Geopolitics are being reduced to videos lasting just a few minutes. Social media has surpassed traditional media, not only in the speed with which it is created and shared but also in its ability to frame our reality. People have the illusion of knowing what is happening and why within just a few hours—or less—of major world events. But reality is more complicated.
In the early hours of January 3, the United States attacked Venezuela. The sky thundered over Caracas with multiple explosions. Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged that 32 Cuban soldiers died in combat during the US intervention. The attacks caused at least 80 deaths among other military personnel and civilians, according to reporting from The New York Times. The attack included the capture of president Nicolás Maduro, who was transferred to New York to be tried on narcoterrorism conspiracy and other charges.
Hours later, US president Donald Trump said he would run the South American country until there was a transition he considered satisfactory. At the same time, he said, US oil companies would revive the Venezuelan oil industry. Later, from Caracas, Venezuela vice president Delcy Rodríguez called for Maduro’s release, saying that the country “will never again be a slave or colony of any empire.” Maduro, meanwhile, slept in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he had been transferred after his capture.
The attack has returned the world to an era that many thought was long over, of direct US military involvement in the affairs of Latin American countries. And it's playing out very differently from what you might have seen on TikTok.
The Collapse of Fact-Checking in the Digital World
WIRED asked Julio Juárez, a psychological researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and academic secretary of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Sciences and Humanities, to analyze how the practice of verifying claims with sources has collapsed in the current digital world.
“The time that traditional media needed to verify information has been devoured by the speed of social media platforms. From the first reports of the attack on Venezuela, social media operated as a massive amplifier that not only transmitted different perspectives but also constructed reality," says Juárez. "It is the sign of an era where digital communication has primacy: It defines what happens and why. Donald Trump’s narrative was not random; it was an exercise in legitimization that polarized public opinion. Today, citizens face the challenge of exercising critical judgment in an environment that’s designed to provoke immediate reactions, not nuanced reflection.”
On his Truth Social account, Trump announced early in the morning after the military strike that the US had successfully carried out a “large-scale attack on Venezuela.” Maduro had been captured and taken out of the country by helicopter along with his wife, Cilia Flores. Both were transported by a military aircraft to a US ship, which took them to Guantanamo, where they then boarded a plane that took them to New York.
Historia Para Tontos (History for Dummies), a Spanish-language Instagram account that has disseminated its takes on history through the use of maps and satire, summarized the geopolitical tension of early 2026 in a viral video. In the clip, while an optimistic Mexico celebrates the arrival of the new year, an imperial US boasts: “I just bombed Venezuela and captured Maduro for the sake of world security.” The punch line is a critique of American exceptionalism, as the character continues, “and the world is me.”
Comments quickly followed. “Where was the concern for international law when Maduro violated our human and civil rights year after year for more than a decade? Where were those laws when they starved us, killed our students for protesting peacefully, and let political prisoners die? Where were YOU, Mexico, during those 25 years when we were crying out for help? Did you raise your voice to defend our sovereignty when Maduro stole the elections last year? Were you outraged to learn that Cuba, China, Iran, and Russia were stealing our oil and natural resources? Stupid international laws have watched us bleed to death for almost three decades. Do us a favor and keep quiet and look the other way. Thank you.🥰 Sincerely, Venezuela,” wrote Dayani López in one reply.