Original subtitles

NARRATOR: They're watching you.

More than 6,000 satellites circle the Earth.

Every day, they uncover new,

mysterious phenomena that defy explanation.

The mystery ancient mega project.

They almost look like paw prints

for some super giant animal.

NARRATOR: Russia's weird burning lake.

[buzzing noises]

This is at the heart of one of the most

clandestine programs in Soviet history.

NARRATOR: And the trillion-dollar treasure hunt.

This site changed the face of the world.

NARRATOR: Baffling phenomena, mysteries from space.

What on Earth are they?

[theme music playing]

July 2021.

Aerial archaeologists take to the skies

over the Cantabrian Mountains of Northern Spain.

Onboard Lidar sensors peel back the landscape below

and reveal a mystery.

The image shows very vivid scars

across this landscape.

They're kind of a spider-like shape.

They almost look like paw prints for some

super giant animal that walked through this area.

It's pretty cool.

NARRATOR: Further scans of the area deepen the mystery.

They reveal a lot more of these lines.

So something really strange is going on,

not just here, but elsewhere.

NARRATOR: The images intrigue Javier Lozano.

As a geologist,

he's convinced the weird markings aren't natural

and is heading to the area to investigate.

NARRATOR: Lozano treks deep into the region of Léon.

When he reaches the first of the patterns,

their true scale becomes apparent.

NARRATOR: Lozano discovers the trenches are 60 feet deep,

carved out of a large, circular patch of landscape.

Hidden among them are vast lines of piled stones.

HUNT: They stand out in contrast to what is around them.

There must be some kind of human activity

that has altered this landscape.

They're kind of regular, but it's not clear

why they are oriented as they are,

and I can't really guess what purpose they serve.

NARRATOR: Closer inspection confirms the mounds of

stones have been moved here by hand.

NARRATOR: Lozano explores the wider area -- to the east,

he uncovers more evidence of human presence here in

the distant past.

NARRATOR: A series of ruined walls sits on a platform

to the southeast of the site in the image.

But there is no history of any Spanish settlements here.

NARRATOR: The settlements are evidence

the strange shapes were gouged out by Roman hands.

Historical records confirm that the Lidar images

have uncovered one of

the greatest mega projects of the ancient world.

HORTON: These trenches are actually 2,000 years old

and are part of a massive

Roman gold mining operation

in this part of Spain.

This was the site of one of

the largest and most important gold mines of the Roman empire.

NARRATOR: The mines have their origins

in the 3rd century BCE.

Lured by tales of vast mineral reserves,

Rome begins preparations to bring Spain under its control.

Rome had its eyes on Spain

for a long time.

NARDI: It's likely that gold was one of the main

reasons the Romans were looking to conquer this land.

NARRATOR: This is a period of massive expansion for an empire

that will go on to rule one in 5 people on Earth.

HUNT: As Rome expands, it has to

have an economic backing for that expansion.

War is terribly expensive, but peace

is expensive to keep, as well.

NARRATOR: The more gold that Rome can obtain,

the bigger their army can be, and the bigger the army,

the more gold-rich countries they can conquer.

They had to have mines to feed

the beast to keep the empire going.

So there is a voracious demand for gold

to support the empire.

NARRATOR: The first battle for control of Spain's

gold-rich lands takes place in 206 BCE,

when the Romans defeat the Carthaginians

during the 2nd Punic Wars.

Despite this initial victory,

a prolonged campaign of guerilla warfare waged by local

tribes stalls their advance.

HORTON: The Romans were able to capture Spain,

but it was a really hard-fought victory.

It's fair to say that they put up quite a vicious resistance

because it did take the Romans 200 years to conquer this land.

NARRATOR: By the time the legions finally

conquered the peninsula in 19 BCE,

Rome is still recovering from a very costly civil war.

To refill his war chest,

Emperor Augustus begins to ravage Spain's gold reserves.

HUNT: Gold bullion --

it's absolutely vital to the Roman economy.

It backs up all the other

economic activity that Rome engages in.

HORTON: So the extraction of gold from Spain during

this period was on a truly industrial scale.

Over the following years,

the Romans extract an estimated 300 million tons of

earth from the sites in

the image in their search for gold,

and among them is a mine whose magnitude

is almost unimaginable for a pre-industrial civilization.

