The REAL Reason(s) The US Is Taking Over Venezuela Explained

0:00Hello, everyone. Hope you all had a great new year. Today, we're going to talk about Maduro's arrest in Venezuela, what it means for financial markets, what it means for your portfolio. We're also going to talk about why I think Bitcoin didn't go up in 2025. And lastly, we're going to talk about humanoid robots that are working right now in American factories. We're live today from the desk of Anthony Pompliano.

0:29Now, before we get into today's episode, we're going to do something a little bit different. I have Matt, our producer here. He's going to ask me questions about each of these topics, and I'm going to explain what my perspective is. If you've been enjoying this show, it would be awesome if you go ahead and hit the subscribe button. Let's get into it today. All right, Pomp. 2026 started off with a bang. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was captured and brought back to the United States. Now, there's a ton of geopolitical conversations to be had here, but the people want to know what are your thoughts on this situation and how should investors approach this geopolitical uncertainty?

1:01Everyone's talking about oil. What exactly should investors do in this situation? Well, I think the first thing is that we just pulled off something here in America that no other military in the world could do. I mean, everyone always talks about Navy SEALs or the Army Rangers, all these different groups. But Delta Force, they are the kings of the military. These are the most badass people that we have in the military. We sent them down. We heard from the generals there was 150 different aircraft involved in pulling this off. We literally went in. We used technology that people don't even know that we have.

1:33They supposedly dropped a temporary electromagnetic bomb that knocked out all of the lights, all of the energy inside of Caracas in order for us to be able to pull this off. And within a very short period of time, Delta Force was able to grab Nicolas Maduro. And from my standpoint, one, God bless these guys. Americans live in this country and feel safe because there's rough men who are ready to stand and do violence on our behalf, usually in the dark of night and not knowing whether they're going to come back or not. So be able to do this, do it so well, and to do it without a single U.S. soldier losing their life or us losing any equipment.

2:12Incredible to see that. That's the first thing. The second component of this I think is really important is that why are we going and getting him? Now, as most people don't know, Maduro was actually charged in U.S. court back about six years ago in the first Trump administration. So he is a fugitive from the U.S. justice system. Now, of course, people are going to say, oh, it has nothing to do with drug trafficking or anything else. It simply is about oil. So let's talk about oil. From my perspective, oil is a big part of the story. Venezuela has 300 billion barrels of oil, but they're only producing about 30 percent of what they were doing just 15 years ago.

2:48Our friend Adam Kobe say he's been all over this. He says that the oil is worth about 17 trillion dollars. So do we care about the oil? Of course. But remember, America is a net exporter of oil. We don't necessarily need to consume other people's oil. The story to me about the oil is less about what the United States is going to do with it and much more about the fact that there are countries like Russia, Iran, China, et cetera, that want control of that oil. And so in a world where gas prices have been coming down in America, we're now sub$3 on average across the country, there is a world that if this oil starts to come online, given the size of how much oil is there, you could actually see gas prices in America being like$2 a gallon.

3:31We had that just a couple of years ago. And so I'm watching not only the oil, but I'm watching the gas prices in America. Now, one of the things that I think is really important is this administration, for better or worse, they just say what they think. And I think that people still continue to think that the administration may be playing some sleight of hand, maybe lying, maybe trying to mislead people. Just last night, President Trump, he was on Air Force One. He was being interviewed, does a little, you know, airplane kind of press conferences. And someone asked him, who is going to run Venezuela?

4:05And he literally said something to the effect of, you ain't going to like the answer, but we are. And whether you agree with that or not, there can't be any more transparency than that. And so that's why I started to pay attention when all of a sudden I saw Marco Rubio on television. Watch this clip of what Rubio said. We don't need Venezuela's oil. We have plenty of oil in the United States. What we're not going to allow is for the oil industry in Venezuela to be controlled by adversaries of the United States. You have to understand, why does China need their oil? Why does Russia need their oil?

4:34Why does Iran need their oil? They're not even in this continent. This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live. And we're not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States. Have specific oil companies? We also want to see that oil and the proceeds from it. Hold on. We want to see the oil proceeds of that country benefit the people of Venezuela. Why have 8 million people left Venezuela? 8 million, the single largest mass migration probably in modern history, left Venezuela since 2014 because all the wealth of that country was stolen to the benefit of Maduro and his cronies in the regime, but not to the benefit of people of Venezuela.

