A former Morgan Stanley executive believes that President Donald Trump’s move against Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro is more about the AI supply chain than oil.
Over the weekend, the US launched airstrikes in Venezuela to capture its president, Nicolas Maduro, on drug trafficking charges.
Said Trump in a press conference:
“We will run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.”
While most experts say that the attack is a move to secure the country’s oil reserves, ex-Morgan Stanley managing director Jordi Visser believes it is about AI-era supply-chain security and the physical inputs that modern militaries need to build autonomous systems at scale.
Visser highlights that military advantage today is increasingly tied to AI embedded in hardware, and how that shifts the definition of what matters geopolitically.
“There’s a lot of speculation about why Trump moved against Maduro. Most macro takes default to the familiar explanation: oil. That framing is understandable, but it misses the AI geo-political lens, which has been the story since rare earths became the new oil in the AI military world.
Modern militaries don’t compete on troop counts alone. They compete in:
– Autonomous systems
– Drones
– Sensors
– Precision guidance
– Electronic warfare
All of which depend on AI embedded in hardware. And once AI becomes physical, inputs matter. Not oil, but:
– Rare earths
– Tantalum
– Cobalt
– Antimony
These are the atoms behind intelligent systems.”
Looking through the supply-chain lens, Visser ties his argument directly to Venezuela’s resource base and the strategic leverage that comes with controlling those inputs.
“Here’s the key point: Venezuela sits on significant deposits of these critical minerals, the same materials required for AI-enabled weapons, drones, radar, and guidance systems. That alone raises strategic importance. This is what changes the calculus.”
Visser notes that the geopolitical risk rises further due to what he describes as a three-way convergence of adversarial influence within a single country in the Western Hemisphere.
“Venezuela became the only place in the Western Hemisphere where:
– China controls AI-critical inputs
– Iran manufactures autonomous weapons
– Russia integrates military infrastructure
That convergence matters far more than oil.”
He adds that in the age of AI, logistics involving critical minerals are the new chokepoint for the US.
“In an AI world, supply-chain security is national security. Control of the materials that power intelligent systems is as strategic today as control of oil was in the last century.”
Last month, the US opened up to $134 million in funding to expand domestic rare earth extraction and processing capacity, aiming to reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign sources dominated by China. Under the program, the Department of Energy will work with commercial partners to prove that rare earths can be cost-effectively recovered within the United States.
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