A clip from Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan (2018 to 2023), which shows the titular CIA analyst played by American actor John Krasinski giving a lecture on the geopolitical landscape of Venezuela, has gone viral.

The scene from the first episode of the espionage spy thriller series’ second season, which aired in 2019, depicted Ryan telling a room of CIA personnel that a faltering Venezuela may be more of a security risk to the United States than Russia, China or North Korea.

“What would you assume is the most major threat to the world stage?” asked Ryan. He went on to claim that “Venezuela is arguably the single greatest resource of oil and minerals on the planet”.

A reel titled Venezuela Explained, featuring a short clip of the scene, broke the Internet, accumulating over 40 million views since it was shared on Instagram by @Saltwater_Survival on Jan 4. The reel has also been copied and shared widely across other social media accounts.

Netizens have called the scene “prophetic” amid the recent 

US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro due to his alleged drug-related crimes

Even Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan’s co-creator Carlton Cuse found it uncanny, telling US film publication Deadline on Jan 4 that “the goal of that season wasn’t prophecy – it was plausibility”.

“When you ground a story in real geopolitical dynamics, reality has a way of making it rhyme,” the 66-year-old American screenwriter said.

Cuse explained that the choice of Venezuela as the subject of the second season was conceived more than seven years ago.

“We were telling a fictional character-driven thriller rooted in Venezuela’s ...