5:09You know how destabilizing 8 million migrants is? The number one fear that Brazil has, that Colombia has, that all these countries in the region have about what's happening in Venezuela and our involvement is they're afraid of another mass migration event. That's what they fear. This is deeply destabilizing stuff. It's not going to continue to happen. They are not going to come from outside of our hemisphere, destabilize our region in our own backyard and us have to pay the price for it, not under President Trump. Now, again, I think that Rubio is just telling you what they think. They want to control the Western Hemisphere, and they do not want to allow Russia, China, or Iran, or any other adversary to have a base of operations in the Western Hemisphere.

5:48Now, again, you may not like that. You may think that they shouldn't have done what they did, but that's why they're doing it. That's a very different story than what a lot of people are speculating online. Now, one of the other aspects that I saw people talking about, which I think there's a lot of credence to, and probably this is the fourth point as to why I think this was an important geopolitical moment is that the United States historically has always had a lot of allies around the world. But what we have seen happen in the last couple of years and maybe even the last decade or so is all of these allies, they continue to be very friendly with the United States.

6:19But more and more, they're counting on the United States to actually be the ones to defend them. And so the U.S. military capabilities have accelerated. We are still the best military in the world. But many of our allies, their militaries have not kept up. Israel is one where I think the United States still has a lot of confidence in their ability from a military standpoint. But most other allies, I think the United States is taking the position that says it's either us or no one. We are going to have to step in and protect these people. Look at Ukraine, for example. There is no way that that war is in the place that it is right now unless the U.S.

6:53steps in. And so I think that the United States government, this administration in particular, they are playing a geopolitical strategy game. They're trying to figure out how can they go and take some sort of weapon to China, Iran, and Russia. Now, if you were to flood the market with oil, that obviously would completely destabilize a lot of the revenue that Russia, Iran, and China are getting. The second thing that I think is really important here is we already see military assets moving over into Europe. Now, I'm not saying that we're going to go and do something in Iran. But what I do think is pretty interesting is, is this administration going to try to pull off the triple parlay?

7:31They went and they got the Venezuelan leader. Are they going to try to out the Ayatollah in Iran and then turn around? Are they going to go after Cuba as well? If they get Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba, and they knock them down like bowling pins one after the other in a month or two, that would probably be one of the most large geopolitical realignments in my lifetime. The United States is back to being the king of the global stage. And whether you like it or you don't, the United States believes that the world is safer when the U.S. is strong, when its military is capable, and when people, especially bad people all around the world, realize if you mess with the United States, if you try to do things to hurt our country or our citizens, the United States of America will hunt you down to kill or capture you.

8:20Now, one of the things I don't hear a lot of people talking about when it comes to Maduro is the fact that we didn't kill him. We actually arrested him and brought him back to stand trial. This whole idea of actually using the justice system in that way, I think it's a big deal. And so what does this mean from an investment standpoint, right? If you go and you look at the whole geopolitical thing, it's super interesting. But what does it mean for your investment portfolio? From my standpoint, I think that there's one, the price of oil is going to significantly go down if we flood the global market with more oil.

8:47But two is a lot of the US oil companies and those energy companies, the president of the United States is saying he's going to send them to Venezuela. He's going to go and have them actually participate in bringing that oil out of the country. If that's true, those stocks are probably going to do pretty well. On top of that, I think generally the more stability there is on a global stage, the more you're going to see asset prices like public stocks go up. So I think that the stock market is going to have a very fast start to the year. Some of that's monetary policy, but a lot of it is because of things like this.

9:20And then, of course, if we are going and using military might all around the globe, military and defense contractors, those guys are going to do well as well. And so I think that this is one of those things of trying to better understand what's happening on the ground in Venezuela. Why is the United States making those decisions? And then what are the second and third order effects in your portfolio? This is the Super Bowl for investors. If you pay attention to macroeconomics and geopolitics, These types of events can create enormous amount of opportunity. Now, what I think is most interesting is if I was a young person today, there is going to be incredible mispricing of assets and lots of asymmetric opportunities coming out of Venezuela.

10:00If they really do embrace capitalism and democracy, there is going to be so much opportunity in Venezuela. It's one of the largest, most natural resource rich countries in the entire world. It used to be the most prosperous country in South and Central America. If they can get back to that, that means that obviously one, every investment bank, every large asset manager, and most young people who have the opportunity should be headed to Venezuela and trying to figure out where's their opportunity. Now, the Venezuelan people, they're not going to just turn over assets. You have to do it in a way that is beneficial to them.

10:33Every single Venezuelan I know, they're excited about the fact that Maduro was removed. They have hope and belief in their country once again. And I think that there's going to be a profound impact both in geopolitics, but also your personal investment portfolio and the global stock market. So keep your head on a swivel, keep paying attention to this. These are the types of opportunities that I think are really big. So, Pomp, I think 2025 was a bit of a letdown for Bitcoiners. What happened last year? And what do you expect going into 2026? Yeah, look, I think that there was four major things that played into Bitcoin being disappointing, frankly, right?

