Sentinel minutes for week #48/2024: Aleppo, Romania presidential election, and the long tail of H5N1 impact

Status: Greenish 🟢

Top items:

• Militant Islamic rebel forces seized important territory in Syria, in an apparent push to wrest control from Assad. If the rebels succeed, Russia’s influence in Syria will be weakened, Turkey’s influence will be strengthened, and Hezbollah supply routes from Iran will be cut off.

• A Russian-backed candidate rose from obscurity to the number one spot in the first round of Romania’s presidential elections, following a social media campaign suspected to have been facilitated by Russia.

• We offer some thoughts on why the fatality rate for the North American strain of H5N1 is so low, and on the tail of a potential H5N1 pandemic.

Geopolitics

Middle East

The rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which split off from Al Qaeda in 2017, took the important city of Aleppo in a surprise offensive in Syria, and is pressing its offensive southward to Hama. Their relationship with Turkey is ambiguous; they have previously cooperated, but also fought with Turkey, and Turkey declared them a terrorist organization. In the north, a rebel group backed by Turkey, the Syrian National Army (SNA), aims to push Kurdish forces out of territory west of the Euphrates. Syria’s leader Assad has survived 13 years of civil war thus far and will be hard to dislodge from power; however, Assad is backed by Russia and Hezbollah, both of which have been weakened and distracted by current conflicts. Whether the rebels succeed in gaining or holding territory in Syria, their offensive destabilizes Syria, strengthens Turkey, weakens Russia, and cuts Iranian resupply routes to Hezbollah.

Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire that gave Israel 60 days to withdraw from Southern Lebanon. The Lebanese Army and the State Security Forces will deploy and take control of their own territory once again, and Hezbollah will not be allowed to rebuild terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon. Israel and Hezbollah are already accusing each other of breaching the ceasefire. Lebanese civilians are returning to their abandoned homes.

Iran says it could end its ban on the possession of nuclear weapons if sanctions are reimposed, following a rebuke from the IAEA. Hardliners are pushing for Khamenei to consider lifting his fatwa against producing and using nuclear weapons, and an important imam in Qom also asked that Khamenei consider lifting the fatwa.

An ISIL bioweapons engineer was eliminated in a drone strike in December 2022. This indicates that the group was pursuing bioweapons, like Al-Qaeda once did.

Aljazeera looked at whether aid workers are being targeted, given that relatively many (281 in 2024) were killed this year, particularly in Gaza. Killing aid workers seems like it could make catastrophes much worse than they otherwise would be. One of the workers killed last week worked for the World Central Kitchen, an organization Sentinel admires.

Food conditions continue to worsen in Gaza, in part because Israel has been blocking aid.

Europe

Romania’s top court ordered a recount of votes cast in the first round of its presidential election, after far-right, Russia-backed candidate Calin Georgescu came in first, with 23% of the vote. Sentinel hadn’t been following this election, but it came as a surprise to many commentators. Georgescu has no party of his own, and he reportedly campaigned mainly on TikTok. While his rise to prominence touches on real concerns among Romanian voters, his first-round success is thought to have been propelled by Russian election interference.

Georgia's ruling party said that the country will suspend talks on European Union accession for the next 4 years, triggering protests. The president denounced the move.

Ukraine raised taxes to fight Russia’s invasion.

Putin said that Russia would use all weapons at its disposal if Ukraine were to obtain nuclear weapons.

Documents declassified by the US reveal a list of assassination targets authorized by Putin.

Sweden has sent a formal request to China asking the country to cooperate with an investigation of recent damage to communication cables under the Baltic Sea.

Unidentified drones were spotted over three US air bases in Britain. British troops were deployed to investigate.

France has reiterated that there are no red lines when it comes to its support for Ukraine, and Le Monde is reporting that Britain and France have engaged in talks about deploying troops to Ukraine.

Germany’s intelligence chief has said that Russian acts of sabotage in Europe may result in Article V of the NATO Treaty being invoked.

A DHL cargo plane crashed just outside the Vilnius airport, killing the Spanish pilot and injuring the three other crew members. Russian terrorism is the suspected cause.

The Russian ruble collapsed to a lower level than in February-March 2022, and the central bank stepped in to support the currency. Some Russian newspapers are discussing stagflation, with interest rates at 21% and inflation at 8%, though official data suggest that unemployment is low and real wage growth, high.

An Austrian energy company seized a large volume of Russian gas as a remedy for an arbitration award. In retaliation, the Russian company GazProm has halted their supply of gas to Austria, ending the country’s more than half a century of dependence on Russian gas, mid-winter.

Exports from EU countries to Russia via Kyrgyzstan have decreased recently, with the exception of Germany.

