Sentinel minutes for week #39/2024

Israel primed to enter Lebanon, next few days fraught with uncertainty around Iran’s response. Yet doesn't seem likely for this conflict to escape the region. Mpox and H5N1 continue.

Sep 30, 2024

Status: Yellow. Corresponding response team instructions: increase alertness, process information below, brainstorm possible actions if meaningful. Don’t mobilize yet, as the tractability of the issue seems low.

Geopolitical Risks

Middle East

An Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon appears to be imminent, as a US official has said that Israel has told the US that it plans to launch a ground operation “imminently”. Such an invasion raises the risk of a regional war that could potentially draw in global powers more directly, although our forecasters agree that the risk of a broader conflict is low.

Several days ago, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike. Iran has said that the "forces of resistance" will be at the forefront of any response and that Hezbollah remains strong. The Ayatollah stopped short of calling for revenge.

This comes after the IDF Chief of the General Staff spoke of a "possible ground assault" in Lebanon. Throughout, forecasters’ probabilities have updated as follows:

Week 14 (April 8): “Probability that Israel will start a war against Hezbollah, with at least 5 Israeli tanks making incursions into Southern Lebanon by the end of September 2024, to be 30%, 37% and 30%, for an average of 32%”
Week 25: Despite annual base rate of 2-3%, forecasters estimated the chance of an Israeli offensive in Lebanon by the end of 2024 to be 56% (range: 45-62%).
Weeks 31 and 33: coin toss (50%) by end of 2024
Week 38 (last week): 55% (40-70%) by end of 2024
Week 39: 60% (53% to 70%)
Monday: 75%, then 85% and more, as more news arose.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu previously rejected the prospect of a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon after initially signaling that talks would continue.

The UK sent troops to Cyprus, which is well positioned to intervene in the Middle East.

An Iraqi Islamic resistance group also attacked Israel.

Ukraine

Putin again warned the West that he will consider using nuclear weapons if Russia detects a massive launch of missiles, aircraft or drones heading towards Russian soil. Forecasters give a 42% (35% to 50%) probability that Ukraine will use long-range missiles to attack inside Russia by the end of the year. If they do, they estimate the chance that Russia uses a nuclear weapon in an act of war this year at 0.21% (0.05% to 0.45%), vs. 0.12% (0.05% to 0.28%) if Ukraine doesn’t use long-range missiles.

The New York Times covers this topic, although the article does not provide probabilities.

Russia and Europe

A ship carrying 20 tons of fertilizer is now floating off the UK coast, potentially posing a risk to ports but also potentially probing military responses. The ship, loaded with cargo in Russia, has loitered near military installations in Norway over recent weeks.

East Asia

China is producing drones for Russia.

China's new nuclear submarine sank during construction this year, with the US remarking that it "raises obvious questions about training standards and equipment quality." This development is somewhat embarrassing for China–but it also reflects the country’s determination to build new capabilities.

Chinese markets received a huge stimulus in the form of China’s central bank cutting its reserve requirements.

A Japanese warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait for the first time.

Japan's incoming PM has proposed an Asian version of NATO.

South Asia

Pakistan has complained about Indian measures in Jammu and Kashmir – but Pakistan itself also sees violence on its streets.

United States

Ports in the US are going on strike over pay and automation. Observers fear this might catastrophically interrupt the flow of goods into the US.

Biological Risks

Mpox case counts continue to climb, especially in Burundi. And India reported its first clade 1b mpox case, in a man who traveled from the United Arab Emirates. This case suggests the possibility that clade 1b mpox is spreading undetected outside Africa, likely at a low level, in particular in the UAE. Mpox will become more difficult to control if cases start to spread in other low- or medium-income countries.

One piece of good news is that the US has pledged to provide $500M and 1M mpox vaccine doses to the African CDC.

H5N1 bird flu continues to spread in dairy cattle in the US, and more questions continue to arise about the size of a likely human-to-human transmission cluster in Missouri.

At least six healthcare workers and one household member who came in contact with an infected patient in Missouri are now known to have developed symptoms of viral infections. Healthcare workers were not tested, but the CDC said they would use antibody tests.

It is possible that a human-to-human transmission chain is ongoing; a small, narrow chain of transmission with a low R0 and a low case fatality rate could evade detection for some time, while the virus adapts to humans.

Moreover, as the virus in the Missouri case is close to those seen in dairy sequences, the risk exists that potentially ongoing human-to-human transmission would not be readily distinguishable from spread in dairy cattle by wastewater monitoring.

And the longer such transmission chains are, the larger the risk of a pandemic. However, small clusters of human-to-human are not unexpected with zoonotic flu viruses, and it is most likely that transmission in a potential such chain will die out. Our forecasters estimate the probability that an H5N1 pandemic starts and is declared by the WHO by the end of 2025 to be 15% (range, 10%-20%).

"A few" Marburg cases have been seen in several healthcare facilities in Rwanda.

The US Senate is considering a bill, the Risky Research Review Act, that would require independent oversight of gain-of-function research conducted in the US.

AI Risks

Governor Newsom of California vetoed/did not sign California Senate Bill 1047, citing concerns about unduly restricting large models while letting smaller models run amok: “the bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions - so long as a large system deploys it”.

OpenAI is moving towards becoming a for-profit company, and giving Sam Altman a 7% equity stake. Around the same time, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati suddenly announced her resignation from OpenAI. It’s unclear whether or to what extent these events are related. Along with Murati, OpenAI chief research officer Bob McGrew and vice president of research Barret Zoph also resigned.

Google DeepMind announced AlphaChip, an AI for chip design method which they say has transformed the way the company designs microchips.

There is reporting that OpenAI rushed the testing of GPT-4o, released the model, and then later determined the model was too risky to release.

Sam Altman published a blog post on “the intelligence age,” and online commentators pointed out the shift in his identification of risks, noting that he was no longer discussing existential risk and instead was only considering “labor market adjustment issues.”

OpenAI pitched the White House on building 5GW data centers in various US states to power AI. 5GW is roughly the equivalent of 5 nuclear reactors, or enough to power almost 3 million homes. Meanwhile, Constellation Energy’s CEO Joe Dominguez has said that the US should emulate China to meet AI energy requirements.

In less important and more institutional news, UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres explicitly identified AI as an existential risk, alongside climate change, in his speech to the UN. The UN adopted, by consensus, The Pact for the Future, which includes the Global Digital Compact, which has some, albeit weak, language on AI. US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin was reportedly the target of a sophisticated deepfake operation. The US DoJ is pushing companies to consider AI risks, and US intelligence officials say Russia and Iran are using AI to boost anti-US influence campaigns.

Boeing is planning to build thousands of AI-controlled “killer jets” for the US military.

Natural disasters

Hurricane Helene has killed nearly 100 people in the southeastern US and has caused widespread destruction and flooding, including “once-in-a-century” flooding in parts of North Carolina.

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