Geopolitics: The Iran War widened, with a port in Egypt being hit, Tehran threatening Cyprus and Bulgaria, and Ukraine striking an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea. Hamas said it would give up its heavy weapons if Israel withdraws from Gaza, but Israel said it would not withdraw until Hamas gives up the weapons.

• Will Iran or its proxies (Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis) strike the territory of Bulgaria or Romania before October 1, 2026 with a ballistic missile, drone, or covert attack that is credibly attributed? Our forecasters think there’s a 9% (5% to 15%) chance.

• Will Benjamin Netanyahu be selected by the President of Israel and successfully form a government after the parliamentary elections scheduled for October 2026? Our forecasters give this a 47% (30% to 65%) probability.

Technology and AI: OpenAI and Anthropic said they found more evidence of their models having been involved in attempted or actual cyber breaches. More than 1k employees of frontier AI labs signed an open letter calling on the US government to support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools to “pace” the frontier of automated AI development.

• In the US, will there be binding legislation or an executive order explicitly addressing AI risks by the end of 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 60% (53% to 70%) chance.

Economy: The price of Brent crude oil remained below $100 despite fresh strikes on Iran earlier in the week. The market is signaling that the debt of several big tech companies is getting riskier to hold.

Biorisk: The number of confirmed deaths in the Ebola outbreak reached 1,659 globally, up from 1,407 last week, a 1.18x growth multiple.

Geopolitics

Middle East

Earlier in the week, the United States resumed strikes on Iran, saying these were needed to thwart what would otherwise have been a surprise Iranian attack on US troops in Jordan. Iran also launched fresh attacks on Kuwait. The Trump administration was considering further strikes, but instead held off as Trump said the “perimeters of a deal” had been reached.

The Iran war widened. An unidentified drone strike in Egypt’s Damietta port caused a US-owned gas tanker to catch fire, marking the first time that Egypt has been struck. Tehran also warned Cyprus and Bulgaria over the use of their bases to carry out strikes on Iran, while Ukraine struck an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea.

Forecasters estimate that there is a 9% (5% to 15%) chance that Iran or its proxies will strike Bulgaria or Romania before October 1, 2026, noting that this would be a desperate and very escalatory move that could nonetheless not be completely ruled out.

Iran is expected to receive the first shipment of a total of 300-400 shoulder-fired, man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) from China in the coming weeks. The purchase is one of Iran’s largest-known attempts to replenish its inventory of short-range air-defense weapons since the start of the Iran war.

Iran-backed militias in Iraq struck US forces and Saudi oil facilities with drones. In retaliation, Saudi and US forces struck Iranian militia locations in Iraq.

Saudi Arabia and 13 other countries announced the creation of the Multinational Maritime Defense Alliance, a maritime military coalition to protect freedom of navigation through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

Hamas said that it would begin to disarm as part of an agreement announced by Trump, which also requires Israel to stop strikes on and withdraw from Gaza. Hamas said that it would not give up heavy weapons unless Israel fully withdraws from Gaza, but Israel said that it would not withdraw from Gaza unless Hamas gives up its heavy weapons. Hamas also said that it would not relinquish its heavy arms without the creation of a Palestinian state, which Israel’s current government rejects.

With the upcoming elections in Israel, forecasters give a 47% (30% to 65%) chance to Netanyahu being selected by the President of Israel and successfully forming a government after the elections. They note that he has grown deeply unpopular and is not polling well, and that Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party and other opposition parties have the potential to remove him. But on the other hand, Netanyahu is great at maneuvering, and he could remain in power.

Europe

A Russian cruise missile struck farmland deep in Polish territory. Poland summoned the Russian ambassador, though the Polish PM said that his country probably wasn’t the target.

Trump said he would have to think more about whether to allow Ukraine to produce Patriot missiles.

Russia has been building up air defenses around Moscow in recent months, but the effort still seems to be insufficient to counter Ukrainian drone strikes in the region. Ukrainian drones have destroyed 30% of Russia’s actual refining capacity and triggered fuel shortages around the country, and Ukraine continued to strike more Wildberries warehouses in an effort to hurt the Russian economy.

Russia extended export bans on both diesel and gasoline through the end of January and is building ties with Madagascar to broaden the market for its sanctioned oil.

Hungary will temporarily shut down its sole nuclear power plant, which supplies nearly half of the country’s electricity, for the first time in 44 years, because of low water levels on the Danube River. The power plant relies on the Danube River for cooling.

Asia

China carried out military drills in the South China Sea, close to a shoal whose status is disputed with the Philippines. China’s coast guard also conducted a patrol in the waters east of Taiwan, prompting complaints from Taipei.

Taiwan, meanwhile, carried out a drill to test how effectively it could disperse arms production in the event of a Chinese attack.

United States

US Patriot and THAAD stockpile numbers have fallen to about one third and just over one half of their levels before the Iran war, respectively. Some US officials worry that Putin and Xi may be factoring these shortages into their plans for Ukraine, Europe and Taiwan.

A federal appellate court declined to block an executive order by Trump that would restrict mail-in voting but left the door open to potential future court rulings that block significant changes if the administration tried to force them to take effect too close to the midterm elections.

The US is ramping up domestic drone production but currently produces drones at a fraction of rate at which Ukraine does. Ukraine will produce 6-7M small FPV attack drones in 2026. A new rule now requires US military drones to be built with domestic parts.

The Senate passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026, which would impose heavier sanctions on Russia and on countries that buy oil and gas from Russia. The bill now heads to the House.

Trump wants the US to stop relying on rare earth metals from China, Russia, Iran or North Korea by 2027, but that doesn’t look likely to happen.

CDC data record 2,371 confirmed cases of measles across 45 US jurisdictions, surpassing all of 2025 and the highest since 1991. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, called on people to get the measles vaccine.

The FBI reported a coordinated cyberattack affecting community water systems in at least seven states. Minnesota reported that at least 30 water facilities in the state were targeted on July 26-27, and Michigan reported nine attacks on its water systems. The US is investigating whether the cyberattacks were conducted by Iran.

North Africa

Over 50k migrants surged across the border from Morocco into Ceuta, an autonomous Spanish city on the north coast of Africa that directly borders Morocco on the Mediterranean Sea; most had returned to Morocco by the next day. At least 72 died. Spain deployed its military.

The surge into Ceuta appears to have been driven by a social media campaign that amplified inaccurate social media posts claiming that Spain wouldn’t turn migrants away; many involved accounts have since disappeared. These posts were loosely based on a recent ruling by Spain’s Supreme Court that migrants intercepted at sea trying to enter Ceuta or Melilla, another Spanish exclave bordering Morocco, would not be turned away immediately.

Some wonder whether Morocco facilitated or didn’t do enough to prevent the incident, perhaps to show displeasure that the Spanish prime minister flew to Algeria to meet with the Algerian president. Tensions had also risen when a leader of the breakaway Western Sahara region was treated in a Spanish hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moroccan intelligence agents were reportedly among the migrants who entered Ceuta.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Hugging Face released a report outlining the intrusion of OpenAI models into their systems. One X (Twitter) user put it quite starkly: “a frontier agent can autonomously sustain a resilient, multi-day intrusion across cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes clusters, internal networks and the software supply chain. Crazy.” Overall, OpenAI’s ensemble of agents comes across as a talented hacker, systematically and relentlessly exploring surfaces at superhuman rates.

Reporting from Reuters says OpenAI found notes in their systems with instructions for how to break out from OpenAI’s restraints, which are presumed to have been left by rogue AIs for their future selves. It is not clear whether these are connected to the Hugging Face attack.

OpenAI said that it found evidence of other AI agents going rogue and escaping containment, after carrying out a review prompted by the Hugging Face incident. Anthropic also said that it found evidence that Claude Opus 4.7, Mythos 5 and an unnamed internal test model had compromised three external organisations during testing.

More than 1,300 employees of frontier AI companies signed an open letter calling for the US government to support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools to “pace” the frontier of automated AI development. One forecaster comments that this isn’t a call for a pause, but more like a call for tools to implement speed limits on recursive self-improvement. Nevertheless, those tools could likely be repurposed for stronger governance interventions.

The White House is convening AI companies to discuss an oversight framework this Tuesday. Forecasters estimate that there is a 60% (53% to 70%) chance that there will be some binding legislation or executive order related to AI risk by the end of the year. Forecasters note that if this resolves positively, it might do so soon, that there is demand for a response after the Hugging Face and related incidents, but also that AI companies might competently lobby to keep their shackles light.

An internal version of OpenAI’s next major model family, Astra, reportedly solved ten major open problems in mathematics and theoretical computer science.

The Trump administration banned imports from China of new humanoid and quadriped robots, and of power inverters that connect to grids and data center equipment. The move is intended to protect the US from potential national ​security threats and to reshore manufacturing.

Google Earth launched a new feature that allowed people to use Nano Banana 2 to create fake satellite images showing anything they want – and then rolled it back, to “work on implementing stronger guardrails.” Beyond positive creative uses, this capability could lead to reduced trust in Google Earth images and increased OSINT disinformation and misinformation.

One AI commentator noted that OpenAI and Anthropic have started at least eight new business ventures to compete with companies that use their services. Others had noted previously that this method of expansion is one way in which AI companies hope to generate enough revenue to finance their infrastructure spending.

Biorisk

The Ebola outbreak in the DRC is now the second largest on record, and it is growing out of control. As of August 1, 3,748 cases, including 1,657 deaths, were confirmed in the DRC, up from 3,200 cases, including 1,405 deaths, as of July 25.

A study based on interviews with people in the region suggests that the outbreak started in or before January in eastern Ituri province, where the outbreak is still centered. Also, China has sent three teams of medical experts to help to contain the outbreak.

An online commentator argues Why AI-assisted bioweapons won’t kill you.

In other news, the UN organization that fights AIDS, UNAIDS, fears that HIV cases and AIDS-related deaths may rise because global funding fell by 18% to $7.3 billion last year, the lowest level in nearly two decades.

Economy

Leopold Aschenbrenner’s hedge fund Situational Awareness sold a majority of its erstwhile $45B stock portfolio to Citadel, after facing steep losses over the last month. There was chatter that Citadel put out a forecast that the Fed would raise interest rates in order to get Achenbrenner’s fund margin called. His fund may still be up 80% year to date (although it is unclear if this is true in dollar-weighted terms), and in a letter to investors, he says he will soldier on.

The price of Brent crude remained below $100 per barrel in the past week, despite hostilities in the Gulf region, and was trading in the low $80s on Monday, August 3.

The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is at its lowest level since 1983. It has been drawn down by roughly 20-37M barrels per month since May, with recent weeks seeing rates at the low end of that range. The SPR is currently at 307.7M barrels, while its operating minimum is estimated to be about 180-200M barrels. If the SPR were to continue to be drawn down by about 20M barrels per month, it could potentially still be used to buffer world oil supplies and prices for another 5-6 months.

The market is indicating that it’s getting riskier to hold the debt of several big AI-related companies. Prices for credit default swaps (CDS) for Oracle, SpaceX, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Broadcom and Nvidia have risen to record highs. CDS are purchased to bet against corporate debt and hence offer a measure of the risk of holding the debt of a given company – 0.9% over the next five years for Meta, for example.

A review (a) by Nikkei Asia outlines how five hyperscalers are structuring $1.65T worth of future obligations so that they will not appear on their frontline balance sheets as debt, but rather in the footnotes. The case for this being somewhat nefarious is that it hides from straightforward public view the risks that these companies are each taking. The case for this being business as usual is that hyperscalers’ big bets on AI are well known, they will be severely punished by the market if their bets on AI go wrong, regardless of the accounting treatment, and SPVs are a good way to coordinate the amounts of risk that different entities want to take for a given venture.

> Under accounting rules, GPUs and servers under long-term contracts that have not yet been delivered -- as well as lease agreements for data centers that are not yet operational -- are treated as off-balance-sheet items.

US economic growth slowed to 1.5% in the second quarter.

Yields on 30-year Treasuries are at their highest levels since 2008. Inflation expectations, rising term premiums, increasing US government debt levels (which exceeded 100% of US GDP as of March 31 of this year for the first time since soon after World War II), increasing de-dollarization of the global economy, and other sources of uncertainty about the future are contributing to this increase.

The US Treasury intervened to support the Japanese yen on Friday, for the first time since 1998, following an intervention by Japan. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York sold euros to buy yen on behalf of the Treasury. The dollar fell against the yen on Monday, August 3 after the US and Japan both confirmed the interventions.

Average barge loads on the Rhine River have fallen to 16% of normal levels because of severe drought. The river provides critical connections between industrial sites in Switzerland, Germany and France and ports in the Netherlands. The current Rhine crisis could become as bad as a previous crisis in 2018, or even the worst in several decades. German officials expect extreme Rhine droughts to become more common with climate change.

The highly volatile South Korean stock market collapsed further during much of last week, and more leveraged positions were liquidated. The market then rebounded on Friday.

Climate and nature

The latest modeling, done using 14 models and Relative Oceanic Niño Index (RONI) data, predicts that there is a 77% chance that the 2026-2027 El Niño event will be the strongest on record.

California faces about a 2.5% chance of a $1T megastorm and megaflood from roughly November 2026 through March 2027. There’s a baseline 2% (and growing) annual chance of a megastorm, but the latest data suggest that the risk will be higher over the coming year because of an expected global mean surface temperature (GMST) anomaly of approximately 1.5-1.7°C (see Fig. 5 here). The risk in 2027-2028 could be as high as 3%, as next year is expected to shatter temperature records.

Scientists have found evidence in sedimentary layers off the coast of Oregon that a major Cascadia earthquake, which could affect the west coast of North America from Northern California to British Columbia, could trigger a major earthquake along the San Andreas Fault in California.

Technology and AI: A combination of OpenAI models was revealed to be behind the recent cybersecurity breach at Hugging Face (🟡). A bipartisan bill named the AI Kill Switch Act was introduced to the US House of Representatives.

• Will the AI Kill Switch Act pass the US House of Representatives before January 3, 2027? Our forecasters think there’s an 18% (12% to 27%) chance.

• By December 31, 2027, will OpenAI or any of its directors, officers, or employees be arrested, charged, penalized, or subjected to formal regulatory or criminal enforcement action for conduct related to the Hugging Face attack? Our forecasters believe there’s a 2.6% (1% to 9%) probability.

Geopolitics: Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthis carried out strikes on each other, while the US and Iran paused fighting for over two days, with Oman attempting to mediate a fresh ceasefire deal.

• Will the United States and Iran announce a new ceasefire by the end of August? Our forecasters think there’s a 60% (40% to 70%) chance.

Biorisk: The number of confirmed deaths in the Ebola outbreak reached 1,407, up from 930 last week.

• How many confirmed deaths will there be in the Ebola outbreak before September 2026? Our forecasters’ aggregate 90% confidence interval ranges from 2.6K to 15.1K (with an aggregate mean at 5.4K). By the end of 2026, our estimate ranges from 4.8K to 105K, with an aggregate mean at 22.7K.

Technology and artificial intelligence

A “combination” of OpenAI models was revealed to be behind the cybersecurity breach at Hugging Face, which we reported on last week. It appears that the model(s) broke out of the sandbox that OpenAI had built and broke into Hugging Face in an attempt to cheat on the test it was being given.

Cheating behaviour and reward hacking more broadly have been observed before by frontier AI labs, METR, and the UK’s AI Security Institute (which published a report on the subject this week), but many of our forecasters are still surprised by the scale and audacity of the Hugging Face incident.

Still, we think it’s extremely unlikely that there will be any legal consequences for OpenAI, giving just a 2.6% (1% to 9%) chance that the company or any of its directors, officers, or employees will be arrested, charged, penalized, or subjected to formal regulatory or criminal enforcement action before 2028.

Some forecasters recommend that readers consider taking the precautionary steps of moving their funds away from European financial institutions, which are going to be more insecure, and into large American institutions, which have access to the latest AI models to faster patch their vulnerabilities with. Our sources tell us that Banco Santander, in particular, is riddled with security gaps, which would make sense in light of its fast expansion.

In somewhat related news, Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu joined with Republican Congressman Nathaniel Moran to introduce a bill, the AI Kill Switch Act, into the US House of Representatives, which proposes that the Department of Homeland Security be given powers to order a company to shut down an AI model if there is a “loss of control” incident. Our forecasters think there’s an 18% (12% to 27%) chance that it will pass the House by January 3, 2027. Overall, in each Congress, 14K bills are introduced, of which only about 5% are enacted into legislation (though passing the House is a weaker burden). On the one hand, this is an important issue that many people in Congress will be increasingly concerned about (with the Hugging Face incident being a stark example of the dangers). However, it might be less likely than a typical bill to be passed because of the prospect of an immense lobbying effort against it.

Chinese start-up Moonshot AI’s open-weight model Kimi K3 was jointly tested by the UK’s AI Security Institute and the US Center for AI Standards and Innovation, which found that the model “performs significantly below the most recent frontier cyber-capable models on preliminary cyber evaluations.”

The Trump administration’s Science and Technology Adviser Michael Kratsios claimed that Moonshot AI carried out a “distillation” attack on Anthropic’s Fable model in order to develop Kimi K3, which he said was tantamount to “stealing proprietary U.S. technology.”

Microsoft signed a multibillion dollar deal with French AI company Mistral.

A PhD candidate at Columbia reportedly solved six open Erdős problems in 5 days, using OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol.

Geopolitics

Middle East

The Saudis and the Iran-backed Houthis traded fire after the latter attempted to enforce a blockade on Saudi Arabia. The Houthis fired on two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the US fired on another vessel in the Strait of Hormuz for violating its blockade of Iranian ports, but both Iran and the US have held their fire since Saturday, with Oman attempting to mediate a fresh ceasefire agreement.

Our forecasters think there’s a 60% (40% to 70%) probability that the US and Iran will announce that such an agreement has been reached, or no longer engage in regular hostilities under a de facto, unsigned ceasefire arrangement, before September 2026. On the one hand, the US is expending munitions in the Iran war at a rapid rate, with some officials concerned that their ongoing depletion could put US readiness for other potential scenarios at risk. The US is also very motivated to see commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz increase to higher levels. On the other hand, trust between the two sides is very low, and some voices are urging the Trump administration to escalate hostilities.

The US and Saudi Arabia signed a deal under which Saudi Arabia would develop a civilian nuclear program and could potentially enrich uranium in the future. The next day, Trump said that the US-Saudi nuclear deal would only go ahead if the Saudis join the Abraham Accords, which would involve normalizing relations with Israel.

Bahrain and Kuwait conducted airstrikes targeting military sites in Iran earlier this month.

Europe

Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy sacked Gen. Syrsky, commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, and appointed 43-year-old Mykhailo Drapatyi, a well-known battlefield commander who was previously in charge of Ukraine’s ground forces and joint forces command, to take his place. The change marks a transition from the “old guard” of generals trained under the Soviet Union, to a younger generation of commanders forged in the Ukraine war and more ready to embrace newer approaches to the war.

Ukrainian attacks have taken more than half of Russian oil refinery capacity offline, according to Morgan Stanley. Russia has extended an export ban on gasoline until the end of the year, and the country was scheduled to receive a gasoline shipment from India on July 26. Russia said that the country plans to lift its ban on diesel exports when its diesel market recovers.

Ukraine is also targeting the warehouses of Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries, which connects buyers and sellers all over Russia via its logistics network. Ukrainian attacks have reportedly destroyed around one tenth of Wildberries’ total warehouse capacity since the attacks started on July 18, causing about $2.2B in losses that will nearly all be borne by people selling goods through the company, rather than by the company itself. A minority of goods sold on the Wildberries platform are military-related, but an important goal of these attacks is to increase pressure on Putin by bringing something of the war on Ukraine home to ordinary Russians.

NATO jets under NATO command scrambled and shot down three drones in three days in Romanian airspace.

The Swedish Transport Agency reports that satellite navigation (GNSS) jamming is continuous and spoofing is common in the Baltic Sea, especially around southeastern Sweden, including Gotland and Öland, and around marine traffic flows towards the Baltic states, Finland and Poland. Sweden has previously accused Russia of being behind the large rise in jamming in the Baltic Sea.

Latin America

The US Department of State released a report about Cuba and stated that, “Cuba’s assault on the United States was never, at root, a quarrel over economic policy or sovereignty or even ownership of a particular territory. It was a revolution against Western civilization itself.”

In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega, who has been in power since 2007, announced that the country will not hold elections again.

Asia

India’s education minister resigned following the “Cockroach Janata Party” protests, leading the protesters to call off a planned strike.

A social media personality declared independence in the province of Balochistan from Pakistan. Although the claim got picked up in some minor newspapers, observers mostly categorized it a more of a social media event than a significant declaration.

Africa

The US is reportedly considering conducting strikes on an al-Qaeda-affiliated rebel group in Mali.

United States

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy set forth a plan to overhaul how federal research funding is awarded, proposing the most significant set of changes since the period following World War II. It commands that more funding go to individual scientists rather than to universities, and to fund more research that uses AI, in order to accelerate scientific and technological progress in competition with China.

One forecaster with research experience is concerned that the new approach will harm large universities that rely on federal research funding, potentially catastrophically, and could potentially upend the top tiers of the university system and the abilities of universities to smooth grant funding fluctuations across administrations. The directives in the report could also potentially reduce incentives for students to spend long, intense years at low wages to train to become scientists, by reducing the prospect of some level of job security at universities later on. Another forecaster notes that this is probably correct but also by design to reduce funding to Trump’s political enemies.

The report was released on the heels of a federal court ruling that the Trump administration could not cancel previously awarded grants because they no longer align with current administration priorities. Last year, the Trump administration also sought to cap indirect research costs, which go to the institutions that host research, at 15% of award totals, but that attempt was blocked both by federal courts and by Congress. The administration has also pursued other policies that aim to change both K-12 and higher education in the US.

The Trump administration also clashed with federal judges after two blocked the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for migrants from South Sudan and Ethiopia. Administration supporters noted that the Supreme Court had previously ruled that, “the TPS statute bars judicial review of non-constitutional claims,” while opponents noted that the Supreme Court’s ruling was made on the basis of reviewing somewhat abstruse claims that revoking their clients’ TPS status deprive the migrants of liberty and property as guaranteed in the Fifth Ammendment. Overall, the conflict between the executive power wishing to act and the judiciary being able to delay and obstruct may come to an interesting clash if the administration chooses to ignore federal judges without ignoring the Supreme Court.

Biorisk

The Ebola outbreak in the DRC continues to grow, with 3,200 cases, including 1,405 deaths confirmed as of July 25, up from 2,340 cases and 930 deaths as of July 18. Uganda has seen 20 confirmed cases in the current outbreak, including 2 deaths, and no longer has any active cases. In the coming days, this outbreak will likely surpass the 2018-2020 North Kivu outbreak in size; the North Kivu outbreak is the second largest on record, with 3,470 cases and 2,287 deaths. Our forecasters expect the number of cases and deaths in the current outbreak to continue to accelerate, as the outbreak continues to be insufficiently controlled.

Our forecasters’ aggregate 50^th\ percentile estimate for the number of confirmed deaths in the outbreak before September 2026 ranges from 2.6K to 15.1K (with an aggregate mean at 5.4K). By the end of 2026, our estimate ranges from 4.8K to 105K, with an aggregate mean at 22.7K.

Forecasters discussed that the outbreak has grown far more rapidly than the 2014 epidemic, and that the current outbreak is by default going to grow much larger, and they argued about the size of the largest plausible outbreak: if the current growth rate continues, the outbreak spreads into cities, and the international response is slow and ineffective without a large amount of help from the US, then the numbers would grow really fast (e.g., 50M by the end of the year, naïvely extrapolating the growth rate). Of course, at some point before then, the exponential would turn into a sigmoid, we’d see behavioral change, the population would build immunity, etc. But we are uncertain about where that inflection point would be reached, and about when help from the global public health community, working together with local health systems, would bring the outbreak under control.

Economy

The price of Brent crude oil rose to over $100 again as Trump considered escalating strikes on Iran. Last week, we gave this a 68% chance of happening by the end of 2026. The price has since fallen to $90 because of the pause in fighting.

As Trump’s 10% tariffs on most US imports expired on Friday, he imposed new US tariffs of 10-12.5% on 60 trade partners, including China and the EU, that cover 99.4% of all US imports. Some goods are exempted, including oil and gas, fertilizer and some food items. The tariffs were imposed based on claims by the US that those trade partners had allowed goods made with forced labor into their supply chains; countries on which tariffs have been placed have denied these allegations. Additional tariffs are expected in the coming weeks.

Canadian exports that comply with the rules of origin in the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement will be exempt from the new US tariffs, which means that tariffs on Canadian goods won’t change. However, the Trump administration has also threatened to impose 50% tariffs on a wide swath of Canadian goods starting August 19, based on its claims that Canada is discriminating against US alcohol, dairy and auto-industry products.

