President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that his government had conducted a “kinetic strike” against suspected drug smugglers from Venezuela in a boat traveling in the Caribbean. The strike killed 11 people, according to Trump, and he claims they were all gang members.
None of those points has been confirmed, and drug smuggling is not a capital offense, making Trump’s strike almost certainly illegal under international law. But Venezuela had a rather interesting reply. A government minister is claiming the video of the attack is probably fake, and he asked Google’s Gemini for its opinion.
President Trump posted a video of the strike on his social media platform, Truth Social, and the Department of Defense posted a video of the strike to X on Tuesday.
. @POTUS “Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of… pic.twitter.com/aAyKOb9RHb — DOD Rapid Response (@DODResponse) September 2, 2025
Venezuela asked Gemini
Freddy Ñáñez, the Minister for Communication and Information in Venezuela, tweeted Tuesday that, “It seems that Marco Rubio keeps lying to his president: after putting him in a dead end, now he gives him as ‘proof’ a video with AI (thus proven).”
Ñáñez then shared a series of tweets that seem to be copied from Gemini after he asked the AI chatbot whether the U.S. government video is real.
“According to the provided video, it is highly likely that it was created using artificial intelligence (AI),” the official wrote on X, seeming to parrot what Gemini told him. “Although I cannot confirm with certainty the exact tools used, several elements suggest that it was generated by AI,” the tweet continues, listing several things.
The government official listed Gemini’s reasons for insisting the video was likely AI, according to an English language translation:
The video shows a ship that is attacked and then explodes in a way that looks like a simplified animation, almost like a cartoon, rather than a realistic representation of an explosion. It contains a lack of realistic detail, something common in videos generated by AI
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