Category: Politics

The day after U.S. special operations forces swept into Caracas, the new Venezuelan president assembled her cabinet members around a large wooden table at the Miraflores Palace. Behind Delcy Rodríguez were large pictures of the country’s fallen leaders: Hugo Chávez, dead of cancer in 2013, and Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, now jailed in New York on drug-trafficking charges.

Seated on either side of Rodríguez, at the head of the table, were the powers that remained. One was Vladimir Padrino López, the defense minister, dressed in military camouflage. The other was Diosdado Cabello, the interior minister. He wore a scowl and a hat that said, “To doubt is treason.”

Both men hold far more power than their titles suggest, analysts say. Stalwarts of the Maduro regime — one U.S. investigators say is built on patronage and fueled by criminal proceeds — they control Venezuela’s expansive security state and much of its commercial activity.

Since Maduro’s capture and arrest Saturday, public attention has focused on Rodríguez and whether she will accede to White House demands to open up Venezuela’s vast natural resources to American industry. But the newly installed president — alongside her brother Jorge, president of the Venezuelan National Assembly — represents only the political sphere.

The country’s other power centers, according to scholars, Venezuelan researchers, and current and former U.S. officials, are commanded by Padrino López and Cabello — hard-line, old-school Chavistas who came of ideological age in the socialist movement and accrued significant power and wealth through continued loyalty to the cause.

Using connections and intimidation, researchers say, the men have repeatedly helped Maduro survive periods of crisis and tighten his authoritarian grip. First in 2019, when much of the world united behind opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s bid to supplant Maduro. And then again in summer 2024, when electoral tallies made clear that Maduro had lost the presidential election.

Now Padrino López and Cabello, both of whom are wanted by U.S. authorities on drug-trafficking allegations, will help to decide the future of Chavismo — and the nation. Their continued presence magnifies the complexity of the challenge faced by American negotiators as they seek to bypass war and regime change and find common ground with members of a besieged government riven by internal divisions.

“There are three centers of power,” said a former senior official with the U.S. State Department, who like others in this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “And Delcy is going to find out pretty quickly that she can’t provide everything that the Americans want.”

The Washington Post was unable to reach Padrino López and Cabello for comment. The communications office of the Venezuelan government did not respond to a request for comment.

President Donald Trump has said the United States is “in charge” of Venezuela, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio has suggested a less direct role, saying the U.S. will use its ongoing oil blockade and other economic measures to make Caracas do its bidding.

Analysts expressed concern that Washington doesn’t fully understand the factional, internecine political system it now seeks to control — a maze of overlapping loyalties, family ties and competing interests. Several pointed to Cabello — a feared figure who hosts a weekly talk show called Bringing the Hammer — as the wild card.

One Venezuelan adviser close to Rodríguez’s government said he was central to maintaining unity. “In times of crisis, his role is not conciliatory, but rather one of maintaining order,” the adviser said. “Delcy governs; Diosdado ensures that power does not slip away.”

But others worry about what he was capable of. At his disposal, according to researchers and U.S. officials, were not only the police and intelligence services, but also the “colectivos,” a pro-government militia embedded throughout society, whose members speed around the streets on motorcycles, armed and masked.

“Cabello is a brutal, repressive figure in the regime, but he’s not stupid,” said Geoff Ramsey of the Atlantic Council. “He knows his survival depends on threatening to burn down the country, unless his interests are taken care of.”

“Politics in Venezuela,” he added, “is a ruthless blood sport.”

Power at all costs

How the state built by Chávez went from a hierarchal system built around a single charismatic leader to a hotbed of competing factions is, to some degree, a story of Maduro’s own political failings.

“Chávez was a leftist military man and very charismatic and happened to rule Venezuela during an oil boom, so he had a lot of resources to do a lot of things,” said David Smilde, a sociologist at Tulane University who researches Chavismo. “And with the exception of being a leftist, Maduro is none of those things — not charismatic, not a military man, and he has no oil boom.”

