Native Americans were making dice, gambling, and exploring probability thousands of years before their Old World counterparts

Colorado State University

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Late Pleistocene (13,000 to 11,700 BP), Early Holocene (11,700 to 8,000 BP), Middle Holocene (8,000 to 2,000 BP),
and Late Holocene (2,000 to 450 BP) diagnostic and probable prehistoric Native American dice: (a, d) Signal Butte, Nebraska
(Middle Holocene), NMNH-A437076, NMNH-550791; (b) Agate Basin, Wyoming (Early Holocene), UW-11327; (c, f) Agate Basin,
Wyoming (Late Pleistocene), UW-OA111, UW-OA448; (e, g) Lindenmeier, Colorado (Late Pleistocene), NMNH-A442165, NMNHA440429; (h) Irvine, Wyoming (Late Holocene). (Figures 1a, d, e, and g courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, Smithsonian
Institution, American Museum of Natural History. Figures 1b, c, f, and h courtesy of the Department of Anthropology, University
of Wyoming.)

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Credit: Photo courtesy of Robert Madden

FORT COLLINS, Colo., March 23, 2026 — A new study forthcoming in American Antiquity, the flagship journal of North American archaeology published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Archaeology, presents evidence that the earliest known dice in human history were made and used by Native American hunter-gatherers on the western Great Plains more than 12,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age, long before the earliest known dice from Bronze Age societies in the Old World.

The research conducted by Colorado State University Ph.D. student Robert J. Madden indicates that dice, games of chance, and gambling have been a persistent feature of Native American culture for at least the last 12,000 years, with the earliest examples appearing at Late Pleistocene Folsom-period archaeological sites in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. These artifacts predate the earliest known Old World dice by more than 6,000 years.

“Historians have traditionally treated dice and probability as Old World innovations,” Madden said. “What the archaeological record shows is that ancient Native American groups were deliberately making objects designed to produce random outcomes, and using those outcomes in structured games, thousands of years earlier than previously recognized.”

What these Ice Age dice looked like

The earliest examples identified in the study come from Folsom sites dating to roughly 12,800–12,200 years ago. Unlike modern cubic dice, these were two-sided dice known as “binary lots,” carefully crafted, small pieces of bone that were flat or slightly rounded, often oval or rectangular in shape, sized to be held in the hand and tossed in groups onto a playing surface.

The two faces of these binary lots were distinguished by applied markings, surface treatments, coloration, or other visible modifications, much like heads or tails on a coin, with one face designated as the “counting” side. When thrown, they reliably landed with one side or the other facing upward, producing a binary (two-outcome) result. Sets of these dice were cast together, and scores were determined by how many landed with the counting face up.

“They’re simple, elegant tools,” Madden said. “But they’re also unmistakably purposeful. These are not casual byproducts of bone working. They were made to generate random outcomes.”

How the research was conducted

Rather than relying on subjective resemblance or guesswork, the study introduces a new attribute-based morphological test – a systematic checklist of measurable physical features – for identifying North American dice archaeologically. The test was derived from a comparative analysis of 293 sets of historic Native American dice documented across the continent by ethnographer Stewart Culin in his 1907 Bureau of American Ethnology monograph, Games of the North American Indians.

The study then applies this test systematically to the published archaeological record, essentially re-examining artifacts long labeled as possible “gaming pieces” or otherwise overlooked to determine whether they meet the new objective criteria for dice. In most cases, the evidence had been in the archaeological record for decades, but without a clear standard for identifying dice, it had never been analyzed as part of a larger pattern. Using this approach, Madden identified over 600 hundred diagnostic and probable dice from sites spanning every major period of North American prehistory, from the Late Pleistocene through and after the period of European contact.

“In most cases, these objects had already been excavated and published,” Madden said. “What was missing wasn’t the evidence, it was a clear, continent-wide standard for recognizing what we were looking at.”

The earliest examples were examined directly in museum collections at the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Wyoming Archaeological Repository, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

Rewriting the deep history of probability

Historians of mathematics widely regard dice games as humanity’s earliest structured engagement with randomness, an intellectual precursor to probability theory, statistics, and later scientific thinking. Until now, the origins of these practices were thought to lie exclusively in Old World complex societies beginning around 5,500 years ago.

This study suggests a much deeper and broader history.

“These findings don’t claim that Ice Age hunter-gatherers were doing formal probability theory,” Madden said. “But they were intentionally creating, observing, and relying on random outcomes in repeatable, rule-based ways that leveraged probabilistic regularities, such as the law of large numbers. That matters for how we understand the global history of probabilistic thinking.”

A 12,000-year cultural tradition with living descendants

The research also documents the remarkable breadth, as well as the persistence, of Native American dice games. From Paleoindian times through the Archaic and Late Prehistoric periods, dice appear at 57 archaeological sites across a 12-state region associated with a variety of different cultures and subsistence strategies.

According to Madden, this breadth of use and endurance reflects their social importance. “Games of chance and gambling created neutral, rule-governed spaces for ancient Native Americans,” he said. “They allowed people from different groups to interact, exchange goods and information, form alliances, and manage uncertainty. In that sense, they functioned as powerful social technologies.”

