🟩 US sends second aircraft carrier to Middle East, European nuclear deterrent discussed, pandemic preparedness deprioritized at NIAID | Global Risks Weekly Roundup #7/2026

Executive summary

Geopolitics: Trump again expressed support for regime change in Iran and sent a second aircraft carrier group to the Middle East, but also said that nuclear talks will continue. Some European leaders are floating the idea of a common European nuclear deterrent, but Spain’s PM is opposed to “nuclear rearmament”.

• Will the US strike Iran before April 2026? Forecasters give a 48% (40% to 55%) probability thereof. Will it strike Iran before July 2026? Forecasters think there’s a 69% (58% to 90%) chance.

• Will more than 10,000 people take part in protests in Tehran before February 20? Forecasters believe there’s a 47% (35% to 58%) probability.

Technology and AI: Bernie Sanders reiterated that he plans to introduce federal legislation for a moratorium on data center construction. A Chinese AI startup trained its new model entirely on Huawei chips. Anthropic was valued at almost $380B.

• Will a federal moratorium on data center construction become law before 2029? Forecasters give a 4% (2% to 7%) probability thereof.

• Will a Chinese AI model enter the top 3 on Epoch’s Capabilities Index by the end of 2026? Forecasters think there’s a 12% (10% to 18%) chance.

Biorisk: The US NIAID is deprioritizing pandemic preparedness and biodefense, while the FDA refused to consider Moderna’s application seeking approval of their mRNA influenza vaccine.

Geopolitics

Middle East

The United States is sending a second aircraft carrier group to the Middle East as it further builds up its ‘armada’ in the region. Donald Trump also said that regime change in Iran would be the “best thing to ever happen”, with the US military preparing for a weeks-long operation against Iran if Trump gives the order to attack. Trump said that making a deal with Iran has been difficult and that “sometimes you have to have fear”, hinting that his ideal scenario is still to scare Iran’s leaders into making a deal that he feels is acceptable. A second carrier group boosts strike power and would bolster the defence of Israel and US bases in the region if they were to come under attack.

Meanwhile, Iran’s President Mahmoud Pezeshkian said the country is willing to open up its nuclear sites for “any kind of verification”. This would represent a return to the setup under the JCPOA negotiated by the Obama administration, but it’s unclear whether this will be a large enough concession for the current administration. Access to Iran’s nuclear sites has been progressively restricted since Trump pulled out of that deal in 2018, and IAEA inspectors were barred altogether following the US-Israel attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites in June 2025.

Trump met with Israeli prime minister Netanyahu and said that nuclear talks with Iran must continue. Nothing definitive was agreed at the meeting. US and Iranian representatives are expected to meet in Switzerland on February 17 to continue talks about Iran’s nuclear program.

Forecasters now think there’s a 48% probability (40% to 55%) that the US will strike Iran before April 2026, and a 69% chance (58% to 90%) that it will do so before July 2026.

There could be large protests in the coming days in Tehran as some traders at the city’s Grand Bazaar called for nationwide gatherings following the end of the 40-day mourning period for protesters who died on January 8 and 9. Forecasters think there’s a 47% (35% to 58%) chance that a credible news outlet such as Reuters or the Associated Press will report that at least 10,000 gathered in Tehran in a protest this week.

Europe

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says that he opposes nuclear rearmament, in response to suggestions from other European leaders that there should be a common European nuclear deterrent.

Intelligence agencies in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands allege that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was killed by epibatidine, a toxin found in the skin of Ecuador dart frogs. Britain said it would be reporting Russia to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for what it called a flagrant violation of the chemical weapons convention (CWC).

Ukraine is reportedly working on holding presidential elections and a referendum on a peace deal, possibly as early as May, though this may all be conditional on substantive progress being made in peace talks. Ukraine’s President Zelensky emphasised that a ceasefire would first need to be agreed. Last week, we reported that the US has given Ukraine and Russia a June deadline to end their war, though a US official has since publicly rejected this.

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen says that Trump remains serious about acquiring Greenland.

Russia said it will take “countermeasures, including military-technical ones”, if the West increases its military footprint on Greenland. This most likely refers to building up military infrastructure aimed at the West, and one forecaster thinks it’s extremely unlikely that there will be more than 10 uniformed deaths as a result of confrontations between NATO and Russian forces before 2027.

Norway’s army chief said that, while it’s extremely unlikely that Russia aims to conquer Norway, there could be a confrontation with Russia in the far north of the country if Russia believes its nuclear assets in the Kola peninsula are under threat.

Trump rejected Vladimir Putin’s offer of a one-year extension to the New START Treaty’s deployment limits.

A NATO exercise in May 2025 suggested that the alliance is unprepared for drone warfare.

Russia is transforming its command and control of military operations using software to provide AI-enabled, decentralized battlefield control of drones and to integrate drone activities with other fire units.

Asia

The US and UK air forces reportedly held joint exercises simulating confrontations with Chinese and other countries’ fighter jets.