After narrowly winning the presidential election to succeed Chávez in 2013, Maduro appeared to recognize what he lacked and set out to defend his hold on power not through political persuasion, but by restricting freedoms and empowering — and enriching — the armed forces.

In February 2016, he put the mining sector in the hands of the military. A few months later, he gave it control over the distribution of basic goods. Another decree shortly afterward put the nation’s ports under its purview. Padrino López, who rose to defense minister in October 2014, became more powerful with each move, researchers said, pioneering new kickback schemes that kept the military loyal to him and indebted to the regime.

“The military became its own branch of power,” said Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, the Venezuelan president of the Washington Office on Latin America. “I don’t think the United States understands the extent to which the military is ingrained into the politics and economy, both formally and informally.”

The military also began to profit from illicit revenue streams, American authorities contend. In March 2020, federal prosecutors in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Florida filed charges against Padrino López and Cabello for using their roles to facilitate and abet Venezuelan drug trafficking and “flood” the United States with cocaine.

The U.S. government announced significant bounties for both men — $15 million for Padrino López and $25 million for Cabello.

Over time, Maduro came to be seen less as the ultimate authority in the country and more as an arbiter between competing powers that had little in common, said Roberto Deniz, a Venezuelan investigative journalist.

“It’s not just an authoritarian regime,” he said. “It’s an authoritarian regime with a kleptocratic structure in which there are numerous heads, and each one acts as its own fiefdom.”

“It doesn’t matter if the economy is good or bad, if human rights are respected or not,” he added. “The goal is to preserve power.”

‘The black sheep’

Cabello, who describes himself online as a “revolutionary” and “radical Chavista,” is seen by observers as a particularly unpredictable figure. He participated in Chávez’s failed coup attempt in 1992 and spent the next two years in prison. After Chávez won the presidency through the ballot box, Cabello served as vice president, helping him stave off an attempted coup in 2002, and then as interior minister, a role where he developed deeper ties with the internal security and intelligence forces.

At the time of Chávez’s cancer diagnosis, he was seen as the second most important revolutionary and a direct rival to Maduro, then the vice president, in the line of succession. After Chávez selected Maduro as his heir, he moved to sideline Cabello, only bringing him back into his cabinet shortly after his apparent electoral loss in 2024.

“Cabello has been the black sheep in the ruling party,” Ramsey said. “But Maduro found it impossible to rule without his knack for repression and his proximity to the intelligence apparatus.”

His family’s influence spans the nation. Alexis Rodríguez Cabello, a first cousin, is in charge of the Venezuelan intelligence service and posts frequent homages to Cabello on social media. His brother, José David Cabello, is in charge of the powerful customs and taxation ministry, granting him control over duties at borders and ports. His wife Marleny Contreras, a current member of the national assembly, has been the minister of both tourism and public works.

The Post was unable to reach Cabello’s family members for comment.

“Diosdado never stopped being a powerful actor, even when he seemed demoted,” Deniz said.

And he has “ascended rapidly” since his formal return to government, added Rafael Uzcátegui, the former director of Provea, a prominent Caracas nongovernmental organization — “at the cost of Rodríguez.”

Uzcátegui saw a narrow path forward for brokering an agreement between Venezuela’s rival power centers that would enable cooperation with U.S. officials and avert a wider conflict.

“It’s much easier to negotiate with a malandro than a religious fanatic,” he said, using a word that most closely translates to “hustler.” “And the Diosdado Cabello and Padrino López factions are most motivated by material incentive.”

But there have been worrying early signs, most notably from the informal militias that answer to Cabello.

The colectivos have fanned out across Caracas. Ordinarily, they carry small arms to intimidate dissenters, but they have been seen with larger weapons in recent days, including assault rifles. They have set up checkpoints, forcing residents to turn over their phones and searching them for messages that could be seen as supportive of the U.S.

