Sentinel minutes for week #30/2024

Status: green. This week saw further H5N1 spread, Facebook releasing the largest open source LLM model yet, and a rising likelihood of more intense Israel/Hezbollah confrontations.

Biorisk

Due to the rise in human zoonotic cases and the presence of sustained mammalian transmission, the UK Government previously raised its pandemic risk assessment of H5N1 from level 3 to level 4 (out of 6). Their technical briefings seem through, though they don’t yet incorporate information from the last few weeks.

Mammal-to-mammal spread was recently confirmed in a new study.

A possible seventh worker who culled chickens infected with a cattle-derived H5N1 strain has been found to be infected with the virus in Colorado, and there have been ten confirmed cases in the state so far. However, there remains no sign of sustained human-to-human transmission.

Colorado has in turn ramped up its response to bird flu, requiring dairies to test their milk supplies every week.

The US Government has also broadened its mandate for emergency use authorizations (EUAs) to facilitate their use for the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Some recent studies have suggested that COVID-19 infections are associated with small cognitive deficits after recovery as well as accelerated brain aging.

Geopolitics

Middle East

Israel struck several Houthi targets in Yemen. This followed a fatal drone attack on Tel Aviv by the Houthis.

Israel’s army is also preparing for a possible offensive against Hezbollah, and tensions were further heightened following a Hezbollah rocket attack on the Golan Heights that hit a football pitch, killing twelve children and young adults. In their previous update, forecasters (in aggregate) stated that the probability of an Israeli ground offensive in Lebanon by the end of August was basically a coin toss. Polymarket puts this at 40%.

After Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu warned of Iranian plots to assassinate former President Trump in his speech to the US Congress, Trump posted on TruthSocial saying that America should wipe Iran off the face of the earth if such an attempt was to succeed. One forecaster thinks that this provides some state actors and elements within the US with an incentive to assassinate Trump and blame it on Iran. There was apparently an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump around the time of the attempt by Thomas Crooks.

China hosted a peace summit with rival Palestinian factions. The factions, including Fatah (which controls the West Bank) and Hamas (which controlled Gaza) agreed to make an effort to form a unity government after the war in Gaza ends.

Europe

A number of arson attacks paralyzed France’s high-speed rail network hours before the Opening Ceremony for the Paris Olympics. The most likely suspects are hard-left militants and environmental activists, but other suspects include Russia and France’s foreign minister has said that foreign involvement cannot be ruled out.

Finland suspects that a Russian vessel violated its territorial waters, something made more significant by Finland’s recent accession to NATO.

Hungary says that it will block EU funds for member states who have sent weapons to Ukraine until Ukraine ends its block on the transit of oil from Russia to Hungary. Hungary has, however, been holding up these refunds for around a year because of other disputes.

Asia-Pacific

Taiwan launched its annual war games. The aim is to closely mimic a Chinese attack. Due to the fact that these war games are a regular occurrence, they did not shift forecasters’ estimates of a China-Taiwan war or of nuclear war.

Some of the UAE’s Mirage 2000 fighters were spotted at a Chinese air base. Given that these jets are Western-made and also operated by the Taiwanese air force, this has raised concerns about Chinese access to the details of Western and Taiwanese aircraft.

United States

At a rally in Ohio, Trump’s candidate for Vice-President JD Vance was introduced by a Republican politician who said that “it’s going to take a civil war to save this country” if Trump loses. The politician later apologized for his remarks. Forecasters have previously said that there is a 6% chance (range: 3%-10%) that a US civil war will occur by 2030, but this remark did not update them, as their impression is that this is what a number of politicians, particularly in the GOP, say and think privately.

The North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) detected, tracked and intercepted two Russian TU-95 and two Chinese H-6 military aircraft operating in Alaska. This was significant because Russia and China were operating in tandem.

Tech

Apple has voluntarily committed to adhering to President Biden’s AI Executive Order.

Meta released Llama 3.1, said to be the biggest and best open-source AI model yet. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also published a manifesto arguing for open-source AI development, which most forecasters believe raise the existential risk arising from advanced AI.

The belief that the US is in an AI race with China is reportedly held by the Republican Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman advanced this view in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

OpenAI removed Aleksander Mądry from his role as the head of the preparedness team. This is significant because Mądry was an ally of Altman, but it could just be that he was never meant to hold the role permanently following the departure of a number of members of the now-defunct Superalignment team.

Crowdstrike published an initial post-mortem following the global IT outage. One forecaster expressed the view that they come across as sympathetic if a bit incompetent, and a security expert said that Crowdstrike’s failures are the result of market incentives for brittleness.

Misc

The warmest day ever recorded was Monday, July 22, breaking the previous record set on Sunday, July 21.