China is the target. Venezuela is the stage. That is the core claim in OAN‘s Chanel Rion’s latest report about President Trump’s strategy in the Western Hemisphere. If you’re wondering why a drug war narrative is front and center, Rion says it is a cover for a proxy war against China. In her telling, this is Trump’s third straight strike on Beijing’s energy and influence network. If you want to understand the troop movements, the CIA authorities, and all the noise, you have to follow the oil money and the dual-use projects that tie Venezuela to Beijing.
Rion frames the past few years like a scoreboard. “Trump is officially three and O with China.” The three fronts she lays out share one through line: cheap oil, pliable leaders, and Beijing’s cash-for-control model.
- Iran: China had a heavy investment; Trump neutered them.
- Gaza: China had a heavy investment; Trump secured a regional firewall.
- Venezuela: China straightforwardly controlled it for two decades; Trump is moving in, and China is blinking.
In her view, “attacking Maduro is attacking Xi Jinping.” The point is not to debate whether narco boats are bad. The point is to argue the bigger fight. Rion says Trump is the first American leader to punch China where it hurts, on the assets that keep Beijing’s geopolitical engine running. Oil deals, port access, telecom networks, and sanctioned regimes that sell for pennies.
The press line is simple, albeit incorrect. The buildup near Venezuela is allegedly about narco-terrorism. It is about cartels like Transagua, which Rion ties to Nicolás Maduro’s regime. She quotes the mainstream frame and then flips it. Analysts push a step further and say, this is really about regime change. Rion calls both takes wrong.
Yes, drugs flow. Yes, cartels ship product by sea. But she says that is not the driver of the scale we are seeing. The bigger issue is China. She notes even right-leaning outlets muse about regime change. But she insists the center of gravity is Beijing’s chokehold on Venezuela’s economy and infrastructure.
She gives a simple exchange to show how the administration under Trump answers a fair question about tactics. Why not just use the Coast Guard to stop drug boats? Trump’s reply, quoted by Rion: “We’ve been doing that for 30 years, and it has been totally ineffective.”
Rion says the drug fight is real but too small to explain the military weight on display. A cartel task force does not need this many troops, jets, and ship rotations. A proxy fight with China does.
Rion describes a sizable deployment footprint and a change in rules of engagement. Her words paint a picture of a campaign that goes well beyond interdiction or intel sharing.
- Over 10,000 US troops positioned in the region, plus eight warships on station.
- Helicopters and Reaper drones targeting narco boats at sea.
- F-35s flying, with Venezuela scrambling jets in response.
- CIA authorities expanded. Rion says Trump “has authorized the CIA to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela.”
She presents this as a scale match. If the fight is about cartels, the Coast Guard and DEA lead. If the fight is about China’s anchor client in the Americas, you stage more power. You tighten the circle, you push ISR coverage, you preempt port moves, you cut off oil flows that collateralize Chinese loans.
Rion’s core argument focuses on energy finance. She says Beijing poured money into broken states with cheap resources. It buys out corrupt leaders, secures product at a discount, and keeps them on a debt treadmill. Venezuela, in her words, is the poster boy of that playbook.
Here is the picture she draws of China’s grip on Venezuela:
- Beijing is Venezuela’s largest creditor, with over $60 billion in debt extended since 2007.
- Caracas repays in oil, which keeps them locked into low-price deliveries for years.
- Sanctions paralyze Venezuela’s economy. China buys much of the oil that still moves, which forces next-to-nothing sale terms.
- The debt never goes away. It rolls, it expands, and it binds. That is the game.
Rion connects this to a familiar pattern. “Remember what I said yesterday about why China is likely the biggest force behind the Gaza war,” she says. The pattern is the same. Find leaders sitting on cheap resources. Get a grip on revenue. Export influence through the barrel of a tanker, not a gun.
She adds a fresh data point. In May 2025, at the China CELAC forum, Beijing offered Venezuela another $1 billion in new oil investments. This, she argues, cements Venezuela as a front line in the US-China shadow war. New money, more oil, deeper ties.
The story does not stop at oil. Rion says Chinese firms are “neck deep” in modernizing Venezuela’s ports and telecom grids. That includes systems with obvious dual uses in a crisis, like port logistics, traffic control, and network cores.
Two clear examples:
- Port upgrades that can serve commerce in peacetime, and naval logistics in a pinch.
- Telecom modernization that speeds civilian networks, and can aid signals collection or command systems.