About the Study

The article, “Probability in the Pleistocene: Origins and Antiquity of Native American Dice, Games of Chance, and Gambling,” will appear in American Antiquity, published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Archaeology.  

Figure 9. Folsom diagnostic and probable Native American dice. (Figure 9a, b, d, and g: Agate Basin, Wyoming, UW-OA005,
UW-OA109, UW-OA111, UW-OA448, courtesy of the Department of Anthropology, University of Wyoming. Figure 9c: Lindenmeier,
Colorado, DMNS-A900.179, courtesy of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Figure 9e–f, h–i, k–p, r: Lindenmeier, Colorado,
NMNH-A443046, NMNH-A442165, NMNH-A44890, NMNH-A441178, NMNH-A440429, NMNH-A441841; NMNH-A442122, NMNHA443755, NMNH-A443850, NMNH-A443658, NMNH-A441839, courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution,
American Museum of Natural History. Figure 9j: Lindenmeier, Colorado, CSU-7805-6, courtesy of the Department of Anthropology,
Colorado State University. Figure 9q: Blackwater Draw, New Mexico; drawing by D’arcy NR Madden afer Hester (1972:Figure 9b,
by Phyllis Hughes). (All photographs, except (j), are by the author).

Credit

Photo courtesy of Robert Madden

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Journal

American Antiquity

DOI

10.1017/aaq.2025.10158 

Article Title

Probability in the Pleistocene: Origins and Antiquity of Native American Dice, Games of Chance, and Gambling

Article Publication Date

2-Apr-2026

WATER WITCFHING

Watering smarter, not more

UC Riverside develops modern-day robotic divining rod

University of California - Riverside

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A robot designed to assist with precision irrigation in action, in a citrus orchard. 

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Credit: Elia Scudiero/UCR

Advanced technology can help farmers get to the root of a growing problem ¾ overwatering in an era of increasing drought and water scarcity. A new UC Riverside system can map soil moisture tree by tree, so growers water only where and when it’s needed.

This system, detailed in the journal Computer and Electronics in Agriculture, was led by the research group of Elia Scudiero, associate professor of precision agriculture and the Director of UCR’s Center for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment (CAFE).

Water management is one of the biggest challenges facing agriculture in California and other dry regions. Currently, some growers rely on soil moisture sensors buried in the ground to determine when to irrigate. These sensors are expensive and typically installed in only a few locations, leaving growers to guess how conditions vary across hundreds or thousands of trees.  

“The information those sensors provide is very limited,” Scudiero said. “It really only tells you what’s happening in the immediate areas where they’re placed.”

Even when sprinkler systems deliver the same amount of water throughout an orchard, the soil moisture and its availability to trees can vary greatly from spot to spot within a single field.

One reason is soil texture. Fine soils packed with tiny particles hold water tightly because they have more surface area where water can cling. Sandy soils contain larger particles and fewer small ones, which allows water to drain more quickly. These differences can leave neighboring trees experiencing very different conditions.

The new system replaces limited sensor data and guesswork with detailed maps. A robot moves through an orchard measuring a property of the soil called electrical conductivity. These readings, combined with data from the fixed moisture sensors already in the ground, allow researchers to build a statistical model that predicts water content across the entire field.

Electrical conductivity indicates how easily electricity moves through the soil and is influenced by factors including moisture as well as salt and clay content. By pairing those measurements with direct water readings from buried sensors, the system can translate conductivity into accurate estimates of soil moisture.

The result is a tree-by-tree picture of water distribution. “Using this method, growers will finally know how much water they have, and how much they need, and can water specific trees if they’re dry,” Scudiero said.

Maintaining the right moisture level is important for plant health. Trees that receive too little water become stressed, and more vulnerable to pests and disease. Too much water, however, can deprive roots of oxygen as soil pores fill with water rather than air. “There’s a sweet spot,” he said.

Enhanced precision could also keep orchards from folding. Growers already face tightening regulations on groundwater use while water costs continue to rise.

“If water becomes limited, farmers have two choices,” Scudiero said. “They can retire orchards, or they can find ways to produce the same crops using less water.”

The technology may also reduce fertilizer pollution. When fields are overwatered, nutrients applied to crops can wash below the root zone and into groundwater, polluting it.

“If you apply only the amount of water the plants actually need, you reduce the risk of washing those nutrients away from the roots of the crops and into the environment,” Scudiero said.

This project has been years in the making. Researchers began developing it in 2019 through collaborations between agricultural scientists and engineers at CAFE.

For Scudiero, it represents the realization of a long-standing goal. He has studied soil conductivity technology for about 15 years and had hoped to someday pair it with autonomous vehicles capable of surveying entire fields.

The team has already filed a patent related to how the robot interacts with sensors without disturbing their measurements. This research was conducted at the UCR Citrus Research Center & Agricultural Experiment Station. Future work will focus on testing the system with commercial growers beyond the university’s research orchards.

Moving from research plots to real farms will require rugged machines capable of operating in all weather conditions and across different crop systems. Private industry partners may eventually adapt the technology into commercial products.

