🟩 EU freezes Russian assets, US and Iran seize oil tankers, Trump restricts AI regulation || Global Risks Weekly Roundup #50/2025

Executive summary

Top items and forecasts for this week:

Geopolitics: The EU indefinitely froze €210 billion of Russian assets. The US and Iran seized oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela and in the Gulf of Oman, respectively. Ukraine wants to join the EU before 2027.

• Forecasters estimate a 38% (25% to 55%) chance that the US will seize another oil tanker related to Venezuela by the end of January 2026, and a 70% (60% to 80%) probability that they will carry out a strike on Venezuelan land in the next three months.

• They believe there’s a 32% (15% to 50%) probability that Ukraine will join the EU before 2030. Back in February, they gave this a 10% (5% to 25%) chance.

• They also think there’s a 23% (15% to 30%) chance that the EU will use frozen Russian assets (either directly or as collateral) to fund Ukraine’s defence by the end of January 2026.

Tech and AI: Trump signed an executive order aiming to restrict the ability of US states to regulate artificial intelligence. OpenAI launched GPT-5.2.

• And they estimate a 60% (35% to 75%) probability that the US will have federal or state regulation in force on December 31, 2026 that requires at least some frontier AI developers to publish and follow plans for mitigating the risk that their AIs might cause catastrophic damages. Our understanding is that the US does still have some such state laws that are in force (e.g., California’s SB 53), despite the passage of the executive order.

Economy: The Trump administration will allow Nvidia to export its H200 chips to select customers in China if the US gets a 25% cut. But China might reject some or all of those chips in order to support its domestic chip industry.

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Geopolitics

Europe

The EU indefinitely froze 210 billion Euros of Russian assets that are held in the bloc, taking the bloc a step closer to using them to raise a loan to assist Ukraine’s defence. Some Western countries have already used the interest on frozen Russian assets to provide funding to Ukraine, but the assets themselves haven’t yet been used directly or as collateral. Belgium and Italy are among the countries who oppose using the assets, arguing that it could set a precedent that harms the financial system and fearing the prospect of legal action. Bankers in the UK have similarly warned the government that they would want to be indemnified against retaliation from Moscow. Russia has already filed a lawsuit against Euroclear, a Brussels-based organisation holding most of the assets. Forecasters think there’s a 23% (15% to 30%) chance that the EU will use some of these frozen assets (directly or as collateral, but not just the interest on them) to fund Ukraine’s defence by the end of January 2026. They place considerable weight on Belgium not agreeing and point out that the EU is generally slow in making decisions and still has until April before Ukraine faces a funding crunch.

Ukraine and its European allies put forward another draft peace proposal. Among other things, it envisages Ukraine joining the EU before 2027, which would require a marked acceleration in the bloc’s accession process. Ukraine’s allies note that it would be difficult for the EU to oppose fast-track entry for Ukraine if it scuppers a peace deal, and that Trump could pressure Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban to agree to the plan if it gets a peace deal over the line, assuming he is still in power. Forecasters now think there’s a 32% (15% to 50%) that Ukraine will join the EU before 2030. Back in February, they gave this a 10% chance (range: 5% to 25%). They highlight that the process is usually long and requires unanimity, but their forecasts are moved up by the US proposing it as part of its peace plan. Accession to the EU without definitely agreed borders also seems like a no-no, but a North/South Korea-like indefinite standoff seems more likely.

Ukraine’s President Zelensky visited the town of Kupiansk to showcase the Ukrainian military’s apparent success in retaking parts of it from Russia.

Russian drones struck a Turkish ship at port in the Black Sea in retaliation for recent Ukrainian drone strikes against Russia-linked oil tankers. Today, Ukraine claims to have struck a submarine in Novorossiysk using underwater drones for the first time, putting the submarine out of action.

The UK’s Royal Navy shadowed a Russian submarine as it was passing through the English Channel.

Bulgaria’s Prime Minister and the rest of his government resigned following mass protests against corruption.

NATO chief Mark Rutte called on NATO countries to increase defense spending and preparations to prevent Russia from starting a larger war in Europe that could be “on the scale of war our grandparents and great-grandparents endured”.

Asia

Japan says that Chinese fighter jets locked radars on Japanese aircraft.

Fighting between Thailand and Cambodia continues.

An arm of the Chinese government, the Office for Safeguarding National Security (OSNS), summoned foreign journalists and warned against reporting “distorted facts” about a Nov. 26 high-rise fire in Hong Kong, saying journalists could face repercussions under Hong Kong’s 2020 national security law.