Security forces also have arrested civilians and detained members of the media.

“Diosdado Cabello could be the spoiler,” said the former senior U.S. diplomat. “It’s a pretty rough start for what is the same regime, but a different management.”

SAND SPRINGS, Okla. — One float stood out among the tinsel and holiday cheer at the annual Christmas parade here: an unsightly data center with blinding industrial lights and smoke pouring out of its roof, towering menacingly over a helpless gingerbread house.

This city bordering Tulsa is a battleground, one of many across the country where companies seeking to build massive data centers to win the AI race with China are coming up against the reality of local politics.

Sand Springs leaders were besieged with community anger after annexing an 827-acre agricultural property miles outside of town and launching into secret talks with a tech giant looking to use it for a sprawling data center. Hundreds of aggrieved voters showed up at community meetings. Swarms of protest signs are taking root along the rural roads.

“It feels like these data center companies have just put a big target on our backs,” said Kyle Schmidt, leader of the newly formed Protect Sand Springs Alliance. “We are all asking: Where are the people we elected who promised to protect us from these big corporations trying to steamroll us? The people who are supposed to be standing up and protecting us are standing down and caving.”

From Archbald, Pa., to Page, Ariz., tech firms are seeking to plunk down data centers in locations that sometimes are not zoned for such heavy industrial uses, within communities that had not planned for them. These supersize data centers can use more energy than entire cities and drain local water supplies.

Anger over the perceived trampling of communities by Silicon Valley has entered the national political conversation and could affect voters of all political persuasions in this year’s midterm elections.

Many of the residents fighting the project in Sand Springs voted for Trump three times and also backed Gov. J. Kevin Stitt, a Republican who implores tech firms to build in his state.

“We know Trump wants data centers and Kevin Stitt wants data centers, but these things don’t affect these people,” said Brian Ingram, a Trump voter living in the shadow of the planned project. “You know, this affects us.”

Ingram was standing before a homemade sign he planted on his front lawn that said, “Jesus Was Born on Ag Land.”

The grassroots blowback comes from deep red states as much as from left-wing groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America, which have helped draw hundreds of residents to hearings in Arizona, Indiana, and Maryland.

Even Energy Secretary Chris Wright warned data center developers that they are losing control of the narrative. “In rural America right now, where data centers are being built, everyone’s already angry because their electricity prices have risen a lot,” he told energy executives assembled in Washington for the North American Gas Forum last month. “‘I don’t want them in my state’ is a common viewpoint.”

Some industry groups argue that residents’ concerns are misplaced.

“Fueled by misinformation, driven by radical environmental policies, communities are missing out on the jobs, security, and opportunities this technology is delivering,” said an email from Brian O. Walsh, executive director of the AI Infrastructure Coalition. The group says the projects lower electricity prices, a claim that is hotly disputed.

The White House frames the data center boom as beneficial, saying in a statement that it will lead to big investments in infrastructure and boost manufacturing. But the administration is also aware some communities oppose them.

“Communities know what’s best for them, and the Administration is clear that local infrastructure decisions remain with states and localities,” the statement said.

Many local politicians are yielding to community pressure and rejecting data centers. Between April and June, more projects were blocked or delayed than during the previous two years combined, according to Data Center Watch, a tracking project by the nonpartisan research firm 10a Labs. Some $98 billion in planned development was derailed in a single quarter.

Last month, a group of Senate Democrats launched an investigation into the role data centers play in increasing electricity prices.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind., Vt.) last month called for a moratorium on data center construction, warning that the tech firms are draining scarce energy and water reserves and pushing the cost onto everyday Americans in pursuit of AI technologies that threaten to displace millions from the workforce.

White House AI czar David Sacks replied on X: “He would block new data centers even if states want them & they generate their own power.”

But advocates say residents’ concerns are legitimate.

