🟢 Russian drones shot down over Poland, Israel strikes Qatar, Trump ally assassinated | Global Risks Weekly Roundup #37/2025.
OpenAI and Oracle signed a $300B deal, which would lead to Oracle displacing Microsoft to become OpenAI’s largest compute provider; the deal lifted Oracle’s stock price.
Executive summary
Top items:
Geopolitics: Multiple Russian drones entered Poland’s airspace, some of which were shot down. Forecasters examined the probability of a Russian incursion by air, land or sea that (accidentally or deliberately) results in the death of a citizen of a NATO country within the next 6 months. Israel carried out an airstrike on Qatar, killing multiple members of Hamas’ political leadership. The US condemned the strike.
US Politics: A close Trump ally, conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was assassinated in the US state of Utah, leading to predictions of a rise in political violence.
Tech and AI: OpenAI and Oracle signed a $300B deal, which would lead to Oracle displacing Microsoft to become OpenAI’s largest compute provider; the deal lifted Oracle’s stock price.
Forecasts:
Forecasters estimate that there’s a 25% chance (5% to 50%) that at least one citizen of a NATO country will be killed because of a Russian incursion in the next 6 months (by March 15, 2026).
They think that there’s a 23% chance (14% to 45%) that there will be 8 or more (kinetic) assassination attempts in the US on high-profile political figures (public officials, their family members, or political activists or influencers with more than 100,000 followers on a social media platform) within the next 12 months. They also estimate a 15% chance (7% to 35%) that 4 or more such attempts will be successful.
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Geopolitics
Europe
Multiple Russian drones entered Poland’s airspace. At least three were shot down by Poland (with assistance from other NATO members), marking the first time a NATO member has downed Russian drones since the outbreak of the Ukraine war, while others crashed and were later found scattered across eastern Poland. The roof of a home near Lublin was destroyed in the attack while the inhabitants watched news of the drone incursion on television.
In response, Poland invoked Article 4 of the NATO treaty, which requires all member states to attend a discussion about the issue that has been raised. Article 4 has been invoked on multiple occasions in the past (the better-known Article 5 has only been invoked once, by the US, after the attacks of September 11, 2001). Many NATO member states are now sending troops, artillery, air defence systems and fighter jets to bolster the alliance’s eastern flank. For its part, Russia claimed that the drones unintentionally entered Poland’s airspace, but one Russian drone entered Romania’s airspace a few days later. The drone incursion into Romanian airspace lasted 50 minutes. Two Romanian F-16s tracked the drone until it entered Ukrainian airspace, and two German Eurofighters were also scrambled.
Poland will reportedly send military representatives to Ukraine for training on how to shoot down drones, though no official announcement has been made.
In addition to Russian drone incursions into NATO countries, a Russian MI-8 helicopter entered Estonian airspace near Vaindloo Island in the Baltic Sea, in the third such incident this year. Russia has also flown hundreds of spy drones over Germany this year alone, launched from both land and sea, gathering information about critical infrastructure and military assets. Last week, a cargo ship, the Scanlark, was seized in the Kiel Canal in Germany; German authorities believe that a drone was launched from the ship and flew over a German navy ship to gather intelligence. The crew, who are reportedly all Russian, have been detained on the ship.
One possible source of escalation would be if a Russian incursion of any kind (including a drone incursion) were to result in the death of a citizen of a NATO member state on NATO soil. Forecasters estimate that there’s a 25% chance (5% to 50%) that this will happen in the next 6 months (by March 15, 2026).
In other news, Russia and Belarus are conducting their “Zapad 2025” joint military exercises this week. US representatives were sent to observe the exercises.
France’s (now former) PM François Bayrou was ousted in a vote of no confidence after his budget was rejected by the National Assembly.
Middle East
On Tuesday, Israel carried out an airstrike on Qatar, killing at least five members of Hamas’s political leadership who were staying in Doha, the country’s capital. Qatar had hosted multiple rounds of peace talks between Israel and Hamas, and Qatar’s emir and PM condemned the attack as a violation of international law, while the PM pledged to continue the country’s role as a mediator. US President Donald Trump said he was “very unhappy” about the attack, and the US joined other members of the UN Security Council in (tacitly) condemning the attack. Trump reportedly held “a heated phone call” with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu over the airstrike. On Thursday, as Netanyahu signed an agreement to expand an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, he said, “there will be no Palestinian state”.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for the suspension of funding for projects in Israel, except for a Holocaust Remembrance Center and a few other civil society projects. She also suggested that the bloc would partially suspend its trade agreement with Israel.
The Americas
The United States
A close Trump ally and conservative activist, Charlie Kirk, was murdered in Utah. The prevalence of political violence in the US has very likely increased over the past decade. Over the past 14 months, there have also been two assassination attempts on Donald Trump. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s mansion was set on fire in an alleged assassination attempt. Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered, and Minnesota state senator John Hoffman and his wife were also shot and wounded by the same individual.
Forecasters examined the possibility of a significant uptick in political violence that could result from the Kirk assassination. They think that there’s a 23% chance (14% to 45%) that there will be 8 or more (kinetic) assassination attempts in the US on public officials (or their family members) or on political activists and influencers with more than 100,000 followers on a social media platform, within the next 12 months. They also estimate a 15% chance (7% to 35%) that 4 such attempts will be successful.
Democrats in the House of Representatives obtained and released the contents of a “birthday book” containing congratulatory messages to Jeffrey Epstein to mark his 50th birthday in 2003. Among the contents is a message allegedly sent and signed by Donald Trump, previously reported on by the Wall Street Journal.
The US Supreme Court will soon consider whether most of Trump’s tariffs are legal. The court agreed to hear two tariff cases on an expedited schedule and will hear oral arguments in the first week of November.
Venezuela
US Navy ships remain in international waters off the coast of Venezuela. On Saturday, US Coast Guard personnel boarded a Venezuela tuna fishing boat following a tip and searched the boat for drugs for several hours, according to a US official. The Venezuelan foreign ministry protested the move and claimed that the search took eight hours and that the ship was in Venezuelan waters; the US official said that neither claim was true. Meanwhile, 10 US F-35s are arriving in Puerto Rico, ostensibly to help with operations against drug cartels. Last week, US SecWar Hegseth made a surprise visit to the USS Iwo Jima just off the coast of Puerto Rico. And two American officials have claimed that the boat fired on and sunk off the coast of Venezuela last week by the US, with 11 people on board, turned before it was struck by US missiles, as people on board apparently recognized that the boat was being followed by a military aircraft.
President Maduro sent 25,000 troops to the country’s Caribbean coastline and its border with Colombia, bolstering the 10,000 troops that were previously deployed. He is once again bringing forward Christmas celebrations to October. Last year, he likely did this to distract from the disputed Venezuelan election.
Brazil
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was found guilty of plotting a coup to remain in power after losing the 2022 election and was sentenced to 27 years in prison. The country is bracing for US sanctions in retaliation from Trump, who has been supportive of Bolsonaro and who said that he was “very unhappy” with the verdict and that the US would respond “accordingly.”
Asia-Pacific
Nepal’s government was brought down by demonstrators (many of whom are in “Generation Z”)–and an interim PM was chosen on a Discord server, accepted in talks brokered by army leaders, and sworn in: 73-year-old former Supreme Court chief justice Sushila Karki, now Nepal’s first female PM, will serve until a new PM is chosen in elections to be held on March 5, 2026. Anti-government protests erupted after the government banned social media following weeks of posts highlighting the lavish lifestyles of “NepoKids,” children of the government elite.
The government soon rescinded the ban, but protests only escalated, culminating in protestors setting fire to the parliament building and other buildings, the collapse of the government, members of the government fleeing, and at least 72 deaths. Forecasters don’t expect regional or global domino effects resulting from this regime change. It’s interesting to consider that regime change for countries with populations in the tens of millions hasn’t been that infrequent: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Syria, and now Nepal.
Essential humanitarian aid services have been cut after the Taliban placed further restrictions on women working with the United Nations.
In Pakistan, more than 2M people have been evacuated from their homes because of floods.
Technology and artificial intelligence
OpenAI and Oracle have signed a deal for OpenAI to purchase $300B of compute power over 5 years. With this agreement, Oracle would displace Microsoft as OpenAI’s largest cloud compute provider. Reporting of this deal, along with a good earnings report and rosy projections about its AI and data center operations, moved Oracle’s stock price up significantly, and its co-founder and executive chairman Larry Ellison briefly surpassed Elon Musk to become the wealthiest man in the world.
Microsoft and OpenAI are closer to a deal on the terms of OpenAI’s proposed restructuring, with OpenAI hoping to turn its for-profit arm into a company that could eventually go public. The two companies announced that they had signed a “non-binding memorandum of understanding”.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang are set to accompany Donald Trump on his state visit to the UK. The two companies will reportedly announce AI investments in the country, particularly in data centers (rumoured to be part of a UK arm of the Stargate project). These investments will form part of broader deals between the UK and the US on technology and nuclear reactors.