NARRATOR: What the Romans accomplished here

will change the course of history.

The evidence we have here proves

that we are at the Roman El Dorado.

NARRATOR: Coming up, the destroyer of mountains.

This is on the most -- almost unimaginable scale.

NARRATOR: And NASA's lunar code.

It really is remarkable to think of

the impact of this on the history of

space exploration.

NARRATOR: Drawn by giant, claw-like marks scarring

Spanish mountainsides,

Javier Lozano has uncovered evidence of a vast Roman

gold rush here during the first century CE.

The most important gold mining area

Rome ever developed is right in our image.

NARRATOR: This is Las Médulas, a series

of mountains reduced to rubble by Rome

in its search for riches.

The Romans came up with a very clever way

of mining the gold at this location in Spain.

The lust for gold totally transformed that landscape.

NARRATOR: These massive peaks were once part of

an almost 5,000-acre cluster of mountains.

Historical accounts reveal the extraordinary method

the Romans used to transform it in their search for gold.

The famed classical historian Pliny the Elder writes

of the actual techniques used to mine this location.

NARDI: He describes it as "ruina montium,"

and what that basically translates

into is the wrecking of mountains.

NARRATOR: As Lozano discovers, ruina montium first

involves digging tunnels deep into the mountain.

Engineers also construct a 62-mile-long network

of channels to transfer water

from higher up the range to a reservoir

at the mountain's summit.

Millions of gallons from this reservoir

are then flushed down the tunnels,

creating immense pressure, which knocks chunks of

gold-rich sediment down the slopes.

This is on the most unimaginable scale,

and of course, to extract gold on that scale,

you needed a massive labor force.

NARRATOR: According to Pliny,

at the height of operations, 60,000 people work

the mountain and sift through its sediment for gold.

Mining was a brutal business, and people in

these mines were literally worked as almost

disposable commodities,

such was the Romans' insatiable demand for gold.

NARRATOR: Much of the gold mined in Spain is minted

into coins and stashed in huge vaults hidden in Rome.

All of this economic activity was absolutely

vital to the success of the Roman empire.

But it was not without its environmental costs,

and that goes actually beyond the visible scars on the earth.

NARRATOR: Recent ice core samples reveal

that the Roman gold mines released immense clouds

of trapped lead particles into the skies,

clouds that were so toxic,

they remained in the atmosphere for 500 years.

We often think of environmental degradation as

a modern concern, but the truth is

that the Romans beat us to it in this case.

Between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE, Roman miners

carve vast tracts of land out of Northwest Spain,

creating the hidden patterns revealed from the skies.

The Romans were obliterating mountain

after mountain after mountain after mountain.

But even the Romans, with all their engineering genius,

ultimately exhausted this resource.

NARRATOR: As reserves become depleted,

Rome must look elsewhere for precious metals

to prop up its empire.

It's incredibly expensive to have a payroll for an army.

Roman mining engineers are traveling all

throughout the empire looking for new gold.

NARRATOR: Eventually, Rome runs out of money

to finance its armies.

Economic mismanagement then triggers a collapse in trade,

and the empire begins to crumble.

Today, the strange scars in the images are symbols

of both Rome's rise to power and its eventual fall.

Gold drives people to do strange things,

and we see direct evidence of it here.

NARRATOR: Coming up, inside City 40.

WALTERS: You're never heard of again,

and nobody is asking any questions.

NARRATOR: And the mystery structure that changed history.

DENNIE: We wouldn't have modern homes, modern transportation.

The entire world would be different.

In 1963, Gambit, one of the first

spy satellites in history, launches from California.

It goes on to capture thousands of

images of clandestine sites within communist Russia,

and among them, something that doesn't make sense.

WALTERS: There are a few large bodies

of water, and all are completely frozen --

except oddly,

this lake right in the center isn't.

And not only is it not frozen,

it actually appears to be kind of steaming or smoking.

What they found here is really strange.

It's almost like the lake itself is on fire.

NARRATOR: The recently declassified image was taken

over the Ural Mountains, on the border

between Europe and Asia.

RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: This usually would indicate

geological activity,

but there's nothing in the Ural Mountains

that would do that.

This is not a volcanic area.

NARRATOR: Analysts turn to CIA dossiers

on the Gambit program.

They reveal something extraordinary.

