🟩 Rising China-Japan tensions, Iran seizes oil tanker, AI-directed cyberattacks disrupted || Global Risks Weekly Roundup #46/2025

Executive summary

We’re a group of top forecasters who parse millions of news pieces a week to identify and discuss the most important warning signs of global catastrophic risks for you. Here are our top items:

• Geopolitics: The Japanese PM said that any Chinese invasion of Taiwan could potentially prompt a Japanese intervention. Pakistan accused India and then Afghan nationals of being behind a terror attack. Iran seized a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, while the Houthis signalled an end to their attacks on vessels in the Red Sea.

• Tech and AI: Anthropic said that it disrupted an AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign.

• Economy: The President of the New York Federal Reserve convened an emergency meeting with top Wall Street dealers to discuss signs of stress in money markets.

and here our forecasts for this week:

• Forecasters estimate that there’s a 61% (45% to 75%) chance that the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan will resume peace talks by the end of March 2026.

• They think there’s a 70% (50% to 90%) chance that the Houthis will refrain from attacking ships in the Red Sea through the end of March 2026.

• They believe there’s a 73% (50% to 90%) chance that the US will carry out an attack on Venezuelan territory before the end of 2025, and a 47% (20% to 70%) chance that Nicolás Maduro will still be the President of Venezuela at the end of March 2026.

Geopolitics

Asia

China advised its citizens not to travel to Japan, following the new Japanese Prime Minister’s comment that any Chinese aggression against Taiwan could result in Japanese military intervention. One forecaster believes that the prospect of Japanese involvement in any China-Taiwan conflict could deter China from attempting an invasion or blockade of the island nation, as it would make an already difficult operation even more complex and its outcome more uncertain.

A car bombing in New Delhi killed at least 8 people and injured more than 20, in what Indian authorities are describing as a terror attack. Meanwhile, a suicide bombing outside a district court in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, killed at least 12 people and injured at least 27. Some fear that these incidents could escalate into another India-Pakistan conflict, but the Indian government has so far refrained from accusing Pakistan of involvement in the attack. On the other hand, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif made the unsubstantiated assertion that Indian “terrorist proxies” were behind the Islamabad attack, but authorities later said that Afghan nationals were behind that attack and one other last week. One forecaster assigns a 1% chance to there being a conflict between India and Pakistan that results in the death of at least 10 military personnel by the end of 2025.

Despite the apparent involvement of Afghan nationals in the attack in Islamabad, Sharif initially offered to resume talks with the Taliban government in Afghanistan, after negotiations between the two sides collapsed in Turkey earlier this month, with Pakistan accusing Afghanistan of not doing enough to rein in the Pakistani Taliban.

However, tensions remain high. Pakistan’s closure of its border with Afghanistan remains in place, prompting the Taliban government to warn Afghan exporters against maintaining any trading relationship with Pakistan, while encouraging them to pivot to Central Asia and to make use of trade routes that run through Iran. However, almost half of Afghan exports were to Pakistan in 2024, so such an abrupt pivot will be economically risky, especially as these alternate trade routes involve higher transit costs and longer distances. Lowering trade barriers between Afghanistan and Central Asian countries may also require the Taliban, which relies heavily on customs revenue, to lower its tariffs.

Overall, forecasters estimate that there’s a 61% (45% to 75%) chance that the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan will resume face-to-face peace talks by the end of March 2026.

Meanwhile, Thailand suspended its Trump-backed peace deal with Cambodia after its soldiers were injured in a landmine explosion.

Middle East

Iran seized a Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, accusing it of carrying an unspecified “illegal consignment”. It was en route to Singapore.

In contrast, the Iran-backed Houthis suggested that they will no longer attack ships in the Red Sea, so long as Israel does not resume military operations in Gaza. Forecasters think there’s a 70% (50% to 90%) chance that the Houthis will adhere to this promise through the end of March 2026.

An extreme drought continues to affect Tehran, although some rain has fallen in parts of western and northwestern Iran, and some snow has fallen north of Tehran. Iran’s president previously said that the city would need to be evacuated if sufficient rain didn’t arrive by late December into January. Cloud-seeding operations in northwestern Iran began on Saturday. Trace rain is forecast for Tehran on Monday, but no further rain is forecast for the coming week.

Capital flight out of Iran is accelerating. Capital flight for the 2024 fiscal year, which ran from March 21, 2024 to March 20, 2025, was $20.7B. In the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal year, while both oil and non-oil export revenues fell, Iran still ran a $6B trade surplus, but $9B left the country, erasing the surplus on paper. In comparison, Iran’s GDP was $437B in 2024, so it is possible that capital flight for the 2025 fiscal year could approach 10% of GDP. Because much of the capital flight is likely related to foreign trade, and Iran’s economy minister has said that the private sector is responsible for only 15% of Iran’s foreign trade, it appears that the data “points to individuals with government links or ties to quasi-state institutions, including the Revolutionary Guards, as key drivers of tens of billions of dollars leaving the country.”

