This week

• What are 10,000 U.S. troops and Tomahawk-capable submarines doing off the South American coast?
• Is Donald Trump really deconstructing democracy in the United States? Steve Hanson on the American consolidation of patrimonial rule.
• The Kremlin and Syria’s Islamist rulers were at war for years. Why are they working together now? Vali Nasr on a swift and unexpected transformation of power in the Middle East.

Weather report

• Tropical Storm Melissa stalks the Caribbean

+ Cultural intelligence

• Why is China building so much, so fast? Dan Wang’s new book, Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.
• What’s raptor house?
• & The week in new music

Ghosts of Panama

Since early September, American military forces have killed at least 32 people in eight strikes on boats in Caribbean and, now, Pacific waters. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calls the dead drug smugglers operating along “known narco-trafficking transit routes,” emphasizing the government of Venezuela’s complicity with them.

To date, the administration has offered no evidence to back its claims—no cargo manifests, no photographed contraband, no crew identifications, no boarding documentation. Officials have announced each strike, cited intelligence assessments, and that’s more or less it. They’ve sent two survivors from one attack back to where they were from—Colombia and Ecuador—neither of which is Venezuela, both of which, notably, export more cocaine than Venezuela does.

On Tuesday, American forces destroyed another vessel—this one in the eastern Pacific, the first strike outside the Caribbean. But the pattern is now repeating: Destroy boats at sea, claim drug smuggling, move along.

The U.S. military infrastructure in the Caribbean has meanwhile been growing. Some 10,000 American troops now operate there—Marines, sailors, special operations forces. Eight warships are patrolling the waters off Venezuela, including guided-missile destroyers and a submarine capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles. There’s an F-35 squadron operating from Puerto Rico. B-1 and B-52 bombers fly up to Venezuela’s coast in what the Pentagon calls “bomber-attack demonstrations.” And on October 15, President Donald Trump confirmed that he authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela. On Wednesday, he told reporters the United States was “certainly looking at land now” for strikes—having gotten “the sea very well under control.”

What’s going on?

New music

‘Lets Do It (te-te)’

Out of Venezuela, a new raptor-house track by DJ Babatr, a.k.a. Pedro Elías Corro, the originator of this genre of high-speed South American club music. Corro invented the style back in 2002, after a night at the movies—and in the years since, he’s played from Berlin’s Berghain nightclub to Primavera Sound in Barcelona. He even DJ’ed a set for Boiler Room live from Caracas. From his new record, Root Echoes.

William Rudolph

What’s raptor house?