The work is part of broader efforts at UCR to further the field of precision agriculture, where researchers are developing technologies that combine robotics, sensors, and data science to help farmers manage resources more efficiently.

For growing facing limited water supplies, the payoff for this research could be significant.

“More crop per drop!” Scudiero said. 

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Journal

Computers and Electronics in Agriculture

DOI

10.1016/j.compag.2026.111540 

Article Title

Robotic mapping of soil volumetric water content with geospatial soil apparent electrical conductivity in micro-irrigated citrus orchards in California

Spain cuts the link between gas and power and has Europe’s cheapest power

Thanks to heavy investment into renewables, Spain now has some of the cheapest power in Europe and is insulated from the current energy price shocks. / bne IntelliNews

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By Ben Aris in Berlin April 3, 2026

A year ago this week, Spain’s grid ran entirely on renewable power for a full day for the first time ever. Wind, solar, and hydro met all the peninsula’s electricity demand on April 16. Five days later, solar set a new record, generating 20,120 MW of instantaneous power – covering 78.6% of demand and 61.5% of the grid mix.

Spain is the second highest producer of solar power in the EU, but a fifth of its electricity still comes from gas. Spain’s largest source of clean electricity in 2025 was solar (22%) and its share of wind and solar in the energy mix (42%) exceeds the EU average (30%), according to Ember.

Spain has emerged as Europe’s green energy champion after the government invested heavily into renewables as it sought to break its dependence on expensive and increasingly unreliable fossil fuel imports. That has already paid huge dividends as the cost of power plummeted and is now one of the lowest in Europe. 

But the transformation is not over yet: Spain relied on fossil fuels for 25% of its electricity in 2025.

Its per capita emissions of 0.9 tonnes of CO₂ were below the EU average of 1.3 tonnes of CO2e. It ranked 21st globally for electricity demand in 2024.

In 2025, wind generated 256 GWh. Solar followed with 151 GWh. Hydroelectric sources added 129 GWh. Solar thermal contributed 11 GWh. Other renewables added another 11 GWh. And Renewable waste generated 1 GWh, according to Spain’s grid operator Red Eléctrica.

Its per capita emissions of 0.9 tonnes of CO2e were below the EU average of 1.3 tonnes of CO₂ . “Spain’s power sector emissions have fallen by more than two thirds over the last two decades, as wind and solar expansion displaced fossil fuels,” Ember said in a report in February.

Breaking the fossil fuel chains

Spain’s electricity market is being reshaped by the effort to break the link between fossil fuels and power prices. It is a policy that has already delivered some of the cheapest wholesale electricity in Europe but has also exposed new vulnerabilities in the country’s grid.

Wholesale electricity prices in Spain were a third (32%) less the EU average in the first half of 2025, reflecting what Dr Chris Rosslowe, senior energy analyst at Ember, described in a report as “the reduced influence of expensive fossil gas and coal power on the electricity market… driven by surging wind and solar”.

The country has moved from being among Europe’s most expensive power markets in 2019 to one of its cheapest, as renewable capacity has taken over fossil fuels.

At the core of that transformation is a sharp decline in the role of gas in price-setting. In 2019, fossil fuels determined Spain’s electricity price in 75% of hours; by 2025, that figure had fallen to 19%.

Rosslowe said that “Spain has broken the ruinous link between power prices and volatile fossil fuels”, with average wholesale prices of €62/MWh ($67/MWh) sitting well below the cost of gas-fired generation, which averaged €111/MWh over the same period.

The scale of the build-out has been decisive. Spain added more than 40GW of wind and solar capacity between 2019 and 2025, doubling its installed base. Renewables accounted for 46% of electricity demand in the first half of 2025, up from 27% six years earlier, while fossil generation fell to 20% of the mix—far below levels in Germany or Italy. April 2025 marked the first month ever without coal-fired generation, a milestone that would have been improbable a decade earlier, says Ember.

This expansion has also reduced import dependence and has provided a buffer to the current energy price shock. New renewable capacity installed since 2020 avoided 26bn cubic metres of gas imports, saving €13.5bn ($14.6bn), according to Ember. The Bank of Spain has estimated that wholesale prices would have been 40% higher in 2024 had wind and solar remained at 2019 levels.

Yet the gains have come with some problems. There are two parts to the green energy transition: investment in renewable generating capacity and investment into the grid. Spain has made a lot of progress in the first task, but the second is a work in progress.

The problem is renewable power supply can be erratic, unlike the steady state of generating power using something like gas. Last summer the entire Iberian peninsula was blacked out on April 28 2025, due to large fluctuations in power that the grid could not cope with. Spain still relies on gas-fired plants to stabilise the grid but now needs to invest into a grid that can cope with these unpredictable swings.

Rosslowe warned that “increased reliance on gas power post-blackout for grid stabilisation has been costly”, with ancillary service costs surging. In May 2025, such services accounted for 57% of the electricity price, up from 14% previously, while the cost of balancing actions doubled year on year.