Trump announced in a Truth Social post that the US would impose 100% tariffs on imported generic drugs starting in August 2028, and that this rate would increase to 200% in August 2029. The announcement is intended to encourage generic drug manufacturers to move production to the US. However, uncertainty about whether this policy will be enacted as stated or will be continued in a future administration may dampen investment in such manufacturing capabilities in the US.

Climate and nature

Wildfires have forced over 250K people to evacuate their homes in Spain and France. We can expect growing areas to be afflicted by wildfires as many regions of the Earth experience warmer temperatures and drier conditions. Around the world, societies will need to plan to devote increasing resources to mitigate the consequences of and prevent deaths from wildfires, heatwaves, droughts, and other climate disasters.

Typhoon Noul, the strongest this year to date to make landfall in China, made landfall in southern China on Sunday after forcing more than 715,000 people to evacuate in Guangdong province.

Geopolitics: The US continued its nightly strikes on Iranian territory, while Iran retaliated against Gulf states and against US bases in Jordan and Iraq, killing at least three US servicemembers. Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthis ended a four-year truce, and the Houthis announced a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia, which could disrupt shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

• Will the US place 1,000 or more boots on the ground in Iran before September 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 19% (10% to 45%) chance.

• Will a new temporary or permanent ceasefire agreement be reached and put into effect between Iran and the US before September 2026? The team believes there’s a 53% (21% to 70%) probability.

• Will the price of Brent crude oil reach $100 per barrel before 2027? Our forecasters believe there’s a 68% (60% to 80%) chance.

• Will the Houthis attempt to seize or sink at least one ship before September 2026? Forecasters think there’s a 69% (51% to 77%) chance.

Technology and AI: Chinese startup Moonshot AI launched Kimi K3, an open-weight model that approaches frontier models produced by OpenAI and Anthropic in its capabilities. China set up an international body for cooperation on AI.

• Will the President of the United States issue an executive order aiming to mitigate security risks associated with open-source AI models before 2027? The team thinks there’s a 52% (30% to 65%) chance.

Biorisk: The death toll in the Ebola outbreak in the DRC rose to 930, from 702 last week.

Geopolitics

Middle East

The United States continued its nightly strikes on Iranian infrastructure, including bridges and towers. Among the targets were transit points for Iran’s largest port, Bandar Abbas. Iran, in turn, launched strikes on Bahrain, Oman and Qatar and attacked a power and water desalination plant in Kuwait. US bases in Jordan and Iraq were also targeted; at least three US servicemembers were killed in these attacks, with more injured or missing.

Last week, the Islamic Republic also threatened to have its Houthi allies in Yemen disrupt shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which would very likely increase energy prices further. And today, the Houthis announced a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia. Significantly, the Houthis fired missiles at Saudi Arabia in retaliation for a bombing of an airport in Yemen that the group blames on Saudi Arabia, meaning that a four-year truce has now been broken. Forecasters believe there’s a 69% (51% to 77%) chance that the Houthis will attempt to seize or sink at least one ship before September 2026.

The price of Brent crude oil rose to above $85 per barrel on Friday, briefly rose above $90 late on Sunday, and remained in the high $80s on Monday. Forecasters think there’s a 68% (60% to 80%) probability that the price will reach $100 per barrel again by the end of 2026, on an hourly basis.

On whether the conflict could expand further, forecasters think there’s a 19% (10% to 45%) probability that the US will place 1,000 or more boots on the ground in Iran before September 2026. Conversely, they think there’s a 53% (21% to 70%) probability of a new temporary or permanent ceasefire agreement being reached before then.

Meanwhile, Israeli ministers announced plans to set up settlements in the Gaza Strip and expand existing ones in the West Bank.

Europe

Zelenskyy fired Ukraine’s defense minister, Fedorov, after Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Gen. Syrsky, gave the Ukrainian president “an ultimatum” to fire either Fedorov or him, as conflict between the two defense leaders had reached a boiling point. Fedorov brought a start-up management style to a push to modernize Ukraine’s defense technology and attempted to block corruption, while Syrsky is part of the old guard of Ukraine’s military leaders. Following protests against Fedorov’s firing, Zelenskyy is reportedly now considering firing Gen. Syrsky, and Fedorov apparently rejected an offer to return to a different position in government. While these personnel changes may reduce conflict within Ukraine’s military leadership, they also rock the boat at a time in which Ukraine is enjoying military successes.

The Ukrainian military continues its initiative to make Crimea “impossible to hold — systematically, ship by ship, substation by substation, bridge by bridge.” Holding Crimea has become a vulnerability for Putin.

The Hungarian parliament passed a constitutional amendment that would remove President Tamás Sulyok, a loyalist of former prime minister Viktor Orbán, from office. Hungary’s new Prime Minister has proposed that Hungarian chess champion Judit Polgár become the new President.

And, on Europe’s nuclear deterrence:

Macron’s initiative, outlined in March, to extend the French nuclear umbrella for collective European defense is gradually coming to fruition. So far, nine European countries – Germany, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK – have signed up to come under the French nuclear umbrella, as European countries seek to rely less on the US for security.

Last week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that for the first time, the German military will participate in a French nuclear exercise later this year, furthering European nuclear cooperation. Merz also reaffirmed Germany’s commitment to the NATO nuclear sharing agreement, under which US nuclear bombs are stationed in Germany and German fighter jets have been certified to be capable of carrying the bombs. Merz said that, “the world we live in today requires new answers.”

Two weeks ago, Lithuania’s president announced that the country plans to lift a constitutional ban on hosting nuclear weapons or foreign military bases. A month ago, Finland lifted a ban on receiving, transporting and otherwise facilitating the movement of nuclear weapons within its territory, as part of allied defense operations.

Our forecasters note that while France’s extension of its nuclear umbrella to a broad set of European allies reduces the risk of nuclear proliferation within Europe as countries seek to rely less on the US for nuclear deterrence, it is still possible that countries such as Poland might pursue nuclear weapons in the future.

Asia

Anti-government protests led by the satirical youth movement “Cockroach Janata Party” and supported by the opposition Congress Party swelled in New Delhi, following the leak of an exam paper that was to be taken by prospective medical and dental students in India.

On China/Russia relations

China is building relationships with officials in Russia whom China believes may be involved in running the country after Putin.

And while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last year that the US could not allow Russia to become a “permanent junior partner” to China, Russia is increasingly becoming just that. Putin’s war in Ukraine has accelerated Russia’s decline in power relative to China, as it has handed China increasing economic leverage over Russia.

For example, China has been buying Russian oil at a discount and providing components needed by the Russian defense industry. Before Putin’s visit to China in May, China told Russia that it will not approve the development of a natural-gas pipeline, called the Power of Siberia 2, that would deliver gas from Russia to China, unless Russia agrees to sell natural gas to China at Russia’s own below-market, domestic rate.

And in August, China plans to open the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Development Bank, a regional development bank focusing on Central Asia that will use the Chinese yuan as its base currency and will increase China’s influence in the region. Putin acquiesced to this arrangement, and in exchange, is seeking assurances that the bank will ignore US sanctions

United States

Donald Trump posted an AI image of himself showing a map to world leaders, in which Canada and Greenland have been taken over by the US. Our forecasters see this as a continuation of his “trolling” of other world leaders rather than a significant threat to these territories. Some find it amusing.

On Thursday evening, Trump released declassified documents related to previous elections, and in a speech, he claimed that these documents “reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it. It is not defensible.” Multiple news organizations have found no “smoking guns” in the documents (read here) or his claims. Trump also accused China of election interference in the 2020 election and claimed that America’s election system is very vulnerable to cyberattacks. Republicans broadly welcomed his speech, while some Democrats said they agreed with Trump that election interference from any foreign actor should be stopped, but not on the specifics of his claims. Critics warned that one purpose of Trump’s speech was to cast doubt on US election integrity four months before midterm elections in which many Republican candidates will likely face challenging races.

Rubio, Miller, Bessent and other leading members of the Trump administration hosted representatives of 66 countries at a conference in Washington, DC, focusing on “the resurgence of political violence.” Speakers considered the alleged threat of leftwing violence but did not address a threat of rightwing violence. One of our forecasters notes that this speaks to a broader pattern of characterizing the left as representing an existential threat to the US, and wonders whether, taken together with Trump’s speech on election integrity, a case is being laid out for cracking down on political opponents in the future and, in the extreme, attempting to overturn election results.

On Thursday, Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, announced a paid, licensed data feed, called Truth API, which would provide early access to posts from Trump and 9 other top accounts on Truth Social. Trump Media has reportedly proposed to charge $100,000 per month, or $60,000 per month with a 3-year contract, to Wall Street traders and investment firms for access to the feed. Trump’s trust holds about 41% of the outstanding stock in Trump Media.

The Pentagon has been drawing up plans in recent weeks for a potential military invasion of Cuba. And as for the North, Trump threatened to increase tariffs on Canadian goods after smoke from Canadian forest fires blanketed multiple US states.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Chinese AI company Moonshot AI launched its Kimi K3 open-weight model, which approaches GPT-5.6 Sol and Fable in its capabilities. China also implemented rules that prohibit AI platforms from generating content that encourages emotional attachment, especially in minors, or is likely to erode real-world relationships. And it is setting up an international body known as the World AI Cooperation Organization, which could lead to international standards for AI development being set. Almost 30 countries, including Russia, Brazil and Indonesia, have joined. President Xi also presided over an event called the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai.

The White House launched a program, named Gold Eagle, that will coordinate efforts in the private sector to find and fix vulnerabilities in critical digital infrastructure. The program will reportedly put the Trump administration, rather than AI companies, in charge of deciding which organizations are allowed early access to the most powerful new models.

The Trump administration is also reportedly considering creating an independent regulatory agency, with input from AI companies and Wall Street firms, to review the safety of and cybersecurity risks posed by new AI models. As envisioned, the agency would report to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Given speculation about whether the White House will issue an executive order that aims to mitigate security risks that could arise from open-weight models, our forecasters give this a 52% (30% to 65%) chance of happening before 2027.

An autonomous AI agent system intruded into Hugging Face’s infrastructure. Detection was also assisted by AI, and LLMs helped to reconstruct the timeline of the incident. However, closed-weight AI models blocked this analysis because of safety guardrails that could not distinguish defenders from attackers, so the open-weight model GLM 5.2 was used instead.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis planted his flag by making an AI policy proposal that calls for the US to establish an industry-funded standards body overseen by the government to regulate powerful AI systems, that could test and block systems that are too dangerous from being released and could coordinate a slowdown of frontier AI development.

And: Ukraine launched perhaps the first-ever robotic amphibious assault. A sea drone landed and deployed an armed ground robot on the Kinburn Spit, in Russian-occupied territory. Claude’s Fable model may have produced a counterexample to the Jacobian Conjecture in mathematics, a long-standing and famously hard-to-crack problem. New York State became the first in the US to suspend the construction of new AI data centers.

Biorisk

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is growing explosively. As of July 18, 2,340 confirmed cases have been reported in the DRC, and most cases are likely not being tested. Official confirmed deaths have doubled in the past approximately 15.5 days; based on data from previous outbreaks, actual cases and deaths are likely doubling more quickly. The official death toll rose to 930, up from 702 last week.

The outbreak is entering a critical period, as it will become increasingly difficult to bring under control because of its sheer size, and because health workers face a growing number of challenges. The outbreak is spreading in a province in the DRC that shares a border with South Sudan, which has limited public health infrastructure. And last week, dozens of staff at a hospital in Bunia, in hard-hit Ituri province, went on strike and closed the hospital, saying that they had not been paid for two months and were provided insufficient PPE. Community distrust remains a significant problem as well; on Thursday, a different hospital in Bunia was attacked, and the medical staff and up to 10 Ebola patients fled.

We reported last week that 21,000 community health workers are being trained to go door to door to identify and encourage people potentially sick with Ebola to go to treatment centers. With 80% of new cases not coming from case contact lists, such community outreach efforts will be critical to bringing the outbreak under control.

Doctors have noticed that Bundibugyo ebolavirus infections have a longer course than Zaire ebolavirus infections, which allows patients to spread the virus in the community longer but may also offer a longer window for treatment. Clinical trials for three treatments are underway in Ituri province.

A vaccine against the Bundibugyo ebolavirus is badly needed, but one might not be available for at least several months. The University of Oxford has begun a clinical trial for its new Bundibugyo ebolavirus vaccine, and about 50 adults in Oxford will be given the vaccine over the coming weeks to assess the vaccine’s safety and immune responses to the vaccine. The Serum Institute of India, which manufactures the vaccine, has produced about 620,000 doses of the vaccine and has provided about 4,000 doses for additional clinical studies, which would take place in Uganda. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) has committed to an initial investment of up to $8.6 million to develop the vaccine. Three other Bundibugyo ebolavirus vaccines are also in development.

Cholera has broken out in Sudan for the third year in a row, in the provinces of West Kordofan, North Kordofan and South Darfur. 1,547 cases have been reported in West Kordofan and North Kordofan as of July 15.

Economy

In recent weeks, Japanese bond yields have reached multi-decadal highs. Higher bond yields in Japan can be expected to increase sovereign borrowing costs elsewhere to a limited extent.

In South Korea, swings in the highly leveraged stock market have caused the Korean Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) to plunge 27% in recent weeks, reportedly triggering margin calls for 1.2 million brokerage accounts, representing up to 10% of brokerage accounts in the country.

Climate and nature

An AFP analysis found that there were at least 12k excess deaths in nine European countries during June’s heatwave. Some forecasters note that these deaths would mostly result from accelerating deaths among the elderly, and so the cost in terms of years of life lost would be much lower than for average people’s deaths, e.g., in car accidents.

Wildfires in US and Canadian boreal forests are increasingly burning over larger areas now than in the past, largely because the ground is becoming drier over time, very likely because of climate change. We can expect to see the average total area of North American boreal forests burned per year continue to increase over time, and with it, the spread of wildfire smoke.

Industrial shipping is being forced to reduce loads in the Rhine River, Germany’s most important inland waterway, as the water level continues to fall. Flow rates for waterways in France, including the Loire River, are also falling rapidly. In the US, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the nation’s two largest reservoirs, have fallen to a level last seen in 1956, when the Glen Canyon Dam was under construction. Their water levels are expected to fall further over the coming years as the Colorado River basin becomes drier.

A study estimates that there’s a 10-23% chance that collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is already locked in. The AMOC is effectively a conveyor belt of heat and oxygen in the Atlantic Ocean that warms Europe, affects precipitation patterns on land surrounding the Atlantic, supports growth at the bottom of the ocean’s food chain, and enhances the ocean’s function as a carbon sink.

A new study finds that the impacts of severe solar storms on Earth satellites, electric grids and communication systems could be more extreme than previously thought. A new UN report on risks from severe solar storms and other extreme disruptions to communications and digital infrastructure “calls on policymakers, the private sector, and civil society to act now to prevent these risks from becoming a ‘digital pandemic’, urging for global commitment and coordinated action.”

A few comments on stocks below the paywall:

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Geopolitics: The US-Iran ceasefire broke down, and the US did not end up sending a delegation for a fresh round of talks in Oman.

• Will Iran take fees from ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz at the beginning of 2027? Forecasters estimate a 64% (60% to 68%) probability that this will occur.

• Between now and the end of the year, will Brent crude reach a price of $100 per barrel again? Forecasters give this a 29% (20% to 34%) chance.

Technology and AI: OpenAI released GPT-5.6 following a US government review process and claimed that it produced a proof of a decades-old mathematical conjecture in under an hour. The US government is considering an executive order that would regulate open-source AIs, while China is mulling export controls on its most advanced models.

• Will there be any Chinese Fable-level models by March 2027, defined as a model with an ECI score of 160 or higher? We give this a 73% (65% to 80%) chance.

• Will China restrict foreign usage of its top AI models by March 2027? We’re broadly unsure, at a 45% (22% to 55%) chance.

Biorisk: The Ebola outbreak continues to grow, with 702 confirmed deaths reported, up from 506 last week (1.38x/week). A WHO official said that the outbreak is spreading largely undetected.

• Will this Ebola outbreak reach more than 10,000 suspected and confirmed deaths? We estimate that there is a 72% (23% to 90%) chance.

  • If so, will it reach more than 1,000 suspected and confirmed deaths outside of Africa? We estimate the chance at 3% (1.3% to 5%).

Geopolitics

Middle East

The ceasefire between the US and Iran broke down following IRGC attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and US strikes on targets in Iran. Iranian attacks on Kuwait and Qatar also resumed.

Brent crude spiked slightly, to $79/barrel.

Some reporting suggests that hardline factions within Iran have been trying to undermine the ceasefire, while a faction favoring peace has been conveying to the US that it wants talks to continue. The US wants Iran to publicly state that it pledges to stop shooting at shipping in the Strait; thus far, Iran has done the opposite, saying it is closing the Strait while attacking another vessel. On Saturday, Iran held discussions with Oman about navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, but a US delegation did not end up attending.

Forecasters estimate that there is a 64% (60% to 68%) probability that Iran will be taking fees from ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz as of January 1, 2027, but don’t particularly expect [29% (20% to 34%) probability] that Brent crude oil will reach a price of $100 per barrel by then. A forecaster comments:

> From Iran’s perspective, it is critical to extract fees for passage through Hormuz, and for President Trump, it is critical that the Strait is free. If there is a toll/fee, his entire war will look like an abject failure. The positions of the countries are incompatible with each other, yet neither side has the power to defeat the other. My guess is that it will continue to simmer with peaks and troughs of violence, but with a keen eye on dialing back hostilities when the oil price rises too high, but both sides are prone to overplay their positions.

In Iran, slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was buried after marathon funerals; his son and successor Mojtaba has not appeared publicly since his father’s death.

Europe

At the NATO summit in Ankara, Trump said he would give Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot missile interceptors, and NATO members pledged €70 billion in assistance for 2026 and “at least the equivalent levels” of support for 2027. But the near-term reality is grim: Russian attacks killed at least 65 people in the Kyiv area in the past week, and Ukraine failed to intercept any of the ballistic missiles fired early July 6 because of a shortage of Patriot missiles.

Licensed production could take months to years to matter, so, in the meantime, Ukraine will pursue a six-pronged strategy of using Patriots wisely, finding alternatives to the Patriot, targeting Russian missile production, hiding its own defense industry facilities, taking shelter from Russian missiles, and attempting to force Russia into a position in which it will accept a partial or full ceasefire in which both sides agree to halt long-range airstrikes. Ukraine allegedly struck 21 tankers in the last few days, while continuing to apply pressure on Crimea.

Germany plans to borrow more than €800bn for defense spending by 2030, upending decades of fiscal restraint.

United States

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a leading Republican and Trump ally elected to the Senate in 2002, died on Saturday night from what a preliminary medical report suggests was an aortic dissection (a tear in the aorta). South Carolina is strongly conservative, so his seat in the Senate is likely to remain Republican after the midterm elections. On Sunday, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who was taken away from his home by ambulance last month, finally released a statement saying that he was recovering from a fall, losing consciousness and a case of pneumonia, putting rumors about his health to rest.

Trump forced out the remaining three members of the Election Assistance Commission, an independent federal commission that assists election administration officials across the country. One Republican appointee to the commission resigned, and the two Democratic appointees were fired, following the recent Supreme Court ruling that allows the president to fire members of independent federal agencies. Among its other duties, the Election Assistance Commission provides information on election administration and certifies voting systems.

Democratic nominee Graham Platner formally withdrew from the Maine Senate race on July 10 following a rape allegation he denies, after Sen. Schumer and the party campaign arm warned they “will not invest” if he stayed in the race. The Maine Democratic Party must pick a replacement by July 27, via a roughly 600-delegate convention, to face Sen. Susan Collins, who is seeking a sixth term in the only blue-leaning state with a GOP senator. Democrats would need a net gain of four seats to win a majority in the Senate.

As of July 10, the US has seen 2,231 confirmed measles cases so far in 2026, within striking distance of 2025’s 34-year record, with more than five months remaining in the year. Genomic sequencing shows an unbroken transmission chain since the January 2025 Texas outbreak, and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Regional Verification Commission will convene in November 2026 to formally assess whether the US has lost the elimination status it has held since 2000.

Asia

China tested a nuclear-capable ICBM, which may have been launched from a submarine for the first time. China previously launched a nuclear-capable ICBM in a test in 2024, following four decades without any such test.

Technology and artificial intelligence

OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 was publicly deployed. This followed a US government review process (see also) with the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI). The company also claimed that the model produced a proof of a 50-year-old mathematical conjecture using 64 subagents in just under one hour.

China is reportedly looking at export controls for the country’s most advanced AI models. The White House, in turn, may be considering an executive order on open-source AIs, likely prompted by fears of Chinese models, in particular. OpenAI and Google reportedly sold AI models to blacklisted China groups.

Forecasters estimate that there is a 73% (65% to 80%) chance that China will have Fable-level models by March 2027, and a 42% (22% to 51%) chance that China will restrict foreign usage of its top AI models by then. Although it may be hard to amass the compute to train that model today, China could use distillation, efficiency improvements, renting or aggregating compute, scaling investment through Alibaba’s Qwen rather than DeepSeek, etc. Current gaps are ~7.5 months.

China did not set a target for urban job creation in a five-year plan for the first time in decades, perhaps owing, at least in part, to uncertainty about how AI will affect the labor market. Some reporting suggests that courts in China have been making rulings favourable to workers at risk of being displaced by AI:

There have already been several high-profile rulings siding with workers who were dismissed. In April, a court ruled that a tech company had illegally laid off a worker after replacing him with A.I. software. The ruling delivered an implicit warning to other employers.

“The development of artificial intelligence technology should be applied to liberating labor, promoting employment and improving people’s livelihood,” the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court wrote. “Labor law allows employers to undertake technological changes and upgrade their operations, but it should also take into account the protection of workers’ legitimate rights and interests.”

AI 2040 was published by AI Futures, the team behind AI 2027. It presents a plan involving a slowdown of frontier AI development, a US-China deal, and an eventual handoff of control of civilization to AIs around 2040.

A report found that terrorist groups such as Boko Haram have been using AIs to design explosives and improve weapons and tactics.

The UN’s Secretary-General has called for a ban on lethal autonomous weapons. He urged that global rules to protect children be developed, amid a UN-led global meeting on AI governance. At least one forecaster feels these efforts are very uninspiring. Had there been a Democrat administration in the US, these types of efforts would have found more tailwinds.

And: OpenAI’s Head of Safety Systems is leaving the company. AI is more fully assisting ransomware attacks. A custom silicon startup is advertising a 1000x inference speedup.

Biorisk

The confirmed death toll in the Ebola outbreak in the DRC reached 702 as of July 12, and Uganda saw 2 additional deaths. However, a WHO official said that 80% of new cases in hard-hit Bunia, in Ituri Province, have no known link to confirmed patients and that modeling suggests that the outbreak could be two to four times larger than that reported in official data. From our experience forecasting early COVID, in the absence of widespread testing, estimating the proportion of cases that are captured by tests is very fraught, although in the case of Ebola, deaths are more difficult to miss. Rapid tests could start to be available in the DRC as early as this week.

Forecasters estimate that there is a 72% (23% to 90%) chance that this Ebola outbreak will reach more than 10,000 suspected and confirmed deaths, and a 3% (1.3% to 5%) conditional probability that it will reach more than 1,000 deaths outside of Africa. They slightly differ in their belief that the outbreak is growing exponentially: because deaths have been growing at ~1.38x/week, it would only take 9 weeks to reach the 10K threshold, and this outbreak is starting off with more rapid growth than was seen in the 2014 epidemic. But other factors may kick in.

The DRC is encouraging people with symptoms to go to treatment centers early in the course of disease, both to improve survival and to reduce disease spread. Approximately 70% of the first 400 deaths in the current outbreak occurred outside treatment centers. This week, 21,000 community health workers began training to conduct house-to-house visits, identify potential cases and ​encourage people with symptoms to seek care.

Suspected cases have now appeared in the provinces of Tshopo and Haut-Uélé, beyond the Ituri epicenter, North Kivu and South Kivu; Haut-Uélé abuts South Sudan, and some fear the virus may spread northwards into the war-torn country. The Africa CDC calls the current outbreak the continent’s fastest-growing Ebola outbreak ever. Critically, it’s caused by the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, for which existing licensed Ebola vaccines and treatments are not approved; however, clinical trials of two therapeutics, MBP134 and remdesivir, began July 2.

Geopolitics: Russia closed its railway border crossings with Estonia, Latvia and Finland, prompting speculation about a possible mobilization of troops.

