US-Venezuela: Russian-Flagged Tanker Seized By US Military

Summary

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Newscast – Detailed Episode Summary

Episode Title: US-Venezuela: Russian-Flagged Tanker Seized By US Military
Date: January 7, 2026
Host(s): Adam Fleming, with contributions from Jeremy Bowen (BBC International Editor), Michelle Veazey Bachmann (Senior Maritime Intelligence Analyst, Windwards), Faisal Islam (BBC Economics Editor)
Main Topics: US seizure of a Russian-flagged oil tanker linked to Venezuela, global implications for sanctions enforcement, maritime law, geopolitics, and quantum computing advances.

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1. Overview:

This episode delves into the dramatic seizure of a Russian-flagged oil tanker by the US, with British assistance, in the strategic waters between Iceland and the UK—underscoring escalating enforcement of sanctions against Venezuela, Russia, and Iran. The discussion explores the global implications of these maritime operations, shifting strategies under US President Donald Trump, the growing posture of Western powers, and what this means for international order and alliances. The second segment changes gear to cover breakthroughs in quantum computing, including a rare inside look at Google’s lab from California.

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2. The Maritime Seizure: Background and Developments

The Incident (01:14–03:44)

• Event: US military, aided by the UK, seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker ("Marinara," formerly "Bella One"), linked to sanctioned Venezuelan oil shipments in the North Atlantic gap.
• Follow-up: Shortly after, the US Coast Guard seized another Venezuela-linked vessel in the Caribbean.
• Adam Fleming: “The Americans, with British help, seized a Russian flagged oil vessel with links to Venezuela. And then very soon afterwards, the Americans seized another Venezuelan linked vessel in the Caribbean.” (01:32)

The Geopolitical Framing (03:44–05:01)

• Jeremy Bowen highlights: These operations signify “American muscle flexing of an order that really takes it into new territory... a new age of imperialism.” (04:36)
  • Draws parallels to 19th and 20th-century European imperialism.

Rationale From the White House (05:01–05:35)

• Caroline Levitt, Press Secretary:

  “This administration is going to fully enforce the sanction policy of the United States... The vessel had a judicial seizure order, and the crew is now subject to prosecution for any applicable violation of federal law.” (05:01)

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3. Enforcement, Sanctions, & Maritime Law

Changing Tactics and Legal Ground (05:42–09:13)

• Michelle Veazey Bachmann:
  • Western sanctions haven’t been followed up by robust enforcement, allowing flows of sanctioned oil from Iran, Venezuela, and Russia to continue.
  • US has recently stepped up, with four tankers intercepted for breaching sanctions in the past couple of weeks—“extraordinary and even more extraordinary that this is a Russian flagged tanker.” (06:12)
  • Discusses “flagging”—how ships switch registries for legal cover. Marinara had falsely flagged itself, then reflagged to Russia, offering a new level of state protection and complicating legal interdiction.
  • “About two thirds of sanctioned vessels are...stateless...they've been vulnerable to interception because under the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, Article 110 allows for an authority to board them.” (08:25)

Russian Response and Global Context (09:13–11:23)

• Jeremy Bowen:
  • Russian response is “very low key”—possibly because “if you can have an American empire, you can have a Russian empire, and if you can have a Russian empire and an American empire, you can have a Chinese empire.” (10:33)
  • “The Americans are behaving like an imperial power. And I think...the Russians are being a bit quiet about it.” (10:17)

Old-School Deceptive Tactics, Tech, and Security (11:23–12:45)

• Michelle Veazey Bachmann:
  • “Deceptive shipping practices 101 to go dark—to turn off your automatic identification system so you can’t be seen. Well, that didn’t turn out that well for them...” (11:35)
  • “60% of tankers calling to load in Venezuela are deploying some sort of deceptive shipping tactic...” (12:08)

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4. UK’s Changing Role and European Weakness (12:45–16:46)

British Position

• Adam Fleming:
  “The British government was fully behind the Americans and...provided some resources to help.” (12:45)

• Jeremy Bowen:

  • For the UK, operations in international waters are “something they can get behind quite easily...must be a bit of a sigh of relief in London.” (13:02)
  • Contrasts with the complexities of acting within sovereign territories (e.g., Venezuela).

European Dilemmas

• Jeremy Bowen:
  • “We are weak militarily and politically because we’re on the sidelines...having no real way of influencing it.” (14:06)
  • Lord Mandelson’s Spectator argument: “Trump is actually not the cause of all of this. He’s the product of all of this changing world.” (14:42)

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5. Trump, American Power & The “Don Roe Doctrine” (16:46–18:18)

American Leverage

• Jeremy Bowen:
  • “Trump is a really confusing guy...But some things are consistent. One of the things that's consistent is this feeling that America is super powerful and they can do what they want with impunity.” (16:12)

Venezuelan Blockade & European Lessons

• Michelle Veazey Bachmann:
  • “Trump interdictions...have given a template to the Europeans about how to deal with the Dark Fleet.”
  • “Oil is starting to flow to the US…[Dark Fleet tankers] that typically would come in and load for China, they've all done U-turns...So it's completely choked off that supply.” (17:31)

The Don Roe Doctrine in Action

• Adam Fleming:
  “Donald Trump's new big strategy...based on former American President James Monroe, about controlling the Western hemisphere, that is now happening in real time with the oil supply from South America.” (18:02)

