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.

Geopolitics: The US bombed Kharg Island, home to Iran’s main oil terminal, but spared its oil facilities. A US Marine Expeditionary Unit is being sent from Japan to the Middle East. Trump said that NATO faces a “very bad future” if its members don’t send ships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He attempted to arrange a coalition to do so, but failed.

• Will the US attempt to seize or carry out a major strike on the oil infrastructure on Kharg Island before April 15, 2026? Our forecasters give this a 42% (20% to 75%) chance,

• Will 10 or more desalination plants in the Middle East be attacked from March 16 to April 15, 2026? Our forecasters assign a 11% (5% to 20%) probability of this happening.

• When will the US cease major military operations against Iran’s territory along with air and naval assets? Our forecasters’ aggregate point estimate is April 19 (March 28 to May 10).

Technology and AI: Anthropic is suing the Pentagon for designating the company a supply-chain risk, with Microsoft filing an amicus brief in support of Anthropic’s case. A wide range of voices, including Yoshua Bengio, Steve Bannon and Susan Rice, signed the Pro-Human AI Declaration, with polling appearing to show public support for many of its principles.

• In Pew’s 2026 polling, what percentage of Americans will be more concerned than excited about the use of AI in daily life? Our forecasters’ aggregate estimate is 51% (47% to 56%). What percentage will be more excited than concerned? Our aggregate estimate is 12% (10% to 15%).

Economy: Brent crude oil prices continued to hover around $100 per barrel. Trump threatened Iran’s oil terminal on Kharg Island, the US removed some sanctions on Russian oil, and a few Indian and Pakistani-flagged vessels managed to navigate the Strait of Hormuz thanks to deals negotiated with Iran’s regime.

• What will be the highest price for Brent crude from closing time on March 16 to closing time on April 15, 2026? Our forecasters’ medians average $134 ($110 to $180)

Geopolitics

Middle East

The Iran War entered its third week on Saturday. Six more US servicemembers died when a refuelling plane came down over Iraq, and five refuelling planes were damaged in an Iranian strike on Saudi Arabia. The total number of US and Israeli fatalities stands at 34 at the time of writing. In Iran, more than 1,400 people are reported to have been killed, while hundreds have died in Lebanon as a result of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

Iran’s military capabilities have been degraded, though the rate of degradation may have slowed over the past week or so. Some of the country’s leadership remains intact, with President Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Araghchi and security chief Ali Larijani spotted walking the streets of Tehran on Friday. However, the country’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei hasn’t been seen in public and is reportedly injured. Our forecasters generally think that Ali Larijani is currently the most powerful official in Iran and that his power is reinforced by the choice of an injured supreme leader.

The Strait of Hormuz remains nearly completely closed, and six vessels were struck by Iran in the past week. While the US military continues to reduce Iran’s capacity to strike ships in the strait, strikes using aerial drones and small drone boats are hard to stop. Iran is also laying a small number of mines in the Strait. Two US anti-mine littoral combat ships (LCS) that had been deployed to the Middle East were spotted at port in Malaysia on March 15; a third US anti-mine LCS has been in the Middle East. However, Iran’s oil continues to move through the Strait of Hormuz, and a handful of ships from India and Pakistan have transited the Strait (see the Economy section).

The strait is unlikely to be opened militarily within the next 1-2 weeks. Naval escorts for oil tankers (from the US Navy or an international coalition) are unlikely to occur before the end of March. Trump attempted to rally other countries including Britain, China and France to send ships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but failed. Later, he said that NATO faces a “very bad future” if its member states don’t help to reopen the Strait, and he also sought to pressure China by threatening to delay his planned visit to Beijing at the end of this month.

The US bombed military targets on Kharg Island after markets closed on Friday, hours after Trump unconvincingly denied that it was a priority in an interview. The island is Iran’s main oil terminal, and around 90% of its exports typically begin their journeys there. Trump said that Iran’s oil facilities were spared but warned that they could be destroyed if Iran continues to restrict movement through the Strait of Hormuz. Should that happen, our forecasters think that Iran would likely retaliate strongly (see below).

A thousands-strong Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) is being moved by the US from Japan to the Middle East. It is sprinting to the region and could arrive as early as this weekend, which might provide a lower bound on how long the war will last. Because the MEU is not a large invading force, it might have been sent to help protect US forces on bases in the Persian Gulf. However, if the Marines were to carry out ground operations within Iran, our forecasters generally think Kharg Island would be the most likely target, though it’s possible that the MEU could be used to attempt to secure the strait. Securing the north coast of the strait or some of the islands in the strait (such as Qeshm) would be operationally difficult, with multiple attack vectors that would be difficult to suppress. US Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted about gaining control of Kharg Island and signed it off with ‘Semper Fi’, the official motto of the US Marine Corps. Any operation on Iranian soil would more likely than not take us above the 1,000 boots on the ground threshold that we forecasted about last week.

Our forecasters think there’s a 42% chance (20% to 75%) that the US will attempt to seize or carry out a major strike on the oil infrastructure on Kharg Island by April 15, 2026. They point out that such an operation could be immensely destructive and cause long-lasting pain to the Iranian people, and thus invite further retaliation. But on the other hand the US could be trapped in an escalation spiral.

There are multiple escalation pathways from here. With Saudi Arabia making increasing use of its East-West Pipeline to avoid having to export its oil through the Strait of Hormuz, the Houthis could try to seize or sink oil tankers in the Red Sea. If Iran’s oil facilities on Kharg Island are captured or destroyed, Iran could retaliate by attacking any US forces on Kharg Island or with stronger attacks against oil infrastructure in Gulf states. With a substantial portion of people in the Middle East relying on desalination plants for drinking water, another risk is that more of these facilities could be targeted (at least two have already been damaged, one in Iran and one in Bahrain). Our forecasters think there’s a 11% chance (5% to 20%) that >10 desalination plants will be struck between now and April 15, 2026.

Despite Trump’s AI czar David Sacks worrying about potential Israeli use of a nuclear weapon (seemingly in response to attacks on desalination plants by Iran), former US Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich seemingly suggesting that thermonuclear weapons be used to open up a new waterway for oil to pass through, and some online speculation that Trump will threaten the use of nuclear weapons to try to get Iran to surrender, our forecasters generally think the use of a nuclear weapon in the Middle East by the end of 2026 is extremely unlikely. However, some are below 0.1% on this happening, while others are in the 0.1%-1% range.

Trump has given conflicting signals on when the war will end. His aim is likely to calm the markets as much as possible while continuing the war for at least another couple of weeks. He previously said that the war is “very complete”, but also that the US hasn’t “won enough”. He later said that he would end the war when “I feel it in my bones”. The IDF’s Chief of Staff stated that ending the war now would be a mistake, and that Israel has planned for combat operations to last through Passover, which will be celebrated from April 1 to April 9. Our forecasters’ aggregate estimate for when the US will cease major military operations against Iran’s territory (along with its air and naval assets) is April 19 (March 28 to May 10). This cessation would have to last for at least one week from the stated date.

Asia

Large-scale Chinese incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) resumed after a sharp drop in the first 1-2 weeks of the Iran War. Twenty-six of China’s military aircraft were detected on Saturday.

Europe

European members of NATO declined to send ships to help to reopen the Strait of Hormuz despite Trump threatening the alliance with a “very bad future” if they don’t accede to his request. A spokesperson for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that, “this war has nothing to do with NATO”, while a French government account said that its naval mission in the Eastern Mediterranean remains defensive in nature. British PM Keir Starmer is resisting Trump’s requests for warships to be sent and says that the UK won’t be drawn into a “wider war”.