The CIA knew exactly what that steaming lake meant.

This is at the heart of one

of the most clandestine programs in Soviet history.

NARRATOR: The program has its origins in 1945,

when the U.S. detonates the world's

first nuclear weapon.

In response, Joseph Stalin decides to

dramatically accelerate the Soviet atomic program.

WALTERS: So what does Stalin do?

He puts in charge of the project

not a physicist but a man called Lavrentiy Beria,

head of the NKVD.

NARRATOR: As head of state security, Beria has access to

a vast network of forced labor camps or Gulags, estimated to

hold five million prisoners.

He could corral tens of thousands

of political prisoners and use them

as a slave labor force to advance the nuclear program.

WALTERS: Using Gulag prisoners is absolutely ideal,

because when you go to a Gulag,

you're never normally heard of again.

And nobody, nobody, is asking any awkward questions.

NARRATOR: Beria deploys around 40,000 prisoners to

the site in the image, where they begin constructing

a nuclear plant and a nearby urban complex.

It will become known as City 40.

MORAN: This city was built in total secrecy.

Not only does it not appear on historical maps,

but the residents were removed from the census.

NARRATOR: As the city grows, Beria forces nuclear

scientists from around the country to move there.

MORAN: For the first eight years of its existence,

anyone living in this city was forbidden from leaving or from

having contact with anyone on

the outside, including their family members.

In return for their secrecy,

residents were treated to lives of relative luxury.

M. MORGAN: They are provided housing.

They are provided education and healthcare.

They're provided levels of stability that were not

exactly accessible to all Soviet citizens.

NARRATOR: In 1949, Soviet scientists use plutonium

from the site in the image to

build a 20-kiloton bomb, a full decade faster

than the CIA anticipated.

It's a monumental achievement

to turn around a bomb this fast.

But it's done with the assumption

that the workers are completely expendable.

NARRATOR: As the Soviets ramp up their weapons program,

radioactive waste seeps into the lake in the image

and into the local water supply.

WALTERS: In the first three years,

waste management was practically nonexistent.

This nuclear plant is poisoning everything around it.

MORAN: On top of all that,

the plant faced a series of accidents,

the most devastating of which was the Kyshtym Disaster.

[alarm buzzing]

NARRATOR: The Kyshtym Disaster occurs in September 1957,

when a malfunctioning cooling system

in a waste tank leads to a catastrophic

temperature spike.

The resulting explosion sends a plume of radioactive

materials a mile into the sky above City 40.

What we're talking about here is one of

the greatest industrial nuclear accidents in human history.

MORAN: Like Chernobyl,

this nuclear disaster was a result

of the USSR's negligence.

The only difference is that in this case,

they were able to cover it up.

NARRATOR: The fallout rains down on nearly 270,000 people,

yet the authorities only evacuate 4 percent of them.

Soviet secrecy means the number of fatalities

remains unclear,

but it is believed to be as high as 8,000.

There was an immediate death toll to the disaster,

but the real damage, the lasting damage,

unfolded over years.

WALTERS: From what we know, many of the survivors

in this period, and indeed their children,

are still suffering from things like

genetic mutation, deformity, and other disorders.

NARRATOR: The strange phenomenon captured from space is proof

that despite the disaster,

the plant continues to produce vast amounts of plutonium.

The process entailed pumping cooling water

from the lake into the facility

and pumping heated water back into the lake.

Now, that would have created the clouds of

steam that were picked up on a satellite.

NARRATOR: Today, some of the land around the secret city is

contaminated with 2 and 1/2 times the radiation released by

the Chernobyl disaster.

Yet 80,000 people still live here

under this region's long atomic shadow.

RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: Reportedly, they take pride in living in

a closed city, being one of Russia's chosen ones,

even if that city is slowly killing them.

NARRATOR: Coming up, NASA's space arrow.

Given the size of this arrow, who are we signaling to?

NARRATOR: And untold desert riches.

DENNIE: You needed a little bit of luck

to know exactly where X marks the spot.

NARRATOR: September 4th, 2021.

Satellites over Texas spot a weird mark on the landscape.

This here is a very strange-looking feature.

It juts out from this industrial complex on

the right -- it's very odd.

SALAITA: If you were on the ground, it just looked like

some concrete, but from the sky,

it's so obviously an arrow.

