This is John Batcher, conversation with my colleague Joseph Umyer about drones, drones in the Americas.

Joseph identifies Venezuela as a significant player, connected of course to the bad actors of Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang

and Beijing. However in the Americas right now drones Joseph, a first and it won't be the last. Armed drones in the Americas.

More of this later.

Put it like this, Venezuela is the first military in Latin America's history to have an armed drone program,

meaning they have attack drones.

Not Colombia, not Mexico, not Brazil, not these bigger Latin America. not

not Brazil not these bigger Latin American countries the ones that would first come to mind

but Venezuela for all its deficiencies in weak military they have an armed

drone program the first in Latin America, designed to be

exported to its partners.

That means that Nicaragua and Bolivia will soon have Iranian-designed Venezuelan-made drones as well.

So Iran has become a major actor in the battlefield

around the world, all kinds of conflicts

with its drones.

Obviously, we first learned about this in Ukraine. We obviously knew about this

with the Middle East and the Hutis in Hezbollah and now we're looking at Venezuela and Iran's

become among any of you things the state sponsor terror, all the other destabilizing effects it has worldwide

an arms exporter of drone programs to dictatorships that's a big problem in

and Venezuela is the first country to receive that.