Russia has been receiving a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars per day in oil revenue thanks to the rise in energy prices caused by the Iran War.

The Americas

Reports suggest that US Vice President JD Vance was and is opposed to the Iran War. When asked about these reports, he did not deny them. Our forecasters think this information was most likely released to the press by Vance and his team in order to distance himself from the war. It may be an indication of how he thinks the war is going, from his insider perspective. Alternatively, it could be an attempt by his rivals in the administration to portray him as unsupportive of a war that’s still endorsed by a large fraction of Republican voters.

The Trump administration’s AI czar, David Sacks, also voiced his desire for a negotiated settlement with Iran, warning of escalatory pathways involving desalination plants or even the use of nuclear weapons, which we considered above.

Trump has said, and Cuba has confirmed, that the US and Cuba are in negotiations, as Cuba faces its most serious economic crisis in decades. The country’s worsening economic situation has been brought to a head by the end of oil imports from Venezuela and other countries, under pressure from the US. In recent statements, Trump has also implied that if a negotiated agreement could not be reached, then the US military could be used. Trump said on Sunday that, “We’re talking ​to Cuba, but we’re going to do Iran before Cuba.”

Economy

On Monday afternoon, Brent crude oil prices remained relatively stable at around $100 per barrel. Between now and closing time on April 15, our forecasters’ median estimate for the maximum price of Brent crude oil averages $134 ($110 to $180) based on hourly numbers reported by Trading Economics.

The Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed. Iran also struck oil storage facilities at the Salalah port in Oman along with the UAE’s largest oil facility at Fujairah. Meanwhile, the US threatened oil facilities on Kharg Island if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened. But as discussed above, it is unlikely that the strait will be opened by military intervention for at least two weeks, at which point US naval escorts are possible.

On the other hand, the US removed some sanctions on Russian oil and said that it has no problem with Iranian oil passing out of the Strait of Hormuz. Moreover, a few Indian and Pakistani-flagged tankers have navigated the Strait likely because of deals negotiated with the Iranian regime. As noted earlier, Saudi Arabia is also making greater use of its East-West Pipeline to bypass the Strait. Additionally, there are rumours that the US Treasury may have been intervening in futures markets, with talk of a big seller in the market; our forecasters have varying levels of confidence that this is actually the case. Even without explicit manipulation, as the price rises the Trump administration would face greater domestic international pressure, leading it to take more desperate measures to bring the conflict to an end.

Meanwhile, QatarEnergy suspended helium production at its Ras Laffan facility, removing around 30% of global supply from the market. This has downstream consequences for semiconductor chip manufacturing, because helium is used to cool silicon wafers during fabrication. South Korean memory company SK Hynix said it was forced to look for alternative suppliers, though Taiwan’s Semiconductor Manufacturing Company only said that it is monitoring the situation.

Trump is also easing sanctions on Venezuelan fertilizer and oil to ease shortages resulting from the Iran war.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Anthropic is suing to block its blacklisting by the Pentagon, Microsoft filed an amicus brief in support of Anthropic’s case, along with a group of retired military leaders. The White House, meanwhile, is preparing an executive order to remove Anthropic’s AI from federal government operations. The Pentagon’s CTO claims that Anthropic’s Claude model is a supply chain risk because it has “a different policy preference baked in”.

A large group of experts, public figures, former officials, and organizations signed the Pro-Human AI Declaration, a set of principles for AI development that benefits humans. The signatories include Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, Steve Bannon, Glenn Beck, Susan Rice, Ralph Nader and Richard Branson.

Polling released alongside the Declaration found that there is majority support among American voters for the Declaration’s principles. Our forecasters think that, in Pew’s 2026 polling, 51% (47% to 56%) of Americans will be more concerned than excited about the use of AI in daily life and that 12% (10% to 15%) will be more excited than concerned. This would be broadly similar to previous years’ results.

A judge stated that Elon Musk’s $134 billion claim against OpenAI relies on “numbers out of the air”, but said that jurors would likely understand this and allowed an expert backing Musk’s case to provide testimony to the jury in next month’s trial.

The US Commerce Department withdrew a draft rule on AI chip exports.

8 in 10 AI chatbots were regularly willing to assist users in planning violent attacks including school shootings, religious bombings, and high-profile assassinations. DeepSeek went as far as wishing the would-be attacker a “Happy (and safe) shooting!”.

Geopolitics: The Iran War continues, with the US and Israel continuing to strike targets in Iran and Iran continuing to launch drone and missile attacks. Iran is launching decreasing numbers of missiles over time.

• Will the US place at least 1,000 US troops in Iran before May? Our forecasting team gives this a 21% (7% to 38%) chance.

• Will there be more than 100 combined US and Israeli deaths before July? Forecasters think there’s a 38% (15% to 60%) chance.

• Will weekly shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz return to at least 75% of pre-war levels before April and before May? Our forecasters think there’s a 39% (20% to 58%) probability before April, and a 61% (50% to 75%) chance before May.

• What will be the maximum Brent crude oil price before April and before May? Forecasters estimated maxima of $135 ($110 to $150) and $143 ($112 to $175) respectively.

• Will the month of April see no airspace closures outside Iran that are related to the Iran War? Forecasters think there’s a 39% (30% to 55%) chance of this happening.

And: Trump continues to hint that he’d like to see regime change in Cuba and could be about to announce a deal with them. There was a sharp drop in the number of Chinese aircraft flying near Taiwan in the first week of the war in Iran.

• Will there be a major PLA exercise around Taiwan in April? Forecasters think there’s a 33% (15% to 55%)

• Will China invade any territory controlled by Taiwan before July? Forecasters believe there’s a 0.8% probability (0.6% to ~1%).

• Will China conduct a full-scale invasion of Taiwan before July? Forecasters think there’s a 0.5% (0.2% to ~1%) chance.

Technology and AI: An AI agent being trained by Alibaba allegedly tried to break free, and a Slack message posted by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was leaked to the press.

Economy: With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, oil prices rose above $100 for the first time since 2022 amid the largest oil supply shock in history, and natural gas and fertilizer prices rose further as a result of supply chain disruption caused by the Iran War.

Geopolitics

Middle East

The war in the Middle East continued, with the US and Israel continuing to strike targets in Iran. Israel targeted energy infrastructure in Tehran, a move which the US government reportedly opposed.

The frequency with which Iran has responded with ballistic missile attacks appears to have slowed down, but Iranian missiles have still been fired at Turkey and the UAE, and Iranian drone attacks continue to cause disruption in the region. Drones, in particular, could be difficult to repel as they are cheap and easy to produce. The estimated price tag for a drone is around $35,000, compared to $2.5 million for a Tomahawk cruise missile. A government building in Kuwait caught fire after being hit with a drone, a spot close to Dubai’s airport was also hit, and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is still over 90% below pre-war levels because of threats to shipping.

Meanwhile, Iranian officials elected former Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, to be the country’s next Supreme Leader. Mojtaba Khamenei is associated with hardline factions within the regime but has kept a relatively low profile in the past. Donald Trump says he is “not happy” about this development. The IDF has pledged that, “the hand of the State of Israel will continue to pursue every successor and every person who seeks to appoint a successor.”

