EU may shoot down Russian jets next time, US gov may shutdown, no global AI red lines | Global Risks Weekly Roundup #39/2025
More drone sightings, EU still considering shooting down Russian jets next time, probability of Russia using a nuclear weapon in the next year slightly rising
Executive summary
Top items:
Geopolitics: More drone sightings, EU still considering shooting down Russian jets next time, probability of Russia using a nuclear weapon in the next year slightly rising.
US Politics: US government may face a shutdown, former FBI director indicted.
Artificial Intelligence: USG advisors against global governance of AI.
Climate and nature: Up to half of Prochlorococcus, a plankton at the bottom of the ocean food chain that produces about 20%1 of the planet’s oxygen through photosynthesis, may die off if the climate significantly rises.
Forecaster estimates:
1.2% that, conditional on a Russian jet being shot down in NATO airspace by the end of March 2026, Russia will use a nuclear weapon offensively by the end of 2026
65% for a US government shutdown by October 1st, and 75% by the end of the year, per Polymarket
20% chance that former FBI director Comey will be convicted by a jury
73% chance that the US will conduct a military strike against Venezuelan land by 2026, and a 57% that any such strikes would be limited to narcotics-related targets
1.3% that China and the US will agree on regulations for AI by the end of 2026
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Geopolitics
Europe
There were possible drone sightings in a number of European countries, including Denmark and Norway, which some accused Russia of being behind, though authorities said that a direct link wasn’t established. Denmark said it is not considering invoking Article 4.
Poland is seeking to change its law so that it can shoot down Russian objects, such as drones, without prior NATO or EU approval. Trump endorsed the idea of shooting down Russian jets if they enter NATO airspace, contradicting previous statements by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte echoed Trump’s comments, saying he agreed with Trump and that Russian jets could be shot down “if so necessary,” although forecasters think he was being diplomatic.
European diplomats told Russia that they are indeed willing to shoot down Russian jets, but other reporting suggests that NATO members are divided on the question, with the US, Poland and the Baltic States in favour of more aggressive measures, and Germany and some southern European countries in favour of restraint.
One forecaster assigns a ~33% probability to a Russian jet being shot down in NATO airspace by the end of the year (conditional on one entering in the first place), up from ~10% last week. Even if this were to happen by the end of March 2026, forecasters as a group think that the offensive use of a nuclear weapon by Russia by the end of 2026 would still be unlikely (1.2%, range 0.3% to 7%). Some forecasters point out that such an incident would not bring them much above the baseline risk, for instance moving it from 1% per year to 1.2% per year, but others bring up that a tactical nuclear weapon need not be a huge deal when it comes to its direct impact—it just needs to scare Western countries off. Still, Putin would very likely be dissuaded by China, as in the autumn of 2022.
Trump posted that Ukraine can win back all of its territory from Russia. Some forecasters think this represents a major shift in his thinking. Combined with his statement regarding the right of NATO countries to shoot down Russian military aircraft that violate their airspace, it emboldens NATO countries to take a more robust stance against Russia with less fear of creating a rift with the US. At the same time, some forecasters also point out that Trump has a tendency to listen to the last person in the room and so are hesitant to interpret this as a lasting position.
The Republic of Moldova held parliamentary elections on Sunday. The ruling, pro-EU party won a parliamentary majority, defeating the pro-Russian bloc. Earlier this week, Russia had accused the EU of intentions to “occupy” Moldova.
And: the Russian gasoline shortage continues. Also, Russia reportedly started to build a reserve force in July, keeping some portion of recruits from being sent to Ukraine.
United States
The US government may face a shutdown this week if Democrats and Republicans disagree about the budget. Polymarket has reasonably liquid markets at 65% for a shutdown by October 1st, and 75% by the end of the year. Under a shutdown, the Trump administration would have some wiggle room to decide which services to prioritize, although some big-ticket spending items like Social Security would continue to run.
Following Trump’s social media post last week, former FBI director James Comey was indicted; i.e., a jury allowed the prosecution to proceed. Forecasters estimate a 20% chance that he will be convicted by a jury, with individual forecasters ranging from 5% to 40%. They note that left-wing and right-wing media really differ on their predictions for the success of the case. Left-wing sources characterize the indictment as a clear politicization of the legal system that is unlikely to succeed, whereas right-wing sources characterize it as a clear-cut case that Comey lied to Congress.
Other indictments are expected, with the Justice Department filing a subpoena for Georgia DA Fani Willis. DA Willis led the Georgia election interference case against Trump before she was disqualified.