• Before January 2, 2027, will Russia launch a mass mobilization that involves at least one of the following: involuntary mobilization of at least 300k reservists, forced deployment of active-duty reservists to combat zones, or involuntary mobilization of at least 300k male civilians above and beyond the compulsory 12-month draft requirement? We think there’s a 41% (15% to 85%) chance.

• Will at least 100 Russian troops enter Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and/or Estonia in hostility (in total), by July 1, 2027? Irregular forces will count. We think there’s a 4% (0.5% to 25%) probability.

  • If so, will NATO forces capture or kill at least 100 Russian troops in one or more of these countries, combined, by July 1, 2027 as reported by ISW? There’s forecaster dissent [58% (11% to 90%)] as to this probability.

  • If so, will the following countries all come to the military aid of the invaded country(ies): Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, France, and Britain? We think there’s a 91% (50% to 99%) chance.

Technology and AI: US export controls on Anthropic’s Fable and Mythos models were lifted. OpenAI is considering giving the US government a 5% stake in the company. Britain’s next prime minister may be more AI-skeptical than its current one.

• Will the UK pass legislation that imposes binding rules on the most powerful AI models being developed, by 2027? We give this a 26% (15% to 40%) probability.

• When will OpenAI’s GPT 5.6 Sol (or equivalent, if renamed) be publicly available? Our aggregate 50th percentile estimate is July 12th, with an 80% confidence interval from tomorrow through August 1.

Biorisk: Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continue to rise, with 506 deaths reported as of July 4, up from 360 last week.

Geopolitics

Europe

Russia suspended the movement of people, vehicles and cargo through the remaining seven railway border crossings with Estonia, Latvia and Finland, effective July 1. The move could be an attempt to prevent men from leaving Russia before a possible mass mobilization; this would be consilient with previous reporting. We think there’s a 41% (15% to 85%) chance that there will be an involuntary mobilization of at least 300k reservists, forced deployment of active-duty reservists to combat zones, or involuntary mobilization of at least 300k male civilians above and beyond the compulsory 12-month draft requirement. Forecasters note that this would be a gamble, but also that the forced mobilization of reservists is a smaller ask.

Russia said that Ukraine may have used a long-range ballistic missile for the first time, while Ukraine continues to launch medium and long range drone attacks against Russia. Russian fuel shortages continue, with nearly all of its regions experiencing supply disruptions as a result of drone attacks by Ukraine. Russia continues to strike targets in Ukraine; at least 22 died earlier today in Russian attacks that struck residential buildings in Ukraine.

The US told Poland that it anticipates Russia trying to test US and NATO resolve by launching an incursion in Poland. The US warned that Russia could target critical infrastructure with missiles or drones and that Russian or Belarusian forces could potentially cross into Polish territory from Kaliningrad or Belarus. Officials from Latvia and another country warned of the risk of a Russian military provocation in Poland or in the Baltic states as well, and Polish PM Donald Tusk said that “various types of ⁠escalation can be expected ​in the ​coming ​weeks and ​months.”

We think there’s a 4% (0.5% to 25%) chance that at least 100 Russian troops (regular or irregular) will enter Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and/or Estonia in hostility by July 1, 2027. If this happens, we think there’s forecaster dissent 58% (11% to 90%) about whether NATO forces will capture or kill at least 100 Russian troops by July 1, 2027. But there is broad forecaster agreement, with a 91% (50% to 99%) chance assigned, that all of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, France and Britain would be involved in the defense of the invaded country or countries.

Forecasters would generally consider a confrontation between Russia and NATO as unwise, and 100 as a large threshold. But the question could resolve positively if Russia used a salami-slicing strategy where this threshold is reached cumulatively with many small skirmishes rather than a single large one, with NATO’s response being unclear. But forecasters also note that the countries under consideration have robust border surveillance.

Russia reportedly carried out surveillance of nuclear sites in Europe using drones launched from its ‘shadow fleet’ of ships, over an 18-month period starting in late 2024.

Middle East

The Strait of Hormuz remains semi-open, and the Iran war remains semi-frozen. The number of ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz remains higher than was seen for much of the Iran War, but the 7-day average remains well below 50% of the pre-war figure. Several European powers now regard Iranian fees for transit through the Strait as inevitable.

In Iran, memorial ceremonies for former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei began a week ago. Earlier today, thousands marched through the street behind his funeral procession, with many calling for vengeance against the US.

Israel’s defense minister said that IDF troops are to stay “indefinitely” in parts of Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.

Asia

China raised objections to Japan and the Philippines holding talks concerning maritime boundaries in the waters east of Taiwan without its inclusion.

Pakistan says that the Balochistan Liberation Army is a global terrorist threat and should be blacklisted by the United Nations (UN).

United States

The Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees birthright citizenship to all children born in the United States, including those born to parents in the country unlawfully or only temporarily. This ruling found that Trump’s executive order to restrict birthright citizenship, which was part of a broader push to restrict immigration to the US, violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

Africa

Burkina Faso’s military government severed diplomatic ties with France effective immediately, accusing Paris of “blatant neo-colonial ambitions” and of actively supporting subversive networks and terrorists.

Two rebel groups, a Tuareg-led rebel group and an al-Qaeda affiliated group, claimed responsibility for attacks mounted on five army positions across Mali on Saturday, which threw the country into greater turmoil. Tuareg fighters also claimed to have shot down a helicopter operated by Russia’s mercenary Africa Corps, which provides assistance with security to the Mali government; Russia has vowed to stand by the Mali government. The pair of rebel groups also conducted coordinated attacks, in which the government defense minister was killed, in April. The latest attacks show that the government has been unable to deliver improved security in the country.

Technology and artificial intelligence

AI progress continues apace, though without widespread dramatic cyberattacks (yet?).

The White House is still in talks with AI companies about voluntary model release standards, and the USG lifted its export controls on Fable 5 and Mythos 5; Fable 5 is now publicly deployed. OpenAI reportedly discussed giving the US government a 5% stake in the company, while its model GPT-5.6 Sol reportedly cheated at a relatively high rate on a suite of tasks developed by Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR). Our forecasters think that the model will be publicly available by July 12th (median), with an 80% confidence interval from tomorrow until August 1st.

On the corporate war side, Claude models are now generally available on Microsoft’s cloud platform, planting the kiss of death on Microsoft’s AI dependence on OpenAI. And Google capped Meta’s Gemini use.

In the UK, Burnham may reconsider government support for self-driving cars and AI data centers if he becomes prime minister in a couple weeks. Some of our forecasters think this could be a sign that he’ll be more willing than outgoing PM Keir Starmer to bring in legislation imposing binding rules on the most powerful AI systems, which the ruling Labour Party promised in its 2024 manifesto. By 2027, our forecasters think this has a 26% (15% to 40%) chance of happening. Forecasters note that there is mention of this neither in the recent King’s speech nor in the parliamentary schedule, but Burnham may provide renewed impetus.

Ukraine is working on integrating AI more deeply into its kill chain.

And: Z.ai, the Chinese company behind GLM-5.2, claims the open-weight model can match Anthropic’s Mythos on certain cyber tasks. EU countries approved changes to the EU AI Act, including a ban on some AI sexual deepfakes and a delay on rules for high-risk AI systems. The UN published its first global assessment of AI, with its panel warning there are no guarantees the technology will not cause catastrophic harm. The Bank of England is considering an AI kill switch for trading bots to prevent a market meltdown.

Biorisk

Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continue to rise, with 1561 confirmed cases and 506 deaths reported as of July 4. A clinical trial for two Ebola treatments has opened for enrollment, and the first patient enrolled last Thursday. The WHO has added the first rapid molecular diagnostic test for the Bundibugyo ebolavirus to its Emergency Use Listing.

A toddler died from Marburg virus disease in Uganda. Marburg virus is a genetic cousin of ebolaviruses and causes a hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola virus disease. Additional Marburg cases have not yet been identified. Uganda is experienced in controlling hemorrhagic fever outbreaks, and we do not expect the outbreak to grow substantially.

The WHO said that the hantavirus outbreak that started on a cruise ship in April has officially ended, with 13 cases total.

The world’s first artificial cell has been produced. The cell has a very small genome, and it is composed of 150 to 200 molecules, rather than the millions or billions seen in naturally occurring cells. Dubbed the “SpudCell,” it feeds, grows and replicates for about five generations, after which the lineage dies. Notably, it does not produce its own ribosomes, the cell factories that make proteins, but instead uses ribosomes that it ingests from bacteria. Synthetic biology experts do not view the creation of the SpudCell as having created life, but as a stepping stone towards that goal.

Geopolitics: Shipping traffic markedly rose in the Strait of Hormuz before falling back because of renewed fighting between the US and Iran, who later agreed to a renewed ceasefire. Russian-occupied Crimea declared an emergency following supply shortages and power cuts resulting from Ukrainian attacks.

• Will shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz be over 50% of pre-war levels on July 15, 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 43% (30% to 62%) chance.

  • What about on October 15, 2026? Our forecasters believe there’s a 71% (60% to 80%) chance.

• Will Ukraine control all of Crimea by the end of 2026? Our forecasters give this a 14% (3% to 75%) probability.

• Will Putin still be the President of the Russian Federation on July 1, 2027? We think there’s a 87% (65% to 94%) chance.

• Will more than 5,000 Pakistani law enforcement, other security personnel and troops be killed in 2026 within Pakistan? Our forecasters think there’s a 3.4% (0.1% to 15%) probability.

Technology and AI: Alex Bores, who co-authored one of the world’s few pieces of legislation that attempts to mitigate catastrophic risks, lost his US House primary race. OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 is not currently being released to the public following a White House demand, while Anthropic’s Mythos model will be released to a small number of trusted partners again.

• Will any model that scores above 165 on the Epoch Capabilities Index (ECI) be available for public use in the US and globally, with its use not subject to US export controls, before 2027? The team thinks there’s a 65% (59% to 70%) chance.

Biorisk: The number of deaths in the Ebola outbreak has risen to 360, from 256 last week. And a deadly fungus is spreading in South America.

Geopolitics

Middle East

On Wednesday June 24, shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz rose to above 60 transits, by far the highest daily figure since the start of the Iran War, amidst falling insurance premiums for ships looking to transit the Strait. Many of the ships were using the ‘Omani route’, but Iran then fired on a ship that was using the route, causing traffic to fall again. In response, the US struck targets in Iran, and Iran, in turn, attacked Bahrain and Kuwait. Both sides have now agreed to cease hostilities once again.

Although the Strait of Hormuz traffic level on Wednesday was over 50% of the daily average on the eve of the Iran war, this is not sufficient to positively resolve our question from last week, which specified that the 7-day average had to move above 52 transits. This week, our forecasters think there’s a 43% chance (30% to 62%) that this will be the case on July 15, 2026, and a 71% chance (60% to 80%) that it will be the case on October 15, 2026. Forecasters were encouraged by the Wednesday figure as it provided a proof of concept.

Meanwhile, US-Iran negotiations continue, with the Iranians and the Americans disagreeing about whether an agreement has been reached to resume IAEA inspections of Iranian nuclear sites, which were progressively restricted by Iran after Trump pulled out of the JCPOA in 2018, before coming to a halt following US-Israel strikes on Iran in June 2025. The IAEA Chief, for his part, says that the interim peace accord between the US and Iran does propose such inspections.

Europe

Russian-occupied Crimea declared a state of emergency following sustained Ukrainian attacks on its supply routes and power facilities. Some observers are suggesting that Crimea could soon become “untenable for Russian military use” and that Ukraine may retake the territory. Crimea is both strategically and symbolically important to Russia, and its loss to Ukraine would deal a crippling blow to Putin and to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Our forecasters believe there’s a 15% chance (5% to 75%) that Crimea will be fully under Ukrainian control by the end of 2026. In aggregate they assign a 87% chance (65% to 94%) that Putin will still be President of the Russian Federation on July 1, 2027.

Last week, Ukrainian President Zelensky gave Belarus an ultimatum to dismantle equipment being used to provide targeting information to Russia. Belarus has backed down and stopped providing targeting information to Russia, in an acknowledgment of Ukraine’s growing military success and power. Despite this ongoing shift in the balance of power in favor of Ukraine over Russia, Putin is pressuring Belarus to join the war against Ukraine.

A Ukrainian company plans to produce a ballistic missile interceptor and to have its first missiles ready by the end of the year.

United States

In April, the Pentagon revised its battle targeting principles to allow for the possibility of a greater role for AI in the future, with the use of “systems where AI initiates actions with human monitoring,” in contrast with current “‘human in the loop’ systems, in which a human initiates actions.” The document further states that, “The speed of future warfare, along with our adversaries’ own advances in AI, may require the joint force to adopt completely autonomous systems”. A Pentagon official commented that currently, “Department AI technologies do not autonomously select or strike targets; it ensures commanders remain in charge of every decision”.

Former US National Security Adviser John Bolton pleaded guilty to mishandling classified information. Back in October 2025, we gave Bolton a 90% chance of being convicted.

Gen. Chris Donahue, the top US Army commander in Europe, will relinquish his US command and retire on July 2, after reportedly being forced out of his position by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The move comes in the broader context of Hegseth’s stated goal of reducing the numbers of top military officers, and of an unstated goal of “squeezing out officers with track records of battlefield valor and command experience in favor of less accomplished political loyalists,” per the WSJ.

The US Supreme Court decided not to allow Trump to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, preserving that institution’s independence. However, it did grant the executive branch greater authority over two dozen other institutions, including the FTC.

> The Court declines to sow doubt as to the status of one of the Nation’s (and the world’s) most important financial institutions, and would not so quickly unsettle this “special arrangement sanctioned by history.”

Asia

Pakistan’s interior minister claimed that over 1,000 security personnel were killed in 2025 in militant attacks; this probably includes both police and security forces. Data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal appear to corroborate the claim. Our forecasters think there’s a 3.4% chance (0.1% to 15%) that over 5,000 Pakistani security force personnel will be killed in 2026, with potential escalation between Pakistan and either Balochistan separatists or the Taliban regime in Afghanistan driving the higher forecasts. In the extreme, we could see another partition of the subcontinent, as with the Bangladesh War of Independence.

Africa

The US government warned that the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) may be planning mass killings in El Obeid, a city in south-central Sudan that is strategically important both militarily and economically.

Technology and artificial intelligence

OpenAI announced its newest series of AIs, GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna. The company said it is restricting their release, following a request from the Trump administration, but added “[w]e don’t believe this kind of government access process should become the long-term default. … We are taking this short-term step… while we work with the Administration to develop the cyber Executive Order framework and a repeatable process for future model releases.” Since OpenAI’s model was also interdicted, this should shift one’s estimation that the USG’s interdiction of Anthropic’s Fable model was about genuine security concerns, not just animosity from the USG towards Anthropic.

The US government partially reversed its ban on Anthropic’s top AIs, permitting Anthropic to provide Mythos 5 access to some trusted US organizations, including many Fortune 500 companies.

The White House has reportedly been pressing Meta to agree to AI reviews.

Taking the above into account, our forecasters think there’s a 65% chance (59% to 70%) that an AI model with an Epoch Capabilities Index (ECI) score of over 165 will be available for public use in the US and globally, with its use not subject to US export controls, before 2027. Forecasters wonder whether the US government might impose a capability ceiling at some point on models to be released for public use. Z.ai’s open-source GLM 5.2 model would probably be at 150-155.

Meanwhile, Alex Bores lost the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th Congressional District, coming in second place to Micah Lasher in a heated race that saw millions of dollars spent by rival AI interests for and against his nomination, but also significant backing of his candidacy by Effective Altruists. Bores co-authored New York’s RAISE act, one of a small number of pieces of legislation in the world that attempt to provide some treatment for AI catastrophic risk. Back in January, we thought there was a 66% chance that Bores would lose the primary.

Leaders of the Five Eyes cybersecurity agencies issued a rare joint public statement, warning of the immediate threat of AI cyber-risk. They say the timeline is “not years, it is months”, and that AIs are anticipated to exceed industry expectations. They recommend a series of practical measures to mitigate risk that should be implemented, saying that “[w]e must act now”.

Members of the US Congress are taking increasing interest in AI safety and security. Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-TX) introduced a bill to Congress that would require AI developers to report dangerous capabilities, security breaches, and safety incidents. Another bill is being introduced by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Josh Moolenaar (R-MI) that would let US cloud companies notify the government of suspected foreign misuse of powerful AIs. And the US House Science Committee is advancing legislation to codify the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI).

Biorisk

Ebola cases continue to surge in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). As of June 27, the country has seen 1274 confirmative cases and 360 deaths; these numbers very likely undercount the true numbers of cases and deaths because testing is centralized and requires special equipment and supplies. Neighboring Uganda has so far been able to control the spread of Ebola, but that could become increasingly difficult as cases increase in the DRC. France confirmed its first Ebola case in the current outbreak, in a doctor who returned to France from the DRC.

A deadly fungus that infects cats and can also infect people and dogs is spreading in South America. It causes skin ulcers, and if untreated, it causes a respiratory infection and spreads throughout the body. In cats, it is 100% fatal without treatment and often fatal even with treatment; in humans, it can be severe and can kill those with weakened immune systems. The fungus was first identified in cats in Brazil in the 1990s, and since then, it has been found in cats, dogs and people in Paraguay, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay. The fungus has sickened and killed thousands of cats and infected more than 11,000 people and at least 200 dogs to date. A medical mycologist at the US CDC warned that, “It’s just a matter of time” until the fungus reaches the US; “We’re waiting.” He worries about the fungus spreading in big cities around the globe and in rural areas in the US. “All it takes is one traveler [from South America] bringing their cat with them, and it can emerge anywhere… This is something we are very, very worried about.” Because the fungus can live in soil, one forecaster worries that it could be extremely difficult to eliminate from any new area that it spreads to and within. The good news is that the fungus has so far appeared to spread to new regions very slowly; the bad news is that over the very long term, its geographical spread may be inexorable.

Nature and climate

A heat wave gripping Europe has killed over 1,300 so far; the final toll will likely be substantially higher. Some of our forecasters believe that parts of Europe have been too slow to adopt air conditioning. Another extreme heat wave is now starting in the US.

Geopolitics: A peace deal between the US and Iran was officially signed by both parties, and traffic subsequently rose in the Strait of Hormuz but remained well below pre-war levels. Ukraine carried out its largest attack on Moscow to date, striking an oil refinery, and began EU accession talks.

• Will shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz be over 50% of pre-war levels on July 15, 2026? Our forecasters give this a 43% (30% to 60%) probability, but see below for the operationalization of the question.

  • What about on October 15, 2026? Forecasters think there’s a 61% (60% to 65%) chance.

• Will Ukraine become a full member of the European Union before 2030? Our forecasters believe there’s a 22% (11% to 45%) probability.

Technology and AI: Open-weight models are narrowing the gap with closed-weight frontier models on some benchmarks. The US fears that China has access to a lithography machine used to manufacture chips that is produced exclusively by Dutch company ASML.

• Will the US government explicitly prevent an AI model trained by a company other than Anthropic from being released to the US general public, or impose export controls on it, before 2027? Our forecasters think there’s a 44% (30% to 60%) chance.

• Will the US and/or China ban at least two open-source AI models before 2027? The team thinks there’s a 14% (5% to 50%) probability.

Biorisk: The number of confirmed Ebola deaths in the latest outbreak has risen to 256, from 183 last week.

• How many confirmed Ebola deaths will there be by the end of July 2026? Our forecasters’ aggregate 50th percentile forecast is 2.5k, and our 90% confidence interval is 1.1k to 9.2k.

Geopolitics

Middle East

A peace deal between the United States and Iran was signed by both parties. In response, the price of Brent crude oil fell below $80. However, fighting between Israel and Hezbollah still poses a threat to the deal, with the US trying to rein in Israel and calling on Iran to stop Hezbollah from fighting.

US and Iranian negotiators met in Geneva for the next phase of talks. They were initially overshadowed by renewed threats from Trump against Iran, but both sides ultimately said that real progress had been made.

On Thursday, the number of AIS-tracked ships that transited the Strait of Hormuz was 25, the highest for months, though still well below the >100 that was commonplace before the war. Although the IRGC claimed on Saturday that it had closed the Strait again in response to Trump’s threats, shipping traffic still appears to be higher than it was for most of the war.

Overall, our forecasters think there’s a 43% (30% to 60%) probability that shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz will be above 50% of pre-war levels on July 15, 2026. This would require the 7-day moving average to reach 52, according to the IMF’s PortWatch, which only counts ships with their AIS transponders on. The team thinks there’s a 61% (60% to 65%) chance that this will be the case on October 15, 2026.

Europe

Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian territory continued, including on an oil refinery close to Moscow.

Ukraine’s President Zelensky gave Belarus one week to remove electronic equipment aiding Russian targeting in Ukraine before Ukraine strikes that equipment in Belarus.

Ukraine and Moldova began the first phase of European Union (EU) accession talks, after Hungary’s new government withdrew that country’s objections. Our forecasters think there’s a 22% (11% to 45%) chance that Ukraine will become a full member of the EU before 2030. Forecasters note that Hungary’s opposition is now gone, but that Ukraine has gotten into a row with Poland, and that integrating e.g., the EU Common Agricultural Policy would likely extend timelines.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that he will leave office within the next couple of months following pressure from his party’s lawmakers to step down. His resignation was called by Trump one day before. Andy Burnham, who was recently elected to Parliament in a by-election, is widely expected to replace him as leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister. Our forecasters do not expect substantial changes to British policy on Ukraine, NATO, AI or biosecurity.

Technology and artificial intelligence

After Anthropic revoked access to its new Fable model following export controls imposed by the US government, White House officials told Wired that if Anthropic wants to re-release Fable, they need to ensure its guardrails can’t be circumvented. Many believe this would be quite difficult, if not impossible to accomplish, given the lack of formal guarantees built into model architectures and the abundance of past LLM jailbreaks. On the other hand, an Anthropic executive said that the company expects to be able to restore Fable access in the coming days, and Trump said that Anthropic has been “very responsible”.

Our forecasters think there’s a 44% (30% to 60%) chance that another company’s model will face a similar fate before 2027, either being explicitly banned from release by the US government or having export controls placed on it following its release. Two forecasters’ comments below:

It seems to me that people in Washington are genuinely kinda freaked out by Mythos (as they should be), but even if they weren’t, the stuff that will exist by the end of the year will [freak them out]. Due to competition for investment it seems unlikely that the industry will hold back on new public releases, and it seems unlikely that jailbreaks will be dealt with sufficiently in this period.

So far the administrations’ contention has been with Anthropic, and it seems likely that other companies can check with the US government before releasing any models that would be export-restricted, and that other companies can be more politically smooth and less adversarial.

Meanwhile, a low-skilled attacker reportedly used Claude Code and Codex to breach 14 companies. And here is an (AI-narrated) look at one (AI-assisted) supply chain attack: readers that want to have a sense of current cyberattacks might want to read the links.

The vice chair of the US Senate Intelligence Committee claimed that the head of the National Security Agency told him that Anthropic’s Mythos model “broke into almost all of their classified systems” within hours, though the journalist who reported on this is skeptical that this is exactly what happened.

Open-weight AI models are becoming increasingly capable. For example, GLM-5.2, an open-source Chinese model released by Z.ai, is ranked at number 3 on FrontierSWE, which tracks software engineering capabilities, behind only Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 and Opus 4.8, and ahead of OpenAI’s GPT-5.5.

Our forecasters think there’s a 14% (5% to 50%) chance that the US and/or China will ban at least two open-source models before 2027. Forecasters generally think that it’s impractical to ban open source models, but one thinks that they will become scary enough that policymakers might still try.

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick informed Dutch company ASML, whose lithography products are key to the advanced semiconductor supply chain, that China may be in possession of one of its extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines in violation of US export controls. ASML denies that it sold or passed such a machine to China. Our forecasters also wonder how easy it would be for China to have reverse engineered an ASML machine given that ASML itself has supply bottlenecks, most prominently the ultra-precise mirrors that it exclusively gets from Carl Zeiss SMT, a German company. Previously, China recruited former ASML engineers in order to build its own prototype.

The CEOs of Anthropic and Google DeepMind called for a US coalition to shape AI rules and standards. DeepMind also published an AI control roadmap and partnered with the British government to use AI to speed up planning permission for new housing.

And: Chinese AIs may be displaying awareness that they’re being evaluated.J P Morgan and Goldman Sachs blocked their staff in Hong Kong from using Anthropic models. Japan’s banking lobby said that lenders might be forced to suspend ATMs and online banking if advanced AIs end up posing a serious threat to the banking system. G7 leaders discussed a plan to grant “trusted partners”, potentially including AI security institutes, access to advanced AIs from US firms.