11:06I think a lot of Bitcoiners, they want asymmetry. They want the asset to go up 50, 60, 70, 80 % every single year. The first thing is that there's lower risk now to Bitcoin. And so if you have lower risk, you should get a lower return. But if you think back just a couple of years, it wasn't crazy to believe that the U.S. government may shut down Bitcoin. They may try to arrest the Bitcoiners. They may do anything that they possibly could to be abrasive to the asset. That's first. Second is Bitcoin was kind of outside of the system. There was no large financial institutions. Nobody was participating.

11:36And so if you had high risk, you needed high reward to be the payoff. And that's what Bitcoin provided. And that was really attractive to a lot of people. Now, as Bitcoin's risk has come down, I would argue that right now is the lowest risk ever has existed in Bitcoin's history to own Bitcoin. Well, then you should expect the return to come down as well. Now, I don't think it's low risk, low return. I think it's probably lower risk, medium return. And so I don't expect this thing to compound on an annual basis at 80%, but I also don't expect it to compound at 10 % either. It's probably somewhere in the 25, 30, 35 % range.

12:08And so lower risk equals lower return. And that's kind of one big thing. Mass adoption also happens because of lower risk. More people are willing to come in and buy the asset and hold it because there's lower risk. And so therefore, you should expect lower and lower return moving forward. Now, second thing, and this is a little bit weird, is that global stability is actually returning on kind of this worldly stage. And what do I mean by that? So if you go back just a couple of years, we had wars breaking out all the time. We had all sorts of kind of question marks as to what would the United States do, right?

12:39There was even people who would say that we have strategic ambiguity in many of these geopolitical conflicts. And so you saw things like Hamas and Israel. You saw obviously Russia and Ukraine, and you saw lots and lots of things happening. Now, since President Trump's come back into office again, whether you like the guy or not, it is very clear that he is kind of an alpha. He's somebody who shows up and says, I'm going to be a leader. We are going to have peace through strength. And just look at what they've done. The Hamas-Israel conflict is over. I think that Russia, Ukraine is closer to signing a peace deal today than they've ever been.

13:11We just saw the removal of Venezuelan president, Nicholas Maduro. We also know the Southern border is closed, right? We continue to see all sorts of different actions around the world to create stability, to create safety. And so if Bitcoin is supposed to be this kind of like chaos hedge, well, if there's less chaos, then obviously the insurance policy or that hedge is less attractive. And so less net new dollars coming in. Third, I think is Wall Street. Wall Street is playing a whole different game. Up until the last two years, Wall Street pretty much didn't play in Bitcoin. But now we have ETFs, we have treasury companies, we have options, we have all sorts of different ways for people to participate in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

13:52And so when Wall Street comes in, I think that you end up getting a lot of different strategies. And one of the easy things is there used to not be options. And so Jeff Park, who's the CIO at ProCap Financial, he wrote an entire piece basically explaining the fact that a lot of OGs are saying, look, I may be up 100, 1000, 10 ,000 X on my Bitcoin. What do I do now? Well, many of them are going to these covered call strategies. They have a really big position in Bitcoin. They may not want to sell the Bitcoin, but by selling these kind of covered call strategies, they essentially are putting price pressure on Bitcoin and they're generating yield.

14:28They're almost like selling away the upside and generating yield in the meantime. That obviously changes the dynamic of the market. On top of that, you've got a lot of very sophisticated players. Most people on Wall Street are not playing the game for a hundred or a thousand X. They're playing the game to clip basis points. They want to figure out, can I return 15 % a year and do it with the lowest risk possible? And so having Wall Street start to participate in Bitcoin, that obviously changes the market and goes from a true free market where it was pretty much a long only game to now there's a lot of, I don't want to say manipulation, but there's definitely a lot of things that change in the market structure.

15:03And that has this kind of suppression of volatility to it. And the last thing I think is that Bitcoin is not the only girl at the party anymore. If you go back five or 10 years, you could have said to yourself, okay, I want asymmetric returns. What do I buy? Pretty much the answer was Bitcoin. Maybe somebody would have bought Tesla stock or something else, but for the most part, it was Bitcoin or there wasn't a lot of options. Look today at what the options are in the market. You obviously have artificial intelligence. You've got prediction markets. You've got rockets and drones. You've got humanoid robots.