The reliance on gas for system stability has also driven a sharp rise in renewable curtailment. Between May and July 2025, 7.2% of potential renewable generation was curtailed, compared with 1.8% in the preceding years, as grid constraints forced operators to prioritise gas plants for voltage control and system balance.

A lag in infrastructure investment has left Spain with one of Europe’s largest gas fleets but only the thirteenth-largest battery storage capacity, with just 120MW installed. The battery revolution could smooth out the renewables power supply, but until grid-level eight-hour batteries appear the green transition will not be over.

Spanish grid spending has also trailed peers, with €0.30 invested in networks for every €1 spent on renewables, compared with a European average of €0.70, according to Bloomberg.

Still, policy is now shifting again. The government has approved reforms to expand clean flexibility, including plans for eight synchronous compensators at a cost of €750mn ($810mn), expected to deliver annual savings of €200mn. Battery projects totalling 2.6GW are in development, while new interconnection capacity with France is advancing with support from the European Investment Bank.

Rosslowe said that “boosting grids and batteries will help Spain break free from fossil dependency for good”, adding that the country’s experience shows both “the success in growing renewables” and the risks of failing to match that growth with system flexibility.

Aircon: from comfort to matter of life and death

Summers are getting hotter, but as the Climate Crisis accelerates fair soon temperatures will reach a point in some counties where human life can no longer be sustained, if you get caught out of doors. Air conditions will be come existential at that point. / bne IntelliNews

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By Ben Aris in Berlin April 1, 2026

The last three years were the hottest ever recorded and it’s only going to get worse – to the point where people will start to die from overheating. Unless you have an air conditioner. 

As a species, humans can only tolerate so much heat. Anyone caught outside in the so-called wet-bulb conditions – 35°C with 100% humidity for more than six hours – will perish. The body become unable to cool itself and shuts down. When summer temperatures eventually reach this point in the decades to come, people will need an aircon unit to stay alive in the same way as an astronaut needs a spacesuit.  In the meantime, mere heat-stress mortality is already on the rise. 

Real life studies show the optimum temperature for humanity is somewhere between 17°C and 27°C, but the earths climate is starting to move outside the band that will support human life. There are several factors going into this calculation: the optimum in London is 18°C where air conditioners are uncommon, whereas the same in Texas is 27°C where the use air conditioners is widespread. Even as temperatures move beyond what we can survive, technology will come to humanity’s rescue. For a while anyway.

In cold countries, heating is considered a necessity and often provided by the state. That is not true in hot countries. As out-of-bounds temperatures start to appear, governments around the world will have to start to factor heat-deaths into social policy and urban planning.

Wet-bulb conditions already occur in places like Pakistan and UAE, but they have been short-lived, a few hours only. Scientist say that as the Climate Crisis accelerates extreme heat is already becoming a problem even before wet-bulb conditions are common. As IntelliNews reported, mortality is already rising simply due to heat-stress that singles out the old and infirm. Most heat-deaths occur in people older than 65 at a lower levels of heat and humidity. A recent study projects that by 2050, several lower-income countries could see heat-stress mortality overtake some of the major lethal diseases as the leading cause of death.

Air conditioners

The solution is the mundane air conditioner. Already considered essential in developed countries with hot summers, air conditioners are going to become existential in the countries most exposed to extreme temperatures. Access to air conditioning will literally save lives.

That is a problem for the poorest countries. In large parts of Africa electricity consumption is so low that even running a single-room air conditioner for an hour exceeds the average person’s entire daily household power use.

In richer hot countries in the Middle East power is still an issue and as aircon units use a lot of power. Government need to plan for very large increases in power to cool everything from homes to factories as summer temperatures in places like Oman will regularly exceed 50°C in the hottest months. In a recent study, McKinsey estimated that “cooling” will consume 40% of the cost of adapting to the new hot climate in the period 2020-2050, with the need for this spending to become acute from about 2035 onwards as power consumption will start to rise exponentially form then on.

A typical aircon unit consumes about 1,000 watt-hours of electricity per hour. Less efficient models can require 1,500 watt-hours making energy efficiency critical in countries where every kilowatt counts. In at least 45 countries, the average residential electricity use per person for a full day is lower than the electricity needed to power an air conditioner for one hour, according to a report from Our World in Data (OWID).

The problems in Asia are similar, although the population has better access to electricity, but the power budgets still don’t stretch to keeping a family cool all day. In India, the average daily household electricity budget allows for just 44 minutes of air conditioning. In Nigeria, it is 13 minutes. In South Sudan, only four minutes. And that assumes the houses are hooked up to the grid.

The penetration of aircon units remains extremely low. Only 5% of households in India have air conditioning, compared with 6% in South Africa and 16% in Brazil, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). In the very poorest countries, many of which are the most exposed to heatwaves,  penetration is close to zero.

Even the penetration of electric fans, the cheapest and most basic alternative to aircon, is low. A simple fan uses roughly 50 watt-hours per hour, but that still only gives an average Nigerian four hours of cooling a day, assuming they don’t turn the lights or TV on.

Cooler countries will see temperature-related deaths fall

Even developed cooler countries in the Global North are going to come under pressure. Ironically, initially the number of heat-related deaths will fall as temperatures rise, as extreme cold still kills more people in the developed hemisphere than heat, according to the Global Burden of Disease study.