One topic of forecaster discussion was whether Iranian forces would exhaust the ability of the US and its allies to intercept either Iranian missiles or their less expensive and more numerous but also less destructive Shahed drones. One forecaster in our broader network modelled the Iranian side as competent, ideologically radical and wanting to cause chaos to increase variance, and pointed out that Iran was able to destroy very expensive THAAD radar systems. A key indicator to watch out for is the number of missiles and Shaheds the Iranian regime launches each day; the US side is able to stop hits on its bases and on its allies’ territories and reopen the Strait of Hormuz more easily if it is able to “flatten the curve” of Iranian launches to the point where its smaller interceptor stockpile and production capacity are able to deal with them.

Looking ahead, there have been conflicting signals as to whether the US will put boots on the ground in Iran in an attempt to seize nuclear materials, capture Iran’s oil terminals on Kharg Island or its oilfields in the Khuzestan region, or even bring about regime change. The official US line appears to be that nothing is being ruled out. Our forecasters ultimately think there’s a 21% (7% to 38%) chance that the US will place more than 1,000 troops in Iran before May. This question also has some bearing on whether they think there will be more than 100 combined US and Israeli deaths (civilian or uniformed) before July; they assign a 38% (15% to 60%) probability to this happening. They believe there’s a 39% (30% to 55%) chance that there will be no airspace closures related to the conflict in Iran in the month of April, as an operationalization of whether the conflict will end soon.

Asia

Incursions by the Chinese air force into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) have dropped sharply since the outbreak of the Iran War, with a period of seven consecutive days without planes being spotted and zero planes being spotted in 9 out of the last 10 days. There were 86 planes spotted in the same period last year, compared to 2 this year.

Some forecasters speculated that this could be, in part, an attempt by China to conserve fuel given the disruption to energy exports out of the Strait of Hormuz, while others suggested that it could be a gesture of goodwill ahead of the upcoming meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping in April.

There was some online speculation that the abnormal PLA activity around Taiwan could be an indicator of an imminent Chinese invasion, especially as the weather in April is arguably the most conducive to an amphibious assault, but our forecasters think this is very unlikely. They assign a 0.8% probability (0.6% to ~1%) chance to the possibility of China invading any territory controlled by Taiwan (such as the Kinmen islands) before July, and a 0.5% (0.2% to ~1%) probability to China invading Taiwan’s main island before then.

PLA exercises were carried out around Taiwan in April 2025 and April 2023, but in other months of the year in 2022 and 2024. Forecasters think there’s a 33% (15% to 55%) chance that there will be similar exercises this April, taking the Trump-Xi meeting in early April into account.

Meanwhile, China has also recommended that its oil refineries should not accept new export contracts. Again, stockpiling of key resources could be an indicator that something is afoot, but it’s more likely that China is just responding to the energy supply shock.

Europe

France announced a new nuclear doctrine of “forward deterrence”. France will maintain sole launch authority of its nuclear weapons but may deploy its nuclear forces in several countries throughout Europe. This can be seen as an escalation and as destabilizing, or as a more robust commitment to the defense of NATO countries, diminishing the chance that countries such as Poland may develop their own nuclear weapons programs.

The Americas

Trump again suggested that he would like to see regime change in Cuba, though other reports suggest that he could announce a surprise economic deal with the nation. Such a deal would represent a move towards soft regime change.

Confirmed measles cases in the United States reached 1281 for 2026, with 145 new cases reported in the last week. 30 states have reported cases this year, and the largest outbreaks are in South Carolina, Utah, Florida, and Texas. Outbreaks occur in regions with low vaccination rates.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was fired by Trump on Thursday. Markwayne Mullin has been picked to replace her on April 1 but needs Senate confirmation.

Economy

With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed for over a week, the world faces a real risk of soaring crude oil and natural gas prices and of their downstream consequences. The Financial Times has suggested that crude oil could even reach $200 per barrel.

Crude oil prices are rising, even hitting $118 at one point on Monday March 9 (they are hovering around $93 at the time of writing). Markets calmed somewhat after G7 finance ministers met to consider releases from their strategic petroleum reserves; they do not yet plan to release oil reserves but said that they are prepared to implement “necessary measures.” In an attempt to ease pressure on oil markets, the US gave India the green light to resume purchases of Russian oil for 30 days, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US would consider removing some sanctions on Russia’s oil.

Fertilizer prices have also risen, as the export of urea and other chemicals through the Strait of Hormuz is also being disrupted. The production of metals, including nickel, copper and cobalt, will also soon be affected by the strait’s closure. The Gulf is also a major source of refined aluminum, particularly for Europe.

If the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened to shipping traffic soon, then we can expect growing effects on world markets. Current measures to keep a lid on oil and gas prices will not suffice in the long run. If oil and natural gas prices continue to rise, then the prices of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and electricity would also rise. As energy prices rise, so would transportation costs and the costs of goods produced using energy, including food and manufactured goods. These rising costs would lead to inflation and if severe enough, could potentially lead to a global recession.

A further upcoming downstream consequence is on Gulf state investments in AI in the US: while US GDP growth has been sustained by AI investments, these were partially relying on further investments from Gulf States, as well as public markets, for exit liquidity. Both of these sources might dry up in the coming months.

Our team thinks there’s a 39% (20% to 58%) chance that weekly shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will return to at least 75% of pre-war levels before April, and a 61% (50% to 75%) probability of this happening before May. Speculating about Brent crude oil prices, they estimated maximum prices to be $135 ($110 to $150) by the end of March and $143 ($112 to $175) by the end of April.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Researchers at Alibaba published a paper on arXiv about ROME, an open-source agent they trained. Buried within the report is a deeply concerning description of an incident that they report occurred during post-training. A Manifold market implies there’s a 57% chance that ROME did indeed try to break free during training. One of our forecasters is conflicted. While they believe this could happen, they’re puzzled as to why we haven’t seen similar reports from companies that have trained more powerful agents.

The US DoD designated Anthropic a supply chain risk. A Slack message by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was leaked to The Information; in this message, Amodei attributed this designation to not having donated money to Trump or having given him “dictator-style” praise. He says Anthropic has told the truth about a number of AI policy issues. Amodei then apologized in a written statement and in an interview with the Economist.

Despite the ongoing feud between the company and the US government, Anthropic’s Claude has been used by the Pentagon during the war in Iran to select hundreds of targets, prioritise them according to importance, and provide location coordinates. This is because it is embedded within Palantir’s Maven Smart System. “Thanks to AI, the corps achieved that with only 20 people, compared with more than 2,000 staffers employed in Iraq”, reports the WSJ.

OpenAI released GPT-5.4, which they say is their most capable and efficient frontier model for professional work. It has a 1M token context window.

OpenClaw is being adopted very rapidly in China.

A former DOGE official has been appointed Chief Data Officer at the Pentagon. He’ll be responsible for coordinating its AI efforts. He previously retweeted content from Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate but has since disavowed supporting bigots or supremacists. One forecaster remarked that this appointment indicates a more permanent shift in the Overton window around respectability, rather than a more temporary change at the beginning of the Trump administration as it scrambled to find employees.

And: US Senator Bernie Sanders met with Eliezer Yudkowsky and others to discuss existential risks that could arise from advanced AI. The White House is pressuring Republican-controlled states not to pass AI safety legislation. Uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs), which can be characterised as semi-autonomous robots, are being used in the Russia-Ukraine war. NVIDIA is investing $4B on photonics startups.

Geopolitics: The US and Israel attacked Iran and killed Ayatollah Khamenei. Iran retaliated by striking US bases and allied countries in the region. Also, an arms sale to Taiwan has been paused by the US to ensure that Trump’s April visit to Beijing goes smoothly.