Biorisk

As of June 20, 1,003 people have been confirmed to have Bundibugyo Ebola disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and 254 people have died of Ebola. Last week, two deaths at a camp for displaced civilians in northeastern Congo were reported; as of this week, Ebola has claimed the lives of at least 30 people in a different camp. Case numbers and deaths are likely to rise explosively over the coming weeks as insufficient percentages and numbers of case contacts are being monitored.

Our forecasters’ aggregate 50th percentile estimate for the number of confirmed Ebola deaths at the end of July 2026 is 2.5k, and our 90% confidence interval is 1.1k to 9.2k.

Forecasters comment:

The number of deaths is rising quickly. With an insufficient number of case contacts being followed, patients sometimes escaping healthcare locations, and not all patients seeking treatment, the situation is not at all under control. And now cases are rising within a camp for displaced persons, which is a disaster in the making. If there were no constraint on testing, with a doubling time of as little as 7.5 days possible, I think we could see as many as 11k deaths by the end of July. However, I think testing capacity is likely to remain an ongoing constraint

Uganda has done a good job at containment but DRC has major challenges with people wanting to collect bodies for burial and attacking treatment centers. CFR is currently around 25% but testing and reporting mean the actual number will be much higher than the reported number. So far Kinshasa has remained Ebola free. If it gets into Kinshasa and starts to spread, the number of deaths will be unprecedented based on previous Ebola outbreaks.

As of June 21, 15 cases of New World screwworm (NWS) have been reported in animals in the US. We can expect to see many more cases as the NWS spreads in the US southwest.

Nature and climate

Growing water shortages in Central Asia might to cause economic and political instability, increase regional tensions, and drive countries in the region towards greater dependency on China and Russia. China and Russia, in turn, will likely need to provide water to the region or face large-scale migrant inflows.

Geopolitics: The US and Iran announced that a peace deal has been agreed. Putin acknowledged that Ukraine’s strikes on Russian territory are harming Russia’s economy.

• Before 2027, will a ceasefire (covering land, sea and air) between Russia and Ukraine be agreed for a period longer than 3 days? Our forecasters give this a 26% (20% to 40%) probability.

• Before August 2026, will a US-Iran peace deal be signed, involving a cessation of hostilities and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping (with or without a toll system)? Our forecasters thought that there’s a 76% (70% to 85%) chance, meaning we were pricing some probability of last minute turmoil, but as we publish this, the NYT and other media is reporting that the deal was just signed.

Technology and AI: Anthropic’s Fable 5 model was released to the general public, before access was revoked for everyone after the US government imposed export controls. The US’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) was barred from publishing model assessments.

• Will access to Anthropic’s Fable 5 model be restored to the US general public before July 2026? Our forecasters are broadly uncertain, giving this a 64% (50% to 75%) chance.

  • If so, will non-US citizens residing in Europe gain access to it again? Our forecasters are fairly confident about the conditional, giving this an 81% (78% to 85%) chance.

• Will the US’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) publish a model assessment for an AI developed by Anthropic or OpenAI that ultimately scores above Mythos 5 on the Epoch Capabilities Index (ECI) before October 2026? Our forecasters give this a 50% (33% to 75%) chance.

• Given the recent export controls, will UKAISI be given access to an AI developed by Anthropic or OpenAI that scores above Mythos 5 on the ECI, without safety mitigations, before October 2026? Our forecasters are broadly uncertain, with a 55% (30% to 70%) aggregate probability.

  • Will they publish a model assessment for an AI developed by Anthropic or OpenAI that scores above Mythos 5 on the ECI, before October 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 62% (50% to 70%) probability thereof.

• Will SpaceX develop an AI that at any point scores highest on the ECI, before 2027? Our forecasters are bearish, with an aggregate 3.6% (0.5% to 8%) probability.

Biorisk: Ebola spread to more health zones in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). As of June 14, there were 181 deaths recorded in the DRC and 2 deaths in Uganda.

Geopolitics

Middle East

The US and Iran announced that they have agreed to a peace deal. It’s set to be signed on Friday, though the details remain unclear in some areas. At a minimum, it will likely involve the end of the US blockade of Iranian ports and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. However, with Israel saying it will still occupy parts of Lebanon despite its inclusion in the agreement, there could yet be bumps along the road.

Earlier in the week, Trump had threatened to take Kharg Island and hit Iran hard again, because the deal was taking too long to finalise. But he later said that the strikes were cancelled.

Overall, our forecasters thought there was a 76% (70% to 85%) chance that a US-Iran peace deal, involving a cessation of hostilities and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping (with or without a toll system), would be signed before August 2026. As we publish this, the NYT and other media is reporting that the deal was just signed.

Europe

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin conceded that Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory are damaging his country’s economy and society. In a phone call with Putin, Trump reportedly pledged to help end the Russia-Ukraine war.

Our forecasters believe there’s a 26% (20% to 40%) probability that a ceasefire (covering land, sea and air) between Russia and Ukraine will be agreed for a period longer than 3 days, before 2027.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Anthropic released Claude Fable 5 to the general public and Claude Mythos 5 to a handful of cybersecurity and computer infrastructure companies. The models were the company’s most powerful yet, and some of our forecasters were impressed with, for instance, stories of people creating a Harry Potter video game using the model. In the system card, we see evidence that the models are becoming more dangerous in the domains of cyber, bio, chemical and loss-of-control risks.

The Trump administration later imposed export controls on these models, preventing them from being accessed by people in foreign countries or foreign nationals in the US. Anthropic, in turn, disabled access to these models for everyone, arguing that it would otherwise be unable to comply with the export controls.

The US government said it imposed export controls on the models because of concerns about how strong the model’s guardrails were, and that Anthropic didn’t take these concerns sufficiently seriously by pausing access to the model while fixing the alleged vulnerabilities.

Anthropic, in turn, represents the specific vulnerabilities alleged as less worrying:

No testers have yet been able to find a universal jailbreak—a jailbreak method that can very broadly bypass the model’s safeguards, unblocking a wide range of cyber capabilities.

We suspect that perfect jailbreak resistance is not currently possible for any model provider. Every safeguard used in the industry is vulnerable to non-universal jailbreaks (which can elicit some cyber information in specific circumstances), and it is likely that universal jailbreaks will eventually be found in the future. We stated this clearly when we released Fable 5.

Given that perfect jailbreak resistance does not appear to be possible today, Anthropic adopted a defense in depth strategy with Fable 5.

Our forecasters think there’s a 64% (50% to 75%) chance that access to Anthropic’s Fable 5 model will be restored to the US general public before July 2026. If so, we think there’s a 81% (78% to 85%) probability that non-US citizens in Europe will gain access to it.

The White House also ordered the government’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) to halt publication of its model assessments, citing security risks.

Given this and the export controls mentioned above, our forecasters think there’s a 50% (33% to 75%) chance that CAISI will publish a model assessment for an AI developed by Anthropic or OpenAI that ultimately scores above Mythos 5 on Epoch’s Capabilities Index (ECI) before October 2026.

We think there’s a 62% (50% to 70%) probability that the UK’s AI Security Institute (UKAISI) will do the same by that date, and a 55% (30% to 70%) chance that UKAISI will be given access to an AI developed by Anthropic or OpenAI that scores above Mythos 5 on the ECI, without safety mitigations, before then.

And: Germany’s National Security Council decided that a German AI Security Institute will be established, modeled on the UK’s. Anthropic urged Congress not to preempt state AI laws without setting federal standards. A report suggests that AI is now the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs.

Biorisk

Ebola has spread to more health zones in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC reported on June 14 that the country has seen 782 cumulative confirmed cases (+72 in the previous 24 hours) and 181 deaths (+32 in the previous 24 hours). Only 56.5% of contacts are being traced, below the operational target of 90-95%. As of June 11, 94% of cases have been in only one province, Ituri Province. Housewives and healthcare workers are among the most affected. The virus has reached a refugee camp that houses 30,000 displaced people in eastern DRC.

In the US, H5N1 bird flu virus infections continue to be found in more dairy herds. However, fewer herds are being infected now than in the past two years since H5N1 was first detected in dairy herds. The USDA reports that 917 cases were detected in cattle in 2024, 171 in 2025, and 53 in 2026 as of June 12. Risks to humans from H5N1 in dairy cattle remain, but the risks of zoonotic infection from cattle are falling overall.

Economy

SpaceX’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) was the largest in history, and it makes Elon Musk the first-ever trillionaire. We think there’s a 3.6% (0.5% to 8%) chance that SpaceX will develop an AI that at any point scores highest on the ECI before 2027. Overall forecasters are very bearish on this happening, since SpaceX’s AI arm has been renting out its compute.

Nature and climate

A study found that the extent to which a persistent cold blob in the ocean near Greenland has cooled both at the surface and deep below signals that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is likely slowing. The AMOC circulates heat throughout the Atlantic Ocean, so to the extent that this spot is becoming colder, it’s because warm water nearer the equator isn’t circulating as much, disrupting the historical pattern of heat circulation.

An El Niño weather pattern has started, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It could end up being the costliest on record.

Geopolitics: Iran and Israel exchanged fire for the first time since the fragile ceasefire began in April. A Ukrainian maritime drone crashed into a Black Sea port in Romania.

• Before September 2026, will a NATO country invoke Article 4 consultations in response to suspected or proven Russian aggression? Our forecasters think there’s a 21% (12% to 40%) chance.

• Will a peace agreement between the US and Iran, that includes opening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping with or without a toll system, be signed before July 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 28% (21% to 35%) chance.

Technology and AI: Trump signed an executive order that calls on frontier AI labs to provide the US government with early access to their models for pre-deployment testing.

• Will Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind voluntarily act in accordance with Trump’s executive order 14409 through the end of 2026? Our forecasters estimate that there’s a 77% (63% to 93%) probability.

Biorisk: While the Ebola outbreak continues to grow, hundreds of suspected cases and deaths were removed from official case tallies, with the WHO now reporting 93 confirmed deaths. The New World screwworm has been found in two calves in Texas and in a dog in Texas that had recently been in Mexico, posing a threat to the US cattle industry and to all warm-blooded animals, including humans.

• How many deaths will be confirmed by the World Health Organization in the Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak before September 2026? Our forecasters’ aggregate estimate is 360 to 16K, with the average of the midpoints at 1.6K.

Geopolitics

Middle East

Iran fired missiles at Kuwait and Bahrain after the US struck some of its radar sites, and Iran also launched missiles targeting Israel for the first time since April. Iran later announced a cessation of strikes against Israel.

Despite the violence, talks between the US and Iran about a possible peace deal continue. Trump claimed that a deal could have been signed on “Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday of this coming week” before Iran and Israel resumed hostilities and called on the two sides to stop “shooting” at each other.

Our forecasters believe there’s a 28% (21% to 35%) chance that a peace agreement between the US and Iran, that includes opening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping with or without a toll system, will be signed before July 2026.

Trump also said that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu will have “no choice” but to accept a US-Iran peace deal. This comes after a heated phone call between Trump and Netanyahu about Israel’s plans for further ground operations in Lebanon in which the US President reportedly told Netanyahu, “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah nevertheless continues despite US attempts to mediate a ceasefire.

Europe

A Ukrainian drone exploded at a Black Sea port in Romania, while three others self-detonated close to the port. No one was injured, and Romania’s President said that Ukrainian forces “lost control of the assets as a result of electronic warfare actions by Russia.”

This comes after a Russian drone crashed into a Romanian apartment building last week, with Romania reportedly considering invoking NATO’s Article 4 (importantly different from Article 5) in response to that incident.

Our forecasters believe there’s a 21% chance (12% to 40%) that a NATO country will invoke Article 4 consultations in response to suspected or proven Russian aggression before September 2026. It has been invoked on nine occasions since NATO’s creation in 1949, most recently by Poland in September 2025 after NATO fighter jets shot down Russian drones that had entered Polish airspace.

The US is reportedly considering expanding the number of countries in Europe that host its nuclear-capable bombers. Some in the administration are keen to signal that despite recent changes to troop deployments on the continent, the US is still committed to Europe’s defense. One forecaster also suggests that a positive side effect of such an expansion could be that other countries in Europe might become a bit less likely to want to develop their own nuclear weapons capabilities.

Thousands of Albanians have been protesting since May 30 against a real estate venture associated with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump that’s close to protected wetlands.

The Americas

Foreign firms are leaving Cuba as its economy continues to collapse and US sanctions take effect. Three Canadian airlines are the latest to suspend flights to Cuba indefinitely because of jet-fuel shortages on the island.

Technology and artificial intelligence

President Trump signed an executive order which would invite top AI companies to provide early access to the US government for voluntary vetting of their models, very similar to a leaked draft which he initially opted not to sign. This is an interesting sign in that it shows the Republican side taking some initial AI safety measures, as opposed to AI safety being or becoming a politicized partisan issue and having become solely the remit of Democrats, which would have left the Republicans vulnerable in the event of some AI catastrophe. Our forecasters believe there’s a 77% chance (63% to 93%) that Anthropic, OpenAI and Google DeepMind will accept the invitation and adhere to its terms through the end of 2026.

Anthropic said in a blog post that the ability of AIs to improve AIs, also known as recursive self-improvement, is happening faster than the company anticipated. Recursive self-improvement would be dangerous because it could mean that humanity has very little time to react to risky developments. Anthropic called for society to develop the ability to pause AI development if necessary, though the company has been careful in its language not to actually call for a pause right now.

Top AI CEOs Altman, Amodei and Hassabis, together with leading scientists and biotech, biosecurity, national security and other tech leaders, have signed an open letter calling for Congress to mandate screening for synthetic DNA sales, as AIs become increasingly useful for bioweapons development.

The United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) has reportedly been using Anthropic’s Mythos model to carry out offensive cyber operations.

ControlAI launched a campaign in Canada with over 30+ MPs and Senators supporting it, calling for Canada to negotiate a trust-but-verify international regime to prohibit the development of superintelligence, highlighting the risk of extinction posed by the technology.

Usage of Chinese AI models via OpenRouter has dramatically increased in 2026.

Biorisk

Hundreds of suspected cases and deaths in the Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak were removed from the official figures on May 29, as testing backlogs were cleared and suspected cases were investigated further.

The few data points we have since this re-classification suggests that the growth rate may be similar to that which was tentatively but alarmingly observed before the re-classification (with a doubling time of <10 days). d This observed doubling time in the reported data likely reflects a combination of largely uncontrolled spread during this early phase of the outbreak, expanding testing capacity, health authorities working through the testing backlog for suspected cases and deaths, and growing identification of potential cases. Testing remains centralized, and only samples from patients seeking healthcare are being tested.

As of Saturday, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has reported 515 confirmed cases and 91 confirmed deaths, with Uganda reporting 19 cases and 2 deaths.

Only about half of all identified contacts of patients are being contacted in the DRC. Three vaccines are in development, and the WHO is working with DRC and Ugandan authorities to plan and conduct clinical trials of vaccines and therapeutics.

A modeling study by US CDC scientists and others suggests that if only half of all patients are detected and isolated early, then there could be a roughly one third chance that the outbreak would grow to infect over 10,000 people and kill more than 2,000 people by August 22, 2026. While the model relies on assumptions that may eventually prove not to reflect the current outbreak accurately, its results are based on simulations that sample ranges of parameter values estimated from past Ebola virus disease outbreaks and likely provide reasonable qualitative guidance about the potential eventual scope of this outbreak with different levels of intervention.

Overall, our forecasters’ aggregate estimate for the number of confirmed deaths associated with the outbreak before September 2026 is 360 to 16K, with the average of the midpoints at 1.6K.

Meanwhile, the New World screwworm has been found in two calves in Texas and in a dog in Texas that was recently in Mexico, posing a threat to the US beef industry, in particular, as well as to all warm-blooded livestock, pets, wildlife and humans. Before its elimination from the US by 1966, the screwworm was endemic in the southern and southwestern US; by about 2004, the US and its partners had pushed the screwworm to the South American side of the Panama Canal. But it has spread northward since breaking biological containment in 2022. The US is ramping up breeding of sterile male screwworm flies to release in the wild, to attempt to push the screwworm southward once again. Last year, DOGE eliminated funding for a project that monitored and aimed to contain the New World screwworm in Central America, and funding for the project was not restored, despite pleas from agriculture officials and cattle industry leaders.

More than 2,000 measles cases have been reported in the US so far this year.

Economy

A European Union official responsible for transportation said that there is no sign that there will be a shortage of jet fuel in Europe, though he acknowledged that this may partly be the result of airlines cutting some routes, which most of our forecasters consider to be a “shortage” in all but name. The price mechanism may also be playing a role.

While the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, the positions of oil traders indicate that traders believe that a peace deal that opens the Strait will likely soon be reached. If greater oil flows do not occur soon, we can expect prices to adjust upward.

Larry Johnson, the global head of freight at Mercuria, a commodities trading house, warned that the shipping industry will soon face fuel shortages that could idle as much as 10% of the global shipping fleet. While US refineries have shifted towards meeting greater demands for jet fuel, the production of marine fuel oil has suffered. “My view on marine fuel oil is there will be regional stock-outs by July and that there are potentially outages in the major hubs by August, September, at the latest,“ Johnson said. A barnacle crisis on ships in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere also looms in the short term.

Geopolitics: A Russian drone hit an apartment building in Romania, injuring two people. Israel continues to strike Lebanon and Gaza.

• Will at least 10,000 deaths in Gaza and Lebanon be attributed to Israeli military action between June 1 and September 1, 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 19% (7% to 35%) chance.

Biorisk: Reported Ebola deaths continued to rise, though at a slower pace. There are currently between 220 and 300 suspected deaths.

• Will at least two countries besides the DRC have at least 1,000 confirmed and suspected cases of Bundibugyo Ebolavirus by the end of 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 37% (20% to 50%) chance.

• Will there be more than 20,000 confirmed and suspected cases of Ebola in the current outbreak by the end of 2026? Forecasters think there’s a 55% (35% to 70%) chance.

Technology and AI: Anthropic surpassed OpenAI’s valuation in its latest funding round.

• What is the chance that Anthropic’s valuation will exceed that of OpenAI by at least 50% on June 1, 2027? Our forecasters estimate that there’s a 35% (20% to 51%) probability.

Economy:

• Will the hourly Brent crude oil futures price reach $150 before August 2026? Our forecasters believe there’s a 17% (10% to 51%) chance.

Geopolitics

Middle East

Over the past week, Iran and the US continued to wrangle over the terms of a peace deal or ceasefire extension. However, on June 1, Iranian state media announced that Iran would fully close the Strait of Hormuz and halt negotiations because of what Iran claims are ongoing ceasefire violations by Israel against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israeli PM Netanyahu ordered strikes on Hezbollah-controlled suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon on June 1, following escalating Israeli strikes against other Hezbollah targets over the weekend. The strikes come in response to Hezbollah’s “repeated violations“ of the ceasefire and “attacks against our cities and citizens,” according to a statement from Netanyahu’s office. Hezbollah has claimed responsibility for firing missiles targeting Israeli military infrastructure in ‌Tiberias, Israel, on Monday, and for other attacks that it claims are in response to Israeli ceasefire violations.

In addition, Netanyahu said he directed the Israeli military to increase its control over Gaza to 70% of the region’s territory, from the 60% that Israel currently controls.

Forecasters estimate that there is a 19% (7% to 35%) chance that there will be at least 10,000 deaths in Gaza and Lebanon caused by the Israeli military between June 1 and September 1, 2026. Current levels of deaths caused by the Israeli military are less than 1,000 per month, so a military escalation would be needed to reach the 10K threshold, but one which the Israeli military is well capable of.

Europe

A Russian Geran-2 drone (Shahed 136 in its original Iranian designation) hit a 10-story apartment building in Galati, Romania, injuring two people. Its warhead fully detonated and caused a fire that was quickly brought under control. This is the first time that a Russian drone has caused injuries in a NATO member country, the 47th time – and the 12th time this year – that debris from Russian drones has landed on Romanian territory. The drone may have been struck while flying over Ukraine, damaging either the navigation or control systems.

The EU will release 16B Euros in funds for Hungary that were frozen when Orban was prime minister.

Anti-government protests in Serbia drew nearly 200K people. These were the second largest protests since the fall of former president Slobodan Milošević in 2000, and were motivated by a lack of investigation into corruption related to the collapse of a canopy in a train station that killed 16 people in 2024.

Asia-Pacific

China is building a military complex “that some security scholars say appears built to ensure no American first strike on China’s nuclear arsenal could reliably knock out Beijing’s ability to hit back.”

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the US will prevent China from gaining hegemony in the Asia-Pacific, but he did not explicitly mention Taiwan in his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. He also said that US-China relations are better than they’ve been in many years.

The Americas

Latin America

US SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Francis Donovan met with senior Cuban military leaders on the perimeter of the US Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to discuss “operational security matters.” This visit suggests that security of the US naval base is being addressed before potential US military intervention in Cuba.

The United States

A federal court reviewed the Trump administration’s plans to tighten requirements for mail-in ballots, including plans for a citizenship list, and didn’t enter a preliminary injunction against them.

The Pentagon reached a $4 billion deal with SpaceX to track aircraft from orbit, which would reduce the need to use Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft for this purpose.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin again threatened to remove all Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents from airports in sanctuary cities, which would halt processing of international arrivals at these airports. He claimed that he is not threatening to stop international flights, but without CBP agents to process arrivals, there would be a de facto halt to international flights arriving at these airports. While most sanctuary cities are led by Democrats, such a move would disrupt travel throughout the US.

The chemical tank in Garden Grove California, reported on in our last report, was stabilized, but a 3.4M-liter chemical tank imploded in Longview, Washington, killing 11 workers.

Africa

An estimated 30K Fulani militants are causing death and destruction in Nigeria, according to a US report on global religious freedom.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Epoch AI estimated that open-weight AIs are 4 months behind the state of the art. This is relevant for cyber and biorisk capabilities.

Anthropic launched Opus 4.8. The company also said that they “expect to be able to bring Mythos-class models to all our customers in the coming weeks,” as they are in the process of developing cyber safeguards. Anthropic’s valuation reached $965B after a $65B funding round, surpassing OpenAI’s $852B valuation.

Forecasters estimate that there is a 35% (20% to 51%) chance that Anthropic’s valuation will exceed that of OpenAI by at least 50% on June 1, 2027. While Anthropic may face some tailwinds over the coming year in its legal battle against designation as a supply chain risk by the US Department of Defense, the company is currently ahead of OpenAI in its capabilities and looks likely to maintain its lead. However, forecasters don’t expect Anthropic will strongly dominate over OpenAI by one year from now – although they don’t rule it out, and one forecaster thinks it’s more likely than not. OpenAI’s trailblazing also required giving too much equity to Microsoft, whereas Anthropic, having not done that, can compensate its employees better, giving it a strategic advantage.

Safety protections can reportedly be easily stripped from Meta and Google models, allowing responses to prompts involving bioweapons, malware and child exploitation.

OpenAI is creating a trusted access biorisk programme with a model called GPT-Rosalind. OpenAI gave some Japanese financial institutions access to “GPT-5.5”1. The OpenAI Foundation committed $250M to help workers and economies adapt to AI disruption. OpenAI also offered $2M in credits in exchange for equity for companies in the YC incubator program.

Illinois passed a bill that requires top AI companies to have third-party confirmation that they’re following safety standards. The governor says he’ll sign it.

British officials are considering whether to allow weapon systems to conduct lethal strikes without human approval. North Korea is reportedly testing AI-guided cruise missiles.

An investigation looked at vulnerabilities in OpenClaw. Since the software is widely deployed, connected to the internet, granted wide permissions, and itself created with heavy AI assistance, it is an attractive target for attacks and introduces correlated vulnerabilities.

The Pope published an encyclical on AI that states,

> “For this reason it is necessary to begin a shared discernment process for identifying the spiritual and cultural roots of ongoing transformations. If we focus only on contingencies, we risk letting the succession of emergencies dictate the direction of our path. We are living through a rapid phase of transition, a “change of era,” in which — while some are vying for the future of new technologies and others dedicate themselves to reflecting on the matter — most people are watching and waiting, observing from afar and merely hoping for the best. For this very reason, crucial questions impose themselves on our conscience and can no longer be avoided: Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves? What direction should we choose as a people and as a human community?”

Australia’s Assistant Minister for Productivity gave a talk on the economics of extinction, identifying AI as an extinction risk, citing estimates by Toby Ord and other experts.

Biorisk

There are now at least 228 suspected deaths in the Ebola outbreak; the rate at which reported mortality is increasing slowed over the past week. The outbreak continues to grow in a region with limited healthcare availability, limited Ebola testing capabilities, and substantial resistance among the public to health measures needed to slow the spread of the outbreak.

In response to the outbreak, Uganda closed its border with the DRC to most traffic.