Secretary of War Hegseth ordered all general and flag officers to come to the US for a pep rally about the warrior ethos and to discuss the new National Defense Strategy, which prioritizes homeland defense over threats from abroad. The meeting raised security concerns around bringing approximately 800 officers and their support staff together in one place. “Gathering all the military brass together in this meeting, though, will allow Hegseth and his social media team to capture video and photos of him with hundreds of generals and admirals listening to him at once, a potentially powerful visual,” NBC reports. Trump announced that he will attend the meeting.
And: A big bailout for farmers is expected. Trump ordered troops to Portland, even after expressing some uncertainty. The Supreme Court issued a 6–3 decision allowing a form of presidential rescission of foreign aid, which strengthens the President’s leverage in appropriation fights. Musk, Bannon and Thiel named in new Epstein documents.
The Rest of the Americas
The Trump administration is reportedly developing plans to strike “drug targets” in Venezuela, though some forecasters think that action against drug cartels is a pretext for a broader projection of US power in the region. Eight US Navy surface warships are in the area. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro offered to help the US hunt down drug cartel leaders, indicating that he is trying to avoid a situation in which Venezuela comes into direct military conflict with the US. Forecasters estimate a 73% chance (50% to 94%) that the US will conduct a military strike against Venezuelan land by 2026, and a 57% (10% to 87%) that any such strikes would be limited to narcotics-related targets.
The US offered to bail out Argentina. Argentina then was able to suspend export taxes, which led to China buying more soybeans from Argentina – not the US.
Middle East
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei ruled out negotiations with the US over its nuclear programme.
Ten countries recognized the State of Palestine at the UN, bringing the total number to 157 of 193 countries (81%). The US is the sole permanent Security Council member that has not formally recognized the State of Palestine, thus blocking full UN membership.
Ukraine and Syria restored diplomatic relations in a sign of increasing international normalization of ties to the new Syrian government.
Asia
An analysis of the Chinese PLA’s interest in surprise attacks finds that the Chinese military places a high value on the element of surprise and on unconventional approaches, and that these could well be used in any potential invasion of Taiwan.
Russia is reportedly selling military equipment, technology, expertise, and training to China, which could help China to seize Taiwan if it decides to make an attempt.
Economy
The US dollar is having its “worst year in decades.”
Trump announced new tariffs on drugs, furniture and heavy trucks, to go into effect October 1. US domestic freight demand continues to be weak.
China’s domestic gas production has gone up by almost 10% annually since the turn of the century. Iran may be exporting crude oil via Indonesia to China.
Artificial Intelligence
Policy
The Global Call for AI Red Lines, which we reported on as it was announced by Maria Resa in the UN last Monday, got significant media attention. However, following this announcement, Michael Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in his remarks during the UNSC Open Debate on Artificial Intelligence and International Peace and Security that
We totally reject all efforts by international bodies to assert centralized control and global governance of AI. We believe that the responsible diffusion of AI will help pave the way to a flourishing future, one of increased productivity, empowered individuals, and revolutions in scientific advancement.
…
We believe broad overregulation incentivizes centralization, stifles innovation, and increases the danger that these tools will be used for tyranny and conquest. Ideological fixations on social equity, climate catastrophism, and so-called existential risk are dangers to progress and obstacles to responsibly harnessing this technology as an extension of human ingenuity and capacities.
It’s not clear whether he was responding to the call for red lines in particular, or to the UN in general. He reiterated his opinion on X, with White House senior AI policy advisor Sriram Krishnan (who formerly led VC firm Andreessen Horowitz’s London office) and Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, Jacob Helberg (former senior advisor of Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp, and close ally of OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman), piling on.
Krishnan wrote that, “one world government + centralized control of AI = tyranny.” And Helberg embraced a push to win the AI race:
AI Catastrophism is the new Climate Catastrophism.
Catastrophists always claim a massive expansion of regulatory control is necessary to “protect” you from an imminent calamity.
WE TOTALLY REJECT IT.
As President Trump has said, America started the AI Race and it will win it.
That is the AI policy of this Administration.
We at Sentinel believe that it would be sensible for representatives of major countries to sit down and agree what behaviors and uses of AI are acceptable, since we consider the risk of losing control to AI worrisome. It’s therefore concerning to us to see US government officials opposing collaboration with other countries on risks, and indeed, in the case of Helberg, actively willing an AI race.
However, forecasters generally assign a very low probability (an aggregate of 1.3%, estimates ranging from 0.8% to 2%) that China and the US will agree on regulations for AI by the end of 2026. Such an agreement seems extremely unlikely, barring a strong warning shot, such as a September 11-magnitude event, and even then, it would take time for new regulations to be proposed and accepted.
