El Ojo del Mar: La Tecnología Que Ve Todos los Barcos del Mundo

When I was reporting in the region, the joke was that Iranian oil had a way of becoming Malaysian oil, or Emirati oil, or Omani oil somewhere in the middle of the ocean.

Ship-to-ship transfers in international waters, with both ships dark.

The cargo changes hands, the paperwork changes, and suddenly it's perfectly legal.

Es que hay decenas de barcos que hacen esto.

The thing is, there are dozens of ships that do this.

Investigadores calcularon que la flota fantasma tiene más de seiscientos barcos en total.

Researchers calculated that the ghost fleet has more than six hundred ships in total.

Es un mercado paralelo enorme.

It is an enormous parallel market.

Six hundred ships.

So here's my question, and it's one that I genuinely don't know the answer to: if these ships turn off their AIS, can they actually disappear?

Or does technology find them anyway?

La verdad es que no pueden desaparecer completamente.

The truth is they cannot disappear completely.

Los satélites modernos tienen cámaras muy potentes.

Modern satellites have very powerful cameras.

También hay radares que detectan barcos aunque el AIS está apagado.

There are also radars that detect ships even when the AIS is turned off.

Y hay aviones de vigilancia.

And there are surveillance aircraft.

So there's basically no hiding anymore.

You might be able to obscure which ship you are, but you can't hide the fact that a very large metal object is sitting in a particular patch of ocean.

The physics won't let you.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Y esto es importante para el periodismo también.

And this is important for journalism too.

Grupos de periodistas e investigadores usan estas tecnologías para verificar informaciones.

Groups of journalists and investigators use these technologies to verify information.

Se llama inteligencia de fuentes abiertas, o OSINT.

It is called open source intelligence, or OSINT.

This is something I find genuinely exciting.

When I started as a foreign correspondent, you needed sources inside governments to verify troop movements or ship positions.

Now a team of researchers with internet access and the right tools can track a military convoy across a country.

Bellingcat proved that.

The MH17 investigation proved that.

Sí, y en esta guerra también.

Yes, and in this war too.

Cuando Iran atacó el Estrecho de Ormuz, investigadores independientes usaron datos de AIS para mostrar exactamente qué barcos no podían pasar.

When Iran attacked the Strait of Hormuz, independent researchers used AIS data to show exactly which ships could not get through.

No necesitaban fuentes secretas.

They did not need secret sources.

There's something almost poetic about that.

Governments spent decades trying to control information about what moves where on the sea, and then a Greek professor built a website that democratized the whole thing.

Bueno, pero hay un problema.

Well, but there is a problem.

MarineTraffic es una empresa privada.

MarineTraffic is a private company.

Ella decide qué datos son gratuitos y cuáles son de pago.

It decides which data is free and which is paid.

Los datos más detallados son muy caros.

The most detailed data is very expensive.

Which means the most powerful version of this democratized intelligence isn't actually that democratic.

The hedge funds, the oil traders, the intelligence agencies, they get the premium feed.

The independent journalist gets the free version with a twenty-minute delay.

A ver, esto es un problema real.

Look, this is a real problem.

Cuando los primeros barcos cruzaron el Estrecho de Ormuz esta semana, los mercados financieros reaccionaron inmediatamente.

When the first ships crossed the Strait of Hormuz this week, financial markets reacted immediately.

El precio del petróleo bajó mucho.

The price of oil fell a lot.

Los traders tenían esta información antes que los periodistas normales.

Traders had this information before regular journalists did.

The Dow Jones jumped over a thousand points after the ceasefire.

And some of that was algorithmic trading reacting to ship movement data in near real time.

So a Greek company that started as a hobby project is now, in a very direct sense, moving global financial markets.

Mira, y aquí viene la parte griega que Fletcher prometió antes.

Look, and here comes the Greek part that Fletcher promised earlier.

Grecia tiene la flota comercial más grande del mundo.

Greece has the largest commercial shipping fleet in the world.

Más que China, más que Japón.

More than China, more than Japan.

Los armadores griegos controlan casi el veinte por ciento de todos los barcos de carga del planeta.

Greek shipowners control almost twenty percent of all cargo ships on the planet.

And this is a country of eleven million people.

It's not a huge industrial power.

How does that happen historically?

Es que los griegos tienen una relación con el mar desde hace tres mil años.

The thing is, Greeks have had a relationship with the sea for three thousand years.

En el siglo veinte, familias griegas compraron barcos viejos después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, cuando eran muy baratos.