An antiviral therapeutic is being trialed as a post exposure prophylactic for Ebola, i.e., as a medication that could reduce the chance that an exposed person will develop Ebola disease. Russian scientists announced the development of a vaccine that may offer protection against the causative species of the current Ebola outbreak.

The US wants to set up an Ebola quarantine facility and treatment center for US citizens with Ebola on its military base in Kenya. A Kenyan court initially suspended this plan, but Kenya’s government might still push it through.

Canada will require a three-week period of self-isolation for people traveling from Congo, Sudan and Uganda because of Ebola.

Our forecasters think the outbreak is likely to grow dramatically this year and estimate that there’s a 55% (35% to 70%) chance that there will be more than 20,000 confirmed and suspected cases of Ebola in the current outbreak by the end of 2026. However, in contrast with the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, our forecasters think that the current Bundibugyo ebolavirus outbreak that started in the DRC will probably not spread to cause sizable outbreaks in other countries, at least in part because travel between the outbreak region in the Eastern DRC and adjacent border countries, and between the border countries themselves, is more limited than was international travel between affected countries in West Africa. Forecasters estimate that there’s a 37% (20% to 50%) chance that at least two countries other than the DRC will have at least 1,000 confirmed and suspected cases of Bundibugyo ebolavirus by the end of 2026. However, one forecaster thinks this prospect is likely because the outbreak is likely to grow very large, and this forecaster views it as likely that some patients will travel to and spark outbreaks in areas in which disease surveillance is minimal.

Economy

Oil prices remain low, representing markets’ expectation of an end to the conflict in the relatively near future. On the other hand, warnings abound about whether early measures to dampen the price of oil will no longer suffice and the price will thus spike. For instance, Exxon Mobil warned on Thursday that physical oil prices will spike over the coming weeks as oil inventories fall to record low levels. Exxon Senior Vice President Neil Chapman said that, “We’re approaching unheard of inventory levels,” and that the price of physical Brent oil will spike to $150 to $160 per barrel, resulting in demand destruction.

Forecasters estimate that there is a 17% (10% to 51%) probability that the hourly Brent crude oil futures price will reach $150 by the end of July 2026.

Geopolitics: Trump said that a deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is near. Rubio called Cuba a leading state sponsor of terror and questioned whether diplomacy with the regime would work.

• Will the US carry out a strike on Cuba’s territory by the end of July 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 34% (20% to 50%) chance.

Biorisk: The number of suspected deaths in the current Ebola outbreak has exceeded 200.

• How many suspected deaths will there be due to the Ebola outbreak by the end of June and by the end of 2026? Our forecasters’ aggregate 90% confidence intervals are 870 to 18K and 3.5K to 200K respectively.

• Will there be more than 10 recorded cases of Ebola in the US and Europe by the end of 2026, including imported cases? Our forecasters think there’s a 68% (50% to 85%) chance.

Technology and AI: Trump held back from signing an executive order encouraging AI labs to have their models reviewed by the US government prior to release. OpenAI said that a general-purpose model has autonomously solved an Erdos problem, while DeepMind said one of its models has solved nine of them. Forecasters also discussed the short-term impact of advances in robotics on the jobs market:

• What will be the number of jobs in transportation and warehousing in the United States by the end of 2026, according to FRED? Our forecasters’ aggregate 90% confidence interval is 5.87M to 6.66M

Economy: Oil and natural gas prices opened lower on Monday following reports that a US-Iran deal could be close.

• Will shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz have returned to over 50% of pre-war levels on July 1, 2026? Our forecasters believe there’s a 47% (37% to 65%) chance.

Geopolitics

Middle East

Trump claimed that a deal with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is close, though he later said he wouldn’t rush into a bad deal amid criticism of the reported outlines of the deal from hawks in the Republican Party. These terms reportedly include a 60-day ceasefire extension and the end of the US blockade of Iranian ports in exchange for the reopening of the Strait. Other issues on the table that could be negotiated later include the unfreezing of Iranian assets, sanctions relief and limits on Iran’s nuclear program. One forecaster writes:

“Oil markets are really low right now, Brent is at 96.53 as I write this, suggesting that the market is again optimistic about an end to the conflict. If the strait suddenly reopens, there would be a backfill, which might temporarily bring the numbers up for a while.”

Pakistan deployed sixteen aircraft and thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia during the Iran War, which suggests that their mutual defense pact is having a real-world impact.

Europe

Russian fighter jets almost hit British reconnaissance aircraft over the Black Sea.

Russia struck Ukraine with one of its hypersonic ‘Oreshnik’ missiles.

Asia-Pacific

The US paused a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan, with US navy chief Hung Cao saying this is due to the Iran War. Forecasters generally think that Trump’s recent visit to China may have also influenced the decision, however.

During the US-China summit, Xi Jinping reportedly raised concerns about Japan’s “remilitarization”.

The Americas

Latin America

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Cuba is a “leading state sponsor of terrorism” and warned that the likelihood of a peaceful settlement with the country is “not high”. Our forecasters think there’s a 34% (20% to 50%) chance that the US will strike Cuban territory by the end of July 2026.

Former Cuban leader Raul Castro was indicted on murder charges in the US. Forecasters write:

“A lot of signs are pointing in this direction, but the timing is uncertain. The US wants to see fundamental change in governance in Cuba, but those in charge in Cuba have been unwilling to yield to diplomatic and economic pressure from the US. Rubio has recently been making the case for US intervention, and the US military has been making preparations for a possible intervention. Regime change in Cuba is of central importance to Rubio, and Rubio will probably get his way, as regime change in Cuba is in alignment with the idea of a US sphere of influence, and also with the idea of trying to prevent mass migration from Cuba as a consequence of its ongoing economic collapse, which would be Stephen Miller’s highest priority. Overall, it seems extremely likely to me that the US will intervene militarily in Cuba at some point this year, but military preparations and diplomacy take time, and intervention could well occur later in the year.”

“There is a lot of talk and it would not be surprising, but the time period is short. Cuba can prolong talks. I’m unsure whether it will be used as a diversion from Iran or whether the quagmire of the Iran war will serve as a cautionary tale.”

The United States

Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, announced her resignation from the position, citing a need to support her husband, who has a rare form of bone cancer.

An industrial tank in Garden Grove, California containing methyl methacrylate is leaking and could possibly explode. 40,000 people are under evacuation orders.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Trump held back from signing an executive order that would likely have encouraged but not mandated AI labs to have their frontier models reviewed by the US government prior to release, hours before he was expected to approve it. This was because of concerns that it would have held the US back in the “AI race” against China.

A general-purpose OpenAI model disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry, thereby solving one of Paul Erdos’ mathematical problems. Google DeepMind, meanwhile, said that their AlphaProof Nexus model autonomously solved nine of Erdos’ 353 open problems.

Anthropic hired OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy to lead a team looking into recursive self-improvement (RSI). The hire suggests that Anthropic may be ahead of OpenAI in this area. OpenAI is also hiring staff to work on RSI.

Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR) released a report on whether AI companies could lose control of their own AI agents, finding that the agents currently lack the ability to prevent humans from shutting them down or blocking their plans.

Elon Musk lost his case against OpenAI after the jury tossed out his lawsuit on the basis that the statute of limitations had expired. In January 2026, we estimated that there was a 69% chance that Musk would not get more than $40 billion in his case.

OpenAI is preparing for an Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Our forecasters also discussed the short-term impact of advances in robotics on the jobs market. Their aggregate 90% confidence interval for the number of jobs in transportation and warehousing in December 2026, according to FRED data, is 5.87M to 6.66M, from a current level of 6.58M. They expect economic fallout from the war in Iran to drive those numbers down slightly but don’t expect impacts from automation to significantly drive those numbers down so fast.

Biorisk

The number of suspected deaths in the recent Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda now exceeds 200. There are now over 900 confirmed and suspected Ebola cases in the Eastern DRC. Uganda has confirmed 7 cases, and the head of the Africa CDC said that 10 additional countries are at risk: Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia.

With a doubling time of approximately 14 days (range, 7-21 days), we can expect explosive growth in cases in the densely populated Eastern region of the DRC that has been the seat of conflict since the Rwandan genocide in 1994, most recently between the Congolese government and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.

While the DRC and Uganda are both experienced at controlling Ebola outbreaks, it will be much harder to control the outbreak in the Eastern DRC than in Uganda because of the ongoing conflict. Contact tracing is currently only reaching about a fifth of identified case contacts in the DRC. In addition, public resistance to medically safe burial practices needed to contain spread of the virus have erupted in attacks on at least three healthcare facilities in the DRC; 25 patients fled one hospital after two attacks over the weekend.

Containment is especially difficult without help from a vaccine as of yet. The current outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, for which no specific vaccine currently exists; existing vaccines against the Zaire ebolavirus may offer little to no protection against Ebola disease caused by the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, which is a different species of virus. Genetic data suggest that the outbreak resulted from a single spillover event into humans.

However, two vaccines against the Bundibugyo ebolavirus are in development and could be available within months. One antiviral and three antibody-based treatments are also in the works, and production of two existing diagnostic tests is being ramped up to expand testing capabilities. When one or more vaccines become available, ring vaccination will be an important strategy, alongside standard public health measures, for controlling the outbreak.

Overall, our forecasters’ aggregate 90% confidence intervals for the number of deaths of confirmed and suspected cases in the Ebola outbreak by the end of June and the end of 2026 are 870 to 18K and 3.5K to 200K respectively. We also think that there’s a 68% (50% to 85%) that there will be more than 10 recorded Ebola cases (imported or acquired) in the US and Europe by the end of 2026. In the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak, there were at least 19 such cases in 2014.

Forecasters discussed whether the outbreak could become a pandemic. On the one hand, the environment might be significantly worse than in 2014 due to further wars, and lack of appetite for US involvement, so we might get a substantially worse outbreak even if the virus stays mostly the same. On the other hand, it seems exceedingly unlikely that Ebola would mutate to become airborne. Forecasters write:

“While growth is seemingly vertical right now, that is in part due to more cases being brought to light since the outbreak was discovered. However, with a doubling rate of ~14 days (7-21 days), poor containment and population resistance to public health measures needed to reduce spread (e.g., at least 3 incidents with crowds at treatment centers so far), we can expect to see explosive growth. As of Sunday, there were about 230 deaths to date. A doubling time of 14 days would bring us to 1437 deaths by June 30, but I’ll project that higher, to 1800, as I think health workers are still discovering new pockets of disease in the community. Right now, growth is still very exponential. By the end of the year, I expect that the outbreak will largely be under control, although cases may well continue another 1-2 years. I’m not sure how large the outbreak could get, but I fear it could get very large.”

“One US doctor with a confirmed infection is currently being treated in Germany. It seems likely to me that at least 9 more people with Ebola will travel to Europe or the US by the end of the year, given the expected explosive growth in cases. During the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak, at least 9 confirmed cases were reported in Europe and 11 in the US (and possibly more). There are already more confirmed and suspected cases in the DRC and Uganda now than there were at the same time of year in West Africa in 2014, and all but one of the cases in the US and Europe during that outbreak occurred in 2014. It seems unlikely to me that this outbreak will be brought under control faster than that one, especially without a specific vaccine, but it is possible.”

“This is likely to be much worse than the 2014 West African epidemic because of even worse civil strife and distrust of doctors and aid workers. There currently isn’t a vaccine, and the US is unlikely to mobilize thousands of aid workers like they did in 2014. Undercounting will be an issue.”

A total of 12 cases and 3 deaths have been reported to the WHO as of May 24 in a hantavirus outbreak that began on a cruise ship. The director of the WHO said that more than 600 contacts are still being monitored in 30 countries, and a small number of high-risk contacts still remain to be found. One forecaster thinks that the outbreak is unlikely to grow substantially further.

Economy

Oil markets reacted favorably to the news that a peace deal could soon be reached between the US and Iran.

Iran claims it allowed 26 vessels to transit the Strait of Hormuz in a 24-hour period last week, while Lloyd’s List reported at least 54 transits last week: about double that seen in the previous week.

Taking this and the prospect of a US-Iran deal into account, our forecasters believe there’s a 47% (37% to 65%) that shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz will have returned to over 50% of pre-war levels on July 1, 2026. This would require the 7-day moving average to hit at least 52 according to the IMF’s PortWatch.

Technology and AI: The US and China discussed AI guardrails to mitigate risks from frontier AI models.

• Will the US and China publicly announce a bilateral AI arrangement before 2027 in which both governments state or clearly imply reciprocal expectations, commitments, rules, or norms governing AI development, deployment, security, or military use? Our forecasters believe there’s a 21% (15% to 35%) probability.

• Before 2027, will the US publicly support creating or moving toward an international AI governance body with an IAEA-like role that includes China? Our forecasters think there’s a 8.7% (5% to 15%) chance.

Biorisk: A new Ebola outbreak was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization.

• As of June 13, 2026, what will be the cumulative total number of recorded deaths linked to the Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak first confirmed in Ituri Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo, in May 2026? Our forecasters’ aggregate 50th percentile estimate is 208 (185 to 230).

Geopolitics: Donald Trump again warned Iran to agree to a peace deal quickly, and shared an AI-generated image of him pressing a red button with a mushroom cloud in the background.

• By June 18, 2026, will the United States or Israel carry out three or more strikes against targets inside Iran? Our forecasters think there’s a 63% (49% to 90%) chance.

Economy: Bond yields are rising around the world. A shortage of Group III base oils resulting from the Iran war is expected to cause shortages and price increases in markets for industrial lubricants, including motor oil, in the coming weeks and months.

• What will be the highest BLS urban consumer price index value for Motor oil, coolant, and fluids for any month from April 2026 through July 2026? Our forecasters’ aggregate 50th percentile estimate is 598 (540 to 834), relative to a May 2026 value of 476.

Geopolitics

Middle East

Trump and Iran rejected each other’s peace proposals. Trump later warned Iran to agree to a peace deal “or there won’t be anything left of them”, and subsequently shared an AI-generated image of him pressing a red button with a mushroom cloud in the background. Iran, in turn, said that it would respond to the “slightest mistake” by the US and submitted its latest peace proposal to Pakistan. Our forecasters think there’s a 63% (49% to 90%) probability that the US or Israel will carry out three or more strikes against targets in Iran by June 18, 2026.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE carried out previously unreported attacks on Iran, making them direct combatants in the regional conflict.

Europe

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth cancelled the deployment of 4,000 troops to Poland.

Kyiv launched 1300 drone strikes around Moscow this weekend, hitting oil refineries and industrial plants. This was the largest attack by Kyiv on the Moscow region, and it is significant because it shows that even the most heavily defended areas are vulnerable to Ukraine’s attacks.

The Americas

Latin America

The CIA director reportedly travelled to Cuba to meet with Cuban officials to discuss intelligence cooperation, the Cuban economy and security issues. The meeting likely involved CIA officials to pressure Cuba to reduce intelligence and military cooperation with China and Russia; US officials demanded that Cuba cannot be a “safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere“. That the publicly reported meeting occurred highlights the increasingly dire energy situation in Cuba, which is causing power outages and economic collapse.

One of the Cuban officials that US officials met with was Rodríguez Castro, a grandson of Raúl Castro, Cuba’s former leader, even as Raúl Castro himself faces potential indictment in the US. Rodríguez Castro has previously met secretly with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio as well, which suggests that Rodríguez Castro is becoming an increasingly powerful power broker in Cuba and may also be someone US officials feel that they can work with in their push towards regime change in Cuba.

Our sources from and in Cuba write:

Small protests have become commonplace in Havana. The government used to be extremely wary of any public dissent, responding with quick repression anytime a protest arose. Now the strategy has shifted: they let the protests happen, then send the DTI (Departamento Técnico Investigativo) afterward to pick up the people who started them.

One consequence of the government’s loosening grip is that blackouts in the capital are now nearly as long as in the interior. Havana has gone up to 30 hours without electricity; parts of the countryside, up to 72. On average, Havana and provincial capitals get around 3–4 hours of power a day. The rest of the country gets about 2. The Minister of Electricity and Mines appeared on state television and said the situation is going to get worse, and there is nothing they can do about it for now. The government is shifting focus to “extracting and using domestic Cuban oil”, but it’s too high in sulfur content to be a practical solution.

It has become more common to see solar panels on regular houses. Some are imported by private businesses or individuals; others come through state employers, which in Cuba spans nearly all industries, not just what other countries would consider “government work“.

Most universities are stopped or partially stopped. The exceptions are the Universidades de Ciencias Médicas, which continue to operate. There are no graduation ceremonies expected. There is no expectation of resuming regular academic activities by September, which means no one sees improvement on the horizon.

Everything that isn’t a core economic activity has shut down. MiPyMEs (small and medium private businesses) are still operating. Research centers are stopped. There are rumors that foreign investments and donations originally directed to those centers are being redirected to purchase basic essentials for the general population.

The United States

A new US military wargame series began by simulating a nuclear weapon in orbit.

Donald Trump shared an AI-generated image of him walking next to an alien.

The Supreme Court rejected Virginia Democrats’ congressional district map, dealing another blow to the Democratic party in legal battles over redistricting in advance of the midterm and presidential elections.

Asia-Pacific

Trump and other US officials visited China. Following the visit, Trump warned Taiwan against formally declaring independence.

Africa

Somalia is facing its worst-ever drought, whose effects are exacerbated by the Trump administration’s aid cuts and the Iran War.

The IPC is warning about acute food insecurity and famine in Sudan:

Although the latest IPC analysis did not identify areas currently experiencing Famine (IPC Phase 5), conditions remain extremely concerning. The analysis shows that nearly 135,000 people are facing Catastrophic food insecurity (IPC Phase 5) across 14 hotspots in Darfur, South Darfur, and South Kordofan are at risk of famine in the coming months. More than five million people are classified under IPC Phase 4 (Emergency) and a further 14 million people are in IPC Phase 3 (Crisis). Conditions are expected to deteriorate further during the lean season between June and September.

Technology and artificial intelligence

During Trump’s visit to Beijing, the US and China discussed AI guardrails to mitigate risks from the most powerful AIs. Trump said they talked about possibly working together on this, though nothing concrete was agreed. One forecaster suggests this is a candidate for the most positive news story of the year so far.

Our forecasters think there’s a 21% (15% to 35%) chance that the US and China will publicly announce a bilateral AI arrangement before 2027 in which both governments state or clearly imply reciprocal expectations, commitments, rules, or norms governing AI development, deployment, security, or military use, and a 8.7% (5% to 15%) probability that the US will publicly support creating or moving toward an international AI governance body with an IAEA-like role that includes China before 2027.

On cyberattacks: OpenAI launched “Daybreak”, its equivalent of Anthropic’s Project Glasswing. Unlike Anthropic, OpenAI is offering access to its GPT-5.5-Cyber to some European firms. Google disrupted hackers who attempted to use AI to exploit a previously unknown major vulnerability. Palo Alto Networks said that using Mythos Preview and GPT-5.5-Cyber, they found 7 times as many vulnerabilities as the previous month. The Pentagon is using Mythos to patch vulnerabilities across US government networks.

And: Pope Leo set up an AI study group. The US Commerce Department deleted from its website details about the government’s recent deals with Google, xAI, and Microsoft on pre-deployment testing. Elon Musk’s attorney discussed the existential risks arising from artificial intelligence in the Musk-OpenAI case.

Biorisk

An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by the World Health Organization. So far, there have been 80 deaths and over 300 suspected cases.

Forecasters note that no specific tests, therapies or vaccines are available for the particular species of Ebola virus that is causing the outbreak; existing Ebola vaccines are unlikely to offer much, if any, protection against this species but will be provided if they are found to be useful. Along with the fact that the virus is spreading in a large, dense, urban border area, a potential inability to contain the outbreak with ring vaccination could make the outbreak harder to contain than the 2013-2016 outbreak of the Zaire species of Ebola virus.

A major lesson of the 2013-2016 outbreak was that it is important to put resources into containing an urban Ebola disease outbreak early; with limited US funding for global public health, international resources will be strained. We are concerned about the possibility that infected individuals may travel to large cities within Africa and seed multiple urban outbreaks, as occurred during the 2013-2016 outbreak. We also wonder about the possibility that an mRNA or other vaccine could be developed for the virus causing this outbreak. An mRNA vaccine could likely be produced rapidly but might face regulatory hurdles to approval (in the US) and would likely require international backing.

Our forecasters’ aggregate 50th percentile estimate for how many deaths there will be on June 13, 2026 is 208 (185 to 230).

Economy

In the US, the S&P 500 is reaching new record highs, driven by AI-related stock price increases, while consumer confidence fell to its lowest level ever indexed. The unsettling and growing disparity between Main Street and Wall Street likely reflects, in part, the growing share of wealth accruing to tech stock owners as AI becomes an increasingly important engine of economic growth in the US.

Global sovereign bond yields have risen to multi-year highs. On Friday, yields on 30-year US bonds rose above 5%, to their highest levels since 2007. German 10-year bond yields reached their highest levels in 15 years. Japanese 30-year bond yields surged to their highest levels since they were first sold in 1999. The growing weakness in bond markets reflects increasing inflation risks resulting from the Iran war, in addition to rising government debt levels worldwide. Rising bond yields in Japan could start to pull some Japanese investment abroad back home and thus push global bond yields up further.

In a unanimous ruling, the US Supreme Court ruled that a trucking freight broker could be sued for arranging freight shipments using trucking companies they hired negligently, e.g., ignoring red flags. This ruling upends the freight trucking industry and could push many smaller motor carriers and freight brokers out of business and many drivers out of trucking. Insurance costs for brokers are expected to increase by a factor of 5 to 10, and some brokers may not be able to obtain insurance at all. Truckload spot rates are spiking. At least some companies with spotty track records can no longer get loads to drive as brokers are already making more careful selections. Increasing trucking freight prices are likely to drive additional inflation faced by both producers and consumers.

A shortage of synthetic industrial lubricants is anticipated to start affecting the US and Europe over the coming weeks. Production at the Shell Pearl GTL facility in Ras Laffan, Qatar was halted after the facility was struck by Iran in March. The Shell Pearl facility, together with far smaller facilities in the UAE and Bahrain, produced 20-30% of the world’s supply of Group III base oils. These base oils are used in a variety of applications, including synthetic motor oils and automatic transmission fluid. Lower-quality base oils can be substituted for Group III base oils in some of these applications better than in others. Shortages of products containing Group III base oils can be expected to start appearing by June and July, as retailers face losses of new supplies; price increases are expected, and some products are likely to be reformulated.

Geopolitics: Donald Trump called Iran’s response to the US’ latest peace proposal “totally unacceptable”. Vladimir Putin hinted that the Russia-Ukraine war may be nearing an end.

• Will Russia and Ukraine end the war with a signed agreement by the end of 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 35% (25% to 50%) chance.

Technology and AI: The White House is reportedly considering introducing an executive order mandating that the government reviews new AI models before they are released to the public.

• Will the US Federal Government through executive order or legislation regulate the release of all new AI models from frontier laboratories by November 3rd, 2026? Our forecasters believe there’s a 32% (27% to 40%) probability.

Economy: The S&P 500’s rebound since late March has been driven by the smallest number of stocks on record, namely a handful of Big Tech stocks.

• Will the tech companies Alphabet, Nvidia, Amazon, Broadcom, and Apple account for at least 65% of overall growth of the S&P 500 in Q4 of 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 33% (15% to 60%) chance.

Biorisk: Passengers who were on the cruise ship associated with the hantavirus outbreak are being evacuated to their home countries, where they are typically being assessed in quarantine facilities before being allowed to return home if they are deemed “low risk”.

• Will the WHO classify the current hantavirus outbreak as a PHEIC (Public Health Emergency of International Concern) by the end of 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 0.35% (~0% to 5%) chance.

Climate/nature: A super El Niño event is looking increasingly likely this year.

• Will extreme weather be the cause of at least 10,000 deaths in the US in 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 2% (1% to 5%) chance.

Geopolitics

Middle East

On Sunday, Trump rejected the latest Iranian peace proposal, calling it “totally unacceptable”. A ceasefire between the US and Iran continues to officially hold, as both countries continue to exchange demands with a hope of inching towards a peace agreement. The Strait of Hormuz remains nearly closed. Trump announced Project Freedom to escort ships out of the Persian Gulf; days later, the project was aborted, in part because Saudi Arabia refused to let the US use its air base for the operation. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait later lifted restrictions on US use of their air bases and airspace. The US attacked military sites in Bandar Abbas and Qeshm in Iran in retaliation for Iranian strikes against US warships. Iran also carried out strikes against the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar.

Europe

On Saturday, Putin said that the Ukraine war “is coming to an end.” Zelensky and Putin agreed to Trump’s request for a three-day ceasefire around Russia’s annual commemoration of Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in WWII; Zelensky agreed to the ceasefire in order to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war. Russia had prepared defenses against the prospect of Ukrainian drone attacks during the parade. Putin has also been increasing his security amid fears of assassination attempts, particularly by drones, and has been spending more time in underground bunkers. He is reportedly increasingly isolated and detached from civilian life. After falling territorial gains in Ukraine over the past several months, Russia suffered a net loss of territory in Ukraine in April.