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6. Europe’s Response & The High Stakes Game

Possible UK and Nordic Interdictions

• Michelle Veazey Bachmann:
  • Nordic and Baltic countries are carefully watching “at legal options available to them...I think we’re very close to that.” (19:00)

Global Alliances, Starmer’s Challenge

• Discussion:

  • The UK wants to balance the “special relationship” with the USA and European partnerships, but future “crisis over Greenland” may force binary choices. (19:30–21:16)

• Jeremy Bowen:

  • “If the Americans come in and do it...really would be the end of NATO.” (21:16)

“Trump’s Bark vs. Bite”

• Debate:
  • There’s a “don’t worry too much about Trump” camp—his bark is worse than his bite, but others point to a doubled-down, unpredictable strategy in his second term. (21:51–22:34)

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7. Quantum Computing Segment (From 23:00)

What is Quantum Computing? (23:48–24:45)

• Faisal Islam:
  • Quantum computing allows many more states than 0 and 1; “Some states in between all at the same time. And if you deign to try to observe it, that, in fact, changes the answer.” (24:15)
  • Data analogy: “A classical computer would just take out all the drawers one by one...A quantum computer just allows you to open all the drawers at the same time.” (25:10)

Inside Google’s Quantum Lab (26:52–29:05)

• Faisal Islam:
  • Visited Google Quantum AI's Santa Barbara lab—“most promising, most advanced, fastest...functioning version of this quantum computer.”
  • Facility’s laid-back California vibe stands out; “They wrap these computers, which are like oil barrel-sized bronze chandeliers, in art.” (27:03)
  • Interview with Prof. Hartmut Neven, head of the lab.

Notable Quote:

• Hartmut Neven:

  “It will enable us to discover drugs more efficiently, help make food production more efficient, help with the energy economy...by virtue of being able to model nature at its finest level...this allows us to unlock its secrets to build technologies that make life more pleasant for all of us.” (28:20)

Implications, Power, and the Geopolitical Race (29:05–36:42)

• Superpowered Calculations and Cooling:

  • Quantum computers exist at the “coldest place in the universe...minus 170 degrees Kelvin plus a thousandth of a percent.” (30:43–31:05)

• Race for Quantum Supremacy:

  • The US (Google, IBM, university spin-outs) and China are leading, with Britain playing catch-up.
  • “China has decided that it wants to use this technology as part of its 14th Five Year Plan” and has centralized all quantum computing efforts. (32:55)

• Security Fears:

  • “Harvest to decrypt”—global governments are stockpiling data, expecting future quantum computers will break all encryptions.
  • “Every WhatsApp message, Bitcoin, absolutely everything will be crackable...when these things become functioning.” (34:08)
  • Bank regulators and crypto experts are racing to keep up with looming vulnerabilities.

Notable Quotes:

• Faisal Islam:

  “Whoever wins this race...wins the 21st century.” (36:35)

• Discussion on Quantum Entanglement:

  • “Whoever gets there, whoever wins this race, really...probably is the second quarter of the 21st century will be the quantum era.” (36:01)

• Parallel Universes Mention:

  • Hartmut Neven on the implications of quantum speeds:

    “There’s a formulation of quantum mechanics called many worlds...it doesn’t confirm the existence of parallel universes but...it’s an idea we should take very seriously.” (37:13)

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8. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (Timestamps & Attribution)

• Jeremy Bowen (On New “Imperialism”): “What we are looking at...is Trump’s conception of the birth of a bigger, bigger and better American empire. A very good frame...is through imperialism and empire, just like we used to do in Europe in the 19th and 20th century.” (04:36)
• Caroline Levitt (White House): “The United States of America under this president is not going to tolerate that.” (05:01)
• Michelle Veazey Bachmann (On Shadow Fleet Tactics): “About 60% of tankers that are calling to load in Venezuela are deploying some sort of deceptive shipping tactic in order to try and hide the origin and the destination of the oil.” (12:08)
• Faisal Islam (On Quantum Race): “Whoever wins this race...wins the 21st century.” (36:35)
• Hartmut Neven (Google Quantum AI): “Just by virtue of being able to model nature...this allows us to understand nature much better and then unlock its secrets to build technologies that make life more pleasant for all of us.” (28:44)

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9. Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:14–03:44 – Seizure background & episode setup
• 03:44–05:01 – Jeremy Bowen on US's new imperial posture
• 05:01–05:35 – Caroline Levitt (White House) press briefing
• 05:42–09:13 – Sanctions enforcement & “flagging” explained by Michelle Veazey Bachmann
• 09:13–11:23 – Tensions with Russia and parallels to global power status
• 11:23–12:45 – Old-school deceptive shipping in a new tech era
• 16:46–18:18 – The “Don Roe Doctrine” and Venezuelan oil choke
• 23:00–32:00 – Quantum computing explainer, Google lab visit, strategic outlook
• 33:40–36:42 – Security implications of quantum computing, the geopolitical tech race

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Takeaway

This episode captures a moment of escalating legal, military, and technological confrontation on the world stage, blending old-school naval drama with the new realities of global power and technological revolution. Listeners are left with an understanding of how oil sanctions enforcement is evolving and how quantum technology may soon reshape everything from finance to geopolitics, wrapped up in insightful, accessible conversation.