“This data center expansion affects so many issues,” said Mitch Jones, managing director of policy and litigation at Food and Water Watch. The group last month organized a letter signed by several national advocacy groups demanding a moratorium.

“It takes up farmland in rural communities. It takes up dwindling water sources in communities that need cleaner drinking water. And it is driving up electricity prices for everyone,” he said. “It is drawing together people from disparate backgrounds who might not agree on other political issues. They are saying this is taking place without any forethought to communities and we must stop it.”

The NAACP this month convened a two-day “Stop Dirty Data” conference in Washington that focused on the impacts of the AI build-out on minority and low-income communities. It included a bus tour of “Data Center Alley” in Northern Virginia, the world’s largest collection of data centers.

Even Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is championing an AI “bill of rights” to enshrine local governments’ power to stop data center construction and prohibit utilities from pushing AI infrastructure costs onto residents. The break between Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) and President Donald Trump was driven in part by her vocal criticism of his AI build-out push.

The industry has struggled to quell the concerns. In Chandler, Ariz., former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, co-founder of the AI Infrastructure Coalition, implored city officials to get on board with a large proposed project or risk the federal government pushing it through without city input.

The city council rejected the project unanimously.

The vote followed the Tucson City Council’s unanimous rejection of a plan that would have required annexing land in the Sonoran Desert that until June had been zoned “rural homestead.” Some voters were outraged that local officials had signed a five-year nondisclosure agreement with Amazon, which did not come to light for two years. Frustration with the power company that would have provided the power has fueled a movement to drive it out in favor of a community-led nonprofit.

Amazon did not respond to questions about the controversy, saying only, “We do not have any commitments or agreements in place to develop this project.” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post.

“People are understandably asking how they will benefit,” said Chris Lehane, chief global affairs officer at OpenAI, which has won initial local approval for some of the country’s largest data center projects. He said companies need to listen to communities and make sure they are sharing in the economic gains. “You need to be on the ground, having these conversations. It is a journey.”

In some places, large tech companies have signed contracts committing to pay for new power grid infrastructure required to bring a data center online, even when the companies are not the only ones that would benefit from it.

It’s a journey that some local officials are willing to go on because the projects generate construction jobs and boost revenue for schools.

“We’re trying to work through this,” said Mike Carter, the city manager in Sand Springs. “This would probably be one of our major employers. It would almost certainly become the dominant part of our tax base. … When you can surpass Walmart, which is right now the biggest taxpayer in our community, there is a big incentive to look at this.”

He has tried to assure residents that they will have all their questions answered — including the name of the tech firm — before the city hearing this month, where officials will consider rezoning the sprawling property from agricultural to industrial. He said the city has signed other nondisclosure agreements during negotiations with large corporations, such as Olive Garden.

The project developer, White Rose Partners, said none of the costs involved with providing electricity to the Sand Springs data center would fall on residential ratepayers. The firm says the data center would generate millions of dollars in revenue for local schools and services.

It is cold comfort to many residents of the rural community, where the data center would industrialize a landscape now defined by the ranches that drew them there.

“I don’t care how much chocolate icing you put on a dog turd, it don’t make it chocolate cake,” said Rick Plummer, who raises elite team-roping horses next to the proposed data center. “They are trying to fluff this data center thing up and say, ‘Man, eat this birthday cake.’ But it isn’t birthday cake.”

On the other side of Tulsa, a steady stream of pickups pulled off the busy local road to sign petitions fighting a different data center proposed for the rural community of Coweta. One sign takes aim at the nondisclosure agreements, stating “NDAs BETRAY.” The petitions demand the firing of a city official who signed one.

“We want to see this damn data center go away and go someplace else,” said Allen Prather, who was leading the petition drive dressed as Santa. “This town deserves a better centerpiece than a data center. They keep coming to smaller and smaller towns. Leave mine alone.”

Sherri Crumpacker, a retired law enforcement officer who pulled over to sign, concurred. “I moved here from California to get away from BS like this,” she said.