Our forecasters think there’s a 35% (25% to 50%) chance that the Russia-Ukraine war ends with a signed agreement between the two parties by the end of 2026.

The Americas

Latin America

The US military is flying more surveillance and reconnaissance flights near Cuba, as was seen before US military action in Venezuela and Iran. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US SOUTHCOM commander Gen. Francis Donovan shook hands in front of a map of Cuba at SOUTHCOM headquarters.

The United States

Defense contractor Raytheon received $441.6M to deliver Patriot missiles in 5 months, an extremely short timeframe. The US has been depleting stockpiles of missiles in the Iran war.

More than a quarter of the Department of Justice’s lawyers have been fired or quit since Trump started his second term.

White House border czar Tom Homan told DHS officials and industry representatives that, “Mass deportations are coming.”

Asia-Pacific

Taiwan’s legislature approved a package of defense spending after repeated delays by opposition parties, but only for US weapons rather than domestically produced equipment. The US said that it regards such delays as a “concession” to China.

Some Chinese analysts are saying that China thinks the US has been weakened by the Iran War, particularly because the US has used up a significant portion of its munitions.

In its newly revised constitution, North Korea formally dropped its previous goal of reuniting with South Korea.

Technology and artificial intelligence

The White House is reportedly considering introducing an executive order which would require government review and oversight for AI models, though some reports suggest that only a minority of administration officials support the idea. Our forecasters think there’s a 32% chance (27% to 40%) that this will happen by November 3, 2026, the date of the US midterm elections.

Officials from the US and China are reportedly considering putting AI cooperation on the agenda for the Trump-Xi Summit in Beijing.

OpenAI is expanding access to its GPT-5.5 model with weaker restrictions to more cyberdefenders. Less than 1% of the vulnerabilities identified by Anthropic’s Mythos model are estimated to have been patched. On the other hand, reports of Mythos’ power may have been exaggerated.

This briefing usually focuses on high saliency items, but from our internal tooling, there is just a lot of stuff happening, partnerships, initiatives, cyberattacks, releases.

And: Anthropic says that Claude’s propensity to blackmail in certain testing scenarios can be mitigated by giving the AI positive fictional stories about AIs behaving admirably in training data, and explaining the deeper principles underlying good behavior. UK-based staff at Google DeepMind voted to form a union in an attempt to put pressure on the company to drop its military contracts.

Economy

The S&P 500’s rebound since late March has been driven by the smallest number of stocks on record, namely a handful of Big Tech stocks. Our forecasters think there’s a 33% chance (15% to 60%) that the tech companies Alphabet, Nvidia, Amazon, Broadcom, and Apple account for at least 65% of overall growth of the S&P 500 in Q4 of 2026.

Chevron’s CEO said that in a matter of weeks, the effects of physical shortages of oil will start to appear around the world, as strategic reserves of oil and natural gas are drawn down. In a Bloomberg interview, a Carlyle senior advisor said that he expects European oil storage tanks to be empty by “sometime in the month of May” and US tanks, “somewhere in that July 4th period.” US gasoline inventories are at their lowest seasonal level in over a decade.

Morgan Stanley projects spending on AI by the top 5 labs to be $1.1T in 2027 – more than the current US defense budget.

Some fertilizer is being exported from the UAE over land by trucks.

Airlines around the world are cutting and canceling flights, raising prices and lowering their outlooks.

The global helium market is expected to face shortages through the rest of the decade.

Biorisk

Passengers on the cruise ship associated with a Hantavirus outbreak are being evacuated to their home countries, with more individuals associated with the ship having tested positive since last week’s update. In Britain and the United States, they will initially stay in quarantine facilities before being allowed to leave within days if they are deemed low risk, which in the US appears to mean that they don’t recall being in close contact with any of the other passengers. In Britain, anyone who doesn’t test positive or show symptoms will still be asked, but not mandated, to self-isolate for 45 days at home.

At least two of our forecasters think that the passengers should be mandated to stay in a quarantine facility for weeks, given that the incubation period of the virus is up to six weeks and that even a tiny probability of a pandemic, or of spread to other people, should be taken seriously given the potential consequences.

The World Health Organization said that limited human-to-human transmission is a possibility in the outbreak; we mentioned this possibility last week. This has likely been observed before with the Andes virus (the causative hantavirus in this outbreak), most notably following a birthday party and a subsequent wake in Argentina in 2018-19, though some researchers still think that co-exposure to rodents can’t be ruled out even in that cluster. However, other clusters involving the deaths of healthcare workers do suggest that limited human-to-human transmission can occur.

Spread via droplets and saliva is considered the most likely mode of limited human-to-human transmission in part because healthcare workers, including those not wearing PPE, generally haven’t been infected when diarrhea or vomit have been involved. Close contact is likely necessary, but some reports from the cruise ship suggest that it may not have to be prolonged and that being in the same enclosed space as someone who was infected could be sufficient for transmission in some cases.

Our forecasters think there’s a 0.35% chance (~0% to 5%) that the WHO will declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) related to the hantavirus outbreak by the end of 2026. Currently, it does not appear that the virus has undergone meaningful genetic changes. One forecaster notes that political and communication considerations could play a role as to whether it’s declared a PHEIC.

Nature and climate

A super El Niño is looking increasingly likely. Our forecasters think there’s a 2% chance (1% to 5%) that extreme weather will be the cause of at least 10,000 deaths in the US in 2026. Deaths associated with extreme weather are typically in the hundreds in the US. But a historical precedent exists in the 1900 Galveston hurricane, which killed 6K-12K people in the US, or in a longer list of historical cyclones which killed hundreds of thousands in Asia.

One of our forecasters thinks the associated temperature anomaly raises the risk of a California megastorm and megaflood that could cause a large number of deaths in the US.

More speculatively, another forecaster notes that for those with very high probabilities of AI doom, anthropic reasoning might increase the chance of observing a superstorm in San Francisco/California specifically that significantly disrupts the AI industry this winter, conditioning on humanity’s arguendo unlikely survival. This perhaps suggests a strategy of playing to your outs.

Executive summary

Geopolitics: Iran unveiled a fresh peace proposal, but Trump was not satisfied with it and says that Iran has not paid a big enough price for the war to end yet. The US said it would guide stranded vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, but Iran warned it could attack US naval vessels in response.

• Will Congress put any constraints on the war in Iran by June 1, 2026, using the War Powers Act? Our forecasters think there’s a 6% (5% to 7%) chance.

• Will there be a new conflict in Africa that kills over 100k people before May 1, 2027? Our forecasters think there’s a 17% (15% to 30%) chance.

Technology and AI: OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 was found to have a similar level of performance to Anthropic’s Mythos model on the UK AISI’s suite of cyber tasks. Unlike Mythos, it has been publicly deployed.

• Will OpenAI de-deploy GPT-5.5, making it unavailable to the general public, before 2027 because of its use in cyberattacks? Our forecasters believe there’s a 7% (5% to 8%) chance.

Economy: Brent crude oil prices reached a new war-related high, as did gas prices in the US. Outgoing Fed Chair Jerome Powell says he will stay on the institution’s Board of Governors. The UAE withdrew from the OPEC cartel.

• What will be the highest Brent crude oil price in 2026? Our forecasters’ 50th percentile estimates average $137 ($126 to $175), for Trading Economics’ hourly average.

Geopolitics

Middle East

Iran submitted a fresh, 14-point peace proposal to the US via Pakistan, but Trump was “not satisfied” with it. He later said that Iran has “not paid a big enough price” for the war to end yet.

The US said it would begin guiding vessels that have been stranded in the Gulf region through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, in turn, warned that any US navy vessels participating in such an operation could be attacked and claimed to have hit an American warship in the Strait, which the US denied.

Israel sent a version of its “Iron Beam” laser system to the UAE to help intercept Iranian missiles and drones. This is significant because it is an explicit defense cooperation between Israel and an Arab state. It is also significant because the system is very new, and Israel is unlikely to have enough of it to cover its own territory.

The Americas

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum opposes extraditing a Mexican state governor unless sufficient evidence is provided for why he was indicted in the US on drug trafficking charges. The governor in question, Ruben Rocha, has temporarily stepped down.

Trump again suggested that the US could try to bring about regime change in Cuba once the Iran War has concluded: “On the way back from Iran, we’ll have one of our big - maybe the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier - the biggest in the world, we’ll have that come in, stop about 100 yards offshore, and they’ll say, ‘Thank you very much. We give up’.”

The United States

The US passed the 60-day mark since the start of the war with Iran. According to the War Powers Act, the President must terminate hostilities within 60 days unless Congress declares war. On Friday, Trump suggested that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional. Secretary of Defense Hegseth had earlier said that the “60-day clock was effectively paused when Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran in April.”

Our forecasters think there’s a 6% (5% to 7%) chance that Congress will use the War Powers Act to put any constraints on the war in Iran before June 2026 and overall do not expect Republicans to meaningfully push back against the executive branch.

The US Supreme Court’s ruling on Louisiana v Callais gives some advantage to Republican redistricting and weakens the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by making majority-minority districts subject to much greater scrutiny. Polymarket perhaps moved +5% on Republican control in the Senate after the midterms after the ruling, though it’s hard to establish causality.

Europe

Following criticism from German Chancellor Frederich Merz that Iran was “humiliating” the US and that he didn’t see an exit strategy, Trump ordered the withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany. The US currently has 35,000 to 38,000 troops stationed there. Trump said on Saturday that he would “go a lot further” with additional cuts.

Rheinmetall’s CEO claims that Germany’s capacity to produce conventional ammunition now exceeds that of the US.

Africa

Tuareg and jihadist rebels in Mali took control of a key military outpost in the north of the country, in a setback for the country’s Russia-backed ruling junta.

Our forecasters think there’s a 17% chance (15% to 30%) that a new conflict will break out in Africa that results in the death of at least 100,000 people before May 1, 2027. A recent instance of such a conflict is the 2020-2022 Tigray war.

Technology and artificial intelligence

The UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) found that OpenAI’s newly released model, GPT-5.5, reaches a similar level of performance to Anthropic’s Mythos Preview on its suite of cyber evaluations.

Unlike Mythos, GPT-5.5 has been publicly deployed. Our forecasters think there’s a 7% probability (5% to 8%) that OpenAI will have to “de-deploy” GPT-5.5, making it unavailable to the general public, before 2027.

One forecaster writes:

It does seem plausible to me that Mythos-level hacking capabilities do give you the ability to collapse society, via financial institutions, but also probably through other pathways.

There are three pieces here that I’m decently confident in:

1. Mythos is a super duper hacker

2. If Mythos was generally available today we probably would be cooked

3. GPT-5.5 is basically as good as Mythos at hacking (and it is publicly deployed)

I really feel like I should say 1+1+1=3, therefore we’re cooked. But I hesitate. My generator for hesitation is like, maybe I’ve missed something, and especially the thought “Surely OpenAI wouldn’t do something this insane”, but I think this is a terrible heuristic. And just generally the feeling that bad things don’t happen very often.

But there have been previous times when forecasters have looked at the decisions people in positions of power are making and noted that 1+1+1=3 (we’re cooked), e.g., with Covid. I remember it well. But I feel pretty confused and uneasy about this.

The opposite case might be that Mythos practical cybersecurity prowess has been greatly exaggerated, or that society will end up being fairly resilient to cyberattacks as a result of having good enough practices, bad actors not having enough compute, and the threshold to causing harm to civilization as a whole being fairly high.

The White House opposed Anthropic’s plan to expand access to Mythos to an additional 70 companies; this would allow more actors to patch software but also introduce security risks and reduce the company’s ability to serve the model to the USG. Germany’s central bank has urged the EU to seek access to Mythos, reporting that banks are in “difficult waters” without access to the model.

The US’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has proposed to cut government bug-patching deadlines from 3 weeks to 3 days.

The Pentagon reached deals with seven tech companies, including Nvidia, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Amazon, to use their AI-related services in its classified networks. One forecaster wonders whether the decision to use the technologies of multiple companies may reflect a desire not to concentrate too much power in the hands of one company or model.

Ubuntu, a popular operating system, suffered a cyberattack, with the “Islamic Cyber Resistance in Iraq” claiming responsibility.

US Senator Bernie Sanders is continuing to speak out on AI extinction risk. He held a panel with American and Chinese AI scientists, Max Tegmark, David Krueger, Xue Lan and Zeng Yi, to discuss the risks posed by AI and the need for international cooperation.

EU countries and lawmakers failed to reach a deal on weakened EU AI Act rules.

Ukraine’s defense ministry said that 96% of Russian casualties in March were caused by drones.

The New York Times reports that some bioscientists are getting increasingly worried by biorisks arising from AI.

Economy

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced its withdrawal from OPEC and the wider OPEC+ framework on Tuesday. The UAE and Saudi Arabia were the main OPEC partners with significant excess capacity. Although previously more coordinated, the UAE has been pursuing its own foreign policy strategy, for instance, supporting its own proxies in Yemen, Sudan and Somalia. Although the UAE has one third the population of Saudi Arabia, its economy is one half as large, and its oil diversification strategy has been more successful than Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 attempts. But the UAE’s banking system has been in trouble as a result of the war with Iran, and it recently asked the US for a currency swap line, meaning it can access dollars directly without selling its treasuries and stocks.

Western economies are increasingly going to face consequences of the Strait of Hormuz closure. Demand destruction is expected as oil stores are drawn down and consumption must come into line with an approximately 10% reduction in oil shipments from the Persian Gulf.

The price of Brent crude oil reached a new war-related high of $120.65 on an hourly basis. Our forecasters’ 50th percentile estimates for where the Brent crude oil price will peak in 2026 average $137 ($126 to $175). This will be resolved according to Trading Economics’ hourly average.

US petrol and diesel prices reached a new war-related high this week. US airlines are struggling with high jet-fuel prices; budget airline Spirit Airlines went out of business. The University of Michigan’s US Consumer Sentiment Index dropped to a historic low in April 2026.

Outgoing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said that he would stay on the institution’s Board of Governors for the time being, and “will not leave the board” until an investigation into the renovation of the central bank’s headquarters “is well and truly over with transparency and finality”. In doing so, he will deprive Trump of the chance to appoint an additional member of the board who would follow his wishes on interest rate decisions. This also deprives Trump of a majority on the board, of which 3 out of 7 are currently Trump appointees, not including Powell. Trump’s nominee to be the next chair will be replacing Stephen Miran, who is well aligned with Trump on monetary policy, so the balance is not likely to shift in the near term.

Trump said he would raise tariffs on EU trucks and cars to 25% from 15%, accusing the bloc of failing to comply with a US-EU deal.

Biorisk

Three people on a cruise ship have died, and one has been confirmed to have died of hantavirus. Others are sick. The ship left Argentina in March. This is significant because there is some evidence that one species of hantavirus found in Argentina and Chile, the Andes Virus, is capable of limited human-to-human transmission. Cruise ships provide close quarters that are ideal for disease spread; any outbreak will be very limited.

Nature and climate

With a strong El Niño expected to start in the coming months, statistics from past years suggest that we can expect to see half as many major hurricanes and about 40% fewer hurricanes overall in the coming Atlantic hurricane season.

Geopolitics: Another round of peace talks between the US and Iran failed to materialise, with Iran only committing to indirect talks in Islamabad and US negotiators cancelling their trip to Pakistan.

• Will direct or indirect US-Iran negotiations, with representatives from both nations present in the same country, resume before June 2026? Our forecasters think there’s an 80% (75% to 85%) chance.

• Will the US end its naval blockade of Iranian ports before June 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 47% (33% to 70%) chance.

• Will US strikes on Iranian territory, excluding strikes on boats, ships and waterborne drones, resume before June 2026? Our forecasters believe there’s a 46% (40% to 55%) probability.

Technology and AI: Unauthorized users reportedly gained access to Anthropic’s Mythos model.

• Will Anthropic release a model to the general public that outperforms Mythos Preview on over 50% of examined benchmarks including the words “agentic” and “coding” before 2027? Our forecasters think there’s a 73% (51% to 90%) chance.

Economy: The Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed. Trump’s nominee to be Federal Reserve Chair looks set to get a Senate hearing after the Department of Justice dropped its case against current Chair Powell.

• Will shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz have returned to over 50% of pre-war levels on November 3, 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 68% (65% to 75%) chance.

Climate and nature: As the chance of a strong El Niño event in 2026-2027 increases, we are looking at the risks of a California superflood and a Southern African famine.

Geopolitics

Middle East

Another round of negotiations in Islamabad between the US and Iran failed to materialise. Our forecasters think there’s an 80% chance (75% to 85%) that direct or indirect negotiations between the two sides will resume before June 2026. This would have to involve representatives of both nations being present in the same country.

Some reports suggested that Iran’s injured Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, forbade direct talks with the US. One of our forecasters thinks that Khamenei is leading to a very limited extent but is largely under the thumb of the IRGC, and that the IRGC’s Commander-in-Chief Ahmad Vahidi now has more power than Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament. Several security and policy officials paint a picture of Iran’s current governing structure as a “politburo style system” governed by current and former IRGC officials, together with Mojtaba Khamenei.

When asked about when the Iran War would end, Trump said, “don’t rush me”, and mentioned that the Iraq, Vietnam, WW2, and Korea wars took much longer.

Meanwhile, the US naval blockade of Iranian ports continues, and Iran has fired on and launched drone strikes against American vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. Our forecasters think there’s a 46.5% chance (33% to 70%) that the blockade will end before June 2026.

Israel and Lebanon agreed to extend the ceasefire in Lebanon, but it has already been violated on a number of occasions, with both Israel and Hezbollah accusing the other of failing to abide by it.

Asia

Some US officials argue that the US has used up so many munitions in the Iran War that it would be unable to execute plans to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack in the “near term”. A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies similarly suggests that so many weapons have been used in Iran that the US would not have enough in the event of a large conflict in the near future. One forecaster comments that this very slightly raises their probability of a Chinese invasion or blockade of Taiwan in the next year.

A Taiwanese minister made a rare visit to the disputed South China Sea island of Itu Aba.

US and Filipino forces held their largest ever military drills, drawing anger from China.

Russia and North Korea connected a road bridge ahead of its planned opening this summer.

China banned the export of dual-use items to seven European entities that China claims have played a role in arms sales to Taiwan or “colluded with Taiwan”..

The Americas

The United States

Trump and other members of his administration were targeted by a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Trump signed an executive order that classifies electrical transformers and other equipment important for the electric grid as essential to national defense and called for the Defense Production Act to be used to strengthen the grid. Most large transformers are manufactured abroad, creating a supply chain risk that this order aims to address.

And: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to spend millions of dollars to buy smart glasses for immigration agents. The Lancet writes that the CDC is on the brink of collapse. The DOJ is pushing to denaturalize about 300 citizens. It will also permit execution by firing squad and by single-drug lethal injection. Trump’s net approval rating hit a new record low.

The Rest of the Americas

Under pressure from the US, Mexico’s President Sheinbaum has doubled down on military operations, high-profile arrests and extraditions to decapitate the leadership of drug cartels. Her government has extradited nearly 100 suspected cartel members to the US since 2025. Cartels have fragmented and retaliated.

The US may consider dropping its support for UK ownership of the Falkland Islands in favor of Argentina’s claims, reportedly in retaliation for a perceived lack of sufficient help from the UK with US military operations in Iran.

Europe

Ukraine is making defense deals with several Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, as the country broadens its support beyond the US and Europe.

Economy

The US Department of Justice dropped its investigation of the Chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. Key Congressional Republicans had pledged to stall the confirmation process for Trump’s nominee to be the next chair if the case was not dropped, so this clears the way for that process to now begin.

The Strait of Hormuz remains nearly closed. Global crude oil inventories are projected to reach their lowest levels on record even if the Strait of Hormuz were to fully reopen this week. Our forecasters think there’s a 68% chance (65% to 75%) that shipping traffic in the Strait will have returned to at least 50% of pre-war levels on November 3, 2026, the date of the US midterm elections. The 7-day average according to the IMF’s PortWatch would have to be at least 52.

An analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that US GDP would fall by approximately 4%, or $100B per year, if the US were to leave NATO.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Unauthorized users reportedly gained access to Anthropic’s Mythos model. On the question of whether Anthropic will grant the general public access to a model that outperforms Mythos Preview before 2027 on over 50% of of the benchmarks they showcase which include the words “agentic” and “coding”, our forecasters estimate a 73% probability (51% to 90%).

With the help of Mythos, Mozilla reportedly found 271 vulnerabilities in its Firefox web browser. Many banks are pushing for access to the model.

OpenAI launched GPT-5.5, which they say is their smartest AI. They report that gains are particularly notable in “agentic coding, computer use, knowledge work and early scientific research.…” They also announced a biorisk bug bounty for the model. OpenAI briefed federal agencies, state governments and FVEY countries on the capabilities of GPT-5.4-cyber. Qwen, Kimi and DeepSeek also saw new model releases.

The Pentagon is seeking $54B for an AI-enabled autonomous drone warfare program, aiming to increase funding more than 200x for its Defense Autonomous Warfare Group.

The White House pushed out Anthropic researcher Collin Burns from the directorship of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI, formerly the AI Safety Institute) after just 4 days. The WSJ reports that the White House has been lobbying against AI regulation in at least 6 Republican states.

Google will reportedly invest $40 billion in Anthropic, $30 billion of which is conditional on meeting performance targets. Amazon is investing $5B now and will invest up to $20B more later.

The Democratic governor of Maine, Janet Mills, vetoed a bill imposing a moratorium on data center construction in the state. Her rationale was that it would have halted an ongoing project in the state.

Anthropic told a federal appeals court that it can’t control its own models once they are deployed for military purposes. In other words, they don’t have a “killswitch”. Their aim is to counter the Pentagon’s claim that the company could interfere in military operations, which could justify labelling them a “supply-chain risk”. But this also diminishes the degree of monitoring, oversight and error correction they can employ, in tension with their stated values.

Nature and climate

Previously we reported about the likelihood of a strong El Niño event later this year:

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is forecasting a 61% chance of an El Niño weather pattern, and a 25% chance of a “super” El Niño. If an El Niño event were to start this fall, there could be an approximately 4% risk of a “megastorm” and “megaflood” occurring in California over the following year; some estimates place the damage it would cost at nearly $1T, or 4% of US GDP, more than the damage caused by the Great Flood of 1862. The risk has been increasing because of the rise in global temperatures. A super El Niño would also be expected to have worldwide effects on temperatures and precipitation.

Now, the latest climate ensemble model from NOAA, with data from April 17-26, shows an even wilder oscillation, reaching a 3°C shift or higher in the Niño 3.4 spot. This shifts one forecaster’s probabilities of a megastorm/megaflood in California in November-March to 6-7%, from our earlier 4%.

As El Niño events are a primary driver of elevated risks of serious droughts in Southern Africa, it is also looking increasingly likely that next year will bring drought and famine to parts of Southern Africa. The far weaker El Niño event in 2023-2024 resulted in widespread drought and the worst hunger crisis in decades in several southern African countries. An extreme El Niño event starting later this year would be expected to raise the risk of drought and hunger striking the already vulnerable region again. This risk might also compound as a blockade of the Hormuz strait reduces worldwide fertilizer shipments.

Miscellaneous

Fifteen giant agricultural drones, typically used for spraying pesticides, were stolen in the US state of New Jersey. Some fear that if they fall into the hands of terrorists, they could be used to carry out a chemical or biological weapons attack.

Geopolitics: The US seized an Iranian cargo ship while enforcing its blockade of Iranian ports. Iran says it will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until the blockade ends.

• Will there still be ongoing hostilities between the US and Iran on November 3, 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 20% (5% to 40%) chance.

• Will the Democrats take the Senate in the US midterms? Our forecasters believe there’s a 41% (10% to 63%) probability.

• Will enough US states join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact for it to reach 270 Electoral College votes by November 7, 2028? Our forecasters think there’s a 12.5% (10% to 20%) chance.

  • If so, and conditional on the Supreme Court ruling on its constitutionality, will the Supreme Court rule in favour of the Compact? Our forecasters believe there’s a 35% (10% to 57%) probability.

  • If the Compact gets to the 270 threshold and stands before November 7, 2028, what is the probability of a US civil war by 2030? Our forecasters provide a 2% (0.5% to 7%) estimate.

    • If it does not, what is the probability of a US civil war by 2030? Our forecasters think there’s a 1.6% (0.45% to 3.5%) chance.

Technology and AI: Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.7, while its CEO Dario Amodei met with officials at the White House to discuss the risks associated with the company’s Mythos model.