• Will Iran’s regime fall by the end of 2026? Forecasters assign a 45% (32% to 70%) probability thereof.

• Will there be >50 US fatalities (civilian or uniformed) anywhere in the world linked to the conflict in Iran or attributed to Iran or its proxies by the end of 2026? Forecasters think there’s a 48% (35% to 60%) chance.

• Will there be >100 Israeli fatalities (civilian or uniformed) linked to the conflict in Iran by the end of 2026? The team believes there’s a 58% (45% to 70%) probability.

• Will Israel’s airspace reopen before April 2026? With Israeli authorities saying they may very gradually reopen their airspace over the next week, most forecasters are now at >95% here.

• Will the Houthis seize or sink at least one ship before May 2026? Forecasters believe there’s a 42% (20% to 68%) chance.

Technology and AI: Anthropic was designated a supply chain risk by the Pentagon. The company accused three Chinese companies of carrying out “distillation attacks” on their models. And they updated their Responsible Scaling Policy, dropping a pledge not to train or deploy systems without adequate safety measures.

• Will the designation of Anthropic as a supply-chain risk be reversed by the end of 2027? Forecasters estimate a 72% (65% to 80%) probability that this occurs.

  • If not, will Anthropic raise funding at a higher valuation by the end of 2026? Forecasters believe there’s a 34% (19% to 60%) chance.

  • If not, will Anthropic collapse by the end of 2027? Forecasters think there’s a 24% (5.0% to 50%) probability.

Economy: Oil and gas prices spiked in the first trading day after the US-Israel attack on Iran. Stock markets opened lower.

Geopolitics

Middle East

On Saturday, the United States and Israel launched an attack on Iran. Multiple high-ranking officials in Iran’s chain of command were killed, including Ayatollah Khamenei and Ali Shamkhani. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and missile sites were also targeted, while dozens of civilian casualties were reported. US President Trump said that the strikes on Iran could continue for “four to five weeks”. Last week, we estimated a 66% chance that the US would strike Iran before April, well above the Polymarket aggregate of 20.5%. At the beginning of February, we gave a 31% chance that Khamenei would cease to be the Supreme Leader of Iran before April, above the Polymarket estimate of 19.5%.

In response, Iran launched missile and drone attacks on US bases and allied countries in the region. US bases in Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates have been hit, with at least four US servicemembers killed and at least four others seriously injured. A French base in the UAE and a British base in Cyprus were also struck, and civilian areas in Dubai suffered damage. At least ten people in Israel have died as a result of Iranian attacks, and fighting between Hezbollah and Israel broke out again. Even so, Israel says it is preparing to very gradually reopen its airspace over the next week. The conflict has resulted in deaths and wounded in other countries as well.

Oil and natural gas prices spiked on the first trading day following the outbreak of war. The Houthis said that they would resume attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, while traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, through which around 20% of global oil supply and large volumes of liquefied natural gas move, has come to a near standstill. At least three tankers in the Gulf region have already been damaged by debris and projectiles, while certain energy facilities in Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been hit or shut down.

Looking ahead, forecasters think there’s a 45% (32% to 70%) that Iran’s regime will fall by the end of 2026, operationalized as the IRGC no longer being in power. On the one hand, Trump said that Iranians should “rise up” against the regime and told the Washington Post that “freedom” for Iranians is the goal of the war. On the other hand, Trump said he is interested in talking to the regime and cutting a deal with them, citing Venezuela as a model. One Israeli outlet reports that the US asked Iran for a ceasefire over the weekend.

Trump says he has three “very good choices” regarding who should take over in Iran, but it’s unclear whether they are affiliated with the current regime or not. Ali Larijani, the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and former Speaker of the Iranian Parliament who has reportedly been in charge of day-to-day operations since January, appears to be alive at the time of writing and said that Iran is not currently willing to negotiate with the US.

It’s possible that regime change was at most a secondary goal, and that the primary objective was to speed up negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program or neutralise an imminent threat. Cutting against this idea is the fact that Oman’s foreign minister, who was mediating the US-Iran nuclear talks, said on Friday that significant progress was being made and that Iran had agreed to get rid of its existing stockpile of enriched uranium. In addition, the Pentagon reportedly told Congress that Iran was not planning to attack the US.

Forecasters also believe there’s a 48% (35% to 60%) probability that there will be >50 US fatalities (civilian or uniformed) anywhere in the world linked to the conflict in Iran or attributed to Iran or its proxies by the end of 2026, and a 58% (45% to 70%) chance that there will be >100 Israeli fatalities (civilian or uniformed) linked to the Iran war in the same time period. To some extent, this is a proxy for how long forecasters think the war will go on; most also think it’s >95% likely that at least some flights to and from Israel will resume before April. Before May 2026, they think there’s a 42% (20% to 68%) probability that the Houthis will seize or sink at least one ship in the Red Sea.

Asia

Pakistan declared that it is in “open war” with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, accusing it of aiding and abetting the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), which has escalated its violent campaign within Pakistan over the past year. Airstrikes were carried out on targets within Afghanistan, while the Taliban deployed drones, anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems in response.

The US State Department reportedly delayed an arms sale to Taiwan that was recently approved by Congress, to ensure that Trump’s April visit to China goes smoothly.

Latin America

Trump said that the Cuban regime is currently in talks with the US and suggested that the US could carry out a “friendly takeover” of Cuba. One administration official says that Trump hopes to change the regime in Cuba one way or another and feels that he’s “on a roll”.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Anthropic updated its “Responsible Scaling Policy”, dropping its central safety pledge not to train or deploy AI systems without adequate safety measures to keep the risk of catastrophic harm within acceptable levels. Responsible Scaling Policies represented the idea that AI companies could set “if-then” commitments such that increased risks from training ever-more powerful AIs would result in safety measures up to and including pausing development. They were pushed hard by the AI industry around the AI Safety Summit in 2023, when there was more political appetite to regulate AI companies to address the worst risks of AI.

On Friday, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic a supply chain risk, saying the decision is “effective immediately” and the “decision is final”. Trump also ordered federal agencies to stop using the company’s AI models. Nevertheless, Anthropic could still be used by the Pentagon for up to six months, and their Claude model was reportedly used during the US attack on Iran. Anthropic says it will challenge the designation in court.

Later that day, Sam Altman announced that OpenAI agreed a deal with the Pentagon that supposedly provided exceptions to the use of their AIs for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Anthropic says that these activities could have fallen under the “any lawful use” policy that was being requested of them by the Pentagon. The details of the exceptions and the enforcement mechanisms that OpenAI and the Pentagon agreed to appear to be a bit weaker than what Anthropic was pushing for.

Forecasters estimate a 72% (65% to 80%) probability that the designation of Anthropic as a supply-chain risk will be reversed by the end of 2027. By then, Anthropic could have reconciled with the administration or won in court. Conditional on the designation not being reversed by 2027, forecasters estimate that there is a 34% (19% to 60%) chance that Anthropic would raise funding at a higher valuation by the end of 2026, and a 24% (5% to 50%) chance that Anthropic would collapse by the end of 2027.

Earlier in the week, it was reported that xAI and the Pentagon reached a deal to use Grok in classified systems. Officials at multiple federal agencies have raised concerns about the safety and reliability of Grok in recent months.

Senior OpenAI safety employees were summoned for “urgent talks” in Canada after a school shooting in which the attacker had described violent intentions to ChatGPT to the extent that they were flagged by OpenAI’s systems, discussed by employees, and caused the attacker’s account to be banned. OpenAI did not alert authorities in advance of the shooting. Canadian ministers told OpenAI that if they do not quickly upgrade their safety protocols, they will force them to through legislation.

A study finds that prefill attacks, where an attacker predefines initial response tokens before generation begins, are consistently effective for bypassing safety mitigations across all major contemporary open-weight models.

And: Anthropic accused three Chinese AI companies of large-scale “distillation attacks” on Claude. In simulated wargames of current frontier AIs, at least one AI in every wargame escalated the conflict by threatening the use of nuclear weapons. OpenAI raised $110B at a $730B valuation, although some of it is conditional on hitting milestones. Hackers used Claude in an attack against the Mexican government. Meta partnered with AMD.

Geopolitics: The US continued to move military assets to the Middle East and Europe. A Russian tanker believed to be carrying oil is on its way to Cuba, in potential violation of a US embargo. There is unrest in Mexico after a cartel leader was killed.

• Will the US strike Iran by March 8, the end of March, or the end of June? Forecasters provide estimates of 38% (25% to 51%), 66% (55% to 75%) and 79% (65% to 90%), respectively.

• Conditional on this happening by the end of June, will there have been 30 consecutive days without any US strikes on Iran on November 3, 2026 (the date of the midterms)? Forecasters estimate a 78% (60% to 90%) chance.

• Conditional on a strike by the end of June, will cyberattacks that the team believe were credibly attributed to Iran occur by the end of June and cumulatively lead to more than 10 estimated deaths? Forecasters give a 6.5% (2.0% to 15%) chance.

• Will the US remove (either partially or completely) sanctions against Cuba by the end of 2026? Forecasters believe there’s a 48% (31% to 67%) probability.

• Will any oil tanker get through to Cuba by the end of April? Forecasters think there’s a 12% (6.0% to 25%) chance.

Technology and AI: METR said that Claude Opus 4.6 has the longest measured time horizon to date on their suite of software tasks. The Trump administration says it rejects global governance of AI.

• Will an IAEA-like institution for AI that includes the US and China exist or be agreed on in a treaty by 2029? Forecasters think there’s a 6.6% (4.0% to 10%) probability.

• Forecasters estimate Anthropic’s valuation at the end of 2026 as ~01 to 1.8T (90% confidence interval).

Economy: Many of the Trump administration’s tariffs were struck down by the US Supreme Court, though Trump later imposed a 15% global tariff, citing Section 122 of the Trade Act 1974.

Geopolitics

Middle East

The United States continues to move military assets to the Middle East and Europe in preparation for a potential attack on Iran. The USS Ford Supercarrier and part of its strike group entered the Mediterranean en route to the Middle East. On Tuesday, F-22 fighter jets were spotted in Britain for the first time since June 2025 (when they arrived 3-4 days before the US strikes on Iran that month), and at least 60 fighter jets were parked at a base in Jordan. Britain and Jordan are both reportedly refusing to allow the US to launch strikes on Iran directly from bases on their territory, with the British government concerned that an attack would violate international law.

If Trump does go ahead with strikes, the options range from limited strikes with the goal of speeding up a nuclear deal, to a large, multi-week or multi-month campaign that aims to topple the regime (for reference, the NATO air war against Serbia lasted 78 days; the air war against Gaddafi lasted around 7 months; the US intervention against Maduro around two hours, and that against Noriega 15 days.) US military preparations for the latter continued over the past week, as a large share of deployable US military aircraft have been staged in the Middle East or Europe. One senior US official said that “full forces” would be in position for operations against Iran by mid-March. With refueling tanker aircraft positioned in key locations in Europe and the Atlantic, it looks likely that any operation against Iran could involve bombers flying from the continental US. There are now about three times as many US military aircraft staged for this operation than were involved in Operation Midnight Hammer last year.

The latest round of talks between the US and Iran concluded in Geneva, with the Iranian delegation saying that an agreement was reached on “guiding principles”. Iran’s foreign minister said that a draft counterproposal should be ready within days, and the next round of talks is set to take place this Thursday in Geneva. Iran is unlikely to agree to give up its current stockpile of highly enriched uranium, but it might agree to diluting it.

Some American sources say that some progress has been made and that the Iranians would be coming back with further details within two weeks. Others say that Trump is getting impatient and that strikes on Iran are very likely to occur within weeks, though they differ on how much time it would take for the US to prepare and note that there are some in the administration who are trying to persuade him not to launch an attack. On Thursday, Trump himself hinted that he will make a decision one way or another within 10 days, implying that we will have more clarity by Sunday 1 March, though forecasters caution that his statements shouldn’t always be taken literally.

Overall, forecasters think there’s a 38% (25% to 51%) chance that the US strikes Iran by March 8, a 66% (55% to 75%) chance by the end of March, and a 79% (65% to 90%) chance by the end of June.

Conditional on a US strike by the end of June, they believe there’s a 78% (60% to 90%) probability that there will have been 30 consecutive days without any US strikes on Iran on November 3, 2026 (the date of the midterms). This could happen both if the US decisively wins quickly, but also if it attains limited goals and then withdraws, and forecasters generally agree that the US doesn’t have the appetite for an extended campaign.

Forecasters also estimate a 6.5% (2.0% to 15%) probability that cyberattacks that the Sentinel team believe were credibly attributed to Iran occur by the end of June and cumulatively lead to more than 10 estimated deaths. Attacks that lead to the deaths of more than 10 people are likely to be counterproductive, galvanizing the general population of the US and/or its allies against Iran.

In other news, a six-decade agreement regarding access to the al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem collapsed, with Israel blocking Palestinians from attending Friday prayers for Ramadan.

Europe

Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that Britain should send non-combat troops to areas in Ukraine that are away from the frontline, to make a statement about Ukraine’s sovereignty and to make it clear to Putin that he won’t be able to regain much Ukrainian territory and that he should instead settle for a peace deal. He acknowledged that he is getting ahead of thinking in the British government, and forecasters think it’s very unlikely that Britain places boots on the ground in Ukraine outside of training missions and absent a peace deal.

In Ukraine, drones are reportedly killing 33,000 Russian forces per month – and Ukraine aims to increase that number to 50,000 per month by Easter. As of late January, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry reported that drones are now responsible for 75% of Russian casualties and 80% of Ukrainian strikes.

Asia

Satellite imagery reveals that China is building up its nuclear weapons capacity in facilities located deep in the mountains in the southwest of the country.

Chinese hackers continue to target US energy infrastructure.

Africa

In Sudan, UN investigators say they uncovered the “hallmarks of genocide” in El Fasher, with mass killings and ethnic targeting discovered. A reader also recommended a particular charity for Sudan.

Latin America

A Russian vessel believed to be carrying fuel to Cuba could challenge the US blockade of the country. Forecasters think there’s a 6.5% (2.0% to 15%) that at least one oil tanker will reach Cuban shores by the end of April. They also think there’s a 48% (31% to 67%) chance that the US will partially or completely remove sanctions against Cuba by the end of 2026, with some forecasters viewing this as a proxy for whether there is regime change in Cuba. Forecasters note that the Trump administration’s attention is concentrated in Iran.

On Sunday, the Mexican army killed “El Mencho,” the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, and the most powerful drug cartel leader in the country. In retaliation, the cartel set vehicles on fire and blocked roads in at least 20 Mexican states and at least 25 National Guard troops were killed in 6 separate attacks. The US reportedly provided intelligence for the operation and has pushed Mexico to act against drug cartels.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Capabilities

The 99.9th percentile of Claude code use went from 25 mins to 45 mins in 3 months.

METR estimates that Claude Opus 4.6 has a 50% time horizon of 14.5 hours on software tasks, their highest estimate to date. Some argued that this is evidence of superexponential growth in the length of tasks that AI models can complete, though others suggested that this was less clear from the 80% time horizon results, and METR themselves said that their measurement is extremely noisy because their current task suite is nearly saturated as models are starting to be able to do more tasks in its finite dataset.

Taalas hard-wired models provide ~10x faster inference at ~10x less power. This seems tricky to adapt to a mixture of experts architecture, like that used in current frontier models, although maybe one could hard-wire every model in the ensemble somehow.

There has been a malware distribution campaign targeting Github users. Previously, one could trust and install a random github repository, but this has changed as people can create malicious repositories at scale.

AI progress continues inexorably with new model releases: Gemini 3.1 Pro, as well as various Chinese models (GLM-5, Seed 2.0, Qwen3.5).

Chinese models might not be as close to Western ones as they might seem, because the benchmarks they mention in their announcements are specifically selected for being close to parity, and models are trained specifically to hit those benchmarks in a way that doesn’t generalize as well to benchmarks that become available after Chinese models are released.

Governance

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth threatened to cut ties with Anthropic, saying that he may designate the company as a “supply chain risk,” after Anthropic raised questions about how its AI was used in the Venezuela raid and refused to agree to permit the US government to use its AIs for domestic surveillance purposes. A source said that Anthropic’s stance is not ideological but based on the view that “AI systems are not reliable enough for life-or-death decisions without human judgement and that the technology significantly changes what is possible with domestic surveillance.” DOD Secretary Hegseth is set to meet with Anthropic CEO Amodei on Tuesday. Depending on the degree to which the Pentagon might require companies it does business with to decouple from all business with Anthropic, such a designation could hit Anthropic quite hard. Previously, Anthropic’s revenues had been growing faster than OpenAI’s, albeit from a lower starting point.

Forecasters estimate Anthropic’s valuation at the end of 2026 as ~0 to 1.8T USD, as the aggregate of their 90% confidence intervals. Forecasters engaged in some spirited discussion about whether the Pentagon’s designation of it as a supply chain risk, if played very hardball, could destroy Anthropic through stopping any part of the government, and companies that do business with the government, and their suppliers, and their suppliers’ suppliers, from using Anthropic’s models. For some forecasters, this falls within the worst 5% of scenarios, others think Anthropic would be able to survive such a measure, or that a designation by the Pentagon would not be so recursively strict. Anthropic could take such a designation to court, but in the worst case scenario, courts may not respond in time to save the company: injunctions and emergency rulings would be possible but not assured.

Michael Kratsios, Science Advisor to Trump, says that the US “totally” rejects global AI governance. Although the White House is at times fractious, this reflects current White House policy.

Conversely, at the New Delhi AI summit, Sam Altman says an IAEA for AI may be needed. And the UN Secretary General said that the future of AI can’t be decided by a handful of countries or left to the whims of a few billionaires, although he doesn’t have that much power himself to avoid this.

Forecasters think there’s a 6.6% (4.0% to 10%) that an IAEA-like institution for AI, which includes the US and China, will exist or be agreed on in a treaty, before 2029. This would be a body which oversees and/or sets some international rules on AI, at least some of which have to do with safety.

Forecasters disagree specifically on the likelihood of China agreeing to such a body. Forecaster comments on the no side include:

> 1) China is not that far behind, 2) it doesn’t trust the US to abide by common agreements, and 3) I think they want to go as far ahead with it themselves as they can. I think they see it as a double-edged sword, but primarily, like nukes, if everyone else is going to have powerful AIs, they want to have them, too. I see a lot of quasi-official Chinese statements about wanting lots of (near-)autonomous military capabilities, in particular. As I understand it, they see it as a necessary part of their military’s future

And on the yes side:

> China is in a weaker position, and so would lose less of the upside. Xi and other senior officials have made multiple public statements advocating for global AI governance and on setting international rules on AI. The US is quite clearly ahead, and China has very little chance of overtaking the US. So to the extent China looks at statements AI CEOs like Dario Amodei are making about essentially using superintelligence for world conquest, and believes them, it would want to accept a deal.

OpenAI committed $7.5m to an independent AI alignment research fund created by UKAISI

The White House is opposing Utah’s HB 286 bill, which would force AI developers of the most powerful systems to publish and follow safety plans, along with providing whistleblower protections.

The Pentagon briefly added Alibaba, Baidu, BYD to the Section 1260H list (entities that support the People’s Liberation Army), then withdrew them.

A few weeks ago, we reported on the NY-12 Congressional primary and forecasted that Alex Bores, who co-sponsored AI safety legislation in New York state, has a 34% chance of winning. Recently, a Super PAC backed by Anthropic has backed Bores, while a Super PAC backed by OpenAI’s Greg Brockman continues to oppose him.

Economy

The Supreme Court ruled that Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs was unlawful. In November, we forecasted a 71% chance (55% to 90%) that this would be the outcome. Trump announced he would impose a new global tariff of 15% (quickly raising it from 10%) using the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the President to impose tariffs of up to 15% for 150 days. The Tax Foundation estimates that this 15% tariff could replace about 73% of the revenue that will be lost as a result of the Supreme Court decision. One forecaster also thinks it’s more likely than not that Section 338 of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 will also be invoked to impose tariffs, though it has never been used before. It has not been decided if and how $133 billion dollars of tariffs already collected will be refunded.

Geopolitics: Trump again expressed support for regime change in Iran and sent a second aircraft carrier group to the Middle East, but also said that nuclear talks will continue. Some European leaders are floating the idea of a common European nuclear deterrent, but Spain’s PM is opposed to “nuclear rearmament”.

• Will the US strike Iran before April 2026? Forecasters give a 48% (40% to 55%) probability thereof. Will it strike Iran before July 2026? Forecasters think there’s a 69% (58% to 90%) chance.

• Will more than 10,000 people take part in protests in Tehran before February 20? Forecasters believe there’s a 47% (35% to 58%) probability.

Technology and AI: Bernie Sanders reiterated that he plans to introduce federal legislation for a moratorium on data center construction. A Chinese AI startup trained its new model entirely on Huawei chips. Anthropic was valued at almost $380B.

• Will a federal moratorium on data center construction become law before 2029? Forecasters give a 4% (2% to 7%) probability thereof.

• Will a Chinese AI model enter the top 3 on Epoch’s Capabilities Index by the end of 2026? Forecasters think there’s a 12% (10% to 18%) chance.

Biorisk: The US NIAID is deprioritizing pandemic preparedness and biodefense, while the FDA refused to consider Moderna’s application seeking approval of their mRNA influenza vaccine.

Geopolitics

Middle East

The United States is sending a second aircraft carrier group to the Middle East as it further builds up its ‘armada’ in the region. Donald Trump also said that regime change in Iran would be the “best thing to ever happen”, with the US military preparing for a weeks-long operation against Iran if Trump gives the order to attack. Trump said that making a deal with Iran has been difficult and that “sometimes you have to have fear”, hinting that his ideal scenario is still to scare Iran’s leaders into making a deal that he feels is acceptable. A second carrier group boosts strike power and would bolster the defence of Israel and US bases in the region if they were to come under attack.