NARRATOR: The giant structure stretches

1,700 feet across the landscape.

RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: Given the size of this arrow,

it's clearly meant to be seen from above, from the sky.

So... who are we signaling to?

NARRATOR: A clue to the mystery feature's

purpose comes from the dawn of the age of aviation.

A lot of what drove the use of planes across the country

was trying to deliver mail, and it could do it amazingly well.

But airplanes didn't have all kinds of

electronics on board to help them navigate.

NARRATOR: In the early 1920s, transcontinental air travel is

in its infancy, with pilots

facing the seemingly impossible task of navigating

the vast U.S. interior.

So, in 1924,

the U.S. Postal Service hatches

a simple yet ingenious plan.

RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: The U.S. Postal System placed these

concrete arrows along the route, pointing out the direction

that the pilots should fly.

RUBEN: Once this system was up and running,

it had a huge effect on how quickly mail could travel in

the United States.

You could get a letter from one coast to the other

now in a day and a half.

NARRATOR: By 1929, there is a 2,500-mile

network of arrows directing pilots to their destination.

Customers place so much trust in the postal system that

families use it to send children as freight

to other relatives.

The U.S. Postal Service markers litter the landscape to

this day,

but there are doubts that the Houston arrow

is one of them.

WAKEFIELD: Houston isn't really on the flight path of

these airplanes.

So then what other possibility could it be?

NARRATOR: Analysts turn to local records.

The structure, it transpires, has its origins in

an even more extraordinary episode in the history

of aviation.

RUBEN: I guess in one sense, the arrow is pointing west

by northwest, but in another sense,

it's pointing humanity's path to the stars.

LEE: This is NASA's Johnson Space Center's

antenna test facility

they set up to test space communications.

[indistinct over radio]

NARRATOR: The space agency establishes the test facility

in the 1960s as part of perhaps the most

ambitious project in human history.

The objective was to develop technologies that would

allow the Apollo missions to reach the moon.

RUBEN: This place was central in figuring out parameters

that needed to be known for Apollo to succeed.

NARRATOR: To successfully reach the moon and return to Earth,

the Apollo astronauts must spend

over eight days alone in space.

They will also travel 240,000 miles,

a journey that will test NASA's communication systems

to its limits.

LEE: What's important to realize is that,

when you undertake spaceflight,

you are really entering a domain that is very alien to

what we're familiar with at the surface of the Earth.

[over radio] All systems are good at this time.

NARRATOR: To ensure the survival of the mission,

NASA must be in constant contact with the three-man crew,

but the vast distances they will cover threaten

existing communication systems.

LEE: In the early years of the space age,

space was largely unknown as to what it would do to

radio communications, and radio communications is

really vital in space.

That's how you track spacecraft.

That's how you download data.

That's how you talk to astronauts.

The further a radio wave travels,

the more electromagnetic interference it encounters,

a nightmare scenario for astronauts

240,000 miles from rescue.

To tackle this problem, Project Apollo

engineers construct the 1,700-foot-long

concrete arrow in the image

and install antennae at either end.

Then they conduct mission critical test broadcasts to

study how communications decay

and to work out ways to boost the signal.

Antennae send out radio signals in a radial pattern --

in other words, a big circle that grows and grows.

The receivers further down the arrow are at very specific

distances away from that antennae,

allowing us to determine just how long and how strong signals

can travel from the broadcast point.

NARRATOR: The arrow's shape enables precise line of sight

frequency measurements,

meaning scientists can forensically

study a test signal.

LEE: Interference could be really measured carefully,

which allowed NASA to understand what's going on with

the physics of communications.

A. MORGAN: The importance of the work that took place here

cannot be overstated -- when you're sending people

out into orbit and beyond,

you need to be able to communicate

with them to understand what exactly is happening.

NARRATOR: The pioneering work carried out at the giant arrow

is critical to the success of the Apollo 11 mission...

[over radio] CAPCOM, we're "go" for landing.

[over radio] Roger, understand. Go for landing, 3,000 feet.

...and enabled those on Earth to listen

to the first words spoken on another world.

ARMSTRONG: That's one small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind.

It really is remarkable to think of the impact

of this one poured slab

of concrete in a field on the history of something as

magnificent as space exploration.

NARRATOR: Coming up, the secret desert death squads.