The study that estimates that 7.7% of deaths were attributed to temperature found that 7.3% were from cold temperatures; 0.4% were from heat. Globally, cold deaths are nine-times higher than heat-related ones. In no region is this ratio less than three, and in many, it’s over ten-times higher. Cold is more deadly than heat, even in the hottest parts of the world.

Another study published in Nature Climate Change in 2021 attributed one-third of heat-related deaths across all countries to climate change and that cold-related deaths are falling every year.

But that is not going to stop the problem transition from cold-related deaths to heat in the coming years. There have been several blisteringly hot summers during the annual disaster season which got underway three years ago. Extreme heatwaves are regularly hitting the south of Europe and US southwest, where temperatures have broached 40°C as earlier as April. A heatwave last summer in Europe, caused an estimated 16,000 excess deaths.

Aircon units are widespread in the US; now they are starting to appear in Europe. The sale of aircon units in Europe peaked at around 10mn in 2022, during an exceptionally hot summer, but are expected to continue to rise going forward. But sometime after 2035 they will have to become mandatory in all buildings in the worst affected countries.

The increased demand for power will add to the cost-of-living crisis in the Global North. Although down from their 2022 peak, consumer prices remain well above pre crisis levels and rising power costs are already make things worse, according to the IEA’s last Household Energy Affordability report. In Europe, after the 2022 energy shock, power prices remain twice their long-term pre-Ukraine war average and now they are rising again thanks to the Iran war.

 

Iran-linked hackers claim breach of Israeli air defence contractor PSK Wind

Alleged images from Iranian hack. / bne IntelliNews

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By bnm Gulf bureau April 2, 2026

The Handala Hack Group, a cyber outfit aligned with Iran's "axis of resistance," claimed on April 2 to have breached the networks of PSK Wind Technologies, an Israeli firm that designs integrated command and control systems for the country's air defence network.

The group said it had extracted "all sensitive data" from PSK Wind's servers, including classified documents relating to command and control centres and communication systems. It claimed the stolen information had been "transmitted directly to the missile units of the Axis of Resistance."

The claims could not be independently verified. PSK Wind Technologies and the Israeli military did not immediately comment on the alleged breach.

Handala issued a threat timed to the Jewish holiday of Passover, stating: "What you celebrate as Passover will soon turn into a day of unforgettable mourning." The group warned that "none of your command or defence centres will be secure."

The claimed hack is the latest in a series of cyber operations targeting Israeli military infrastructure since the war began on February 28. Iran and its allied groups have pursued a parallel cyber campaign alongside conventional missile and drone strikes, seeking to degrade Israeli intelligence and defence capabilities.

If confirmed, a breach of PSK Wind's systems would be significant. The firm is described by the hackers as the "mastermind behind the command and control centres" of Israel's air defence network, which has been under sustained pressure from daily Iranian, Houthi and Hezbollah missile and drone attacks throughout the conflict.

Israel's air defence systems, including Iron Dome, David's Sling and Arrow, have been central to the country's ability to intercept incoming projectiles. Any compromise of the command architecture linking these systems could have operational consequences.

Iran's IRGC separately threatened on March 31 to target 18 US technology and AI companies it accused of providing targeting data for assassination operations against Iranian nationals.

 

Venezuela opens for business, but investors weigh promise against reality

Delcy Rodríguez has moved swiftly to court foreign investors and overhaul the country's legal framework and military leadership since Nicolás Maduro's ouster in January, but questions over her democratic intentions persist.

By Marco Cacciati April 1, 2026

The months since Nicolás Maduro's capture have brought Venezuela closer to the global economy than at any point in a generation. New laws, a US sanctions rollback and a resumption of international engagement have redrawn the investment landscape with striking speed. Yet for many of the large Western corporations and institutional investors Washington is courting, the reforms remain a foundation still under construction, according to Caracas-based boutique advisory Orinoco Research.

Since taking office, acting president Delcy Rodríguez has presided over a cascade of legislative activity. Forsaking decades of rabid anti-imperialist rhetoric, the National Assembly has approved reforms to the hydrocarbons law that give international companies greater freedom to manage production and market crude independently. A new mining law has received initial approval, designed to establish private mining concessions and streamline bureaucratic processes. Meanwhile in Washington, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control has issued a general licence that effectively permits almost any foreign entity to enter and invest in Venezuela's oil and gas sector without first obtaining individual clearances. And separate OFAC licences have since extended similar terms to the minerals trade, including gold.

The broader legal overhaul also includes an amnesty law that is being used, in part, to reform Venezuela's deeply compromised judiciary and bureaucracy. According to Orinoco Research, this aims to jump-start a transformation considered essential to building investor confidence, as well as to advancing democratic governance and human rights.

Alongside these long overdue reforms, the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) recently published updated balance of payments figures after seven years without comprehensive official data, itself a telling signal of the opening under way. The release, welcomed by economists as a rare increase in transparency from an institution long criticised for limited disclosure, offered the first systematic view of Venezuela's external accounts in nearly a decade. For investors, the figures reveal both the scale of the opportunity and the depth of the hole the country must climb out of.

