Global Risks Weekly Roundup #16/2025: Trade disruptions, US hacks China Winter Games, OpenAI not testing finetuned models.
Also Iran nuclear talks, dollar falling, trade disruptions.
Executive summary
Fallout from Trump’s tariffs continues: trade patterns are shifting, Trump is feuding with the Chair of the Federal Reserve, the dollar is falling relative to other currencies, and US imports and exports are plummeting, as are manufacturing indicators in the US.
The Trump administration continues to clash with the judicial branch about deportations without due process. The Supreme Court halted another round of deportations to the jail in El Salvador. You can read our brief on this topic here. Sentinel forecasters in aggregate assess as “83% true” that the Trump administration has disobeyed the Supreme Court so far.
The US and Iran have concluded two rounds of nuclear talks and a third is scheduled for this week, and Sudan enters its third year of civil war with no end in sight. OpenAI removed the requirement for fine-tuned versions of their models to be safety tested from their Preparedness Framework.
Economy
Trump made markets nervous by criticizing and threatening to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell because Powell won’t raise interest rates. Trump may not have the legal authority to fire the Fed Chair, and doing so would cause market panic, though there is an argument to be made that independent agencies are unconstitutional. John Kennedy of Louisiana, a Republican Senator on the banking committee that oversees the Federal Reserve, has spoken out against firing Powell: “I don’t think the president, any president, has the right to remove the Federal Reserve chairman.” Yet on Monday the 21st, Trump referred to chairman Powell as “a major loser” because he is not following Trump’s wish to cut interest rates.
The dollar has fallen about 9% relative to a basket of foreign currencies since mid January, its lowest level in three years. The sell-off reflects falling investor trust in the US.
Just as sanctions and export controls against Russia have been circumvented by shipments through former Soviet republics, especially Kyrgyzstan, US tariffs levied on China are being partially circumvented by shipments through nearby countries, particularly Vietnam. China and Vietnam signed new cooperation agreements on April 14. Vietnamese authorities are trying hard to win favor with the administration to achieve low tariff rates, including granting Musk’s Starlink approval to operate in the country and expediting a Trump real estate project. Fareed Zakaria sees a lot of opportunities for corruption.
Ocean container shipping volumes to the US for the first week of April fell by almost two thirds compared to the previous week, and global ocean shipping volumes fell by one half. On the one hand, these data reflect short-term reactions to tariffs, and shipping volumes could well change if tariffs are walked back further. However, on the other hand, sustained trade disruption at this level would cause a massive economic downturn worldwide. As one observer noted, “This is COVID level supply chain collapse without the Fed.”
The US trucking industry is suffering. A trucking industry commentator observes that “prestocking” before tariffs were announced isn’t propping up trucking volumes and predicts that, “Starting in May, port freight out of California will be almost eliminated. Its [sic] going to be a bloodbath in dray, followed by intermodal, and then a collapse in I-20 & I-40 trucking.” Heavy truck sales are also falling sharply, and it has been noted that drops in this market preceded the recessions in 2001 and 2008. Mack Trucks, which manufactures semi and other trucks, plans to lay off 250-350 employees in Pennsylvania because of reduced orders for heavy-duty trucks because of uncertainties in the market.
Manufacturing indexes in PA, NY and other regions in the US are down sharply because of the tariff shocks. Longstanding shortages of transformers for the electric grid are likely to be deepened by tariffs.
In reaction to shipping-industry feedback, the US changed its plans to charge million-dollar fees per port call for vessels in fleets that have Chinese-made vessels and will instead impose graduated fees on a more restricted group of vessels starting in late October.
In a tit-for-tat play, China ordered its airlines not to take any further deliveries of Boeing jets.
AI and Technology
OpenAI
OpenAI quietly removed the requirement for fine-tuned versions of their models to be safety tested from their Preparedness Framework.
OpenAI launched its o3 and o4-mini models. They say o3 is their “most powerful reasoning model that pushes the frontier across coding, math, science, visual perception, and more. It sets a new SOTA on benchmarks including Codeforces, SWE-bench (without building a custom model-specific scaffold), and MMMU.”
OpenAI launched its new GPT-4.1 series of models without plans for a system card. They say they’re not doing so because it is not a frontier AI model. This drew some criticism in light of the voluntary safety and transparency commitments the company has made. Former OpenAI safety researcher Steven Adler said:
“System cards are the AI industry’s main tool for transparency and for describing what safety testing was done,” Adler told TechCrunch in an email. “Today’s transparency norms and commitments are ultimately voluntary, so it is up to each AI company to decide whether or when to release a system card for a given model.”
OpenAI is working on a Twitter-like social network.
OpenAI’s top catastrophic risk staffer, Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, who became the head of OpenAI’s preparedness team last July, announced that he’s stepped down from that position and become an intern in one of OpenAI’s teams, focusing on healthcare applications.
