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U.S. Military Strikes Boat in the Caribbean, Killing Three People

HeadlineFeb 16, 2026

A U.S. military strike killed three people and blew up a boat in the Caribbean on Friday, according to the U.S. Southern Command. The U.S. military said the boat was allegedly following “drug trafficking routes,” without providing any evidence. Since September, the Pentagon has conducted 39 strikes against boats allegedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing at least 133 people. On Sunday, the Pentagon announced that U.S. forces raided a sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the vessel in the Caribbean in an effort to target oil shipped from Venezuela. The Trump administration has been seizing tankers in order to take control of Venezuela’s oil.

It comes as The Wall Street Journal reports that the Pentagon used Anthropic’s artificial intelligence tool Claude in its operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The Pentagon was able to use Claude through Anthropic’s partnership with the data company Palantir. A spokesperson for Anthropic told The Wall Street Journal that the company is “committed to using frontier AI in support of U.S. national security.”

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