Rodríguez, who has earned the praise of US President Donald Trump, has also overhauled the military leadership entirely since January, replacing the minister of defence, the joint chiefs of staff and all regional commanders, and has reshuffled roughly half of her cabinet. The concentration of decision-making authority over the new laws in Rodríguez's direct economic team has driven the pace of reform, though it has also reinforced concerns about the discretionary application of the new framework.

Investor appetite: a two-speed market

Orinoco Research views the current investor universe as sharply segmented. Companies already present in Venezuela – notably Chevron, which maintained its joint ventures with state oil firm PDVSA throughout the Maduro era, Repsol and Shell, which kept a local office in Caracas – have wasted no time, positioning themselves to take over oil fields and pursue new agreements. Shell has entered discussions over natural gas projects with Trinidad and Tobago. Repsol has said it plans to triple its gross crude output in Venezuela to 150,000 barrels per day within three years.

A second group, composed primarily of high-net-worth individuals from emerging markets, has also moved in, drawn by a high risk tolerance and the prospect of outsized returns from a deeply distressed market. These investors have been most active in real estate, agriculture and early-stage commercial opportunities.

Large US corporations and institutional investors, by contrast, wait in the wings. Orinoco Research expects companies such as ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips to require at least a year, possibly more, before committing capital. ConocoPhillips chief executive Ryan Lance has publicly dismissed recent legislative changes as "woefully inadequate." Chevron's chief executive Mike Wirth acknowledged reforms are moving in the right direction but said further steps are needed before investment at the desired scale materialises.

The key catalyst for this group, the consultancy argues, will be concrete precedents rather than further legal change. If a major company secures an attractive, transparent deal with demonstrably favourable terms – low royalties, clear contract provisions, reliable enforcement – it is likely to trigger a “FOMO effect” among peers. In the meantime, the ambiguity that persists in the new hydrocarbons law, particularly the wide royalty band of between zero and 45%, continues to give large investors pause.

Oil sector: the numbers and the scenarios

The BCV data lays bare the magnitude of Venezuela's oil sector collapse, which began in the early 2000s under the tenure of former president Hugo Chavez. Export revenues fell to $4.8bn in 2020, a historic low, before recovering to $18.2bn in 2025, broadly in line with 2024 levels but a fraction of the $93bn recorded in 2012, when a single year's oil income matched the combined total of the entire 2019–2025 period. Between 2014 and 2016, revenues halved and then fell a further quarter; a 55% decline in 2019 was followed by a 67% collapse in 2020, leaving Venezuela's hard-currency earnings capacity roughly 95% below its peak. Current production stands at around 1mn barrels per day, against 2.5mn in the mid-2010s.

Oil has nonetheless remained the backbone of Venezuela's external sector, accounting for an average of 67% of total exports since 2019. Analysts caution, however, that this share reflects the contraction of other sectors rather than diversification, and that current export levels are still insufficient to meet Venezuela's import needs.

Orinoco Research sets out three scenarios for the oil sector in 2026. In the conservative case, production remains flat, oil prices stay low and OFAC applies licences restrictively, with fiscal pressure holding royalty rates near the top of the permitted band. Oil sector GDP would grow by around 11.5% from a base of approximately $12bn, a modest expansion offering little macroeconomic relief.

The base case assumes production rising to between 1.2mn and 1.3mn barrels per day, with some flexibility in the fiscal framework for new greenfield investments, including reduced royalty rates. This scenario is regarded as the most probable near-term trajectory, particularly if current engagement between Washington and Caracas continues.

In the optimistic scenario, a prolonged conflict involving Iran sustains elevated oil prices, Trump administration pressure intensifies and Venezuela's fiscal terms become more competitive. Production could reach 1.4mn barrels per day or beyond, with oil sector GDP expanding by up to 25%. Orinoco Research suggests that, as a rough rule of thumb, the broader economy grows at roughly half the rate of the oil sector, implying that double-digit overall GDP growth is achievable under favourable conditions. A significant additional upside factor, even without production increases, is the narrowing of the discount applied to Venezuelan crude relative to benchmark prices.

The balance of payments presents a structural challenge that higher oil revenues alone will not resolve. Goods and services are currently almost in balance, with a net surplus of just $94mn on tens of billions in flows, meaning nearly every dollar earned from oil exports is recycled into imports. Breaking this cycle will require resolving the multiple-exchange-rate distortions that have historically incentivised importers at the expense of domestic producers. Orinoco Research notes that the interim leader has spoken of establishing a sovereign wealth fund to set aside oil revenues, but regards her commitment to doing so as unproven.

Inflation remains a persistent structural problem. The widely circulated figure of around 600% bears little resemblance to economic reality, given Venezuela's semi-dollarised economy. Even in dollar terms, effective inflation is running at 30 to 40%, among the highest in the world, and will require higher oil export revenues and fiscal discipline to bring down. Full dollarisation is not on the current agenda, though partial measures are not off the table.

