The President's Daily Brief
PDB Afternoon Bulletin | October 16th, 2025: ESCALATION: Trump Greenlights CIA Strikes Inside Venezuela & Europe’s High-Tech Border Plan Revealed
16 Oct 2025
Chapter 1: What actions has the Trump administration authorized in Venezuela?
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It's Thursday, the 16th of October. Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, the Trump administration is raising the stakes in Venezuela, giving the green light for the CIA to carry out covert action inside the country. So, not that covert, since we're talking about it. I'll have the details.
Later in the show, Europe's preparing for a new kind of war. A leaked defense roadmap gives us more insight into its so-called drone wall stretching across the EU's eastern frontier, linking member states in a high-tech shield against Russian incursions. But first, today's afternoon spotlight. Washington's ongoing campaign against Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro may soon be entering a new phase.
Until now, US operations have been limited to the waters off Venezuela's coast. Naval interdictions targeting boats allegedly tied to drug traffickers. But, according to a new report from the New York Times, based on anonymous sources, President Trump has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela, granting the agency lethal authority for the first time in this campaign.
It's a classified order. Okay, it's not a classified order anymore. Known as a presidential finding, and it represents the most aggressive step yet in Washington's effort to take on the cartels in Venezuela. Now, as an aside, it's not classified a covert anymore because somebody or some individuals couldn't keep their piles shut.
Trump himself confirmed the authorization on Wednesday, telling reporters, quote, we are certainly looking at land now because we've got the sea very well under control, end quote. That comment is telling in some ways, because for the past several weeks, U.S. forces have focused on the maritime front.
The military has now carried out at least five strikes on vessels in the Caribbean that it claims were carrying narcotics from Venezuela, destroying several boats and killing 27 people. But those operations all took place in international waters, carefully avoiding Venezuelan territory. This new authority changes that, or potentially changes that.
Under the presidential finding, the CIA can now conduct lethal operations inside Venezuela, either independently or alongside U.S. military units. Officials haven't disclosed what those missions might entail, and they could simply be related to intelligence collection to aid the counter-narcotics effort
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Chapter 2: How is the CIA's role changing in the Venezuela conflict?
officials have accused Maduro and his inner circle of running a state-sponsored narcotics network known as the Cartel of the Sons. That's a name derived from the sun insignia worn by Venezuela's military officers.
Federal prosecutors have charged Maduro and several top generals with drug trafficking and money laundering, alleging they worked with Columbia's FARC guerrillas to move tons of cocaine into the U.S. And Washington has offered a $50 million reward for Maduro's capture, calling him a narco-terrorist. The decision to unleash the CIA in Latin America isn't new.
Any student of history will know it's part of a long history of US covert activity in the region. The agency's record there is mixed, helping to overthrow governments in Guatemala and Chile, backing anti-communist forces in Nicaragua, and reportedly attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro.
Now, some of those operations met their objectives, but often left behind instability, anti-American backlash and decades of mistrust. This time, though, the the fight does look different. It's not about ideology. It's about what the White House calls narco-terrorism, the idea that drug cartels and their state sponsors are waging irregular warfare against the U.S.
And that's the legal and political foundation of the entire campaign in Venezuela. For now, it's unclear what, if any, covert actions the CIA will ultimately undertake in Venezuela. But the authorization alone marks a turning point. What began as a maritime interdiction mission has evolved into a potential covert war. We'll keep an eye on things and provide further reporting.
Coming up next, a leaked defense roadmap is giving us fresh insight into Europe's planned drone wall along its eastern border, a high-tech shield to counter Russia's growing drone threat. I'll be right back. Hey, Mike Baker here. Now, host of the PDB, as you know, and known also far and wide as a gourmand. It's a fancy word that says I like delicious food. So let me ask you this.
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Chapter 3: What implications does the new CIA authorization have for U.S. operations?
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I want to follow up on a story that we covered last week. Europe's plan to build what it's calling a drone wall along its eastern frontier to defend against Russian incursions.
Now, a leaked document called the Defense Readiness Roadmap 2030, obtained by Euronews earlier this week, is giving us, well, and of course Russian intelligence, new insight into what that drone wall would actually look like. Brussels says it's developing a, quote, network-based drone capability linking EU member states for both defense and precision strike operations.
The document envisions nothing less than a digital fortress stretching the full length of the bloc's eastern borders. Its companion system, known as Eastern Flank Watch, would follow a year later, creating a continent-wide surveillance and early warning network designed to spot and neutralize threats before they reach NATO territory.
As our regular PDB listeners know, Moscow's expanding use of drones from the Ukrainian front lines to incursions over Baltic and Nordic airspace has exposed Europe's vulnerabilities in real time. In recent months, those drones have grounded civilian flights, triggered alerts at NATO bases, and menaced energy infrastructure such as hydroelectric power plants.
According to the roadmap, Europe's response will be a multilayered counter drone network capable of detecting, tracking and destroying hostile drones while retaining the capacity for its own precision offensive strikes. Now, that's a fancy way of saying that Brussels wants the ability to shoot down Russian drones and launch its own when needed.
The plan also identifies the air and space defense shields as top priorities, creating systems that link directly with NATO's command network. The goal? The goal is to share real-time situational awareness and enable rapid cross-border responses when seconds count.
But the roadmap even goes further, targeting another chronic weakness, and that would be Europe's inability to move its own armies efficiently. The commission calls for a, quote, EU-wide military mobility area, also by 2027, including designated transport corridors and upgraded rail and road networks to move troops and armor swiftly across borders.
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