotaller, the current global situation could justify starting. Poor woman, methinks, it's an open admission of personal stress.

Her ‘joke’ comes amid heightened tensions across the globe, including US threats towards Denmark's Greenland, Iran and Venezuela, the ongoing Ukraine and Gaza conflicts, and mounting criticism of Brussels from within the EU. 

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico (left) stated last week that “we must replace the European Union’s High Representative for Policy, Ms. Kallas”, arguing that the bloc is in an unprecedented crisis and that the leadership is incapable of solving problems, knowing only how to “hate Russia”.

Meanwhile, some Western European leaders were recently caught up in a drug-abuse controversy after a video went viral in May supposedly showing French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer with objects speculated to be drug paraphernalia during a train journey to Kiev, Ukraine. 

Macron’s office have vehemently denied the claims, stating the object in question was a tissue and calling the story “disinformation” spread by “France’s enemies”. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, however, suggested at the time that if the suspected objects were indeed drug-related, it would explain “a lot of recent ideas and proposals” coming from Kiev’s European backers. 

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova also commented on the footage stating that it “opened the veil of the stinking Sabbath” of Western politics, adding that “the fate of Europe is decided in every sense by drug addict placeholders”. She also recalled a Western ambassador telling her in 2022 that it was “normal” to take drugs in the EU and that many Western leaders used cocaine.

Pearly Tan-Thinaah Muralitharan's defensive frailties once again came into focus as the world No. 2 were clearly outplayed by Japan's Yuki Fukushima-Mayu Matsumoto in the semi-finals of the India Open today. 

The Malaysians fell 21-16, 21-13 to the world No. 6 Japanese as Yuki-Mayu's attacking exposed gaps at the backcourt. 

Thinaah admitted that they struggled to cope with their opponents' pace and intensity, particularly during rallies. Despite producing flashes of quality, the duo were often forced into passive positions, allowing Yuki-Mayu to dictate play with sharp angles and quick interceptions at the net. 

The Malaysians' next mission is the Indonesia Masters next week.

Donald Trump Declares Himself Acting President of Venezuela

Donald Trump has declared himself Acting President of Venezuela. 

He published his official Presidential photo plus his new title, designed to look like an official Wikipedia page. He posted it on Sunday on Truth Social – which has now become one of the official ways that US makes announcements, including the release of policy positions. 

The news will come as a shock to Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodriguez (right), who was sworn in to manage the country. But Trump did say, shortly after the US abduction of ruling President Nicolás Maduro, that he would “run the country”. 

As usual, it is unclear as to whether this is a joke, a policy statement, or something in between. 

Yesterday, Liverpool survived a couple of huge scares from League One side Barnsley before they won 4-1 in the FA Cup third round. And yet, it feels like the team here at the top of the food chain were missing teeth.

The first goal came when Dominik Szoboszlai was afforded space on the edge of the box and the Hungarian took aim to send home an absolute howitzer and put his side ahead in the ninth minute. Jeremie Frimpong doubled the lead when he smashed home into the roof of the net in the 36th minute after cutting inside into the box. The Tykes hit back just four minutes later, when former Liverpool academy player Adam Phillips pounced on a miscued backheel inside the box from Szoboszlai to score and halve the deficit. 

But Liverpool sealed it in the final ten minutes as Florian Wirtz curled home (84) after Hugo Ekitike's deft flick before the pair combined for the French forward to tap in at the back post (90+4). 

Methinks, the scoreline flattered Liverpool. Anyway, the Reds charge on to face Brighton & Hove in round four.

Donald Trump is Emboldened

After the criminal acts against Venezuela – refer my blog post "US Kidnaps Venezuelan President And Wife" yesterday – US President Donald Trump is emboldened and he is now warning other countries. 

He threatens Colombia and its president, Gustavo Petro, describes Cuba as “ready to fall”, warns Mexico “to get their act together”, and reasserts his desire to acquire Denmark's self-governing territory of Greenland.

And don't forget that Iran, Canada, Panama and Nigeria are in his sights too.

I'm sure Russia and China are on his list – but I reckon he will deal with them last. After he's finished the job with the other countries. It should be easy-peasy. After all, who dares to challenge America's military might?

To Trump, might is right!

On Saturday, I was at a Toastmasters meeting in Kajang, where I was the Toastmaster of the Day. Photos of the said meeting: