Sentinel minutes for week #31/2024
Status: green. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran, reportedly by Israel.
Geopolitics
Middle East
Israel reportedly assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. The method remains unclear, but it has been reported that it was by detonating a bomb that had been smuggled into his accommodation a few months earlier. Iran says he was killed by a short-range projectile with a warhead of about 7kg. It has also been reported that the bomb used was a high tech device that used artificial intelligence.
Forecasters consider that the assassination of Haniyeh reduces the probability of a ceasefire occurring before the 2024 US election. President Biden says the killing of Haniyeh is not helpful for ceasefire talks, while Secretary of State Blinken says the US was not involved in the killing.
Hezbollah’s top commander Fuad Shukr was killed in an Israeli strike on the outskirts of Beirut, and Hamas’s top commander Mohammed Deif was killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza.
Iran and its proxies are to meet to discuss retaliation against Israel, with Iran promising to seek revenge for the assassination, prompting the US to move warships and fighter jets to the region to prepare for a possible defense of Israel. Sentinel forecasters estimate an 81% chance (75% to 87%) that Iran would retaliate in some form, also estimating a 3% probability (2% to 5%) that Iran would retaliate in a way that resulted in more than 100 deaths.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says Israel will exact a heavy price for retaliatory attacks with respect to the killing of Fuad Shukr, though he did not mention Haniyeh, whose assassination Israel has not claimed responsibility for.
The US and several other countries have urged their citizens to leave Lebanon as soon as possible.
Major Dutch airline KLM has canceled flights to Tel Aviv until October 26th.
Turkish President Erdoğan suggested Turkey might enter Israel to help Palestinians.
A polio epidemic has been declared in Gaza.
United Kingdom
Violent protests in Sunderland as unrest spreads after the Southport killings, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer has condemned far-right violence. British police have boosted their presence, but the weekend saw a worsening of the situation as disorder and riots have continued to spread.
Britain’s nuclear submarine engineers apparently used software that was partially designed in Belarus, raising fears that it could be exploited to reveal the location of the submarines. Forecasters caution to take this reporting with some skepticism, as it doesn’t appear to have been reported anywhere apart from the Telegraph.
Europe
Vladimir Putin has warned the US not to deploy long-range missiles in Germany from 2026 and says that Russia will place similar missiles in striking distance of the West if they go ahead.
The United States has suspended $95 million in aid to Georgia over the passage of its ‘foreign agent’ law, which detractors claim suppresses political dissent. The latest sign that Georgia is moving away from the West (at least under the current government) even if it has theoretical disputes with Russia over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Russians have most likely been trying to break into Finnish water treatment plants. Cables supporting a cell phone tower were also cut in Finland.
Fiber optic networks have been disrupted in several cities in France.
Two cable fires were set on rail lines in Germany this week.
Asia-Pacific
The US announced $500M funding for the Philippines military.
A Canadian warship transited through the Taiwanese strait.
The US considers restrictions on Chinese access to AI memory chips.
Germany accused China of a 2021 cyberattack on its cartography agency.
United States
The US National Defense Strategy Commission has released its report. Its findings include that the US faces a substantial risk of a “near-term major war.”
A standoff between US and Russian nuclear submarines that led to the Russian sub loading torpedoes occurred in 2022. While this standoff presents no threat currently, it is a reminder that such threats occasionally occur behind the scenes, unknown to the public.
Project 2025’s director has stepped down, amid backlash from Trump.
Biorisk
Pet cats and dogs frequently get Covid when their owners do, raising the possibility that eventually, the disease could spread independently in these animals, too.
The H5N1 bird flu virus is adapting to dairy cattle. One of the mutations observed in sequences from dairy cattle makes viral replication more efficient in mammals.
A new monkeypox strain is circulating in the DRC and Burundi. It is known to have infected 11,000 people and has killed 450 of those.
The US CDC will be funding free flu shots for workers on farms with livestock in the US.
SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve.
A new and potentially game-changing drug for preventing Covid transmission has been found.
Tech
The UK’s AI bill will focus on foundation models, and the EU AI Act has come into force — this legislation also regulates the highest risk foundation models. Anthropic opposed pre-harm enforcement in California’s draft AI bill, SB-1047, which would also regulate the highest risk AI development.
The White House says there is no need to restrict “open source” AI, for now.
Nvidia’s new AI chip has been delayed due to design flaws. The delay affects the most advanced chips in its Blackwell series, with big shipments not expected until Q1 2025. Forecasters considered that this may delay the training of GPT-5.
Sam Altman claims that 20% of OpenAI’s computing resources will still be dedicated to safety efforts and says that the company is working on showing its next big model to the US AI Safety Institute before release.
Elon Musk made a Kamala Harris deepfake ad go viral.
Google has pulled an AI ad for the Olympics, following backlash.
The UK has canceled $1.7B of computing projects.
Climate
Heat deaths all over the world are grossly undercounted.
The AMOC may collapse by around 2050. “The collapse time is estimated between 2037-2064 (10-90% CI) with a mean of 2050 and the probability of an AMOC collapse before the year 2050 is estimated to be 59 +/-17%.”
Misc
US home insurers posted their largest net underwriting profit losses ever, in 2023.
Venezuelan President Maduro looks to be staying in power, despite significant doubt cast on the integrity of the recent election. Forecasters estimated a 78% probability (70% to 82%) that he will remain in power through January 2025.
Protests in Bangladesh continue, students call for nationwide civil disobedience. Following violent protests that left more than 200 dead, the Jamaat-e-Islami party was banned. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has fled the country, and the military has announced it will now form a new interim government.
Russia’s Wagner Group says it took losses in heavy fighting against rebels in Mali.
Forecasters noticed the recent market downturn, but don’t have a great grasp on causes and effects. So far, it seems it was initiated by a slowdown in hiring in the US, then followed by the Bank of Japan raising interest rates, which snowballed because many traders seem to have been borrowing Yen cheaply to buy fast-growing US stocks, making them very sensitive to Japan interest and currency movements.