• Will there be a cyberattack/campaign that causes over $15 billion in damages by April 20, 2027? Our forecasters think there’s a 14% (5% to 25%) chance.

• Will a cyberattack or cyber campaign cause the S&P 500 to close at least 27% below its pre-incident closing level at any point within the subsequent 10 US trading days before April 20, 2027? Our forecasters believe there’s a 1.6% (1% to 3.5%) probability.

• Our forecasters’ aggregate 95th percentile of how much damage will be caused by a cyberattack or cyber campaign by April 20, 2027 is $78B ($10B to $300B), with a median of $100B.

Economy: The Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed. The US extended its waiver of certain sanctions on Russian oil. The UAE wants the US to backstop its economy. The head of the IEA says that Europe has about 6 weeks of jet fuel left.

• Will there be a period of more than a month with free flow of shipping through the strait of Hormuz by November 3, 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 55% (45% to 64%) chance.

You can see some of our intermediary outputs at twitter.sentinel-team.org and reddit.sentinel-team.org / reddit.sentinel-team.org/threats/ai.

Geopolitics

Middle East

The US seized an Iranian cargo ship while enforcing its blockade of Iranian ports. Iran, in turn, is refusing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz until the blockade is over, with ships coming under fire from the IRGC’s fast boats. Earlier hopes that Iran would be reopening the Strait, following statements from Trump and Iranian foreign minister Araghchi and the announcement of a 10-day ceasefire in Lebanon, were therefore quashed.

Some Iranian media outlets criticised Araghchi’s statement for giving the impression that the Strait would be opened, even though it did make clear that ships would only be allowed to use the “coordinated route”. Our forecasters view this as a sign that there are internal divisions within Iran about how to communicate their position, with IRGC-aligned officials and outlets wanting to take a more aggressive line on the conflict.

In addition, if the Strait of Hormuz were to reopen with ships having to use Iran’s “toll booth”, our forecasters would not see this as freedom of navigation having been restored. Our forecasters estimate that there is a 55% probability (45% to 64%) that the free flow of shipping in the Strait will be restored by November 3, 2026. On the one hand, Iran will want to extract financial concessions in any peace talks with the US. On the other hand, these could come in the form of sanctions relief or the unfreezing of assets. And there’s still a small chance that Iran’s regime will be toppled.

Iran said that there are “no plans” for a second round of peace talks, despite the US stating that it intends to send a delegation to Islamabad, though some Pakistani officials say they are hopeful Iran will attend. Some reports suggest that the US is considering unfreezing $20 billion in Iranian assets in exchange for Iran giving up its stockpile of enriched uranium, although an Iranian official said that this would be a “non-starter”. Russia has reportedly offered to store Iran’s uranium as part of any deal; they previously did so in 2015 and 2016 after Iran gave up 98% of its uranium stockpile under the JCPOA.

Overall, our forecasters think there’s a 20% chance (5% to 40%) that there will still be ongoing hostilities between the US and Iran on November 3, 2026, the date of the US midterm elections. On the one hand, Trump and his administration want to move on, and the last thing they want is another “forever war” in the Middle East. But on the other hand, once Middle East conflicts have lasted this long, they tend to drag on.

The Americas

The United States

The US state of Virginia joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). Participating states pledge to hand all of their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote regardless of who wins the popular vote in the state in question. For example, in 2024, this would have meant that Virginia would have handed its Electoral College votes to Donald Trump, even though Trump did not win the popular vote in Virginia. Had this system been in place in the 2000 and 2016 elections, the Democratic Presidential candidate would have entered the White House, so the compact would be highly controversial, particularly with Republicans.

The compact would come into force if its participant states collectively hold enough Electoral College votes to reach the 270 threshold; they currently control 222. The constitutionality of such a compact is an open question. On the one hand, the Constitution gives state legislatures the right to determine how their states’ Electoral College votes are apportioned. On the other hand, interstate compacts generally require Congressional approval, though legal precedent suggests such a requirement may hinge on whether the compact infringes upon federal power.

Overall, our forecasters believe there’s a 12.5% chance (10% to 20%) that the NPVIC will reach the 270 Electoral College vote threshold by November 7, 2028. If so, and conditional on the court making a ruling, they think there’s a 35% chance (10% to 57%) that the Supreme Court will rule in favour of it. And if the NPVIC gets to the threshold and stands by November 7, 2028, forecasters think there’s a 2% probability (0.5% to 7%) of a US civil war by 2030, whereas they think there’s a 1.6% chance (0.45% to 3.5%) of this if the NPVIC doesn’t reach the threshold. Or in other words, one forecaster sees a big jump in the probability of a civil war conditional on the NPVIC getting to the threshold and standing, from 2.5% to 7%..

The Rest of the Americas

The US is reportedly ramping up military planning for Cuba. A surveillance drone was seen scouting south of Cuba. When asked whether the Pentagon is preparing for military action in Cuba and whether Cuba is next, Trump replied, “Well, it depends on what your definition of ‘military action’ is.” He also said that the US’s “strength” will bring about a “new dawn in Cuba… watch what happens”.

Venezuelan President Rodriguez is purging supporters of former President Nicolas Maduro, sometimes with the support of the Trump administration.

Asia

The US and Indonesia signed a “major defence cooperation partnership” agreement at the Pentagon. One consequence of the pact is that the US will gain greater influence over the Strait of Malacca and potentially could increase surveillance of maritime traffic through the strait. The strait is of great commercial significance to China; approximately 80% of Chinese crude oil imports transit through the strait. The US is also seeking blanket overflight access for military aircraft; that possibility is still under discussion.

Africa

The war in Sudan continues and is causing widespread human suffering.

At least 100 were killed in Nigeria after its air force accidentally fired on a market.

Economy

After a brief increase in traffic, the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed as of Monday.

The United States renewed its waiver of certain sanctions on Russian oil, in an attempt to ease supply constraints caused by the Iran War.

The UAE has begun discussions with the US about the possibility of the US providing the country with a financial backstop, in case the Iran war pushes the country into financial crisis.

The head of the International Energy Agency said that Europe has “maybe 6 weeks of jet fuel left.”

The US is starting to refund $166B in tariffs ruled unlawful by the US Supreme Court.

Last week, the FT and The Economist both discussed how the war in Iran might cause a global food crisis that could cause millions of people to go hungry. Closure of the Strait of Hormuz and damage to key facilities in the Persian Gulf has caused a drop in the exports of fertilizers and fertilizer inputs from the gulf. Rising fuel prices also make tractor usage more expensive. Reduced availability and higher prices of both fertilizer and fuel will mean lower crop yields, less food available, and higher food prices worldwide. The Iran war has also disrupted global food trade flows, as the UAE was until recently a global food re-export hub. Many countries that are expected to be hit hardest by rising food costs are also dealing with rising debt-servicing costs simultaneously and will be less able to fund subsidies or other social welfare programs.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Anthropic has launched Claude Opus 4.7, its newest frontier AI for public use. It performs better than Opus 4.6 on most benchmarks, especially on coding, although it performs ever so slightly worse on CyberGym, a benchmark for cyberhacking. One forecaster hopes, therefore, that it will not significantly advance the frontier of AI-assisted cyberhacking, in the way that public deployment of their recently announced Claude Mythos would.

Opus 4.7 is a less capable model than Claude Mythos, which Anthropic have said is too dangerous to release. Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei met with officials at the White House on Friday to discuss working together, following the wave of concern over Mythos, despite the US government designating Anthropic a “supply-chain risk”.

The Bank of England said it is testing AI risks to the financial system, in a letter published to lawmakers on Thursday, and German banks have been examining the risks, too.

Given these and other developments, our forecasters think there’s a 14% (5% to 25%) chance that there will be a cyberattack or cyber campaign that causes over $15 billion in damages by April 20, 2027. Forecasters highlighted three cyberattacks from the popularization of email in the early 2000s as examples from the historical record of reaching the $15B threshold.

They also think there’s a 1.6% (1% to 3%) probability that a cyberattack or cyberattack campaign will cause the S&P 500 to close at least 27% below its pre-incident closing level at any point within the subsequent 10 US trading days before April 20th 2027.

And our forecasters’ aggregate 95th percentile estimate of how much damage will be caused by a cyberattack or cyber campaign by April 20, 2027 is $78B ($10B to $300B), with the median at $100B. That is, forecasters assign a 5% to at least that much damage done through a cyberattack in the next year.

In an interview earlier in the week, Trump said in response to a question about whether there should be government AI safeguards, and a killswitch for some AI agents, that he thought there should be.

OpenAI announced GPT-5.4-Cyber, its own cybersecurity AI, which they are providing trusted access to.

As we reported last week, OpenAI recently backed a bill in Illinois that would largely let AI developers off the hook for the worst possible actions that AI systems could take, including mass deaths and financial disasters. Anthropic has come out against the bill.

Although the European Union has extensive regulations in place for AI and digital technologies, some argue that the bloc appears less concerned about those rules being applied in other countries.

Zelensky claimed that Ukraine’s military robots captured a Russian Position without soldiers or losses. It has been military dogma that infantry are required to seize and hold territory. For the first time in the history of warfare, to the best of our knowledge, it appears that this fundamental axiom of warfare has been superseded. (While territory has previously been ceded following naval strikes or airstrikes, military presence on the ground typically follows; even then, infantry are needed to hold territory.) The implications of this development are far-reaching. With growing robotics and AI capabilities, this capability is likely to expand to more state and potentially eventually non-state actors, and technical capabilities to seize and hold larger and more complex territories are likely to grow dramatically over the coming years.

Geopolitics: Iran and the US failed to reach an agreement, and the US is now effectively blockading traffic to and from Iranian ports. A fragile ceasefire between the two countries officially remains in place.

• What is the chance that the US will still be conducting a naval blockade of Iran on June 1 2026? Forecasters think there’s a 28% (15% to 55%) chance.

• What is the chance that the IRGC will attack a US Navy vessel in the Gulf of Oman, Strait of Hormuz or Persian Gulf before June 1 2026? Forecasters believe there’s a 50% (40% to 60%) probability.

• What is the chance that Trump will no longer be in office (permanently) before December 2026? Forecasters think there’s a 6.7% (4% to 16%) chance.

• Will Israel conduct fewer than 30 airstrikes against Hezbollah north of the Litani River in Lebanon during the month of June? Forecasters assign a 48% (20% to 70%) probability to this outcome.

Technology and AI: Anthropic announced that it has developed a new model, Claude Mythos, but it considers the model to be sufficiently dangerous that it has limited access to the model to large tech and cyber firms.

• When will there be an open source AI with Anthropic Mythos-level capabilities? Forecasters’ on average expect it to arrive on December 15th 2026, with an aggregate 90%-ile range of May 17, 2026 to May 29, 2028.

Economy: Brent crude oil futures prices rose above $100 per barrel again following Trump’s announcement that Iranian ports would be blockaded.

• What is the chance that shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz returns to 60% of pre-war levels by June 1, 2026? Forecasters think there’s a 38% (21% to 70%) chance.

Errata: last week, we reported that our median of medians for when “superintelligence” would be developed was 2039, but it was actually 2031.

Geopolitics

Middle East

On Tuesday, the US and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire following backchannel talks mediated by Pakistan, to create room for further negotiations towards a broader and lasting agreement. Negotiations over the weekend between the US and Iran in Islamabad ended without an agreement being reached, though the fragile ceasefire is still officially in place.

Iran initially said that it did not expect to reach an agreement in the first round of talks, while Donald Trump claimed that although there were many points of agreement, Iran did not agree to refrain from seeking a nuclear weapon. Washington wants all nuclear activity in Iran to end regardless of the level and amount of enrichment, whereas Tehran insists that it has a right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Trump later predicted that Iran would “come back and give us everything we want”, saying he did not want just 90% or 95% of his demands to be met. Talks may continue in the coming days.

Following the lack of agreement, Trump announced on Sunday that the US Navy would blockade the Strait of Hormuz in an attempt to stop all ships that enter or exit Iranian ports. He also posted on Truth Social that the US would “seek and interdict ​every vessel in international Waters that has paid a toll to Iran” and would begin destroying mines that he said the Iranians had laid in the Strait. The rationale for these actions appears to be that they could pressure Iran into agreeing to US terms, or pressure China into persuading them to agree to US terms to avoid losing out on oil deliveries from Iran.

US Central Command announced that US forces would begin to implement this blockade at 10 am ET (1400 GMT) on Monday, April 13. In response, the IRGC said that it would view any approach of the strait by military vessels as a violation of its ceasefire agreement with the US.

Earlier in the week, Trump threatened to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization” if the Strait of Hormuz was not reopened. Iran, meanwhile, signalled that it was prepared to retaliate against critical infrastructure in neighbouring countries. But both sides agreed to the two-week truce after indirect talks between the US and Iran, via Pakistan, resulted in the wording of a ceasefire agreement that was acceptable to both parties.

Despite this, there remains disagreement as to whether Lebanon is meant to be included in the ceasefire. Iran and Pakistan say that it was, and the US likely agreed to this initially, but Israel’s prime minister said that operations in Lebanon against Hezbollah would continue, while agreeing to participate in direct talks with Lebanon in Washington. Even if the talks go well, Israel’s war is with Hezbollah, not the government of Lebanon, which is unable to fully control Hezbollah.

Looking ahead, forecasters think there’s a 28% (15% to 55%) probability that the US will still be conducting a naval blockade of Iranian ports on June 1, 2026, and a 50% (40% to 60%) probability that Iran will attack and damage a US vessel in the Gulf of Oman, Strait of Hormuz or Persian Gulf before June 2026. They also estimate a 48% (20% to 70%) chance that Israel will conduct fewer than 30 airstrikes against Hezbollah north of the Litani River in Lebanon during the month of June.

Europe

A 32-hour ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine came into force over Orthodox Easter. This is the fourth temporary ceasefire between the two sides since the war began in February 2022. Both sides accused each other of violating the ceasefire, however Russia “refrained from using long-range drones, missiles or guided bombs.”

Trump expressed displeasure with NATO over its member states’ unwillingness to join the Iran War and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte met with Trump this past week to attempt to smooth relations with Trump. While formal US withdrawal from NATO would require a two thirds majority vote in the Senate, Trump could effectively weaken NATO in many ways, including by choosing not to honor Article 5 in a meaningful way. He also implicitly threatened Greenland once again, reiterating that “We want Greenland” ahead of his meeting with Rutte.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was voted out of office in elections held on Sunday. The opposition party won a two-thirds majority, which will enable it to reverse some of Orban’s constitutional changes. Peter Magyar, who will be the country’s next Prime Minister, has pledged to improve relations with the EU and NATO, and is likely to end Hungarian opposition to further EU support for Ukraine. Last week, we gave Orban a 56% chance of losing the election.

The Americas

The United States

Forecasters have been observing Trump’s behavior becoming more disinhibited and impulsive. Most recently, on Sunday, Easter for the Eastern Orthodox Church, Trump posted an image of himself as a Christ-like figure on Truth Social. He has also pursued a very aggressive geopolitical strategy, with statements like “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” While supporters may agree with Trump’s overall approach and strategy, or with many of his actions or statements, changes in his behavioral patterns could be caused by cognitive decline.

One forecaster thinks that his combined behavioral and speech changes likely point towards the development of frontal variant Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia with similar symptoms. This forecaster also suggests that because of ongoing cognitive changes, it is possible that Trump’s advisors and others around him may be increasingly able to influence his thinking, statements and actions, even as his behavior is likely becoming more disinhibited and impulsive.

Forecasters believe there’s a 6.7% chance (4% to 16%) that Trump will no longer be in office before December 2026, whether for health reasons or because of invocation of the 25th Amendment, or even impeachment and conviction.

The Rest of the Americas

Cuba’s President says he won’t resign despite US pressure.

In a speech at the Liberal Party’s national convention, Canadian PM Carney said, “The days of our military sending 70 cents of every dollar to the United States are over.”

Asia

The leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT) visited China, the first such visit by a KMT leader in around 10 years.

Economy

After falling last Wednesday, Brent crude oil futures moved above $100 per barrel again on Monday, following Trump’s announcement that ships entering or exiting Iranian ports would be blockaded. With Iran also threatening shipping in and around the Strait of Hormuz, the number of ships transiting the Strait per week could fall to virtually zero from its already low figure. While futures are currently trading at just over $100, the price for dated Brent crude, the price for cargoes loaded within 10 to 30 days, topped $144 dollars last week.

Europe could face shortages of jet fuel in the next three weeks if ships are not allowed to pass through the Strait of Hormuz soon.

Forecasters think there’s a 38% (21% to 70%) chance that shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz returns to 60% of pre-war levels by June 1, 2026.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Anthropic announced that it has developed a new AI model, Claude Mythos. The company says the model is particularly good at computer security tasks, and set up Project Glasswing, which allows some of the world’s largest tech and cybersecurity companies access to the model for their defensive security work. The model has not been widely released because of security concerns. Anthropic says that the model has already identified thousands of vulnerabilities in web browsers and operating systems. Bessent and Powell convened bank CEOs to discuss cybersecurity. Here is an example vulnerability in wolfSSL,

> wolfSSL’s ECCSI signature verifier wc_VerifyEccsiHash decodes the r and s scalars from the signature blob via mp_read_unsigned_bin with no check that they lie in [1, q-1]. A crafted forged signature could verify against any message for any identity, using only publicly-known constants. Thanks to Calif.io in collaboration with Claude and Anthropic Research for the report. Fixed in PR 10102.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called in bank CEOs to discuss cyber risks arising from Anthropic’s new model, while the UK’s AI Security Institute tested it, with a government minister saying it was the most powerful model they’ve yet tested.

An article was published in The New Yorker suggesting that Sam Altman’s tenure at OpenAI has involved repeated allegations of deception, power-seeking, and erosion of safety commitments. It questions whether Altman can be trusted with so much power. The authors spoke with Altman multiple times for the article and interviewed many people around him. The article received significant attention online.

A man threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s residence.. The perpetrator appears to have been engaged in AI safety discourse. Altman’s home was later targeted in a second attack.

And: OpenAI backed a bill in Illinois that aims to protect AI companies from liability if their products cause over 100 deaths or serious injuries, or over $1 billion in damages. A US appeals court declined to block the Pentagon’s blacklisting of Anthropic. Meta is using its existing distribution channels to promote its AI app, which reached #5 in the US app store.

Nature and climate

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is forecasting a 61% chance of an El Niño weather pattern, and a 25% chance of a “super” El Niño. If an El Niño event were to start this fall, there could be an approximately 4% risk of a “megastorm” and “megaflood” occurring in California over the following year; some estimates place the damage it would cost at nearly $1T, or 4% of US GDP, more than the damage caused by the Great Flood of 1862. The risk has been increasing because of the rise in global temperatures. A super El Niño would also be expected to have worldwide effects on temperatures and precipitation.

Geopolitics: Trump threatened to bomb power and desalination plants in Iran if they do not agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, after indicating that he’d be willing to walk away from the war without its reopening earlier in the week. Pakistan submitted a fresh ceasefire proposal to both parties.

• Will the US and Israel end hostilities against Iran by April 21, 2026? Our forecasters give this a 20% (8% to 42%) probability.

• Will the US place more than 1,000 troops on the ground in Iran before July 2026? We think there’s a 39% (20% to 55%) chance.

  • If so, when will the US end hostilities with Iran? Our aggregate estimate is August 12 2026 (80% CI: May 24 2026 - June 3 2030).

  • If not, when will the US end hostilities with Iran? Our aggregate is May 30 2026 (80% CI: April 20 2026 - Sept 13 2027).

• Will Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party win the Hungarian parliamentary election? We think there’s a 44% (35% to 60%) chance.

Technology and AI: The authors of AI 2027 updated their forecasts. Anthropic accidentally leaked the source code to Claude Code.

• Conditional on no government or self-imposed slowdown and precluding catastrophes, in which year will artificial superintelligence (ASI), an AI system that is much better than the best human at every cognitive task, be achieved? Our aggregate estimate lies at 2028 to 2050, with a median of medians of 2039 2031.

• Will at least two Democratic and two GOP Senators cosponsor an AI bill that mentions existential or extinction risk from AI before January 20, 2029? We give this a 39% (15% to 60%) chance.

  • What about a bill that mentions widespread job loss from AI before January 20, 2029? We give this a 61% (35% to 80%) chance.

Economy: Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz increased over the past week, but is still well below pre-war levels.

• If the US places more than 1,000 troops on Iranian soil before July 2026, will the price of Brent crude oil exceed $200 before August 2026, according to Trading Economics’ hourly average? We give this a 40% (10% to 75%) probability.

• Conversely, if the US does not place more than 1,000 troops on Iranian soil before July 2026, will the price of Brent crude oil exceed $200 before August 2026? We think there’s a 18% (5% to 35%) chance.

Geopolitics

Middle East

Donald Trump gave conflicting signals as to whether the Iran War is set to escalate or wind down. In favour of the idea that the war could end this month, some of his aides said he is willing to end the war even if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened, and Trump himself suggested it would be the responsibility of other nations to reopen the Strait. On March 31, Trump also said that the war could end in “two to three weeks”, which would mean the war lasts longer than the initially stated timeline of “four to six weeks”.

On the other hand, Trump later posted that there would be no ceasefire until the Strait of Hormuz is reopened. On Saturday, he reiterated the 10-day deadline that he set on March 26, warning that “all Hell will reign [sic] down” on Iran if they didn’t agree to a deal by Monday; he later appeared to extend this deadline to Tuesday evening.

Power plants have consistently appeared in these threats, but Iranian desalination plants and bridges have also been singled out. On Easter Sunday, Trump posted: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah. DONALD J. TRUMP”. Attacking power plants is considered a war crime unless they are also used to support military objectives, while attacking desalination plants is a war crime as they are considered “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population”.

Trump did not rule out deploying ground forces but said, in remarks that were likely meant to be private, that it’s unfortunate that Americans don’t have the “patience” to take Iran’s oil, by which he likely means seizing Kharg Island. He later posted that with more time, the US could “TAKE THE OIL” and asked “KEEP THE OIL, ANYONE?” Some of our forecasters interpret this as Trump trying to talk himself into a ground assault, though others suggest it’s a sign that he is still able to hold himself back, seek others’ advice and use social media for popular feedback. Overall, the dynamic seems to be that Trump can neither accept a defeat nor force the Iranians to grant him a win, and so might feel forced to escalate or to come up with a third option.

Very crudely, if we hypothesize that the price of Brent rises to $150 if the war continues and escalates, and falls to $80 if it ends, and if we take the current price at $110 as an expectation over those two scenarios, with $110 = p * $150 + (1-p) * $80, then the market is pricing a 43% chance of escalation and an 57% chance of Trump backing off. This is a simplification that does not take other options into account, such as hostilities continuing sporadically, US and Israeli hostilities against Iran ending but the strait remaining partially closed, or a massive increase in attacks on energy infrastructure in Iran and other Gulf States before hostilities end.

Taking stock of these developments and of the latest attempt by Pakistan to broker a ceasefire, our forecasters think there’s a 20% chance (8% to 42%) that the war does indeed end within Trump’s new timeline, on April 21. They also think there’s a 39% probability (20% to 55%) that the US will place more than 1,000 troops on Iranian territory before July 2026. Conditional on this happening, their aggregate estimate for when the war will end is August 12 2026.

Meanwhile, Iran shot down a US F-15E fighter jet, resulting in two airmen having to be rescued by US special forces operating on Iranian territory. Reports initially indicated that hundreds of US personnel may have been involved in these operations, though it was later claimed that fewer than 100 were. Initial reports also suggested there was a firefight between US and Iranian forces, but US and Iranian sources later denied this. A US A-10 Thunderbolt II was likely also hit by Iran, and the pilot was successfully rescued. Two US C-130 J Super Hercules transport planes and and two MH-6 Little Bird helicopters were destroyed by the US near the site of the rescue in Iran to prevent them from falling into Iranian hands.

Also: Iran hit a desalination plant in Kuwait, making it at least the third to be hit since the war began. More petrochemical facilities were targeted by both Iran and Israel, and the US destroyed Iran’s tallest bridge.

Europe

While railing against Europe’s lack of involvement in the Iran War, Trump suggested that he was seriously considering withdrawing from NATO, which he called a “paper tiger”. While a two-thirds majority in the Senate would be required for the US to formally exit the alliance because of bipartisan legislation signed into law by former President Biden, Trump could leave NATO in all but name if, for instance, he makes it clear that the US wouldn’t respond to an Article 5 request.

In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party continues to trail in the polls, though pollsters aligned with his government suggest he is ahead. If Péter Magyar’s opposition Tisza party wins power, relations between Hungary and the rest of the EU and NATO will likely improve in the short term.