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Transcript

[Adam Fleming]

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[Adam Fleming]

Hello.

If you were listening to the last episode of Newscast, you will have heard Shashank Joshi from the Economist talking about the importance of the Greenland Iceland UK gap and how it plays a very important part in the Tom Clancy novel about a Russian submarine, the Hunt for Red October. Well, today there was some real life maritime drama in the gap. The Americans, with British help, seized a Russian flagged oil vessel with links to Venezuela. And then very soon afterwards, the Americans seized another Venezuelan linked vessel in the Caribbean. We'll discuss what's going on and what it means in this latest episode of.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

Newscast, Newscast, Newscast from the BBC.

[Adam Fleming]

Fat Boy Slim and me in the classroom doing our violin lessons.

[Faisal Islam]

I was the tattletale in the class.

[Lewis Goodall]

Can I have an apology please? I trust almost nobody that daddy has.

[Adam Fleming]

To sometimes use strong language.

[Faisal Islam]

Next time in Moscow.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

I feel delulu with no Salulu. Take me down to Downing Street.

[Adam Fleming]

Let's go have a tour. Blimey. Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio and shortly I'll be joined by Faisal Islam who's going to tell us the latest news in computing from the quantum realm, which we will explain what all that is. Don't worry. But first of all, today's big international story has been the US dramatically seizing it. A Russian flagged oil vessel which was linked to Venezuela. And this all happened in the sea in between Iceland and the UK and the US did this with British help. The ship was called the Marinara. Previously it'd be known as the Bella one because it had only recently transferred its international flagging as is done in the shipping industry to Russia. And then shortly after that, the US Coast Guard seized a second vessel linked to Venezuela, but this time in the Caribbean. There is a lot to unpick here. So the people who are going to help us are here in the newscast studio. Please welcome back for 2026 the BBC's international editor, Jeremy Bowen. Hello, Jeremy.

Hello. Nice to be back here.

Busy year for an international editor so far.

I know it's only the first week of January.

Yes. And also joining us, our favorite shipping expert is Michelle Veazey Bachmann, who's a senior maritime intelligence analyst at Windwards. Hello again, Michelle.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

Hi, Adam.

[Adam Fleming]

You were last on newscast when that ship got stuck in the. It was the Panama Canal, wasn't it?

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

Suez Canal.

[Adam Fleming]

Suez Canal at the.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

Ever given.

[Adam Fleming]

Was that the massive container ship.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

Yeah, the massive container ship that completely paralyzed.

[Faisal Islam]

Yeah.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

World trade for 14 days.

[Adam Fleming]

I feel I've just lost a pub quiz by getting the wrong canal.

Yeah, you wouldn't, you wouldn't make it on my team.

No. Anyway, right, let's talk about the dramatic events today. Jeremy, just how did this, this play out? What do we now know about what happened?

Well, this rusting, apparently empty tanker has been a quarry of the Americans now for quite a while. It gave, gave them the slip, but they've been following it and the, the British are saying that they've known for about a week that this is operation was going to happen. There's been quite a lot in the last few days of reporting of the Americans bringing in an awful lot of hardware into bases in the UK with British permission. And the British were involved in the operation as well in some kind of aviation role. Think so? I think what we're seeing here globally is American muscle flexing of an order that really takes it into new territory. Because what we are looking at really, I think, is Trump's conception of the birth of a, of a, of a bigger, bigger and better American empire. A very good frame, a very good way of looking at this is through imperialism and empire, just like we used to do in Europe in the 19th century and the 20th century.

I'll pick your brains on that in a bit. But let's listen to Caroline Levitt, who's the press secretary at the White House, talking about the rationale for why the US authorities seized this vessel in the first place.

[Caroline Levitt]

This administration is going to fully enforce the sanction policy of the United States. The vessel this morning was seized in the North Atlantic pursuant to a warrant issued by a US Federal court after being Tracked. And this was a Venezuelan shadow fleet vessel that has transported sanctioned oil. And the United States of America under this president is not going to tolerate that. I would also just add the vessel had a judicial seizure order in the crew. So that means the crew is now subject to prosecution for any applicable violation of federal law and they will be brought to the United States for such prosecution if necessary.

[Adam Fleming]

So, Michelle, decode what that means for us in kind of international maritime law and what the Americans think they're doing here.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

Well, so for the last 18 months in particular, the favorite foreign policy tool of Western governments, including the U.S. the UK and the EU has been to sanction these ships. But it hasn't been followed up with enforcement. So sanctions on Iran, oil has flowed uninterrupted. Sanctions on Venezuela, the same, and Russia. And in the last couple of weeks, we've now seen four tankers intercepted for breaching those sanctions. So extraordinary and even more extraordinary that this is a Russian flagged tanker.

[Adam Fleming]

I suppose that's what makes this different from the other seizures that we kind of got used to over the last few months.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

Well, that's right. And the U.S. has previously seized tankers with Iranian oil using a civil forfeiture in rem procedure. They did it under Trump and the first administration, also with Biden. And so this is the basis upon which once they've boarded the vessels, they're able to take the vessel and the cargo, if it's got cargo on it, off back to the US and just.