The Americas

The US seized a sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. The tanker had loaded about 1.8M barrels of crude oil in Venezuela and transferred about 200k barrels of that to a ship bound for Cuba before being seized; the ship was headed to Asia, where Cuba often sells Venezuelan oil to obtain foreign currency. The seizure had been planned for months.

Over the coming weeks, the Trump administration reportedly plans to seize “additional ships carrying Venezuelan oil that may also have transported oil from other countries targeted by U.S. sanctions, such as Iran” and has assembled a target list of several sanctioned tankers. Many shipowners and operators are now wary of sailing to or from Venezuela. US forces are reportedly monitoring tankers near Venezuela and are waiting for targeted ships to move into international waters, and for a destination port to be arranged, before seizure. Further tanker seizures would be expected to squeeze the Maduro regime by reducing its main source of revenue.

Trump again threatened strikes on Venezuela, saying, “it’s going to be starting on land pretty soon”. On Thursday, Putin called Maduro in a gesture of support, and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko met with the Venezuelan ambassador to Moscow for the second time in three weeks. However, neither Russia nor China have offered Maduro substantial military aid.

The US military buildup in the Caribbean continued this week with the arrival of HC-130J Combat King II combat search and rescue (CSAR) planes, HH-60W Jolly Green Giant II CSAR helicopters, and six EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets in Puerto Rico; these new additions indicate a new level of preparedness for inland airstrikes and other flight missions. Six KC-135 Stratotanker refueling tankers are now forward deployed in the Dominican Republic. In addition, F-35 Joint Strike Fighters from the Vermont Air National Guard‘s 158th Fighter Wing were ordered to deploy to the Caribbean; at least six cargo flights have flown from Vermont to Puerto Rico in support of this deployment, suggesting that up to half of the wing’s 20 F-35s may soon fly to Puerto Rico. One OSINT observer reports that several F-35s have already flown from Vermont to Key West and departed onwards, but another vehemently disagrees. The US military buildup in the region in preparation for potential airstrikes may well be complete, or nearly so.

A US Air Force air to air refueling tanker had a near miss with a Jet Blue flight in the Caribbean. The tanker had its transponder off and was not visible on air traffic control’s radar. The Jet Blue pilot told an air traffic controller: “They don’t have their transponder turned on, it’s outrageous… We almost had a midair collision up here.”

On Friday December 12, Lt. Gen. Alvin Pettus assumed command of US SOUTHCOM forces as Adm. Alvin Holsey retired. Lt. Gen. Pettus had previously been SOUTHCOM Military Deputy Commander.

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado snuck out of Venezuela, with the help of a private, US veteran-led rescue organization, to travel to Norway to attempt to receive her Nobel Peace Prize in person. She missed the Nobel ceremony, but she got to address supporters in public.

If the US continues to seize ships transporting Venezuelan oil, or if the Maduro regime collapses, losing Venezuelan oil shipments could also push the Cuban government to the breaking point. Venezuelan oil shipments have fallen sharply over more than a year because of sanctions on Venezuela, and emergency shipments from Mexico and Russia haven’t made up enough of the difference. Cuba has been facing an energy crisis because of both oil shortages and decades of neglect of its energy infrastructure. Life has become harder in Cuba for many reasons, to the point that nearly 20% of the population has left Cuba in the past four years.

Overall, forecasters believe there’s a 38% (25% to 55%) chance that the US will seize another oil tanker related to Venezuela by the end of January 2026. They highlight that there are 30+ sanctioned tankers currently operating near Venezuela, but also that tanker operators will not want to risk their ships and that the US might want to cycle through types of attacks rather than repeat the same thing. US forces planned the recent attack for months, and finding a port to receive a ship is also logistically nontrivial, since a lot of these shadow fleet tankers have unclear ownership, unclear insurance status, and they’re often “ancient rust buckets” that might leak.

They also estimate that there is a 70% (60% to 80%) chance that US forces will carry out a strike on Venezuelan land within the next three months. They agree that tensions are high and rising, but some also point out that there isn’t anything in particular forcing the Trump administration to act now rather than later. There is bipartisan resistance in Congress against starting a war in Venezuela.

On Sunday, Chile elected a right-wing president, Jose Antonio Kast, who has vowed to fight crime and deport illegal immigrants. His election reflects the sharpest right turn in Chile since the end of its military dictatorship in 1990.

Brazil, oddly, did not ratify the treaty for the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, which it had initially accepted back in 2017.