The Americas

President-elect Trump picked retired general Keith Kellogg as his special envoy for the Russia-Ukraine war. Earlier this year, Kellogg co-authored a strategy paper that proposed that the US should negotiate a ceasefire in Ukraine, continue to arm Ukraine so long as Ukraine participates in peace talks, withhold support for NATO membership for Ukraine, and offer Russia sanctions relief contingent on an end to the war.

If Trump were to introduce tariffs against other nations when he becomes president, inflation in the US would increase, all else equal, and other countries would likely retaliate.

The Trump team is considering holding direct talks with Kim Jong Un. Meanwhile, in his final meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month in Peru, Biden asked Beijing to use its leverage to reel in North Korea.

Africa

Senegal and Chad have asked French troops to leave. France’s military presence in Africa has declined dramatically over the past few years. Russia’s influence has correspondingly increased, although the country’s forces may be overstretched. Authoritarian regimes have welcomed Russian financial and military support when Western countries have instead sought changes.

South Asia

Protests in support of releasing Imran Khan have continued in Pakistan.

Asia-Pacific

China may be unnerved by North Korea’s growing ties with Russia, in part because such ties could help the US to persuade allies in the Asia-Pacific region that an even stronger alliance is needed, and in part because increasing ties could increase tensions between China and Europe.

China has been purging a substantial number of PLA leaders over the past two years, over corruption charges.

DW reports that China’s shipbuilding capacity may be 230 times that of the US.

North Korea has revealed a uranium enrichment facility for the first time.

The US and Japan are planning to deploy High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) on Japan’s Nansei islands to defend Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion, as reported by Voice of America.

Russia has said that if the United States stations missiles in Japan, this would threaten Russian security, and they would retaliate.

Taiwan has changed its air raid alert threshold to a lower distance from the island.

Biorisks

H5N1 bird flu was found in a sample of California raw unpasteurized milk sold to the public. A total of 689 dairy herds in the US, 475 of them in California, have had confirmed H5N1 infections.

Scientists have been puzzled by the apparently low H5N1 case fatality rate in humans in the US. They offer a number of hypotheses:

• “The way in which the virus is being transmitted — along with the amount of virus exposure — is limiting the severity of disease.”

• “The version of H5N1 circulating in the U.S., the 2.3.4.4b clade, is inherently less dangerous to people.”

• “People are less susceptible to severe infection from H5N1 than we used to be.”

• “Public health officials were previously unaware of a significant number of mild H5N1 cases in humans, leading to a dramatic overestimation of H5’s feared case fatality rate. Only now are we getting a true picture of the spectrum of infection.”

In further discussions about why forecasters’ estimates of the H5N1 infection fatality rate (IFR) were so high last week (0.07% to 9%, conditional on a descendant of an H5N1 strain becoming pandemic), forecasters brought up several factors. First, if a descendant of an H5N1 strain does become pandemic, it’s unclear which genetic group of strains that descendant strain might emerge from; for example, it might not be descended from relatively milder North American strains. Second, a descendant of a currently circulating H5N1 virus might become pandemic after reassortment with other flu viruses and would need to undergo additional adaptations to humans to be able to circulate widely in humans. It’s not completely clear what the characteristics of such a virus would end up being; for instance, in addition to adapting to bind more efficiently to “human receptors” in the respiratory tract, the virus would need to adapt to grow at temperatures present in the human respiratory tract, and the resulting adaptations could be expected to change the exact mix of symptoms the virus can cause. Third, the disease does have high case fatality rates in cattle, on the order of 5 to 10%, and we have seen higher case fatality rates in sea mammals. Fourth, the farm-worker populations in which we are observing initial cases are likely relatively healthier than the US population as a whole. Moreover, in general, there are lots of things we don’t know yet, and thus, our confidence intervals for a potential IFR should be wide.

Mpox cases in Africa are expected to plateau starting early next year. As widespread global spread of the virus has not been seen, the world may be able to dodge this particular bullet. The WHO has issued recommendations for countries to address small numbers of cases to prevent larger outbreaks.

Artificial Intelligence

China has warned that it would take “necessary actions” if the US escalates chip-control measures.

OpenAI is reportedly considering taking on Google by introducing its own browser. However, OpenAI is reportedly “not remotely close to launching a browser.”

Artists who were testing OpenAI’s Sora video generation model leaked access to the API on HuggingFace in protest against the company. OpenAI has now shut down access.

British cabinet office minister Pat McFadden urged NATO countries on Monday to work closer together to stay ahead in “the new AI arms race,” saying that Russia will not intimidate Britain and its allies with threats of cyberattacks.

Nvidia has exhibited an AI model that can modify voices and generate novel sounds.

Amazon has developed a video AI model.

A Texas lawyer has been fined for the use of AI, because of fake citations in a court filing.

Climate

A reduction in pollution from ships is expected to increase temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea over the coming year.