OpenAI and Anthropic published blog posts about their ongoing collaboration with the UK government’s AI Security Institute and the US government’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation.
An increasing number of organizations and individuals are protesting against AI development, including one man who was recently on a hunger strike outside Anthropic’s headquarters.
Anthropic announced its support for California’s Senate Bill 53, which would place transparency and safety requirements, among other requirements, on developers of the most powerful AI systems. The bill was passed by California’s legislature on Friday and has gone to Governor Newsom’s desk, where he can either approve or veto it. It is weaker than SB 1047, which Newsom vetoed. Also, Senator Ted Cruz proposed federal legislation, known as the SANDBOX Act, that would allow authorities to provide AI companies with exemptions from federal regulations.
Math, Inc, which describes itself as “a company dedicated to autoformalization and the creation of verified superintelligence,” unveiled its first agent, named Gauss. The company’s aim is to get such agents to translate informal mathematical statements into abstract, machine-verifiable formal statements.
Albania appointed an AI as its government procurement minister, to combat corruption; this is the first time that an AI has been chosen to be a government minister. The bot, named “Diella,” or “sun” in Albanian, will manage and award all public tenders for government contracts. The awarding of government contracts has been plagued by corruption in Albania; however, it’s not clear how the government plans to prevent Diella from being manipulated as well. Some Facebook users aren’t optimistic; one wrote that, "Even Diella will be corrupted in Albania," and another that, "Stealing will continue and Diella will be blamed."
Tesla is aiming to produce its own (electrical) transformers. This could mitigate a possible bottleneck in the large-scale upgrade of the US electrical grid that would be needed to accommodate a large growth in demand due to AI datacenter buildout—but it might also increase resilience to large solar flares, a risk that we at Sentinel have been tracking in the background. However, we don’t see signs at this time that Tesla aims to produce any of the large power transformers (LPTs; or any newer designs, for that matter) that could fail in the event of a large solar event and are critical for grid operation; more than 80% of such transformers are imported, “with lead times of up to five years,” according to Siemens.
The next couple of weeks look like they might be a significant period for AI safety advocacy, with Eliezer Yudkowsky’s and Nate Soares’ book “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” coming out on Tuesday, ControlAI launching a new campaign last Friday, and two other comparably significant projects we’ve heard about.
Economy
Fitch downgraded France’s credit rating because of its “High and Rising Debt Ratio” and the political challenges the country faces to bringing down its debt ratio. France’s borrowing costs are higher than those of Greece and Spain for 10-year bonds; yields on bonds issued by several French corporations have even fallen below French sovereign yields for similar durations. While France’s debt ratio, at 114% of GDP, is the third highest in the EU and is lower than those of Greece, at 153%, and Italy, at 138%, its budget deficit, at 5.8% of GDP, is the highest among all Eurozone countries, and the country’s fiscal trajectory is concerning. At this point, pensioners’ incomes are higher than those of working-age people in France, and they have the lowest retirement age at 62 years 6 months. As a former finance ministry official put it, “this is an old story with deep cultural reasons — the French demand more help and protection from the state, yet also demand less tax…. It’s incoherent.”
In contrast with France, Spain’s S&P Global Ratings credit rating just went up.
A federal court ruled that Lisa Cook can remain in her position as a US Federal Reserve Governor while fighting Trump’s attempt to fire her. Trump had sought to remove her from the Fed Board of Governors before an upcoming Fed meeting this week, as he seeks greater control over the Fed. The Trump administration had sought to fire Cook based on the claim that she had falsely declared on mortgage paperwork for two properties that each would be used as her primary residence, but loan documents show that Cook had written on mortgage forms that her Atlanta residence would be used as a “vacation home,” not as a primary residence, contradicting Trump administration claims. She also never requested a tax exemption for the Atlanta residence as a primary residence.
Forecasters note that fraudulent declarations of more than one home as a primary residence are rarely prosecuted; the US has filed criminal charges for such claims only 20 times in the past eight years, and all but once as part of broader criminal schemes. Moreover, at least three of Trump’s Cabinet members – Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin – have also declared more than one property to be their primary residence on mortgage paperwork. The father and step-mother of Bill Pulte, Trump’s appointee as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency who accused Cook of mortgage fraud, even declared two properties in two different states to be their primary residence, according to public records.
Transshipments of goods from many European countries through Kyrgyzstan to Russia continue apace.