My team at Sentinel produces a weekly brief on global risks. Here is the executive summary for this week:
Geopolitical risks: Thailand and Cambodia exchanged fire, and Thailand sent some F-16s into Cambodia, but a ceasefire has already been reached. Israel is being accused of causing mass starvation in Gaza by the WHO and others. Zelensky faced his first large-scale domestic protests over a law weakening the independence of anti-corruption bodies.
Economy and trade: The US and the EU reached a trade deal that would tariff EU goods coming into America at 15%. A similar agreement was reached between the US and Japan, which will now also face 15% tariffs on its goods exported to the US.
Biorisks: A paper reports a method for genetically editing mosquitoes to make them resistant to malaria in a way that can be transmitted to subsequent generations, and a method for driving such mutations into mosquito populations. H5N1 continues to pose an ongoing risk.
AI: The White House published an extensive AI Action Plan, which seeks to accelerate investment and buildout and espouses a framework of a race against China, while also recognizing some potential dangers from AI and including some recommendations for research on controllability and safety. Anthropic is embroiled in a new trial over pirating IP; forecasters assign a 68% chance that the case will reach a jury trial, and a 56% chance that $1.5B damages will be awarded conditional on losing a trial, but only a 1.1% chance that Anthropic will be out of business by the end of 2026 as a result of the trial.
Gray swans: None detected this week.
Our status is at green, representing that we aren’t seeing signals of incoming catastrophic risks over the short-term.
One small suggestion: When I read this, I genuinely couldn’t tell whether “Gray swans: None detected this week” was a joke (like you were pretending to look for literal gray/black swans), or if it meant something serious. After reading your website, my guess is that it’s meant to be serious—but I’m still not sure, and if it is serious then I don’t know what it means. (My understanding is that “black swan” means an unexpected, highly improbable / out of distribution event, so it wasn’t clear to me what it would mean in this context to be generally looking for global gray/black swans.) Might be worth clarifying or finding other terminology, if you want readers like me to quickly grok what you mean.
what it would mean in this context to be generally looking for global gray/black swans
Yes it’s a bit tongue in cheeck, but the point of black swans per Taleb is that they would be so out of distribution that they’d be totally unforeseen. But if you have a foresight team, maybe you can detect some fraction of them beforehand… in which case maybe they were not true black swans after all. Maybe I should just go with “out-of-distribution threats”
My team at Sentinel produces a weekly brief on global risks. Here is the executive summary for this week:
Geopolitical risks: Thailand and Cambodia exchanged fire, and Thailand sent some F-16s into Cambodia, but a ceasefire has already been reached. Israel is being accused of causing mass starvation in Gaza by the WHO and others. Zelensky faced his first large-scale domestic protests over a law weakening the independence of anti-corruption bodies.
Economy and trade: The US and the EU reached a trade deal that would tariff EU goods coming into America at 15%. A similar agreement was reached between the US and Japan, which will now also face 15% tariffs on its goods exported to the US.
Biorisks: A paper reports a method for genetically editing mosquitoes to make them resistant to malaria in a way that can be transmitted to subsequent generations, and a method for driving such mutations into mosquito populations. H5N1 continues to pose an ongoing risk.
AI: The White House published an extensive AI Action Plan, which seeks to accelerate investment and buildout and espouses a framework of a race against China, while also recognizing some potential dangers from AI and including some recommendations for research on controllability and safety. Anthropic is embroiled in a new trial over pirating IP; forecasters assign a 68% chance that the case will reach a jury trial, and a 56% chance that $1.5B damages will be awarded conditional on losing a trial, but only a 1.1% chance that Anthropic will be out of business by the end of 2026 as a result of the trial.
Gray swans: None detected this week.
Our status is at green, representing that we aren’t seeing signals of incoming catastrophic risks over the short-term.
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One small suggestion: When I read this, I genuinely couldn’t tell whether “Gray swans: None detected this week” was a joke (like you were pretending to look for literal gray/black swans), or if it meant something serious. After reading your website, my guess is that it’s meant to be serious—but I’m still not sure, and if it is serious then I don’t know what it means. (My understanding is that “black swan” means an unexpected, highly improbable / out of distribution event, so it wasn’t clear to me what it would mean in this context to be generally looking for global gray/black swans.) Might be worth clarifying or finding other terminology, if you want readers like me to quickly grok what you mean.
Yes it’s a bit tongue in cheeck, but the point of black swans per Taleb is that they would be so out of distribution that they’d be totally unforeseen. But if you have a foresight team, maybe you can detect some fraction of them beforehand… in which case maybe they were not true black swans after all. Maybe I should just go with “out-of-distribution threats”
Interesting turn of events for the US to now disincentivize trade with Japan, wonder what Commodore Perry would think