MUNOZ: You have stories of torture, beatings,

the use of electroshocks to subdue prisoners.

NARRATOR: And the strangest heist in the world.

RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: The satellite imagery has captured

the daylight robbery of a whole island.

NARRATOR: June 3rd, 2020.

A satellite crossing 420 miles above Saudi Arabia

spots something in the remote sands below.

You have these two

what looks to be quite large outlines of structures.

They are really strange shapes, and they're

right in the middle of a desert.

NARRATOR: The mystery structure sits 200 miles

from the nearest population center.

AUERBACH: The location makes me wonder if it

was some type of military or security facility.

Now there is one very notorious organization in

Saudi Arabia that insists

on total secrecy, and that is the Mabahith.

The Mabahith is a widely feared organization,

and their main duty is to identify

and neutralize figures that might be deemed

a threat by the government.

NARRATOR: The Mabahith uses spyware to eavesdrop

on the calls, texts, and emails of Saudi citizens,

taking suspected dissidents and activists

away to brutal detention centers.

MUNOZ: You have stories of torture, beatings,

the use of electroshocks to subdue prisoners.

WALTERS: It's often political activists who are incarcerated,

and you don't have to done anything much more than, say,

attend a public protest or write a critical blog.

NARRATOR: While the Mabahith are known to operate in remote

desert locations,

historical records reveal this site has a very

different purpose.

What we're looking at is actually decades old.

AUERBACH: Incredibly, this site was at the center

of a discovery that changed the face of the world.

NARRATOR: That discovery has its origins

8,000 miles away, during the automotive boom

of America's post World War I years.

New mass production techniques mean that in less than

a decade, car ownership

almost triples, from 8 to 23 million.

WALTER: Almost everybody can now afford a car,

and almost everybody, of course, needed petroleum.

AUERBACH: Sales of gasoline were rising rapidly.

The popularity of the automobile meant that

the demand for oil kept growing and growing.

NARRATOR: The birth of the aviation industry

further fuels this demand for oil.

This transportation revolution means consumption skyrockets.

By the 1920s, the U.S. is using

450 million barrels a year.

Up until this point, a lot of the oil that was used in

the United States was produced in the United States,

but it's not enough to sustain more and more people needing

access to oil.

NARRATOR: Over the following years, the U.S. begins

to scour the world for new supplies.

In 1933, the Saudi government awards California company

SoCal the rights to drill in the region in the image.

They promised to pay the Saudi government huge sums

of money for exclusive rights to whatever resources

they might uncover.

NARRATOR: At the time, U.S. geologists rely on surface

pointers like seepages when searching for oil.

But these clues are hard to find

in the vast expanses of the Saudi desert.

So at first, the team's oil hunt yields nothing.

DENNIE: Back then, when you drilled a well,

you truly needed a little bit of luck, because our geologic

understanding wasn't refined

enough to know exactly where X marks the spot.

NARRATOR: This prospecting mission

turns into a five-year grind.

In March 1938, the team drills one

final borehole at the site in the image.

OKEREKE: At first, it seemed like this well

was another dead end, but they kept at it.

What they eventually discovered was

the largest source of petroleum in the world.

NARRATOR: The U.S. team has discovered

the 1.3-million-acre Ghawar oil field.

It contains over 80 billion barrels of black gold.

This was a phenomenal amount of oil.

It was far beyond what they expected.

DENNIE: We knew there was oil there,

but the sheer amount of it is -- is staggering.

NARRATOR: Following the discovery, the Saudi

government establishes its own oil operation

and drills hundreds of wells.

This soon transforms the previously nomadic kingdom

into one of the richest nations on earth.

DENNIE: This oil reservoir completely changed Saudi Arabia

from a pre-industrial country

to one of the key players on the global stage.

OKEREKE: The influx of cash allowed Saudi Arabia

to build strong infrastructure to transport the oil.

As soon as it was able to build vital wells,

pipelines, refineries,

production ramped up to a previously unthinkable scale.

AUERBACH: In the following decades,

they aggressively expanded the industry.

It was moving towards global domination of

the oil market, and moving towards it fast.

NARRATOR: Nine decades after the first well was sunk,

Saudi Arabia is still home to the largest oil fields

on Earth.

You have Western nations utterly reliant on

black gold.

This gives the Saudis huge power.