In the twentieth century, Greek families bought old ships after the Second World War, when they were very cheap.

Familias como los Onassis.

Families like the Onassis family.

Aristotle Onassis bought surplus American Liberty ships after the war for almost nothing.

He understood before almost anyone that global trade would boom, and that the bottleneck would be shipping capacity.

The NJ Earth, the first ship through Hormuz this week, is Greek-owned.

That's not a coincidence.

Y el segundo barco, el Daytona Beach, tiene bandera de Liberia, pero probablemente el propietario real es de otro país.

And the second ship, the Daytona Beach, flies a Liberian flag, but the real owner is probably from another country.

Eso es el sistema de "banderas de conveniencia".

That is the system of 'flags of convenience.'

Flags of convenience.

This is one of the great hidden architectures of global trade.

A ship built in South Korea, owned by a Greek family, crewed by Filipinos, registered in Liberia, carrying Saudi oil to China.

Which country is actually responsible for that ship?

Según la ley internacional, Liberia es responsable.

According to international law, Liberia is responsible.

Pero Liberia no tiene muchos barcos reales.

But Liberia doesn't have many actual ships.

Simplemente ofrece su bandera a cambio de dinero.

It simply offers its flag in exchange for money.

Las reglas son más fáciles y los impuestos son más bajos.

The rules are easier and the taxes are lower.

Panama is the biggest flag of convenience registry in the world, then Liberia, then Marshall Islands.

And what this means practically is that when something goes wrong, when a ship sinks, when there's an accident, the question of who is actually responsible becomes genuinely murky.

Sí, y en una guerra esto es aún más complicado.

Yes, and in a war this is even more complicated.

Esta semana, Tailandia confirmó que tres marineros en un barco atacado en el Estrecho de Ormuz en marzo murieron.

This week, Thailand confirmed that three sailors on a ship attacked in the Strait of Hormuz in March died.

El barco tenía una bandera de un país, pero los trabajadores eran de otro.

The ship flew the flag of one country, but the workers were from another.

Three Thai sailors.

That detail barely made the news, because the headline was about the ceasefire and the oil price.

But somewhere in Thailand there are three families who've been waiting weeks to find out what happened to someone they loved.

And the technology that was supposed to make shipping safer didn't save them.

La verdad es que la tecnología tiene dos caras.

The truth is that technology has two faces.

El AIS ayuda a los investigadores a encontrar barcos ilegales, y ayuda a los mercados financieros.

AIS helps investigators find illegal ships, and it helps financial markets.

Pero no protege a los trabajadores que están en esos barcos cuando hay guerra.

But it does not protect the workers who are on those ships when there is war.

Look, I want to end on the future question, because I think it's genuinely interesting.

Where does this go?

We have real-time tracking of every major ship.

We have satellites reading AIS.

We have AI analyzing trade patterns.

What comes next?

Bueno, hay dos cosas importantes.

Well, there are two important things.

Primera: barcos autónomos, sin marineros, controlados por computadoras.

First: autonomous ships, with no sailors, controlled by computers.

Ya existen barcos pequeños que funcionan así.

Small ships that work this way already exist.

Segunda: inteligencia artificial que predice exactamente dónde va a ir cada barco antes de que salga del puerto.

Second: artificial intelligence that predicts exactly where each ship will go before it even leaves port.

The AI prediction thing is already happening with commodities trading.

Hedge funds use satellite imagery and AIS data to predict oil supply before official numbers are released.

They're counting how many ships are near Iranian ports, and they're selling that prediction to traders.

The market knows things before the government announces them.

Es que esto cambia el poder en el mundo.

The thing is, this changes power in the world.

Antes, los gobiernos controlaban la información sobre el comercio marítimo.

Before, governments controlled information about maritime trade.

Ahora, las empresas privadas tienen estos datos.

Now, private companies have this data.

Y eso es un cambio político muy grande.

And that is a very large political change.

I mean, the whole episode started with a ceasefire being confirmed not by a foreign ministry press release, but by a vessel tracking company reporting that two ships just sailed through a strait.

That's the world we live in now.

And I'm not entirely sure whether that's reassuring or terrifying.

Para mí, es las dos cosas.

For me, it is both.

Más transparencia es buena.

More transparency is good.

Pero cuando una empresa privada tiene más información que los gobiernos, hay que preguntarse: ¿quién controla a esa empresa?

But when a private company has more information than governments, you have to ask: who controls that company?

¿Y a quién sirve?

And who does it serve?