United States

The Department of Homeland Security has sent tech companies, including Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta, hundreds of administrative subpoenas requesting personal identifying data for social media accounts that track or criticize ICE actions.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that, “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” The House has passed a voter ID bill, the SAVE America Act, but the bill has yet to make its way through the Senate.

Amazon’s Ring security camera company announced that it is ending its partnership with Flock Safety, a security and surveillance company that partners extensively with law enforcement, after a disastrous response to Ring’s Superbowl ad that showcased its ability to locate lost dogs and reunite them with their owners.

Courts have ruled more than 4,400 times since October that the Trump administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully, and detainees have filed more than 20,000 lawsuits seeking to be released. The administration continues to detain immigrants indefinitely despite such court rulings. ICE and CBP continue to increase deportations.

ICE plans for detention centers are becoming clearer. The agency plans to spend $38.3B to buy 24 warehouses across the country and convert them into immigrant detention centers. ICE plans to turn 16 of these warehouses into regional detention centers that can hold 1,000-1,500 detainees, and 8 warehouses into detention centers that can hold up to 8,000-10,000 detainees and will serve as the main hubs for international removals.

The Trump administration is ramping up efforts to denaturalize citizens, with a goal of referring 100-200 cases for litigation per month. Historically, from 1990 to 2017, the US government pursued an average of 11 cases per year. It is possible that the Trump administration will seek to strip US citizenship from foreign-born citizens for lesser violations than in the past.

The House Judiciary Committee’s hearing questioning Attorney General Pam Bondi about the Epstein Files devolved into a shouting match. When asked whether the DOJ has pursued indictments against any co-conspirators, Bondi responded by asking why they weren’t talking about the Dow Jones Industrial Average being over 50,000 and other economic highlights.

Technology and artificial intelligence

US Senator Bernie Sanders reiterated that he intends to introduce federal legislation for a moratorium on data center construction. State lawmakers in Georgia, Maryland, Oklahoma, New York and Wisconsin have proposed similar bills.

Forecasters believe there’s a 4% (2% to 7%) chance that such a moratorium will become federal law before 2029, noting that most Congressional Democrats (including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) have so far declined to fully endorse the plan and that it would almost certainly have to get significant Republican support and survive a potential Presidential veto. On the other hand, there could be an ‘AI warning shot’ or substantial automation-linked job displacement that prompts lawmakers to support it.

Some former xAI employees allege that the company does not take AI safety seriously. One said that “safety is a dead org at xAI”, while another said that engineers at the company immediately “push to prod[uction]... You survive by shutting up and doing what Elon wants”.

In a slightly cryptic post stating that the “world is in peril”, an Anthropic safety lead publicly quit the company, citing the difficulty in Anthropic matching actions to values as among his reasons.

Chinese AI startup Zhipiu released its new flagship model, GLM-5, which was entirely trained on Huawei chips. Forecasters believe there’s a 12% (10% to 18%) chance that a Chinese AI model will have entered the top 3 in Epoch’s Capabilities Index, a composite benchmark, by the end of 2026 (even if it later drops out).

Anthropic secured $30B in Series G funding, at a valuation of $380B. The Pentagon reportedly used Anthropic’s Claude model while carrying out the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Anthropic’s inquiries on the matter led to the Pentagon considering severing ties with the company..

Google DeepMind published two papers which it says demonstrate that Gemini Deep Think can accelerate mathematical and scientific discovery. Google says state-backed hackers are using Gemini to augment their attacks and are stealing Gemini API keys.

OpenAI says that its models have been making progress on mathematical problems posed in the “First Proof” challenge. OpenAI also launched “Lockdown Mode”, an optional security setting for higher-risk users.

Microsoft launched a scanner to detect poisoned LLMs. Microsoft’s AI chief, Mustafa Suleyman, predicted that white-collar work could be automated within 18 months.

Meta plans to add facial recognition to its smart glasses, though it’s aware of privacy concerns. An internal memo from last year stated that, “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns.”

Data centers now represent 7% of US electricity demand, according to a new Goldman Sachs report.

Economy

China has told its banks to begin selling and limit purchases of US Treasuries to reduce the banks’ exposure to potential volatility in the US debt market and to reduce concentration risk.

Biorisk

Pandemic preparedness and biodefense are being deprioritized at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), with staff members told to remove the terms from the institute’s website.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a rare Refusal-to-File (RTF) letter to Moderna for their mRNA influenza vaccine, despite the EU, Canada and Australia all having accepted the company’s application. This is likely driven by the anti-vaccine views of some in the Trump administration. Moderna has already shelved plans to develop vaccines for Epstein-Barr virus, herpes and shingles, and has announced it will no longer invest in new Phase 3 trials for infectious diseases on the grounds that “[y]ou cannot make a return on investment if you don’t have access to the U.S. market.”

Nature and climate

The Trump administration repealed the finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health. As a consequence, the US Environmental Protection Agency will no longer be able to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

A study estimates that by 2065-2100, many parts of Africa (not including Madagascar) could experience heatwaves 250-300 days per year.

Miscellaneous

Former US President Barack Obama said that “aliens are real” in an interview, later clarifying that he was basing this on his view that “[s]tatistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.” He added that, “the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us.”