Mining and beyond

Washington's push to open Venezuela's mining sector, an explicit priority raised by energy secretary Chris Wright and interior secretary Doug Burgum during visits to Caracas, has gathered momentum. The Orinoco Mining Arc, a 112,000-square-kilometre zone holding important reserves of gold, diamonds, bauxite, coltan and rare earth elements, has been associated historically with armed groups and organised criminal networks, complicating due diligence and operating conditions for incoming investors. Legal changes are taking shape, with private mining concessions introduced for the first time, though the security dimension will weigh on decision timelines for major players.

Orinoco Research also points to early-stage opportunities in electricity, real estate, agriculture, tourism and financial services. Venezuela's financial system operates with a money supply of only about 3% of GDP, meaning the credit market is almost entirely absent, no meaningful mortgage market exists, and corporate lending is negligible. This makes for an enticing opportunity for financial sector investors willing to operate in a high-risk environment. The advisory also notes that state-owned assets across multiple sectors, from hotels and steelworks to farmland, are likely to come to market through outright sales rather than the public-private partnership arrangements that characterised the Maduro era. The Centre for International Investment, led by Calixto Ortega, is expected to drive this process.

A reassignment of oil contracts previously awarded under the “anti-blockade” law has already begun. Several fields previously operated by Chinese companies, some of which were separately sanctioned by the US for alleged dealings with Iran, have been transferred to Western-aligned operators following a US-requested review. This process has proceeded quietly, without significant public disclosure, but Orinoco Research says it has been substantive in scope.

Political outlook: transition or consolidation?

Despite the economic opening, Orinoco Research believes the democratic transition remains the most consequential and least certain variable in the investment calculus.

Rodríguez has used her consolidation of military and cabinet control to advance an agenda of economic reform, but whether this reflects a genuine commitment to democratic transition or merely a strategy for long-term retention of power remains a matter of debate. The amnesty law, intended to accelerate judicial and institutional reform, is being implemented slowly and selectively, generating frustration among civil society. Protests have increasingly been driven by labour groups, students and civil society organisations reflecting frustration over stagnant living standards and limited freedoms. And despite signs that hardline chavistas are losing ground, interior minister Diosdado Cabello remains, for now, in place.

Opposition leader María Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has not yet returned to Venezuela despite a second meeting with Trump and ongoing communication with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Her vision for Venezuela's economic future is considerably more ambitious than what is currently on offer: she has put the country's long-run oil production ceiling at 5mn barrels per day, contingent on $150bn in capital and a wholesale transformation of the legal and institutional framework – none of which, she argues, can be secured before a free presidential election is held. She has also backed continued US control over Venezuelan oil revenues, arguing that the Treasury's handling of those funds since January serves as a necessary check against graft and a source of leverage over Rodriguez.

Within Venezuela, opposition leaders recently released under the amnesty have resumed on-the-ground political activity, and Machado’s own Vente Venezuela party’s headquarters in Caracas were allowed to reopen, an unthinkable development under ousted president Maduro.

Orinoco Research outlines three key political risks that investors should monitor. First, whether the Trump administration sustains effective pressure for democratic change, or is consumed by domestic political turbulence, including the possibility of impeachment proceedings following the US midterm elections, that diverts attention from Venezuela. Second, whether the opposition can manage a political transition without provoking the instability or repression that would derail economic recovery. Third, whether chavista factions accept electoral defeat, should elections take place in late 2026 or 2027, or whether Venezuela reverts to a contested result as occurred in 2024.

In the event of protracted US political distraction, Orinoco Research considers it plausible that Rodríguez quietly consolidates power without proceeding to elections, producing what the advisory labels as an intermediate scenario: more business-friendly than the Maduro regime, but falling well short of a full democratic transition. As multiple analysts have observed, the central challenge for Venezuela is ensuring that the current transition leads to a fully democratic system, not merely an economically open one.

For investors, Orinoco Research's overall message is that the Venezuela opportunity is real but front-loaded with risk. The prize – a country with 17% of the world's proven oil reserves, untapped mineral wealth and a deeply suppressed domestic economy – is considerable. So are the obstacles: legal ambiguity, institutional inertia, an unresolved political transition and structural economic distortions that decades of mismanagement have entrenched.

The companies best placed to benefit in the near term are those already in the country. Everyone else is watching closely, and the next twelve months will be the test of whether Venezuela's promise translates into investable reality.

 

COMMENT: Taiwan’s worship of America could be its downfall

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By Mark Buckton in Taipei April 2, 2026

In Taiwan’s ever pugnacious political debate, few orthodoxies are quite as deeply embedded by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as the conviction that alignment with the United States is both natural and the only real way to counter Chinese takeover threats.

From defence procurement to television news bulletins, American primacy is treated less as a choice than as an inevitability to which there is no alternative. Yet this instinctive deference which at times can border on cultural self-effacement, risks leaving Taiwan both economically constrained and intellectually diminished at the exact moment it needs to demonstrate clear and effective resilience.