[Adam Fleming]

Explain the whole flagging situation with, with this vessel.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

Okay, so with shipping with flags, I like to use an analogy. So if I've got a car and I'm driving it in the UK, I need to register the car in the UK but in shipping, you can think, you know what, I don't like the rules in the UK I'm going to go to Gambia where they don't really, you know, they'll insure it without looking at the car. They don't really care what condition it was in. And so on that basis, a lot of these dark fleet tankers that are shipping sanctioned oil have just gone for the lowest common denominator. And they've gone to a lot of countries that don't have proper scrutiny or oversight which has allowed them to continue trading even if they're sanctioned. So in the case of nearly all shadow fleet vessels, dark fleet vessels, they choose permissive flag registries in order to continue trading. But in the case of the Belawan marinara, after the first interdiction failed and it was falsely flagged. So it was stateless. It didn't even have a registry. It reflagged to Russia and that really changed the game because Russia typically hasn't really claimed any of its dark fleet vessels until after the skipper interdiction on December 10th. That was the very first tanker that was seized by the U.S. since then we, we've tracked 21 tankers that have reflagged to Russia like that.

[Adam Fleming]

Right.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

So this is really significant. It's kind of a game change. And so it could mean that maybe regimes like Iran, Russia, Venezuela, if they want to shift their oil, they're going to have to do it on their own fleet now.

[Adam Fleming]

And so would you re flag as Russian so you could get Russian protection if you then got intercepted by the Americans?

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

Well, I think if you're stateless, which about two thirds of sanctioned vessels are, so they're purporting to fly a flag either of a registry that doesn't exist or they'll just broadcast their stool with the flag that they've been booted out of. They've been vulnerable to interception because under the United Nations Convention of the Law of the seas, Article 110 allows for an authority to board them being flagged with Russia. They're thinking that affords them protection. Now, we don't know the legal basis upon which the interdiction was done today, which I note was done just outside, just as it came into the economic exclusion zone of Iceland, a NATO member. So it may be a different basis upon which it was seized than the other three, but we don't know yet.

[Adam Fleming]

And Jeremy, the Russia element to this, it seemed very tense about lunchtime, didn't it? Because the reports emerged that there was a Russian submarine in the area that was going to go and intercept the people who were trying to intercept the ship. But then this evening, it seems like the Kremlin has tried to sort of dial things down.

Yeah. Their response has been actually very low key. You can imagine in a different, slightly different set of circumstances. The fact that a Russian flagged ship, even temporarily flagged, as the Russians have been quite loudly pointing out, has been apprehended by the Americans with the help of the Brits, would be something they get very hot under the collar about. But they've been, they've been saying things like protect the crew, release them, treat them well. And I think that's because they're watching this absolute fury of activity coming from Donald Trump and wondering what's in it for them? Because what Donald Trump has been doing in the Last. Well, it's. Gosh, it's time. What is it now? Wednesday? Yeah, this, only this all started on Saturday morning. Since they took Maduro out of, out of Venezuela, the Americans have been I think showing more starkly than ever how they believe power should run in the world. And that is essentially a new age of imperialism. They're talking like an imperial power about not just about Venezuela but about, about Greenland and actually when the British had a very large Royal Navy during the, our days of empire we used to intercept vessels on the high seas, take them, take the cargoes, do all those sorts of things. Americans are doing it and they're behaving like an imperial power. And I think that one of the reasons perhaps why the Russians are being a bit quiet about it is if you can have a, an American empire, you can have a Russian empire and if you can have a Russian empire and an American empire, you can have a Chinese empire. And so for those countries who have designs on their neighbors then this might be quite a favorable time and of course a very nervy time for those who could be on the wrong end of it.

And talking of old school things, Michelle, like there's some old school, old fashioned sounding elements to this story about this, this ship for example, it turning, it going dark and sort of just disappearing off the radar for a bit.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

Yeah, you know, you know one the deceptive shipping practices 101 to go dark to turn off your automatic identification system so you can't be seen. Well that didn't turn out that well for them because you know we've got remote sensing intelligence these days and we've actually seen images of satellite images of the, the tanker being traced and tracked by a US Coast Guard vessel. So spoofing their location, basically lying about where they were. Yeah, so I mean a lot of Venezuelan oil, I mean when we did the numbers, I would say about 60% of, of tankers that are calling to load in Venezuela are deploying some sort of deceptive shipping tactic in order to try and hide the origin and the destination of the oil. So you know, it's quite common, it's really embedded in the dark fleet and completely outside international rules based order. So in one sense, you know, the US and the UK are really doing the world a favour by seizing these vessels and removing them from the market because they are really a threat to the, the environment because they're so unsafe maritime security and safety. So that's another way to look at this, these interceptions as well.

[Adam Fleming]

And Jeremy, the statement from the British and The Defence Secretary, John Healey today, he was very unapologetic about being involved in this. It wasn't like the Venezuela situation where the British government was sort of hedging its bets and trying not to say anything. They were fully behind the Americans and, as you said, provided some resources to help.