Our forecasters think there’s a 44% chance (35% to 60%) that Fidesz will win the parliamentary election. On the one hand, Orbán’s party outperformed the polling in 2022, in what was generally considered to be a free and fair election. On the other, the economy has been struggling since then and a child abuse scandal was uncovered. As a centre-right politician and a former member of Fidesz who has united the opposition, Magyar may be well positioned to win over some disenchanted Orbán supporters as well as more liberal voters. If Orban doesn’t get re-elected, its branch of illiberalism and closeness to Russia would be very weakened inside the EU.

The Americas

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fired Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff. George worked closely with Army Secretary Driscoll, and clashed with Hegseth because the promotions of two women and two black men to one-star general had been blocked. Hegseth also fired two other generals. Our forecasters generally think the firings were the result of disagreements over internal policy rather than over a potential ground invasion of Iran, noting that Hegseth has shuffled out a number of other high-ranking personnel since Trump took office.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi was fired, reportedly because Trump was dissatisfied with her attempts to prosecute his opponents and her handling of the Epstein files. Todd Blanche is now the acting attorney general.

Asia

The leader of Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party will visit China on what she says is a peace mission, the first by a KMT leader in around a decade.

Economy

Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz rose over the past week, with 15 or more ships getting through on some days, likely the result of negotiations with the Iranian government. However, traffic remains substantially down from pre-war levels of around 130 per day.

With some analysts warning that $200 per barrel oil is increasingly likely if the Iran War persists, our forecasters think there’s a 40% chance (10% to 75%) that the price of Brent crude oil exceeds the $200 threshold before August 2026 if the US places more than 1,000 troops on the ground, and an 18% chance (5% to 35%) if the US does not.

Emirates Global Aluminum, the Middle East’s largest aluminum producer, said that it could take up to a year to restore its aluminum output in Abu Dhabi to previous levels, following an Iranian attack on its plant last week.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Eli Lifland and Daniel Kokotajlo, authors of the AI 2027 scenario and forecasts, published an update to their timelines to superintelligence. Over the last 3 months, their expectation of when superintelligence will arrive has shortened by about 1.5 years, primarily due to faster time horizon growth, and better than expected coding agents. Our forecasters’ aggregate estimate of when we will have “an AI system that is much better than the best human at every cognitive task” is 2028 to 2050, and with a median of medians of 2039 2031. The shortest 10th percentile includes 2027, and the longest 90th percentile includes “never”.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order that will require companies seeking contracts with California to provide safeguards against AI misuse.

Anthropic accidentally leaked the source code for Claude Code, their AI agent scaffold, their second leak in a week. One forecaster views this as very significant, because it gives actors access to the scaffolding, which they can now use with current and future open-source and self-hosted models. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) wrote to CEO Amodei after this, warning of potential national security risks. Also, Anthropic launched a new corporate political action committee (PAC), which will be funded by employees on a voluntary basis. And the Trump administration appealed a judicial ruling that blocked Pentagon action against Anthropic.

Axios, a popular javascript library for sending http requests, was hacked. Researchers at Google Threat Intelligence said that the attack may have been carried out by a hacking group with ties to North Korea.

Mercor, an AI recruiting startup, says it was affected by a cyberattack. Reporting estimates that terabytes of data were stolen. Meta paused its work with the company, which some observers say could result in an approximately 75% reduction in Mercor’s revenue.

And: The US state of Maine could become the first to enact legislation to pause the construction of large new data centers. With cybersecurity vulnerabilities being discovered at a faster pace, Markus Anderljung suggests that state actors will attempt to exploit zero-day vulnerabilities more quickly to get ahead of their discovery by others.

Biorisk

The Democratic Republic of Congo says its mpox outbreak is over after 2 years and more than 2,200 suspected deaths. The mpox virus is still present in animal reservoirs in the region and can be expected to continue to cause zoonotic infections.

Geopolitics: Israel attacked a number of steel and nuclear sites in Iran. The Iran-backed Houthis launched their first attacks on Israel since the beginning of the Iran War. US Marines and Special Operations Forces have arrived in the Middle East, amid increasing discussion of the potential deployment of US combat forces in Iran.

• Will the Houthis attack or seize at least one ship before May 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 64% (50% to 77%) chance.

• Will the Islamic Republic of Iran fall by the end of 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 25% (18% to 30%) probability of a government being in power that does not include the IRGC.

• Will the US place 1,000 or more boots on the ground in Iran before July 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 66% (55% to 80%) chance.

Technology and AI: Epoch announced that one of its FrontierMath open problems was solved for the first time, by GPT-5.4 Pro. A federal judge temporarily halted the Pentagon’s designation of Anthropic as a supply-chain risk.

• Will AI have solved at least 1 problem that qualifies as a “solid result” in Epoch’s FrontierMath: Open Problems collection by the end of 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 67% (55% to 85%) chance.

Economy: Natural gas shortages are about to hit particularly hard in Asia as the last Persian Gulf shipments reach their destinations. The Philippines declared a national energy emergency and other countries in Asia have been taking drastic actions to curb energy demand. Brent crude oil prices remain over $110 per barrel. Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu port on its Red Sea coast has revived almost half of its crude oil exports that would have usually been transported through the Strait of Hormuz.

• What will be the highest price for Brent crude from closing time on March 31 to closing time on April 30, 2026? Our forecasters’ 50th percentile estimate of that maximum average is $144 ($125 to $180), with a median of $140.

Geopolitics

Middle East

Israel carried out attacks on Iranian steel plants and civilian nuclear sites. Iran retaliated against aluminium plants in the UAE and Bahrain, and vowed to target other industrial facilities in neighbouring countries. The damage to Iran’s steel sector will further erode the country’s industrial base and exacerbate its economic woes, which could in turn further weaken the regime. However, Iran’s oil revenue has almost doubled since the start of the Iran War, and the regime continues to hold onto power. Amid the absence of any public appearance or video recording from Iran’s new Supreme Leader, the IRGC is directing Iran’s response to the war and may have largely usurped control of the country from religious leaders.

On whether the Islamic Republic of Iran will fall by the end of 2026, which would have to involve the IRGC no longer holding power, our forecasters think there’s a 25% chance (18% to 30%).

Iran fired more than two dozen drones and ballistic missiles at Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan air base, injuring 15 US servicemembers, of whom 5 were seriously wounded. The attack also destroyed or damaged a number of US aerial refuelling craft, as well as an E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft that’s used for command and control during missions. Notably, there are now only 15 E-3 Sentry planes in service, and it’s time-consuming and costly (on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars) to replace them. One of our forecasters suggests that the US hasn’t learned lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war, and from Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb in particular.

The Iran-backed Houthis entered the war this week when they fired a barrage of missiles at targets in Israel from their stronghold in Yemen. They could get involved further if the Red Sea is used to attack Iran, the Gulf countries directly join an attack on Iran, or the attacks on Iran escalate. By limiting their attacks to Israel, they may be respecting the truce negotiated with the US last year and attempting to secure a financial deal with Saudi Arabia.

Commodity prices would likely rise further if the Houthis were to attempt to close the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, attack ships in the Red Sea, or disrupt Saudi exports through the Red Sea port of Yanbu, which has helped revive close to half of the oil shipments that the Saudis would’ve moved through the Strait of Hormuz. Our forecasters think there’s a 64% chance (50% to 77%) that the Houthis will attack or seize at least one ship before May 2026.

The US’s 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), including around 2,200 Marines, arrived in the Middle East over the weekend with the USS Tripoli, along with hundreds of Special Operations Forces. It is one of two MEUs that are reportedly deploying to the Middle East; the 11th MEU, which departed San Diego on March 18, is currently in Pearl Harbor and will likely be heading for the region over the next few weeks. Elements of the 82nd Airborne Division, including at least 1,000 ground troops, are also deploying to the Middle East, and the Pentagon is reportedly weighing whether to send up to 10,000 additional servicemembers.

Our forecasters now think there’s a 66% probability (55% to 80%) that the US will place 1,000 or more boots on Iranian soil before July 2026. On the one hand, negotiations between the US and Iran are probably occurring via intermediaries in Pakistan, though Trump has very likely exaggerated their progress over the past week. On the other hand, an official in a “mediating country” said that Trump is leaning toward a ground operation, and Trump himself said he’d be very interested in seizing Iran’s oil facilities on Kharg Island and recommended a Fox News segment in which the anchor advocated for putting boots on the ground to seize Iran’s nuclear material.

According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon is preparing for the possibility of deploying troops on the ground in Iran for weeks to months:

Any potential ground operation would fall short of a full-scale invasion and could instead involve raids by a mixture of Special Operations forces and conventional infantry troops…. Discussions within the administration over the past month have touched upon the possible seizure of Kharg Island, a key Iranian oil export hub in the Persian Gulf, and raids into other coastal areas near the Strait of Hormuz to find and destroy weapons that can target commercial and military shipping, officials said. One person said that the objectives under consideration would probably take “weeks, not months” to complete. Another put the potential timeline at “a couple of months.”

Any ground operation could extend the war by months or even years unless it speeds up a potential deal as Trump appears to hope. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the war could last for another 2-4 weeks. If it lasts for two more weeks, this would take us beyond the initial 4-6 week timeline stated by the White House.

Europe

Ukrainian drone attacks on export facilities, an attack on a pipeline and oil tanker seizures have shut down at least 40% of Russia’s oil export capacity, or about 2M bpd, according to an analysis by Reuters. Russia is the world’s second largest oil exporter, and oil is one of its most important sources of income. The blow to Russian oil exports comes as the price of oil has soared above $110 per barrel because of the Iran War.

A weeks-long partial internet shutdown in Russia is likely at least partly aimed at increasing domestic control. One forecaster thinks that this ongoing situation suggests that Putin’s government may be facing some mounting domestic challenges.

Viktor Orban’s Fidesz is trailing in the polls to Peter Magyar’s Tisza party. The election is likely to have repercussions for the EU and the war in Ukraine because of Orban’s opposition to mainstream EU policies and his alignment with Russia.

Asia

In its 2026 Annual Threat Assessment, the US intelligence community says that China does not currently plan to invade Taiwan in 2027 but that they do intend to unify with Taiwan by 2049, and that their thinking could evolve based on the Taiwanese political situation, PLA readiness and US security guarantees (or lack thereof).

China is stationing 1960s jets that have been converted into drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait. China could likely use drones to try to overwhelm Taiwan’s air defences.

The Philippines declared a national energy emergency. It receives 98% of its oil from the Middle East. China has begun shipping oil to the Philippines and Vietnam to alleviate the shortage and improve its ties in the region.

The Americas

The United States allowed a Russian tanker carrying oil to reach Cuba’s shores.

A joint US-Ecuador operation may have destroyed a dairy farm instead of a narcotics operation, according to locals.

Trump’s net approval rating is at historical lows. This is largely due to increasing prices and dissatisfaction with the war against Iran.

Economy

Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains substantially down compared to pre-war levels, though Iran continues to operate a “toll booth”, charging a fee before allowing approved ships to pass through the Strait.

Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea port of Yanbu has helped to revive almost half of the crude oil exports that would have usually been transported through the Strait of Hormuz. As discussed above, our forecasters are watching for signs that the Houthis will attempt to disrupt this trade route, perhaps by targeting Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, facilities in Yanbu, or commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

Crude oil prices remain elevated, with Brent crude oil prices opening at over $114 per barrel on Monday. Our forecasters’ medians for the maximum price of Brent crude oil from closing time on March 31 to closing time on April 30 average $144 ($125 to $180), while the median of the medians is $140.

It could take months to years for energy exports from the Middle East to recover to pre-war levels, in part because of the amount of time it will take to repair the damage caused to energy facilities and in part because shippers could become more risk averse. Traffic through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, for instance, has still not recovered to pre-2024 levels despite earlier pledges from the Houthis not to disrupt shipping.

While countries in Asia have been the first to resort to drastic measures (such as rationing energy usage and reopening coal plants) to overcome energy supply constraints caused by the Iran War, analyses by JP Morgan and Bloomberg, among others, suggest that other regions will soon face serious supply constraints and high prices for multiple commodities, and that many people may be underestimating the potential scale of the crisis. Natural gas shortages are expected to hit Asia in the coming days, as deliveries from the Persian Gulf come to an end and, as we mentioned last week, shortages will increasingly affect the rest of the world over the coming weeks.

A helium shortage caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is expected to start to constrain chip manufacturing soon. Less liquid helium is also expected to be available to cool the magnetic coils in MRI machines worldwide, which will likely reduce the availability of MRI imaging.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is likely to dampen AI development goals and data center construction, as shortages of energy and multiple key materials will hit chip production, raise energy costs and put pressure on firm valuations.

The $1.8T private credit market is facing mounting difficulties. Problems started to emerge in the second half of last year and are now starting to snowball, as increasing numbers of firms have capped withdrawals from private credit funds in the face of unprecedented requests for redemptions. While the problem is likely to worsen, it probably won’t become as big of a problem as the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, because banks are probably not as exposed to risks from private credit now as they were to risks from subprime lending then, although some substantial risks, including some contagion risks, do lie ahead.

The world faces the risk of a tungsten supply crunch in 2026. Tungsten is critical for heavy industry, including for manufacturing, mining and military applications. About 75% of the world’s tungsten supply comes from China, and Chinese exports have fallen this year. Stocks are being depleted, and new sources take time to develop. Rising prices are expected to stimulate increased production over time.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Epoch AI announced that GPT-5.4 Pro solved one of its FrontierMath open problems for the first time. The problem was considered “moderately interesting”, but there are a number of other open problems which, if solved, would be considered a “solid result”, “major advance” or “breakthrough”. Our forecasters think there’s a 67% chance (55% to 85%) that an AI will produce a “solid result” in Epoch’s collection by the end of 2026.

In Anthropic’s case against the Pentagon, a federal judge temporarily halted the enforcement of the government’s designation of the company as a supply-chain risk, arguing that the government was attempting to “cripple Anthropic” and “chill public debate”. However, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is also looking at the case from a different angle and could issue a less favourable ruling to the company, especially as two of the three members of its panel are Trump-appointed judges.

US Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced a bill which would put in place a moratorium on the construction of new AI datacenters until federal legislation has been passed requiring that the government reviews and approves AIs for safety and effectiveness before release. The bill also proposes that the US promote global AI safety coordination by banning chip exports to countries that don’t have laws in place to protect humanity from AI safety concerns and existential risks, workers, and the environment. One forecaster comments that this bill, which is argumentatively written, “has less than a zero percent chance of being passed”; however some rewritten version containing similar points could pass if there is some large AI-enabled catastrophe in the near future.

Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn also released a bill that aims to create a national regulatory framework for artificial intelligence.

Information about Anthropic’s most powerful AI model, named ‘Mythos’, was revealed in an accidental data leak.

Biorisk

A couple of months ago, we reported on two suspected biolabs in California and Nevada and the associated arrest of a Chinese national. A Los Angeles Times article from this week reports that an Israeli national connected to the case was recently arrested; he has been released pending trial. Previously, more than 1,000 samples from the Nevada lab were sent to the National Bioforensic Analysis Center in Maryland.

A Lyme disease vaccine has been found to have 70% efficacy, i.e., it reduced the number of Lyme infections by 70% in a clinical trial. The trial results are not yet published or peer reviewed.

A Meningitis B outbreak in the county of Kent in southern England has resulted in 20 confirmed cases and 2 deaths. All of the cases have been hospitalized. There was some concern about the number of severe cases that were detected in such a short space of time, but this is likely due to a super-spreader event largely involving university students at a nightclub.

Geopolitics: More oil and gas facilities in the Middle East were targeted in Israeli and Iranian attacks. Another US Marine unit is being deployed to the Middle East. Trump threatened to destroy Iran’s power infrastructure, and Iran threatened to retaliate against critical sites including desalination plants; Trump has backed down for now and says US-Iran talks are ongoing.

• Will the US place 1,000 or more boots on the ground in Iran before July 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 37% chance (14% to 55%).

• Will the US place >10,000 boots on the ground before July? Our forecasters think there’s a 13.5% probability (4% to 27%).

Technology and AI: An AI agent at Meta reportedly went rogue recently, exposing sensitive data to those who should not have had access. An AI security researcher says that there have been other “loss of control” incidents over the past year.

• Will there be an AI loss of control incident that causes over $100 million in damages in 2026? Our forecasters believe there’s a 5% chance (3% to 7%).

Economy: The Strait of Hormuz has been nearly closed for over three weeks, and several more weeks of closure are likely. Shortages of oil, natural gas and other commodities continue to impact the world economy. The impact of the war in Iran on natural gas supplies could soon be extreme.

• What will be the highest price for Brent crude from closing time on March 23 to closing time on April 30, 2026? Our forecasters’ 50%-ile estimates of that maximum average $133 ($114 to $175), with a median of $125.

• Will the US experience two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth in 2026? Our forecasters think there’s a 29% chance (20% to 45%).

• Will this happen in the EU? Our forecasters believe there’s a 39% chance (33% to 55%).

Geopolitics

Middle East

The Iran War entered its fourth week on Saturday. Trump stated several objectives of the war, including degrading Iran’s missile capabilities, destroying its industrial base, eliminating their air force, navy and anti-aircraft weaponry, preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and protecting allies in the Middle East. Notably, regime change was not on this list of objectives, though he claims to want a “very serious form of regime change” to be the outcome of any talks.

Iran’s top security official Ali Larijani was killed in strikes by Israel. Larijani was a powerful and competent regime insider who orchestrated the recent crackdown on protesters. Since Ali Khamenei’s death, he and Ghalibaf, the speaker of Parliament and a former IRGC commander, had likely been ruling the country. His assassination leaves Ghalibaf as the de facto leader. Mojtaba Khamenei has not yet been seen or heard since his appointment as supreme leader. He was likely wounded in the attack that killed his father.

Israel struck Iran’s South Pars gas field, prompting Iran to retaliate by hitting Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility, which accounts for approximately 20% of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply. According to QatarEnergy, 17% of the site’s export capacity was destroyed, and it could take years to rebuild that capacity. Iran also attacked an oil refinery in Haifa, Israel. After markets reacted negatively to these developments, Trump said that he had no advance knowledge of the South Pars attack and that Israel would no longer be targeting Iranian energy infrastructure, though some Israeli and US officials say that the Trump administration gave Israel the green light for the attack.

Despite Trump’s pledge not to attack Iranian energy facilities, he later vowed to destroy all of Iran’s power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz was reopened within 48 hours. Iran, in turn, threatened to target power plants, oil and gas facilities and desalination plants in the Middle East and West Asia. Last week, we raised the possibility of desalination plants being explicitly targeted and forecasted on whether >10 would be attacked by mid-April. Trump backed down around 12 hours before his deadline, claiming that the US and Iran have been holding productive talks on a complete and total end to hostilities. He implied that the attacks could still go ahead in the future, perhaps after markets close on Friday. Iran has denied that it is holding talks with the US, though Pakistan may be preparing to host talks in the near future.

Iran targeted Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea port of Yanbu, which is being used to try to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, for the first time. This caused loading oil onto tankers to be suspended for a short period.

Iran also reportedly targeted the US-UK base of Diego Garcia for the first time with Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs), having previously denied that it had missiles capable of travelling more than 2,000 km (Diego Garcia is around 3,700 km away from Iran). This means they theoretically have the capacity to target some Western European capital cities.

Multiple reports suggest that the US is considering a ground operation to reopen Hormuz or occupy Kharg Island, and a second Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) is being sent to the Middle East. Forecasters think there’s a 37% chance (14% to 55%) that the US will place 1,000 or more ground troops, and a 13.5% chance (4% to 27%) that it will place >10,000, on Iranian soil before July 2026. On the one hand, it would be highly risky for US forces. On the other hand, Trump and some of his officials may view it as a high-risk, high-reward strategy that could force Iran to capitulate if it goes to plan. Israeli PM Netanyahu also said that a “ground component” will be required for regime change in Iran, which he views as a key component to winning the war in Iran.

There have been conflicting signals on when the war will end, but most of them suggest it will last for at least another couple of weeks. On the one hand, Trump said he was considering “winding down” the war, and reports suggest that some regional allies of the US are attempting to broker a deal between the US and Iran, with Trump now saying talks have been going very well. On the other hand, Trump’s Press Secretary implied that the war will end up lasting for at least 4-6 weeks (suggesting it could end from March 28 to April 11), while Israeli officials say that it will last for “at least another two weeks” longer. Some US officials say that “about a month” will be needed, and the second MEU will likely arrive in the region around mid-April.

Asia

China is restricting exports of fertilizer, almost certainly in response to supply pressures caused by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

China is issuing PLA reservist ID cards, increasing its ability to mobilize quickly

Pakistan carried out an airstrike on Kabul, reportedly killing over a hundred people.

The Americas

In the US, Joe Kent, a Trump appointee and former Republican candidate, resigned as Director of the US National Counterterrorism Center after saying that Iran was not an “imminent threat” and that the US had been forced into the war by “Israel and its powerful American lobby”. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, in turn, refused to say that the Intelligence Community assessed that Iran posed an imminent threat to the US, but also claimed that the US President is the only person who can make that determination.

Also in the US, multiple waves of drones were spotted over Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana on several days last week. The drones appeared to be custom built and to require “advanced knowledge” of signals operations, and they appeared to be testing reactions at the base.

A federal judge struck down parts of the Pentagon’s restrictions on news outlets, stating that they violated the First Amendment. The judge wrote that the First Amendment “is to enable the press to publish what it will and the public to read what it chooses, free of any official proscription.”

In Cuba, two island-wide power outages occurred in the past week, and three so far in March, as the country’s infrastructure lurches towards collapse without new oil shipments.

Europe

In the Czech Republic, tens of thousands of protesters rallied against Prime Minister Babis’ for “steering the country away from democratic values and aligning with the pro-Russia policies of Hungary and Slovakia.”

Economy

The US Treasury temporarily lifted sanctions on Iranian oil at sea in an attempt to ease supply constraints.

Crude oil prices and futures dropped sharply on Monday morning following US President Trump’s step back from striking Iran’s power plants and energy infrastructure.

Before that development, in a note dated March 22, Goldman Sachs forecasted an average price of $85 for Brent crude oil in 2026, up from an earlier forecast of $77. This estimate is based in part on an expectation that the strait would remain nearly closed for six weeks, followed by a one-month recovery, resulting in cumulative losses of just over 800M barrels of crude oil.

Our forecasters’ medians for the maximum price of Brent crude oil from closing time on March 23 to closing time on April 30 average $133 ($114 to $175), while the median of the medians is $125.

Meanwhile, the last LNG tankers to leave the Persian Gulf will be arriving at their destinations within the next 10 days, and after that, LNG supplies will start to fall off a cliff.

Southeast Asian countries are being hit hard by the loss of oil and gas exports from the Gulf.

Shortages of other commodities exported by the Gulf or whose manufacture requires such commodities, including fertilizer, helium, several metals, and plastics, are ongoing, hurting manufacturing, transportation and food production.

Several brokerage firms and key individuals currently forecast a 25%-35% risk of recession for the US, with one outlier at 49%.

Our forecasters think there’s a 29% chance (20% to 45%) that there will be two consecutive quarters of negative real GDP growth in the US in 2026, and a 39% chance (33% to 55%) that this will happen in the EU. The annual base rate for this is quite low in both the US and the EU (in the single digits for the US and in the mid-teens for the EU, depending on how it’s calculated), and neither went into recession after the energy crisis sparked by the Russia-Ukraine war. That said, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz is arguably causing more profound shocks to oil and natural gas markets than previous shocks, and it doesn’t just impact the oil and gas sector.

Forecasters agree that the EU is more likely to fall into recession than the US because it is more dependent on energy and other key commodity exports from the Middle East, though US petrol, diesel and fertilizer prices are still impacted by what’s happening in international markets.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Dan Lahav, an AI security researcher, says that loss of control incidents involving AI agents are already happening “in the wild”, claiming that there was a case last year “of an AI agent that went rogue in an unnamed California company when it became so hungry for computing power it attacked other parts of the network to seize their resources and the business critical system collapsed.” Meanwhile, there was reportedly a case of an AI agent at Meta going rogue when it revealed sensitive data to people who didn’t have authorization to view those data. Our forecasters think there’s a 5% chance (3% to 7%) that there will be an AI loss of control incident that causes over $100 million in damages in 2026.

The US Justice Department charged three individuals with violating the Export Control Act by selling about $2.5B worth of NVIDIA chips to China.

And: The Pentagon will be using Palantir AI as a core US military system. An OpenAI-backed candidate lost an election in the Congressional district of IL-02. The US government continues to support designating Anthropic a supply chain risk, calling the company an “unacceptable” national security risk, and the White House released a “National AI Legislative Framework”. Mistral released an open-source code agent designed for Lean 4.