15:32You've got all kinds of new shiny things that are promising very high asymmetric return. And so it's not that Bitcoin all of a sudden became less attractive. It's just the fact that now Bitcoin has competition in that asymmetric kind of allocation. And so naturally you're going to fragment capital, energy, and the conversation isn't just Bitcoin only. It now becomes Bitcoin, artificial intelligence, and many of those other technologies. And so I think that lower risk, more global stability, Wall Street participating, and Bitcoin not only being the, or not being the only girl at the party, those are the four reasons why I think that Bitcoin didn't perform well in 2025.

16:08Now, 2026, I think that the story for Bitcoin historically has been, this is a decentralized digital asset that has a programmatic monetary policy and a finite supply. And anyone in the world with an internet connection, not only can you access it, but you also can audit it. None of that has changed. And I think that Bitcoin is actually more attractive today than ever before because of that lower risk. And so my guess is that you're going to continue to see people putting capital into Bitcoin over the coming months and years, and Bitcoin will be just fine. Will there be years where maybe it goes down?

16:40Of course. Will there be years where maybe the return isn't as great as people expected? of course. But that doesn't mean that the compounding yield growth rate of Bitcoin over the next decade isn't still going to be 25, 30, 35%. That's my base case. I ended 2025 owning more Bitcoin than I started the year with. I still have Bitcoin as a very substantial part of my personal net worth. And I think ultimately Bitcoin story, it's not over. I think that Bitcoin is going to do very well in the future. It's just one of those moments where people realize there's four things that happened in 2025 that changed the market.

17:10You get a little bit of transition, but Bitcoin is going to be just fine. So we got a glimpse into the future last night. 60 Minutes did a piece on the Boston Dynamics robot. They're already working in Hyundai factories building cars. Take a look at this. Meet Atlas, a five foot nine, 200 pound AI powered humanoid created by Boston Dynamics. The rise of the robots is science fiction no more. I have to say, every time I see it, I just can't believe what my eyes are seeing. I mean, that's pretty crazy. What are your thoughts? Well, look, I think that this is where we're obviously going, right? The fact that you can take what is really rote human behavior.

17:53It is simply taking in information, synthesizing it, and then taking action in the real world. We have computers and we now have robotics. And if you can put those two things together, you're going to be able to replace a lot of things that humans do. Now, of course, if it's something simple us, pick up a box here, move it over here. That's something that a child can understand, an adult can do, and eventually a robot can understand and do. So that's easy stuff. What I'm more interested in is where is the complex manufacturing going, right? If you look at, let's say a Tesla factory, you already see lots of robotics.

18:26It may not be humanoid robots, but you see lots of robotics helping to build the vehicle. What I think is very interesting. And as I've talked to a lot of the humanoid company CEOs, one of the things they always talk about is like the world is built for the form factor of a human. We have two arms, two legs, our face, our eyes, the way we think, see, talk, et cetera. That's how the world is built. Well, if you can get robotics into that form factor of a humanoid, now all of a sudden you have to change the world a lot. You can simply use that robot in the world that already exists. And I think that's what these factors are trying to figure out is how do you transition from having not a lot of robotics to having robots?

19:03Well, a great way to do that is why don't we put the robots in that humanoid form factor and go and do it. Now, the other thing that I think is really interesting about this is this is a huge deflationary force. This is going to help continue to bring inflation down. You are essentially putting in labor, but you're not doing it with humans. And so the cost will be lower over time, but also you will become more productive as a company. Hyundai, by doing this, will be able to increase revenue and ultimately profit, but do it with lower costs, which go ahead and actually impacts profit. So as you see people going through all this stuff.

19:36My first thing is Hyundai understands where the world is going. Hyundai is trying to drive more profit. And ultimately there are going to be knock on effects of this. There's going to be a lot of creation of jobs and the companies that are making these humanoid robots. It's probably the largest addressable market in the world. But at the same time, there's going to be people who lose their jobs. What do we do with them? How do we retrain them? How do we get them back in the workforce? We need to understand both sides of this. There is creative destruction at play. We are creating new companies, new profits, new opportunities, and new jobs, but we are also destroying old companies, old profits, and old jobs.

20:14And that is ultimately why there's so much controversy around this. I think that this is obviously the future. I think Boston Dynamics has been ahead of this for a long time. Hyundai is smart to be doing this, but ultimately what I see happening here, producing more, costing less, more profits. The economic incentive is going to get every single company in the world to want to participate. Humanoid robots, artificial intelligence, this is coming and we need to figure out how to address it. All right, guys, that's it for today. I hope you guys like this brand new style that we're going to go with.

20:47Please leave us feedback in the comments. Do you like the old show or do you like this new one where Matt asked me questions and I just kind of talk off the top of my head? We'd love your feedback on it. Always helps us make the show better. and I'll see you guys live tomorrow from the desk of Anthony Pompliano.