Also at the UN: Australia’s foreign minister warned that putting AI in control of nuclear weapons could endanger the world, while the UK’s deputy Prime Minister David Lammy said that, “superintelligence is on the horizon”. President Trump announced plans for an AI system to enforce the Biological Weapons Convention.
Meanwhile, in California, it looks likely that Governor Gavin Newsom will approve AI transparency bill SB 53, which has been passed by the California legislature.
Chips, Datacenters, and Investments
OpenAI and Nvidia signed a deal in which Nvidia will invest up to $100B in OpenAI, which will largely be used by OpenAI to lease Nvidia’s AI chips.
OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank announced plans to build 5 more US datacenter sites for Stargate, which would bring Stargate’s planned capacity up to nearly 7 gigawatts, and to invest over $400 billion over the next 3 years.
Evals and Research
OpenAI developed a new AI eval, GDPval, “a new evaluation that measures model performance on economically valuable, real-world tasks across 44 occupations.” Claude Opus 4.1 appears to perform at close to parity with industry experts. However, the tasks are “precisely specified and one-shot”. They aren’t interactive and don’t require tacit knowledge, which may limit the applicability of the benchmark to the real economy.
Some of the reasoning traces from the recent OpenAI and Apollo Research paper are really weird; the models appear to assign new meanings to specific words for reasoning purposes.
One small piece of research suggests that GPT-5 could help to solve minor open problems in mathematics. One of the authors said, “Compared to older generations, GPT-5 feels sharper in math and occasionally original — small sparks worth noting.” Scott Aaronson, a theoretical computer scientist and AI researcher, also published a paper in which a key technical step in a proof came from GPT-5 Thinking, although he noted that it’s possible that the system had seen this somewhere in its training data.
Other AI
OpenAI announced ChatGPT Pulse, which enables ChatGPT to start conversations with users and to conduct asynchronous research on users’ behalf, poring over their chat histories, emails, and other connected app data while they are asleep.
A paper from a few months ago (summary) models the share of GDP allocated to wages as going to zero as salaries converge to the cost of replacing a human’s labor by AGI. It is interesting to think about these conclusions in the context of predictions that fusion energy may become commercially feasible over the coming decades and bring energy costs down towards zero as well, thereby lowering compute costs further.
And: Sam Altman wrote in a blog post that, “Our vision is simple: we want to create a factory that can produce a gigawatt of new AI infrastructure every week.” A chatbot site depicting AI-generated CSAM has raised concerns. A study found that popular AI chatbots use emotional manipulation to keep users engaged. An article in Foreign Affairs argues for treating an AI race with China as a marathon, not a sprint. Google DeepMind announced their new Gemini Robotics 1.5 model, which gives robots the ability to reason.
Other technological risks
The UK Government announced that it will underwrite a £1.5 billion loan to Jaguar Land Rover, following a cyberattack that shut the company’s factories in Britain for more than a month. The company’s manufacturing operations are expected to reopen in early October. A spokesperson from the Royal United Services Institute noted that, “this particular attack in the UK is unprecedented. We’ve not seen something like this in terms of the potential for significant economic losses and disruption within a particular sectoral supply chain from cyber attacks”.
Climate and Nature
Populations of Prochlorococcus, the smallest and most abundant phytoplankton on Earth, may fall by as much as half in warming tropical ocean waters if warming exceeds 4°C. It had long been thought that these species would continue to thrive in higher-temperature waters, but a new study finds that this may not be true. Phytoplankton are at the bottom of the ocean food chain; they convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into food. Prochlorococcus species produce about 20% the world’s oxygen2 through photosynthesis. While other kinds of phytoplankton could potentially step in to take the place of Prochlorococcus species in warming waters, they would not be perfect replacements, and falling Prochlorococcus populations could potentially have fatal consequences for ocean food chains and the climate.
A new study by NASA finds that the sun has become more active since 2008, after several decades of falling activity. The numbers of sunspots, flares and coronal mass ejections have been increasing, and that raises the risk of a catastrophic solar storm.
Super Typhoon Ragasa hit Hong Kong, Taiwan and southern China; millions of people were evacuated from several cities in southern China. Cyclone Gabrielle struck the Azores Islands. Tropical Storm Imelda is expected to become a hurricane on late Monday or Tuesday. Current NOAA projections don’t expect Imelda to make landfall on the continental US, but the east coast of Florida may experience tropical storm level high winds, waves and flooding. It is advised to monitor the direction of Imelda if in Eastern Florida.
Though this source says only 5%. The 20% seems to come from articles like this one. Would be an interesting rabbit hole to dig into but we ran out of time for publishing this article.
See footnote 1.