OpenAI named members to its nonprofit commission, formed earlier this month.
Other AI news
Nvidia said it would take $5.5 billion in costs, related to cancelled orders, as a result of the US’s new export controls on its H20 AI chips to China. Nvidia also announced they’re planning to build $500 billion of AI infrastructure in the US over the next 4 years.
A US judge found that Google holds illegal monopolies in advertising technology.
Erik Hovenkamp, a professor at Cornell Law School, earlier in the case had predicted that if it lost, Google would probably have to divest some, not all, of its display advertising business, and the net effect would be a drop in revenues of less than 10%.
Meta will be using public posts and interactions with AI to train models in the European Union.
Scammers are using AI to make fake job applications for remote jobs, to gain access to companies to loot them from the inside.
Three researchers are leaving Epoch AI to start Mechanize, a company dedicated to automating the whole economy (in part by tackling the bottlenecks to automation that Epoch identified).
Other Technology
China’s first demonstration thorium nuclear reactor is now operational. Will India follow?
Bio
More than 3 million children died from antimicrobial resistant infections in 2022, reports Gavi.
A child in Mexico who was previously reported to be infected with H5N1 has died from the infection. She was infected with a D1.1 strain; D1.1 strains have killed an elderly man in Louisiana and caused a severe infection in a teenager in Canada. D1.1 circulates in wild birds in North America and has also been confirmed in dairy cattle in New Mexico and Arizona. The source of exposure for this child is unknown, but sequence data should reveal whether the source was likely ultimately birds or cattle; H5N1 has been detected in wild birds in the region, but never in cattle outside the US.
Ontario, Canada has reported 109 new measles cases in the last week, bringing the total since October to 925. It continues to be predominantly in unvaccinated youth. The US has reported 800 cases since the beginning of 2025 with three deaths. Measles is unlikely to become a pandemic because most people are vaccinated and the efficacy of a single dose of the vaccine is 85-90% and the recommended two doses imparts a nearly 100% level of protection.
As global temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise with climate change, rice can be expected to contain more arsenic. This can be expected to cause more cancers worldwide, as half the world relies on rice for the majority of its caloric intake.
Scientists have found the strongest evidence yet for life outside our solar system. Observations by the James Webb space telescope of a planet, called K2-18 b, that is 124 light years from earth found what appear to be the chemical signatures of two compounds that are only known to be produced on Earth by life: dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and dimethyl disulfide (DMDS). However, other explanations for the findings remain possible. One forecaster mentioned that signs of life nearby makes the panspermia hypothesis more likely.
Geopolitics
United States
The Trump administration is clashing with the courts, Supreme and federal, most recently over whether the administration can deport immigrants without due process, and more generally on whether it is bound by the rule of law, as ultimately arbitrated by the Supreme Court. You can see our more detailed report here. Sentinel forecasters in aggregate assess as “83% true” that the Trump administration has disobeyed the Supreme Court so far.
Turmoil in the office of Secretary of Defense Hegseth has led to the departure of four high-ranking officials. Hegseth's deputy chief of staff, a senior advisor, and the chief of staff of the Deputy Defense Secretary were fired on Friday; Hegseth claimed that these firings were related to an unauthorized disclosure, but they may not have been. Hegseth's chief of staff also quit and is moving to another position in the DoD. The top DoD spokesperson, John Ulyot quit and wrote an op-ed claiming that the department is in chaos and predicting that Hegseth may not keep his job for long and that more scandals will emerge. “Hegseth is now presiding over a strange and baffling purge” that has left him without senior advisers. Hegseth is now embroiled in a second Signal-chat national-security scandal. This is occurring at a time when the US military is in the midst of its most aggressive attacks against the Houthis in Yemen and contemplating a major strike against Iran’s nuclear weapons development facilities.
Hegseth announced that Panama has agreed to allow U.S. troops to deploy in the country to protect the Panama Canal from Chinese influence.
The IRS has had four acting chiefs since Trump became president. The previous one lasted 2 days. The IRS chief information officer quit the day before taxes were due.
Employees at the Department of Health and Human Services claim that its IT systems are nearing collapse as a result of a reduction in forces. “This could put vast troves of public health data, including the sensitive health records of hundreds of millions of Americans, clinical trial data, and more, at risk of exposure.”
Harvard rejected requests from the Trump administration to reform administration, hiring, DEI, reduce antisemitism, and subject itself to audits and oversight, majorly reducing its independence. The administration then said the whole thing had been a mistake. Despite this, the government has frozen $2 billion in funding, threatened to remove Harvard’s-exempt status, and is threatening another billion in funding.
Despite a federal court order, the AP was barred from Trump’s White House meeting with Bukele.