United States

A grand jury declined to re-indict Letitia James, the former attorney general of New York state, after the Trump administration’s previous case against her was thrown out by a judge. Estimates for the percentage of indictments that grand juries reject range from 0.001% to 5%. Despite this low base rate, the grand jury’s action in the Letitia James case raises the prospect that the administration will face hurdles if they wish to re-indict and convict former FBI Director James Comey.

South Carolina is facing a measles outbreak, the third major regional outbreak in the US in 2025.

Most state Republican legislators in Indiana joined Democrats to block a Trump-backed move to redistrict Congressional seats to produce more favourable outcomes for national Republicans.

The Department of Homeland Security announced that 600k unauthorized immigrants have been deported from the interior of the country this year, and that an additional 1.9M have self-deported.

Middle East

Iran seized a foreign oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, alleging that it was carrying smuggled fuel. The crew members were mainly from India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Africa

The Ivory Coast is pushing to get US spy planes to tackle al Qaeda-linked jihadists in the Sahel.

A Rwanda-backed M23 offensive in the Congo’s South Kivu region killed over 400 civilians.

Technology and artificial intelligence

OpenAI launched its newest and most capable series of AIs, GPT-5.2. On the ARC-AGI-1 evaluation, GPT-5.2 Pro is ~390X more cost efficient than their o3 (High) model tested just one year ago. GPT-5.2 thinking makes significant advances on the frontier on a series of benchmarks, including on ARC-AGI-2 (Verified). OpenAI warned its upcoming AIs could pose a “high” cybersecurity risk.

An OpenAI employee quit, alleging the company’s economic research is drifting into AI advocacy, claiming OpenAI has been hesitating to publish research on negative impacts of AI.

Trump signed an executive order that aims to restrict the ability of US states to enforce their own AI regulations. Some groups claim the order is unlawful, and it has been criticised by Democrats such as Gavin Newsom and Republicans such as Ron DeSantis and Steve Bannon. Forecasters’ understanding is that state AI regulations such as California’s SB 53 are still in force, and forecasters think there’s a 60% (35% to 75%) chance that there will still be at least one federal or state regulation in force on December 31, 2026 that requires at least some frontier AI developers to publish and follow plans for mitigating the risk that their AIs cause catastrophic damages.

The operationalization of that question was a bit messy, given the four players involved in proposing, blocking or enabling such a regulation: Congress, the executive, states and the multiple levels of the judiciary. The forecasters’ consensus was that by the end of the year, there will be no federal law, an executive order aiming to restrict state regulations, and at least some state regulations. The executive order and state regulations will likely be embroiled in legal fights, but it’s unclear who will win it and on what merits. One forecaster noted that the Trump administration has not been skillful at wielding the Department of Justice to accomplish its goals, and suggests, with low confidence, that the federal administration will not get a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction on state regulations. We think that this is an area where future forecasting efforts could be fruitful.

A group of more than 150 parents sent a letter to governor Kathy Hochul, asking her to sign New York’s RAISE Act, which would require AI companies to create and follow safety plans and transparency rules.

Over 100 UK parliamentarians joined ControlAI’s campaign for binding regulation on the most powerful AI systems, including the UK’s first AI minister and former defence secretary. It’s the largest such grouping of politicians to recognize the extinction risk posed by advanced AI systems.

Meta acquired an AI device startup, Limitless. Limitless’ announcement said it shares Meta’s vision to “bring personal superintelligence to everyone”.

A bipartisan group of 42 state attorneys general warned big tech companies about their AIs encouraging users’ delusions and causing AI psychosis and suicides.

Poetiq AI reportedly achieved state-of-the-art performance on ARC-AGI-2 by deploying a meta-system that uses existing frontier models.

Zoom reportedly achieved state-of-the-art performance on “Humanity’s Last Exam”. One forecaster suggests that this is because of scaffolding overhang, another because the benchmark had been ignored by labs since this April.

In China, a jet-powered drone capable of carrying drone swarm payloads was flown for the first time.

Economy

The Trump administration will allow Nvidia to export its H200 chips to select customers in China – if the US gets a 25% cut. However, China may limit companies’ access to the chips, or block their import completely, in order to support its domestic chip industry and achieve self-sufficiency in chip production.

Climate and Nature

A study studying a possible collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which functions as a key heat and moisture conveyor belt in the Atlantic Ocean, arrived at the conclusion it could cause at least a millenium of extreme drought in Europe.

Nearly 700 sinkholes have appeared since 2000 in Turkey’s main wheat-growing region, as a result of drought and groundwater depletion. Dozens of new sinkholes are now appearing each year.