Meanwhile, Iran’s President Mahmoud Pezeshkian said the country is willing to open up its nuclear sites for “any kind of verification”. This would represent a return to the setup under the JCPOA negotiated by the Obama administration, but it’s unclear whether this will be a large enough concession for the current administration. Access to Iran’s nuclear sites has been progressively restricted since Trump pulled out of that deal in 2018, and IAEA inspectors were barred altogether following the US-Israel attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites in June 2025.

Trump met with Israeli prime minister Netanyahu and said that nuclear talks with Iran must continue. Nothing definitive was agreed at the meeting. US and Iranian representatives are expected to meet in Switzerland on February 17 to continue talks about Iran’s nuclear program.

Forecasters now think there’s a 48% probability (40% to 55%) that the US will strike Iran before April 2026, and a 69% chance (58% to 90%) that it will do so before July 2026.

There could be large protests in the coming days in Tehran as some traders at the city’s Grand Bazaar called for nationwide gatherings following the end of the 40-day mourning period for protesters who died on January 8 and 9. Forecasters think there’s a 47% (35% to 58%) chance that a credible news outlet such as Reuters or the Associated Press will report that at least 10,000 gathered in Tehran in a protest this week.

Europe

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says that he opposes nuclear rearmament, in response to suggestions from other European leaders that there should be a common European nuclear deterrent.

Intelligence agencies in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands allege that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was killed by epibatidine, a toxin found in the skin of Ecuador dart frogs. Britain said it would be reporting Russia to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for what it called a flagrant violation of the chemical weapons convention (CWC).

Ukraine is reportedly working on holding presidential elections and a referendum on a peace deal, possibly as early as May, though this may all be conditional on substantive progress being made in peace talks. Ukraine’s President Zelensky emphasised that a ceasefire would first need to be agreed. Last week, we reported that the US has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to end their war, though a US official has since publicly rejected this.

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen says that Trump remains serious about acquiring Greenland.

Russia said it will take “countermeasures, including military-technical ones”, if the West increases its military footprint on Greenland. This most likely refers to building up military infrastructure aimed at the West, and one forecaster thinks it’s extremely unlikely that there will be more than 10 uniformed deaths as a result of confrontations between NATO and Russian forces before 2027.

Norway’s army chief said that, while it’s extremely unlikely that Russia aims to conquer Norway, there could be a confrontation with Russia in the far north of the country if Russia believes its nuclear assets in the Kola peninsula are under threat.

Trump rejected Vladimir Putin’s offer of a one-year extension to the New START Treaty’s deployment limits.

A NATO exercise in May 2025 suggested that the alliance is unprepared for drone warfare.

Russia is transforming its command and control of military operations using software to provide AI-enabled, decentralized battlefield control of drones and to integrate drone activities with other fire units.

Asia

The US and UK air forces reportedly held joint exercises simulating confrontations with Chinese and other countries’ fighter jets.

United States

The Department of Homeland Security has sent tech companies, including Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta, hundreds of administrative subpoenas requesting personal identifying data for social media accounts that track or criticize ICE actions.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that, “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” The House has passed a voter ID bill, the SAVE America Act, but the bill has yet to make its way through the Senate.

Amazon’s Ring security camera company announced that it is ending its partnership with Flock Safety, a security and surveillance company that partners extensively with law enforcement, after a disastrous response to Ring’s Superbowl ad that showcased its ability to locate lost dogs and reunite them with their owners.

Courts have ruled more than 4,400 times since October that the Trump administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully, and detainees have filed more than 20,000 lawsuits seeking to be released. The administration continues to detain immigrants indefinitely despite such court rulings. ICE and CBP continue to increase deportations.

ICE plans for detention centers are becoming clearer. The agency plans to spend $38.3B to buy 24 warehouses across the country and convert them into immigrant detention centers. ICE plans to turn 16 of these warehouses into regional detention centers that can hold 1,000-1,500 detainees, and 8 warehouses into detention centers that can hold up to 8,000-10,000 detainees and will serve as the main hubs for international removals.

The Trump administration is ramping up efforts to denaturalize citizens, with a goal of referring 100-200 cases for litigation per month. Historically, from 1990 to 2017, the US government pursued an average of 11 cases per year. It is possible that the Trump administration will seek to strip US citizenship from foreign-born citizens for lesser violations than in the past.

The House Judiciary Committee’s hearing questioning Attorney General Pam Bondi about the Epstein Files devolved into a shouting match. When asked whether the DOJ has pursued indictments against any co-conspirators, Bondi responded by asking why they weren’t talking about the Dow Jones Industrial Average being over 50,000 and other economic highlights.

Technology and artificial intelligence

US Senator Bernie Sanders reiterated that he intends to introduce federal legislation for a moratorium on data center construction. State lawmakers in Georgia, Maryland, Oklahoma, New York and Wisconsin have proposed similar bills.

Forecasters believe there’s a 4% (2% to 7%) chance that such a moratorium will become federal law before 2029, noting that most Congressional Democrats (including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) have so far declined to fully endorse the plan and that it would almost certainly have to get significant Republican support and survive a potential Presidential veto. On the other hand, there could be an ‘AI warning shot’ or substantial automation-linked job displacement that prompts lawmakers to support it.

Some former xAI employees allege that the company does not take AI safety seriously. One said that “safety is a dead org at xAI”, while another said that engineers at the company immediately “push to prod[uction]... You survive by shutting up and doing what Elon wants”.

In a slightly cryptic post stating that the “world is in peril”, an Anthropic safety lead publicly quit the company, citing the difficulty in Anthropic matching actions to values as among his reasons.

Chinese AI startup Zhipiu released its new flagship model, GLM-5, which was entirely trained on Huawei chips. Forecasters believe there’s a 12% (10% to 18%) chance that a Chinese AI model will have entered the top 3 in Epoch’s Capabilities Index, a composite benchmark, by the end of 2026 (even if it later drops out).

Anthropic secured $30B in Series G funding, at a valuation of $380B. The Pentagon reportedly used Anthropic’s Claude model while carrying out the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Anthropic’s inquiries on the matter led to the Pentagon considering severing ties with the company..

Google DeepMind published two papers which it says demonstrate that Gemini Deep Think can accelerate mathematical and scientific discovery. Google says state-backed hackers are using Gemini to augment their attacks and are stealing Gemini API keys.

OpenAI says that its models have been making progress on mathematical problems posed in the “First Proof” challenge. OpenAI also launched “Lockdown Mode”, an optional security setting for higher-risk users.

Microsoft launched a scanner to detect poisoned LLMs. Microsoft’s AI chief, Mustafa Suleyman, predicted that white-collar work could be automated within 18 months.

Meta plans to add facial recognition to its smart glasses, though it’s aware of privacy concerns. An internal memo from last year stated that, “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”

Data centers now represent 7% of US electricity demand, according to a new Goldman Sachs report.

Economy

China has told its banks to begin selling and limit purchases of US Treasuries to reduce the banks’ exposure to potential volatility in the US debt market and to reduce concentration risk.

Biorisk

Pandemic preparedness and biodefense are being deprioritized at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), with staff members told to remove the terms from the institute’s website.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a rare Refusal-to-File (RTF) letter to Moderna for their mRNA influenza vaccine, despite the EU, Canada and Australia all having accepted the company’s application. This is likely driven by the anti-vaccine views of some in the Trump administration. Moderna has already shelved plans to develop vaccines for Epstein-Barr virus, herpes and shingles, and has announced it will no longer invest in new Phase 3 trials for infectious diseases on the grounds that “[y]ou cannot make a return on investment if you don’t have access to the U.S. market.”