Yeah, well. And trying to take, as you said, as you were saying, one of these unsafe vessels out of circulation, something they can get behind quite easily in international waters, doesn't have the political implications of going into a sovereign state, even if it's run by a really bad man, and pulling them out, putting them on trial and seizing their most important industry, which is oil, which is something the Americans are trying to do in Venezuela. So, yeah, it's easier for. Must be a bit of a sigh of relief in London, in Whitehall, to be able to get behind this in a more unequivocal fashion. Because, of course, when it comes to Venezuela, when it becomes. Comes to Greenland, when it comes to the idea that the Americans might even be having military plans to attack a NATO partner, which they more or less said they're looking at military options, well, that's way more complicated at a time when they are absolutely terrified of enraging Trump and getting him to walk out of, particularly walk out of not just Ukraine, but wider European security. It's a sign of how weak we are in Europe. We are weak militarily and politically because we're on the sidelines looking at what's going on and having no real way of influencing it. And that is a very. Actually, it's a bit of a strange situation for what altogether in Europe? The eu, plus Britain and a few other. Norway is a massive, powerful, rich trading bloc, yet collectively, they cannot find a way of harnessing that power in a way that the. The new big empires like Trump's might be able to.

Well, and Lord Mandelson is back because he's written an article for the Spectator, which I think comes out in print tomorrow, but I've seen it on email where he basically says everyone needs to just get with the program. Trump is actually not the cause of all of this. He's the product of all of this changing world. And actually, he says the histrionics about green the EU's displayed this week, you just need to end that and get around the table with the Americans to do a deal on Arctic security. Because ultimately, that's what Trump wants, like a Green, a more secure Greenland. That's a safer Arctic.

Well, in 1982, Britain went to war when Argentina took British territory, or what was considered to be British territory in the Falkland Islands. Of course, Argentina disagreed about that. And as the Americans say, no one's going to go to war with them against over Greenland. And that is because of this principle I mentioned earlier, which is that Trump is a really confusing guy. It's almost like he spreads confusion as a tactic because it keeps everybody off balance. But some things are consistent. One of the things that's consistent is this feeling that America is super powerful and they can do what they want with impunity. And that's something you always have to keep in mind. I think with Trump is feeling that, you know, you remember how he used to, how he used to boast. I won't use his offensive language about how he'd respond to women. He could get away with it. And he said when he was running for president, and he said, I can go down Park Avenue and shoot someone.

I get away, I get away with it. Yeah.

And now he's thinking, well, I can take a country and get away with it. The thing is, though, is that Venezuela is a big country. It's bigger than Germany. I think it's about the size of California. It's big, big. It's got 28 million people and it's highly fragmented, factionalized. There are a lot of weapons, there's a lot of ideology. Are they really going to do everything that the Americans want? And the Americans calculation is that they have a chokehold on them because they will now control the flow of oil out of Venezuela, which is how they keep their regime going. And that's, they believe is their magic point of leverage on this.

Although, Michelle, we learned that this American blockade of Venezuela is not as, as good. Good as they might like it to be, because the ship that we're talking about today actually evaded the Americans the first time round.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

Well, that's true, but it had no cargo on board. One point I'd like to make about the Trump interdictions is that really, they have given a template to the Europeans about how to deal with the Dark fleet, because at the moment you've got dozens of tankers going through the UK channel, Danish Straits in dilapidated condition, often stateless as well, and they've gone unchallenged. And I think the administration has shown that there is a way to deal with the threats that are posed there, especially now, because there are threats to undersea cables, communications. There are armed guards on board some of these tankers now. And the other point to make is that in terms of oil flows, what we have seen in the last week or so is that oil is starting to flow to the US we're seeing tankers coming into Venezuela, Western linked tankers to load and go to the U.S. but those tankers, those dark fleet tankers that typically would come in and load for China, they've all done U turns, they've gone away, we can't see any there. So it's completely choked off that supply.

[Adam Fleming]

Right. So that thing we've been talking about this week on newscast about Donald Trump's new big strategy of which he calls the Don Roe Doctrine, based on the former American President James Monroe, about controlling the Western hemisphere, that is now happening in real time with the oil supply from South America.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

Certainly from a maritime perspective, what we see right now, given, I mean things are moving very, very quickly, I mean, I would expect more interdictions. We've had four now and clearly even though these vessels have switched off their AIs, they've gone dark, they're lurking around the Caribbean and the US knows where they are.

[Adam Fleming]

Also Michelle, it's intriguing what you're saying there because that to me suggests that if the, if the US have now set the template and kind of upped the ante on dealing with these, these shadow fleet ships, then actually the UK is maybe going to start doing stuff like this too, right on our doorstep. I mean, this has felt kind of like on our doorstep today. But could we see something like this happening in the English Channel, do you reckon?

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

I think the Nordic, Baltic eight plus plus group of countries that are already surveilling these dark fleet tankers very closely are looking at what the US is doing and at legal options available to them. And I think that's part and parcel of why we're seeing this massive shift to Russia flagged tankers at the moment is because they, they have that protection as they go through and they not vulnerable from their, you know, their false flag status. So, you know, I think we're very close to that.

[Adam Fleming]

And Jeremy, we talked about the fact that the, the UK seemed to be quite proud to be involved in this operation today. But when you look at the kind of wider global picture, how do you think Keir Starmer is getting on managing all these things, whether it's Greenland, Venezuela, Trump, US having a special trade deal that the EU doesn't have, etc.

[Lewis Goodall]

Etc.