The Americas

Latin America

US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced ‘Operation Southern Spear’, which appeared to formalize the attacks by the US military on alleged drug boats in recent months. In his post on X announcing the operation, Hegseth stated that, “this mission defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people.” On Sunday, the US conducted another strike against an alleged drug-trafficking boat; at least 83 people have been killed in at least 21 strikes targeting boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier entered the Caribbean on Sunday. Amid the ongoing US military buildup in the Caribbean, Trump held meetings with advisors last week to discuss options for military action against Venezuela and said that he had “sort of made up my mind” about whether to take military action in Venezuela. However, Trump said that the US may open negotiations with the Venezuelan regime. On Sunday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the State Department intends to designate the Cartel de los Soles, which the US considers Maduro to be the head of, as a terrorist organization on November 24, which would lay legal groundwork for US strikes against Venezuela.

Forecasters believe there’s a 73% (50% to 90%) chancce that the US will carry out an attack on Venezuelan territory before the end of 2025, and a 47% (20% to 70%) chance that Nicolás Maduro will still be the President of Venezuela at the end of March 2026. Forecasters expressed uncertainty on whether it is necessary for the US to carry out strikes, as opposed to merely threatening to do so, and forecasters broadly agree that putting boots on the ground would be too costly for the US.

If there is a regime change in Venezuela, investing in the country as it becomes integrated into the Western capitalist system might be an amazing investment opportunity.

In Mexico, protesters broke down a barricade around the Presidential Palace, amid nationwide protests following the murder of the anti-crime mayor of Uruapan in the state of Michoacan. Generation Z Mexico, a self-styled non-partisan group against violence, corruption and abuse of power, had called for the protests against President Sheinbaum’s government.

United States

Democratic Rep. Adelita Grijalva was sworn in seven weeks after winning a special election in Arizona. She provided the final signature needed on a discharge petition that aims to force the release of the so-called Epstein files. There was a concerted effort by Trump and other White House officials to get Republicans who had signed the petition to withdraw their support, but this effort did not succeed. As a result, Trump took to Truth Social to express anger at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, once a prominent supporter of the president. Greene, in turn, said that, “threats against me are being fueled and egged on by the most powerful man in the world”.

The longest US government shutdown in history has ended with a victory for Republicans, and without Democratic lawmakers achieving their goal of extending government subsidies for health insurance.

The military is sending troops to three-week training courses in the jungle in Panama, for the first time in over two decades.

Africa

The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the M23 rebel group signed a framework for a peace agreement in Qatar.

Europe

Germany filed arrest warrants for two Ukrainian men the government alleges were involved in explosions that damaged two NordStream gas pipelines in September 2022.

A railway line which helped to transport aid from Poland to Ukraine was damaged in an explosion. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk called it an “unprecedented act of sabotage”, hinting at Russian involvement.

Technology and artificial intelligence

Anthropic said it disrupted the “first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign”, which involved a Chinese state-sponsored group directing Claude Code to (largely) autonomously attempt to infiltrate more than two dozen targets. The group reportedly succeeded in a small number of cases. Some expressed skepticism about the form and content of the announcement.

Google DeepMind announced SIMA 2, an agent powered by Gemini models that can operate and self-improve in simulated 3D worlds.

OpenAI announced GPT-5.1 Instant and Thinking and publicly deployed them in ChatGPT. OpenAI says that these models are smarter and more conversational than their predecessors. Very little information about these models has been released by OpenAI. Information about their benchmark performances is limited, and their system card is short.

Anthropic researchers found that Claude could automate much of the work of programming a robot and getting it to do tasks:

“We have the suspicion that the next step for AI models is to start reaching out into the world and affecting the world more broadly,” Logan Graham, a member of Anthropic’s red team, which studies models for potential risks, tells WIRED.

At a Tesla shareholder meeting on November 6, Elon Musk floated the idea of using Tesla Optimus robots to prevent future crimes. Convicted criminals would “now get a free Optimus, and it’s just going to follow you around and stop you from doing crime. … You don’t have to put people in prisons and stuff.” One forecaster wouldn’t be surprised if that proposal becomes reality at some point in the next 50 years.

Tech companies and UK child safety agencies will test AI models’ abilities to create child abuse images, with the goal of ensuring that these models have safeguards to prevent them from creating such images.

Yann LeCun, the Chief Scientist at Meta, will reportedly leave the company to build his own AI lab.

SoftBank sold its entire $5.8 billion stake in Nvidia in order to finance its investment in OpenAI.

OpenAI backed a startup which aims to prevent AI-enabled bioweapons risks by using AI itself.

Economy

In the US, the president of the New York Federal Reserve convened an emergency meeting with Wall Street dealers because of concerns about signs of stress in money markets. The meeting was held to discuss use of the Fed’s standing repo facility (SRF), which is valued by central bank officials as a pressure valve that helps them to keep short-term borrowing costs within a target range. After three years of quantitative tightening (QT), banks’ liquidity is being strained; the Fed’s recent promise to take its foot off the QT gas pedal has eased the situation somewhat, but quantitative easing (QE) may be needed to limit upward pressures on money market rates.

Bitcoin has lost about 25% of its value since the high it reached in October. Other cryptocurrencies have fallen from their peaks as well.

Biorisks

A human infection with an H5N5 flu A virus was reported in Washington state in the US. The case highlights the ability of H5 flu viruses to reassort with other flu viruses. The strain is not considered to be likely to pose any additional risk.

At least 9 people have been infected in a Marburg virus outbreak in Ethiopia. Public health officials have responded swiftly to contain the outbreak.

Climate

The UN COP30 meeting on climate change is in progress. The US did not send a delegation. Countries and other parties remain far apart on the creation of a roadmap away from fossil fuels.