Nature and climate

The Trump administration repealed the finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health. As a consequence, the US Environmental Protection Agency will no longer be able to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

A study estimates that by 2065-2100, many parts of Africa (not including Madagascar) could experience heatwaves 250-300 days per year.

Miscellaneous

Former US President Barack Obama said that “aliens are real” in an interview, later clarifying that he was basing this on his view that “[s]tatistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.” He added that, “the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us.”

Geopolitics: American and Iranian negotiators met for nuclear talks in Oman. No agreement was reached, but both sides said the talks will continue. A nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia expired.

• Will Iran’s current regime and the US reach any agreement around Iran’s nuclear program before July 1, 2026? Forecasters believe there’s a 17% (5.0% to 32%) probability thereof.

• What is the chance that any of the US, China or Russia will start any negotiations towards a new nuclear arms treaty by the end of 2026? Forecasters estimate around even odds, 52% (40% to 65%).

• What is the chance that a new country will acquire nuclear weapons by 2030? Forecasters give a 5.3% (1.0% to 15%) chance to this outcome.

Technology and AI: Anthropic and OpenAI released their most powerful models to date. Both companies said that the models were mostly built by AIs, and that some of their benchmarks that were designed to detect dangerous capabilities have been saturated. METR assessed GPT-5.2 (high) to be SOTA on its time horizon task suite.

• Will METR assess any AI to have a time horizon of 100 hours by the end of 2026? Forecasters give an aggregate probability of 7.6% (3% to 20%).

Economics: The US and India reached a trade deal. Both countries will slash tariffs on each other’s exports, and India agreed to stop buying Russian oil.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Anthropic released their latest model, Claude Opus 4.6. OpenAI, meanwhile, released their latest model, GPT-5.3-Codex. Both companies claim that their AI models mostly built these latest models.

Anthropic said that some of their benchmarks for determining dangerous capabilities have now been saturated. For AI R&D capabilities, this meant that they instead relied on a survey of 16 employees to determine whether it could automate the work of an entry-level Anthropic researcher with three months of scaffolding and tooling improvements. OpenAI similarly said that “we cannot rule out” the possibility that GPT-5.3-Codex poses a “High” cyber risk.

The UK Government’s AI Security Institute also conducted red teaming of both models and found no instances of Claude Opus 4.6 engaging in “research sabotage”. Apollo Research, on the other hand, said it observed high levels of awareness that it was being evaluated from Claude Opus 4.6, and therefore declined to provide a formal assessment of the model.

METR’s Chris Painter said:

My bio says I work on AGI preparedness, so I want to clarify:
We are not prepared.
Over the last year, dangerous capability evaluations have moved into a state where it’s difficult to find any Q&A benchmark that models don’t saturate.

METR evaluated GPT-5.2 (high) on multi-step software and reasoning tasks. The organization found that the model is state-of-the-art on both their 50% and 80% time-horizon suites. However, forecasters debate the degree to which this will translate into real-world outcomes, including in the economic and catastrophic risk domains. They believe there’s a 7.6% (3% to 20%) chance that METR will assess any model to have a 50% time horizon of at least 100 hours by the end of 2026. This might happen if there are nonlinearities in time horizon growth once we reach time horizons of a full day, or due to better understood scaffolding.

The 2026 International AI Safety Report was published. Backed by over 30 countries and international organizations, the report finds that real-world evidence for several different risk categories is growing, including cyberthreats, biological and chemical threats, and loss of control risks. Notably, the US withheld support from this report.

Spain hosted a summit on the responsible use of AI in the military, but only 35 out of 85 participating countries signed the joint declaration. The US and China didn’t.

Large Reasoning Models are good at finding jailbreaks for other such models. This is interesting because much as defensive measures might increase with model capability, so might the ability to attack those measures. Here is a more casual treatment of the topic, with Gemini jailbreaking Opus.

And: The UK and Microsoft will work together to build a deepfake detection system. Banks are struggling to cope with faked AI-generated KYC documents. OpenAI is reportedly unsatisfied with some of Nvidia’s latest AI chips and has been seeking alternatives. AI models can rent a human, and there is generally a shady ecosystem arising for AI models. Baidu rolled out fully driverless taxis in Dubai.

Geopolitics

Middle East

Negotiators from the US and Iran met in Oman for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Nothing conclusive was agreed, but Trump said that the talks were “very good”, and both sides said that they would continue to talk. The US military buildup in the region continues, with a focus on moving Patriot and THAAD air defense systems into the region. Forecasters believe there’s a 17% (5.0% to 32%) probability that the US and Iran’s current regime will reach a new agreement on Iran’s nuclear program before July 2026.

Europe

The US-Russia New START Treaty expired. Negotiated by the Obama and Medvedev administrations in 2010 and extended by the Biden and Putin administrations in 2021, it aimed to cap each nation’s strategic nuclear arsenals.

The US called for negotiations with Russia and China on a new treaty, while accusing China of carrying out a secret nuclear test in 2020.

Forecasters think there’s a 52% (40% to 65%) chance that negotiations on a new nuclear arms control treaty involving the US, Russia or China will begin before 2027, and a 5.3% (1.0% to 15%) chance that at least one country that currently doesn’t have nuclear weapons will possess them by 2030.

Ukraine’s President Zelensky says that Trump gave Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to reach an agreement to end the war. Forecasters are sceptical that an agreement will be reached by then.

Asia

China warned that US arms sales to Taiwan could jeopardise Trump’s visit to Beijing in April, though forecasters generally think the meeting will go ahead as planned. President Xi also said that Taiwan is the “most important” issue in a phone call with Donald Trump.

A series of coordinated attacks across Balochistan in Pakistan, claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), killed dozens after assailants struck hospitals, schools, banks and markets in nine cities. The violence comes amid rising ethnic unrest in the border regions of Pakistan, Iran andAfghanistan. Taliban officials have expressed support for Balochi separatists.

Biorisk

Investigators found a biological lab at a home in Las Vegas, and said that it could be linked to a similar illegal facility found in California. The California lab was allegedly run by a Chinese citizen who is currently in federal custody, and contained “pathogen-labeled containers” with labels such as “dengue fever”, “HIV” and “malaria,” along with hundreds of mice.

Antibodies to H5N1 bird flu have been detected in a dairy herd in the Netherlands.

In Bangladesh, a fruit bat virus, Pteropine orthoreovirus, was found in 5 human throat swabs from patients with severe respiratory illnesses or encephalitis collected from December 2022 to March 2023. The patients were initially thought to be infected with Nipah virus; one patient died. This virus is now added to the list of zoonotic fruit bat viruses that can cause serious disease in humans.

Economy

The US and India struck a trade deal. Total US tariffs on imports from India will be cut from 50% to 18%, while India agreed to stop buying Russian oil and to slash its own tariffs on imports from the United States. India has long been viewed as highly protectionist, but has in the last year reached trade agreements with Britain, the European Union and the United States.

US software and services stocks lost $1T last week, but partially rebounded, as investors worry about how AI would disrupt these industries.

Nature and Climate

Solar active region 4366 threw off another X-class flare but has calmed down over the past week. Additional X-class and smaller solar flares are possible from the region, but the risk that the region will produce a solar flare that triggers a dangerous coronal mass ejection (CME) is now almost zero.