[Adam Fleming]

Spinning a lot of plates at the moment, definitely. I think the British would like to be able to say, look, this is a relationship we have with America, we can disagree on some things, we can benefit each Other, we can help out on other things like this operation at sea. However, if it does come to a crisis over Greenland, then it's make your mind up time. Because the policy of trying to manage Donald Trump, which I think is limited and flawed because there's a. He sees three, he knows how to manipulate people. I think he sees through all of this when people say nice things to him and flatter him and get a little bit more as a result of all of that when it comes to some of the real fundamentals. And for him it's, it's about this hemispheric strategy at the moment of making America great again by taking things from other countries and grabbing more territory. Then it's going to be very, very difficult for a European leader of any stripe to say, well okay then. But you know, either you're against it or you're for it if the Americans come in and do it. And I think that it has to be taken really seriously because his people and Trump himself keep saying we're serious when we mean these things. And I do think, as the Danish Prime Minister has said, it really would be the end of NATO.

But sometimes they're serious about things in a rhetorical sense just to get things moving. Well, let's imagine a situation. So for example, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, told reporters today that there's going to be meetings between U.S. officials and Danish officials about Greenland next week. Imagine once all the rhetoric dies down and the drama dies down, we just get a beefed up American military presence in Greenland, a bigger commitment from the other Arctic nations to be tougher on the Chinese and the Russians in the Arctic and then Trump will have got what he wanted. Well, okay, he talked very, very tough and made everyone get very upset and very scared.

But this is the don't worry too much about Trump point of view, which is essentially that his bark is much worse than his bite. That the way he.

Which has sometimes happened.

It has sometimes happened. But you know what, he seems to be doubling down quite a bit now in his second term and he's in the second year of his second term. He won't be president forever. He's in a man in a hurry. He's an old man, but he's a man in a hurry. And this also assumes that what they want, that their real interest in Greenland is strategic. It's because they're worried about the so called high north. But if what they really want are Greenland's natural resources, which are being revealed as the ice sheets melt in global warming A phenomenon, by the way, that Donald Trump doesn't really believe in.

[Lewis Goodall]

Then.

[Adam Fleming]

It'S something different, because to get hold of them is something very, very different to simply saying we can get 10,000 more guys into our base in Iceland. I think in the Cold War, they used to have 10,000 people in Iceland, 10,000 service people. And so, I mean, that would be a great resolution for Europe if that sort of thing happened. I wonder, though, if Trump wants to do it that way. We'll see. I mean, that's the thing. We don't know. He's unpredictable.

Jeremy, thank you very much. Thank you, Adam and Michelle. Thanks to you, too.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

Thank you.

[Adam Fleming]

Now for something completely different, although it does still have a geopolitical bent to it. You might remember last year Faisal went to California to hang out with the CEO of Google's parent company. Well, as a little sidebar treat, they took him into their facility where they're making their quantum computing chip, known as Willow. Quantum computing. It's quite hard to get your head around, but all you need to know is it's the next leap in technology, in computing technology. And by a leap, I mean like giant, massive leap. So earlier on, I spoke to Faisal about his trip, what he saw, and what it reveals about the global tech race. Faisal, Hello.

Hello.

Right, so this is the, I was gonna say the Christmas leftovers of your trip to California, but it's so much better than that.

[Faisal Islam]

No, it's much better than that.

[Adam Fleming]

So just explain the Scenari scenario we're talking about here.

[Faisal Islam]

So they're classical computers, everyday computers operate on the well known principles of binary 0 or 1. These tiny gates, like millions and trillions of them.

[Adam Fleming]

That's how you convey the data that, that.

[Faisal Islam]

So that's the essential insight all the way back through from the 1940s, if not before. Quantum computers are operate on the principles of quantum mechanics. And that involves not 0 or 10 or 1 or some states in between all at the same time. And if you deign to try to observe it, that in fact changes the answer. And the. Now that's a very complicated way of explaining it.

[Adam Fleming]

No, I thought that was actually one of the simpler explanations I've heard.

[Faisal Islam]

But the principles underpinning it are better echo and make for better modeling of various natural phenomenon that operate by quantum principles and allow for essentially exponential increase in computing power. If you can control the mistakes, like completely unthinkable amounts of calculations basically being able to be done, that is the basics of what it is. A more simple explanation would Be if you had the tennis ball in like a set of 100 drawers and you wanted to find it, a classical computer would just take out all the drawers one by one, sequentially, and eventually you find a tennis ball. A quantum computer just allows you to just open all the drawers at the same time instantaneously. And, you know, the tennis ball is.

[Adam Fleming]

I found when I've tried to get my head around quantum, which I've tried a few times in the last few years and never really succeeded. In fact, sometimes you sort of fleetingly have a. Have hold of it, which is quite a quantum thing in itself.

[Faisal Islam]

Yes.

[Adam Fleming]

I find the best way of thinking about it is actually, you think you just said at the start there that with quantum computing it allows so many more states to exist than 0 and 1.

[Faisal Islam]

Yes.

[Adam Fleming]

And that's why it's a quantum leap from what we've got now.

[Faisal Islam]

Exactly. And it, you know, some. There's various, various sort of implications for all of this stuff. It's. It's been the next big thing for some time. Some would argue that really, it's only with quantum computers, functional quantum computers, and we're still not there yet, that you get true artificial intelligence. It all gets a little bit philosophical and metaphysical, to be honest. And we'll probably come on to that in a minute. But in terms of the Christmas leftovers. Yeah, no, I did get to visit what is at the time the most promising, most advanced, fastest, I think you could say, functioning version of this quantum computer in Santa Barbara in California, which is run by Google Quantum AI and is in turn run by a couple of professors who I. Who I spoke to, including a sort of a German sort of legend of the arena called Hartman. He basically turned up to meet me like it's of snowboarded there, straight from Burning Man Festival. So I was.