DENNIE: Simply opening or closing the valves

and increasing production or decreasing it,

they can affect the global economy.

AUERBACH: Countries became so dependent on these oil

supplies that they were essentially

compelled to maintain friendly relationships

with Saudi Arabia.

NARRATOR: The site discovered by the U.S. team closed in 1982,

yet its legacy lives on in every corner of the globe.

No one who was involved in that first drilling

mission could have dreamed of how it would transform

not only the region, but the entire world.

NARRATOR: Coming up, terror on the high seas.

The more you look, the more of these things that you see,

like there must be hundreds of them.

NARRATOR: May 30th, 2020.

A satellite scans the seemingly featureless

300,000-square-mile East China Sea.

This is a vast expanse of water, and then suddenly,

you have all of these things just tightly

clustered together.

The more you look, the more of these things that you see,

like, there must be hundreds of them.

NARRATOR: There are 200 mystery shapes in the water,

each 400 feet long.

WALTERS: Zooming in,

you can see churned water coming off

the backs of some of these objects.

Now that's wake off the backs of ships.

To me, this looks like sand dredgers.

What's strange is that there's so many of them.

It's like some kind of armada.

NARRATOR: Maritime tracking data reveals

the dredgers are registered in China.

The vast size of the fleet intrigues analysts.

These sand dredges dig up sand from the bottom of the sea,

which is often used to create artificial islands,

but I don't see an artificial island anywhere around here.

So, what are they here for?

NARRATOR: The mystery fleet sits between

Taiwan's Matsu Islands and mainland China.

This six-mile-wide strait is currently

the most contested stretch of water on Earth.

RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: Tensions are incredibly high in this region,

largely because China believes that it has rights

to the Matsu Islands and Taiwan itself.

NARRATOR: These tensions begin in 1949.

Faced with an imminent communist takeover,

the Chinese government flees to Taiwan and establishes

a breakaway republic.

It's a move that continues to infuriate Beijing.

RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: China sees Taiwan as

a renegade province that they rightfully own.

But Taiwan doesn't want to be part of China.

Over the decades, Taiwan has turned down multiple

reunification deals presented to them

by the Chinese government.

RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: China could invade,

but this would lead to a much bigger global conflict.

Taiwan has international support from a number

of countries, including the U.S.

NARRATOR: Instead of taking Taiwan by force,

China is now taking it grain by grain.

What we're witnessing here is a new, controversial, and very,

very underhand military tactic from the Chinese government to

exert regional dominance.

RODRIGUEZ McROBBIE: The satellite imagery has captured

the daylight robbery of a whole island.

This army of dredges is stealing sand from

Taiwan to build a new part of the mainland.

NARRATOR: Positioned just off the Taiwanese coast,

every day, the Chinese fleet siphons off

up to 7,000 dump trucks worth of territory.

MORAN: These hundreds of dredges are darting in

and out of Taiwan-controlled waters, shrinking the beaches.

Imagine you're a small nation fighting to maintain

your sovereignty,

and here are these dredges quite literally

eating away at your territory.

NARRATOR: Taiwanese authorities believe China is using

the stolen land to construct nearby artificial islands,

and they are powerless to stop them.

MORAN: This is what's known as gray zone tactics.

Gray zone tactics are acts of aggression that never quite

grow into actual armed conflict,

but they teeter on the edge.

WALTERS: Taiwan's authorities kind of have a hand tied

behind their back, because any military

engagement is gonna be seen as an act of

aggression on their side, and that, of course,

would be an open invitation for the Chinese to

retaliate with their much more powerful military.

NARRATOR: The audacious land heist captured from space

is part of a broader campaign of gray zone tactics

against Taiwan,

a campaign that includes near constant naval patrols,

cyber attacks, and intrusions into Taiwanese airspace.

WALTERS: Gray zone tactics work by exhausting

the enemy into submission with acts of extreme intimidation.

MORAN: It's a form of large-scale psychological

pressure on the population, intended to

eat away at Taiwan's will to exist,

without ever firing a single weapon.

NARRATOR: China is currently increasing the number of

dredgers it's using to eat away at Taiwan.

With tensions escalating, satellites play

a vital role in monitoring the situation

as it unfolds.

China is saying to Taiwan's people,

"Look, we don't recognize your right to this land,

this is ours, and we can take what we like."