The island’s security relationship with the United States is indispensable. In that there is no real dispute. The Taiwan Relations Act coupled to arms sales and high-level visits have long provided a deterrent in the face of mounting pressure from China. Few serious observers would ever argue that Taipei can realistically afford to distance itself from Washington. However, as has become increasingly evident in recent years, dependence is not the same as strategy, and cap-doffing deference is not the same as agency.

In Taiwanese cultural and in particular media spheres, Americanisation often goes unquestioned. For local radio stations, “foreign news” means developments in Washington rather than in Warsaw, Pretoria or Singapore. European elections and African trade blocs barely register and major Latin American political shifts in recent months rarely make the cut - unless of course seen through US eyes. The result across the nation is a dangerous narrowing of the world the neighbours in the Philippines, Japan and South Korea get to see.

This has consequences. Taiwan is not merely a frontline in the ongoing US-China rivalry even if it has been played this way in US media. Taiwan is a vibrant society with its own multilayered history, shaped by numerous forms of Indigenous culture, early Spanish and Dutch efforts at colonialism, Qing Dynasty rule in some areas, a 50-year period of Japanese control into the mid-20th Century, as well as post-war authoritarianism.

Yet public discourse can appear disproportionately animated by US culture wars, US electoral cycles and US policy fashions. Foreign sports coverage on local media essentially means stateside NBA or Major League baseball coverage. In falling so deeply for the belief that working with the US on defence requires the full-on adoption of all things American, Taiwan is overlooking its own distinct strengths – not least its technological prowess and democratic evolution.

This imbalance is most acute in defence policy. Taiwan has spent billions of dollars on American hardware which include F-16 upgrades to missile systems and tanks. Yet, while these purchases send political signals to China, and ensure at least a degree of interoperability with US forces should the time ever come, they also reflect a slave-like belief that Taiwan must tether itself to Washington’s industrial base and timelines. In doing so, military purchases from across the Pacific are more designed for US expeditionary warfare, rather than an island nation living under threat of attack by a much bigger neighbour across the Taiwan Strait.

Beijing has had many decades to study US military hardware, as well as doctrine. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is well aware of American air, naval and missile capabilities. There is little on the Taiwanese defence manifesto the Chinese have not prepared to face many times over.

It would be wholly naïve to assume that weapons publicly debated in the US Congress and showcased in American export catalogues are a mystery to Chinese military planners.

In knock-on effect, the belief that runways would not be among the first Chinese targets in any conflict scenario as part of moves to cripple Taiwan’s air force before it can take off would be gullibility personified. Conventional aircraft in wartime are some of the easiest to ground.

But Taipei’s aviation investments do not reflect this weak spot. Instead, the island’s mountainous terrain could be an asset in developing dispersed, hardened and vertical or short take-off and landing (VSTOL) capabilities. The experience of the United Kingdom with its former Harrier fleet (retired in 2010) in the 1982 Falklands War, and even India’s now-retired naval Harriers (2016), offer lessons in operating from austere environments.

As such, rather than relying overwhelmingly on conventional runways and imported and outdated F-16 fighter jets that first went into service in the 1970s, upgrades notwithstanding – Taiwan could and should invest more heavily in indigenous research and development tailored to its own unique geography. A modern VSTOL capability - whether through adaptation with the US, UK, Japan or Italy who all operate the F-35B – a VSTOL capable modern aircraft – or simply domestic innovation, would prove a huge complication to Chinese targeting calculations. So too would a greater emphasis on drones, mobile missile batteries and decentralised command structures which to some extent are being brought into play sources indicate.

Of course, funding such a shift requires political courage at home. At present, Taiwan’s tax burden remains comparatively low when held up alongside other countries, and fuel prices are often politically massaged to avoid public backlash. But if national survival is truly at stake, then petrol should be priced at realistic market levels, and land and property taxes reformed to reflect soaring urban values. Taiwan as a society that expects security without sacrifice risks discovering the limits of external guarantees.

In addition, diversification should extend beyond current military doctrine and to this end, Taiwan is making progress. As of early 2026, Taipei's unofficial and official ties stretch far beyond Washington with Taipei maintaining diplomatic relations with a small but symbolically significant group of states, and significant economic even if technically unofficial links with major economies across Europe and Asia.

Yet too often are these relationships framed as supplements to, rather than pillars worthy of standing alongside, the American connection.

Taiwan under the DPP has the scope for much more structured military interaction with European partners including spheres such as joint training and intelligence-sharing. But is the government of President William Lai willing to move even slightly away from US influence in defence sector spending? European states have long grappled with hybrid warfare and energy coercion – most recently as a close neighbour to the conflict in Ukraine. These are all issues that resonate with Taiwan’s experience as regards China, and a much broader web of security relationships would signal to all that Taiwan’s defence is not simply a bilateral financial favour to the US.

Taiwan must recognise that the nation’s fate cannot rest solely on the electoral calendar of a foreign power. US politics is highly volatile – never more so than now with commitments that have seemed ironclad under one administration now being questioned under the Trump White House.

A Taiwan that raises the revenue necessary for its own defence, works to develop systems suited to its hard to penetrate terrain and takes steps to nurture its own distinct cultural voice will be a more formidable partner – and a harder target for China to knock out.