[Adam Fleming]

He's cool. In other words, he's pretty.

[Faisal Islam]

He's pretty cool. He's cold. He like, does art. It's kind of very Californian, the vibe they wrap everything in kind of graffiti art, but.

[Adam Fleming]

Oh, yeah. So this is the bit I didn't quite get when I was reading your piece on the website. The look of this facility just like paint a picture of it.

[Faisal Islam]

Yeah, Well, I expected to be quite austere lab, like white coats, you know, protective glasses. But no, no, not at all. They're really focused on the deployment of this type of phenomenal computing power to solve a series of problems. And in order to do that, they have to crack the fuzzy errors that emerge from this sort of newish World, but all of the, you know, it's very sunny Californian vibe. Santa Barbara, they wrap all these computers, which these like sort of oil barrel sized bronze chandeliers, they wrap them in art and it's all sort of focused to give off that kind of more. These people that work at a place like that in California have a lot of options.

[Adam Fleming]

Yeah.

[Faisal Islam]

And so they have to think in California of many ways to keep them to stay working for them. And obviously they pay them a lot of money. But also the general atmosphere and vibe, it's important. And we'll come on to like how this is different around the world. But there is a massive competition between the giant US tech firms about who gets this technology over the line.

[Adam Fleming]

And we have a little listen to your conversation with Hartmut Nevin, the genius who runs this lab, and he's talking to you about some of the potential applications of this.

[I]

So I think we will use it to help with many problems that humankind has. It will enable us to discover drugs more efficiently, it will help us make food production more efficient. It will help us with the energy economy, like to produce energy, to transport energy, to store energy, all of these things.

[Faisal Islam]

Climate change maybe?

[I]

Yes, absolutely. I think just by virtue of being able to model nature at its sort of finest level, essentially speak the language of nature. This allows us to understand nature much better and then unlock its secret to build technologies that make life more pleasant, pleasant for all of us.

[Adam Fleming]

And what's interesting about how he says it there is he gets to the heart, as you've done already, about why quantum is different because it allows you to be so much more. I mean, sophisticated probably isn't the right word because it's way beyond that. But that's why this sort of technology might be good for those kind of things.

[Faisal Islam]

It's exponential increases in compute power, but then also the way in which it kind of works this out models nature better. So I was really keen to sort of find out, you know, would you expect in 20, 30 years time to have a quantum computer in your pocket or wearable or something like that? No, no. This is a very specific type of task. It's a sort of massive calculation, frankly, that existing classical computers cannot do. Or, you know, and they've just sort of had proof of concept with one type of calculation that models molecules being formed using the same sort of technology as an MRI scanner. And they said that the calculation that they did would have taken a conventional computer, even a supercomputer, the entire length of the universe. So that's A trillion, trillion years to have done. And they've done that. And essentially what this computer that I saw in California has done is provide proof of concept that you can scale and that you could do so whilst correcting the fuzzy errors that occur. So, so it's given them. And so now a problem that one expert told me that they thought wouldn't be solved for 10 or 20 years or perhaps never. They now think, well, we can maybe do this within five, six, seven years.

[Adam Fleming]

And so one of the big caveats is, yeah, the fact that there's lots of errors that have to be corrected. The other big caveat is that these things have got to be super, super cold. Like unbelievably, unimaginably cold. So they can work.

[Faisal Islam]

Now, how cool is this? Yes. So. So there is basically the coldest place in the universe at the bottom of this, like, oil barrel that's suspended in the air. You have a series of kind of. It gets colder and colder and colder and then the chip, which is. That's what actually is called willow, is at the. Is at the bottom at minus 170 degrees Kelvin plus a thousandth of a percent. It's basically the coldest place in the universe, actually.

[Adam Fleming]

I love this. In California.

[Faisal Islam]

Yeah. Yeah. And actually, I think I visited within the same 12 months, the hottest place in the universe, which was the fusion reactor in Oxfordshire, and the coldest. How cool is that? But. And indeed, fusion is one of the things that it may be used to help calculate, you know, how to solve that energy problem, which is what Hartman Evan was talking about. So. Yeah, so you have. So they demonstrated this to me with an experiment. They, you know, took some flowers, they put the liquid nitrogen on it and it crumbled before us. But, yeah, you're pushing every boundary of science, essentially. This is highly theoretical, sort of crazy world. When I spoke to the Google chief exec last year, he said, well, quantum is now where AI was five years ago. That's much quicker than we would have expected.

[Adam Fleming]

Yeah.

[Faisal Islam]

The lab that we're in, I thought.

[Adam Fleming]

He would have said 25.

[Faisal Islam]

No, no, no. I mean, which is quite something. The lab that we were in, the technology that uses different routes to get to this sort of quantum computing nirvana. This route we don't need to go into details of, it's superconducting qubits. But the technology won the Nobel Prize. And that originated from a British scientist, actually, who went out to California. Yeah. So all the duck, all the sort of, you know, ducks are in a row now to make this further leap in technological supremacy. And, and you heard there from Mr. Nevin about the positive potential for this, this world. You know, it's all there. And, and you just, you just wonder now there is a race between the big tech companies and there is a global race too to get ha to sort of harness this phenomenal power. And I was left feeling this is like the space race happening. This is like the Manhattan Project. There's quite something going on here.