Rion’s key claim: China does not let companies operate abroad if it cannot fold projects into national security. In her view, a commercial port in a Chinese client state is never just a port. It is a node. It is leverage. It is access.
This is why she reads the US military posture as more than interdiction. Force, manpower, and CIA authorities point at a state-level fight. Knock out the nodes and you reduce China’s ability to stage or resupply through a friendly coastline.
Rion takes aim at the regime change chorus head on. Some analysts argue the buildup is about toppling Maduro. Others say it is a drug war on steroids. She calls that “the wrong question.”
Her argument has three parts:
- Maduro is a proxy, not an independent actor. “To think that Maduro is some independent agent is naive and foolish,” she says.
- China holds the paper. With tens of billions in loans and oil repayment streams, Beijing controls the leash.
- Changing leaders does not change lenders. If the debt remains, the client remains. You have to break the bond, not just the man.
Under that logic, regime change without financial and infrastructure pressure is a revolving door. Another leader steps in, the loans roll, the oil keeps flowing to China, and the wheel turns. The only way to break it is to go after the structure of the deal, the routes, and the docks.
Rion does not deny the drug problem. She calls it real and destructive. Her point is scale and intent. If the mission is cartel suppression, the tools should look like law enforcement plus targeted interdictions. Instead, she points to F-35 sorties, Reaper strike packages, and Navy overlays in the Caribbean.
Her quote about the Coast Guard matters here: “We’ve been doing that for 30 years, and it has been totally ineffective.” That line is less about the Coast Guard and more about mission creep. You escalate when the target set is larger than smugglers. You surge when the adversary has ships, banks, port concessions, fiber runs, and a lot of leverage in a failing state.
Rion’s blunt read: attacking Maduro is attacking Xi Jinping. She argues Venezuela is “basically China,” not a free agent. The same goes for Iran’s mullahs and Gaza’s war politics. “What do these tin pot dictatorships have in common?” Rion answers her own question. They would be nothing without the Chinese Communist Party, and China would be smaller on the world stage without them.
That is why the headline of her case lands hard. “Trump is declaring war on China’s most valuable assets, Iran, Venezuela, Gaza.” Knock out the assets, and Beijing shrinks. Take away the oil for debt scheme, the port nodes, and the telecom pipes, and you reduce China’s reach without firing at China itself.
Even outside Rion’s report, public data lines up with key parts of this model:
- Venezuela’s oil-for-loans deals with China date back to the late 2000s, with commitments commonly estimated in the tens of billions. Many sources place cumulative lending at over $50 billion across multiple tranches.
- China’s overseas infrastructure projects often blend commercial aims with strategic access. This dual-use concern has come up from Sri Lanka to African ports to telecom network cores.
- Sanctions constrict Venezuela’s cash sales. That makes a barter-like oil repayment more likely, and often at a discount.
These facts do not settle every claim. They do set a stage where Rion’s theory about a China-focused campaign can fit the known incentives.
If Rion is right, the fight in Venezuela is less about Caracas and more about a map of the hemisphere. A Chinese-linked port network near the Panama Canal has obvious risk. Telecom stacks tied into Venezuelan state systems are not just civilian utilities. They are potential lanes for pressure or surveillance.
That is why a military posture aimed at Venezuela’s China ties would not be limited to boats loaded with cocaine. It would aim at fuel depots, maritime approaches, cyber nodes, and the financial spigots that keep the oil-for-debt machine pumping.
Rion closes with a warning and a taunt. “Three strikes and you’re out, Xi.” It is a line, but it is also a frame. If Iran, Gaza, and Venezuela are the pillars of a cheap resource pipeline into China’s rise, then breaking any two weakens the third. Breaking all three changes the global board.
In her telling, that is what the buildup near Venezuela is all about. Not a headline win on drug seizures. Not a palace coup in Caracas. A direct hit on Beijing’s supply chain, dressed as a regional crackdown.
Chanel Rion’s case is blunt. The Venezuela push is part of a larger proxy war against China. The debt, the oil, the ports, and the telecom deals point to a client state model. Strip that away and Beijing’s reach in the Americas fades. Agree or disagree, her logic connects the dots in a way most headlines avoid.
If you follow the money and the nodes, the picture snaps into focus. Rion’s closing claim hangs in the air. Three fronts, one strategy, and a clear target. What part of China’s network goes next?
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.