Hundreds of protests against the Trump administration took place in the US this past weekend.
The US State Department will no longer examine certain types of violations in its annual reports on international human rights. The US office that tracks and counters foreign disinformation has been eliminated. The National Weather Association and the American Meteorological Society issued a joint statement warning that weather and climate forecasting will suffer because of NOAA staffing, research and resource cuts.The FDA is planning to end nearly all routine food safety inspections and outsource these inspections to states and local authorities.
The NIH has been instructed to freeze all payments on contracts and grants awarded to four top universities, Harvard, Cornell, Brown, and Northwestern, because the Trump administration believes that these schools have not done enough to combat antisemitism on their campuses. However, the NIH has also been instructed not to tell these universities whether their funding is frozen, or why.
Asia
The Malaysian PM is to hold talks with the Myanmar opposition after meeting the junta chief. A ceasefire has been in effect after the humanitarian disaster from the 7.7 earthquake in March. The parties are still far apart, but there are hopes that this can be a first step towards a lasting peace.
China accuses the U.S. of cyberattacks during the Asian Winter Games. They claim that “essential sectors such as energy, transportation, communication systems, water management, and defense research centers” were targeted.
Europe
President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio have said they will abandon their pursuit of a Ukraine peace deal if there isn’t any progress soon. Despite a last minute call for a 30 hour ceasefire for Easter initiated by Putin, “Russia unleashed a barrage of missile and drone strikes on Ukraine” after “a short-lived and partially-observed Easter ceasefire expired.”
The US and Ukraine have signed a “Memorandum of Intent” regarding a minerals deal to jointly develop Ukraine’s natural resources. US Treasury Secretary Scott Besent said “we’re still working on the details. We’re shooting for around April 26th.”
189 people are on trial after protests in Turkey. A total of 819 people will be tried on charges from “taking part in illegal protests” to “failing to disperse despite warnings.” Potential penalties “range from six months to five years imprisonment.”
North Korea now supplies nearly half of Russia’s artillery ammo.
Estonia’s Navy gains authority from their parliament “to attack merchant vessels threatening maritime infrastructure.” This is in response to a series of incidents where undersea cables were cut by merchant ships.
Africa
The Sudanese civil war is entering its third year. Despite the government retaking the capital city Khartoum, along with the presidential palace in March, there are no signs of the war ending soon. Nine aid workers and more than 100 other people were killed in the Zamzam and Abu SHorouk refugee camps by paramilitary troops. This forced more than 400,000 people to flee. Germany pledged 125M euros for Sudan in advance of an international aid meeting that will take place in London on Tuesday.
More than 100 people have been killed in intercommunal violence in Nigeria. “Land grabbing and political and economic tensions between local "indigenes" and those considered outsiders, as well as the influx of hardline Muslim and Christian preachers, have heightened divisions in recent decades.”
At least 300 people have been killed and more than 3,000 injured in Mozambique during a post election crackdown that has taken place over the last three months.
Middle East
The US is considering a “civilian nuclear cooperation deal” with Saudi Arabia—without requiring Israeli normalization.
In a sign of increasing government control and the weakening of Hezbollah, Lebanon has detained suspects following rocket attacks against Israel.
The US State Department warns “of ‘potential’ imminent attacks in Syria” and against travel to the country. On a positive note, Easter services were celebrated peacefully. This is considered an “early test of the new government.”
Iran
The US and Iran started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome. According to an Israeli official and two other people “familiar with the matter”, Israel has still not ruled out a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. It appears that the US is negotiating for a deal similar to the JCPOA negotiated during President Obama’s second term. Israel’s preference is for the nuclear enrichment facilities to be destroyed. A third round of talks is scheduled for the 26th of April in Oman.
Israel planned to strike Iranian nuclear program sites several times since October, but was blocked by Trump, who ultimately decided to pursue negotiations.
Gaza
Egypt tried to mediate Israel/Hamas talks, but Hamas rejected a ceasefire deal, which required the group to disarm. Now Hamas is sending a delegation to Qatar to continue talks, and Israel says it will keep a Gaza buffer zone. The chances of success are considered very low.
Yemen
The US continues strikes on the Houthis in Yemen, attacking a “key oil terminal on Yemen’s Red Sea coast” and killing “74 people and injuring 171 others”, according to the ministry of health. The US claims that Chinese satellites are providing links to help the Houthis target U.S. warships and international vessels in the Red Sea, though the Chinese satellite company denies the allegations. Preparations continue for a possible ground attack against the port of Hodeidah by Yemeni government forces backed by US air power.
Weird
A Russian "Doomsday" radio station UVB-76 broadcast four words in Russian over 24 hours. Russia Today ( Russian state media) reports that the station "usually [broadcasts] static but sends coded alerts pre-major events". Forecasters thought this was interesting but ultimately not worrying.