[Adam Fleming]

And in terms of who's winning the race, from what you're saying, it sounds like Google are doing really well in the States, but from reading your piece, China might be doing best globally.

[Faisal Islam]

Well, so Google and IBM and there are other smaller companies that are spun out of universities. Britain is pretty good at this as well. But in terms of, you know, China has decided that it wants to use this technology as part of its 14th Five Year Plan. A couple of years ago it amassed all of the private sector efforts and said, well, everything has to go through the state or the expertise or the money, all the existing hardware. So that is what has happened. And, and they have published some pretty impressive results in China and tried to match the output of some of the commercial wins we have seen. And this race really matters. And it matters because although you heard there about the positive potential for the deployment of this compute power, there are darker arenas at work here. Astonishingly interesting. You know, I, I, when I was first researching this highly complicated area, somebody in the industry told me, I know, have you heard about harvests to decrypt? And this is the notion that these quantum computers will surely definitively, logically be able to decrypt every single piece of encryption that currently exists.

[Adam Fleming]

So the entire banking app that's ever.

[Faisal Islam]

Been invented, banking app, private, you know, correspondence, government correspondence, every WhatsApp message, Bitcoin, absolutely everything will be crackable surely at some point when these things become functioning. And so the suggestion was, and obviously I'm insufficiently connected in this arena to tell you if this is true or not, that the world's governments, spy agencies or whatever are currently harvesting treasure troves, petabytes, I think it is worth of everybody's data, knowing that it's useless to them now, but knowing that their successes in 10 or 20 years time will be able to decrypt everything, which will provide extraordinary insight into whatever it is that they want to find out in 10 or 20 years time. So that's harvest to decrypt. That's quite dark. You have the stability of the financial system, the banks, the financial conduct authority, have got Quantum teams currently trying to work out, you know, exactly where this all goes. And then there's. There's cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, you know, one of Nvidia's partners in this arena, the Chairman Factor, has said that, you know, your Bitcoin's safe till 2030, but then if it relies on the current level of encryption, it will be crackable by a Quantum. You know, the Chinese, for example, have thrown open the. The use of their model to the commercial sector in China. UK researchers are currently being offered the chance to use Willow, which is a Google chip as well. There's going to be a big government push in Britain on Quantum in the next few weeks with lots of money and the hope that we can. You know, that classic story of being the guys that invent stuff, but they're never quite commercializing it. Maybe we can sort of turn that around a little bit. But just such a fascinating entanglement of.

[Adam Fleming]

Which is, in fact, a quantum term.

[Faisal Islam]

Yeah, no, it definitely is. Yes, yes. Oh, don't get me started.

[Adam Fleming]

Because of all the particles, they react to each other. It's called entanglement.

[Faisal Islam]

It's fascinating entanglement of tech, of the future of the economy and the future of power. Because then we've talked encryption. What is military power in a world of cyber wars? And the power to decrypt is absolutely phenomenal to think about. You just stand in front of this. This. This machine and think, whoever gets there, whoever wins this race, really, you know, it probably is the second quarter of the 21st century will be the quantum era. And whoever wins that definitively, I would say, wins the 21st century. And it is absolutely fascinating.

[Adam Fleming]

And that's why we should all care. Even if it takes a bit of effort to get your head around it.

[Faisal Islam]

Well, we should. We should all care. And then if you don't even care about all that, about the science and economics and the growth and who wins geopolitically probably should do. Then there's what Hartman said to me at the end, which was. He was so taken aback by the sheer speed of the calculations that Willow was doing that it raised questions about where these particles were at the time. And I was like, well, what do you mean by that? Because, well, there's a formulation of quantum mechanics which is called many worlds. And he sort of whispers to himself, which is the parallel. Parallel universe is parallel reality. And it's. And he sort of. I go, okay, okay, well, that sounds interesting. And he said, yeah, yeah. It doesn't confirm the existence of parallel universities, but it means it's an idea we should take very seriously, the machine. Now, it may well be the case that I, in fact, entered the parallel universe when I went and visited this computer. And this, in fact, isn't happening, or is happening, but it's something.

[Adam Fleming]

Some other things, a different version, some.

[Faisal Islam]

Other version is happening over there.

[Adam Fleming]

But, yeah, Lewis Goodall's presenting this.

[Faisal Islam]

But yeah, no, I didn't. I didn't. Hugely. I didn't expect that. That. That version.

[Adam Fleming]

But yes, we'll do parallel universes in another episode.

[Faisal Islam]

Why not?

[Adam Fleming]

Why, in fact, there'll be. In a parallel universe. That's already been done.

[Faisal Islam]

Exactly.

[Adam Fleming]

Who can say, Faisal, thank you very much.

[Faisal Islam]

Great to be here.

[Adam Fleming]

And that's all for this episode of Newscast. Thank you very much for listening. We will be back with another one very soon. Bye bye. Newscast.

[Michelle Veazey Bachmann]

Newscast from the BBC, you've come to.

[Lewis Goodall]

The end of Newscast. Some people, and you know who I mean, might say you. Ooh, stamina. Can I encourage you to subscribe on BBC Sounds? And you can get in touch with us anytime. Email us at [e-mail] UK. You can WhatsApp us on. Oh, double three. Oh. 1-239-480.