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Sentinel minutes #6/2025: Power of the purse, D1.1 H5N1 flu variant, Ayatollah against negotiations with Trump
The Trump Administration’s overhaul of the US Government continued. More than 8,000 government web pages have been taken down. Also, all USAID staff were placed on leave, as plans were announced to reduce staff from 14,000 to 294 people total. A judge has temporarily blocked this plan, and many have argued that abolishing USAID would undermine the separation of powers. The abolition of USAID or a drastic reduction in its headcount could also have geopolitical implications. Our forecasters believe there’s a 74% chance (range: 50%-90%) that USAID will be shut down or have fewer than 1,000 staff members by January 20, 2029 (assuming there is no existential catastrophe before then).
All employees at the CIA, NSA and ODNI were offered buyouts to voluntarily resign. Meanwhile, an unclassified email was sent from the CIA with the names of all employees hired in the past two years, posing a national security risk.
An administration appointee disbanded the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force and the Department of Justice's Task Force KleptoCapture that targets Russian oligarchs. The CFO of the Office of Personnel Management is resigning under pressure to leave, though the Commissioner and Chair of the FEC is resisting pressure to resign.
The National Science Foundation plans to lay off one quarter to one half of its staff over the next two months. More staff cuts at health agencies are expected to be announced in the week starting Feb. 10. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it would slash indirect costs to 15% of grant amounts, which would reduce the budgets of universities and other research centers by an estimated $4b/year.
An engineer tied to Elon Musk reportedly gained read and write access to Treasury Department payment systems that disburse funds amounting to more than a fifth of the US economy; on Thursday, that access was revoked pending judicial review. Some government IT professionals are worried about the damage that Musk's acolytes could do in the government's computer systems.
On Thursday, a judge temporarily blocked implementation of a "deferred resignation" buyout of more than two million federal workers until at least Monday; as of Thursday, about 40,000 federal workers, or 2% of the federal workforce, had already accepted the deal. Vice-President Vance, however, has questioned the degree to which judges should hold power over the executive.
Forecasters disagree about how to interpret the above list of actions, with some seeing it as an anti-republican, illegal and dangerous concentration of powers and a strong weakening of important checks and balances, and others seeing it as arguably legal and a comparatively small price to pay to reduce stagnation, cruft, decay in the US government.
In terms of predictions, while the administration appears to be complying with court rulings at the moment, our forecasters believe there’s a 39% chance (range: 15%-60%) that the Trump Administration will ignore at least one Supreme Court ruling, assuming that at least one ruling goes against the Administration (and there is no existential catastrophe by 2029). We’d be curious to see readers opine and trade in a similar Manifold Market: Will a sitting US President refuse to follow or ignore a Supreme Court ruling by 2032?, currently sitting at around 30%.
Our forecasters still believe there’s a 72% chance in aggregate (range: 10%-95%) that a free and fair Presidential election will be held in 2028 (according to OSCE, and assuming that there is no existential catastrophe before then). We will be considering what plausible scenarios could be dangerous here over the coming weeks.
A first group of "high-threat" illegal immigrants was sent by plane to a detention center in Guantanamo Bay.
The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, tweeted that he won't attend the upcoming G20 summit in Johannesburg because the summit will promote "'solidarity, equality, & sustainability.' In other words: DEI and climate change."
Argentina's President Javier Milei withdrew his country from the World Health Organization.
Iran's reformists are pressing for the country to make concessions on financial transparency so that the country can rejoin the international banking system and potentially start to build a better relationship with the West.
On the other hand, Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says that entering negotiations with the United States would be "neither wise, nor prudent, nor dignified."
US intelligence has concluded that a group of Iranian scientists is working to develop a relatively crude method for rapidly producing a nuclear weapon, in case the country were to decide to pursue that course.
Syria's new defense minister has said that the country is willing to consider allowing Russia to keep its two military bases in the country, "if we get benefits for Syria out of this."
Donald Trump proposed that the US take over the Gaza Strip when Israel is done fighting there, remove all Palestinians and develop the region. The proposal was condemned by US allies in the region and elsewhere, but some in Israel welcomed the idea. Any attempt to implement this plan could increase tensions between Israel and Hamas, as well as the US and Iran, but our forecasters currently believe there’s a 25% chance (range: 20%-30%) that the US will be in de facto control of the Gaza Strip by January 20, 2029 (assuming no existential catastrophe before then).
The three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) have finally disconnected from the Russian electricity grid, and their power systems are set to merge with the European energy system through several links with Finland, Sweden and Poland. The European Union also reached an agreement with Moldova to integrate the country into its energy system.
Ukrainian President Zelensky is offering the US a deal, seeking a mineral partnership in exchange for security. He has urged the US to ensure that Ukraine has some form of security guarantee, be it a deployment of Western troops to Ukraine or the return of nuclear weapons to the country.
China imposed retaliatory tariffs on US products: 15% on coal and liquefied natural gas products and 10% on crude oil, agricultural machinery and large-engine cars imported from the U.S., starting February 10.
An H5N1 bird flu variant (D1.1) that resulted in the death of a patient in the US and the hospitalization of a teenager in Canada has been found in dairy cows for the first time, in the US state of Nevada. All dairy cattle infections until now have involved the B3.13 variant. D1.1 was most likely spread to the cows by starlings that migrate through Nevada in the winter. That a second strain has infected cattle suggests that the virus will likely be even more difficult to control in cattle than previously thought - and that it could jump to cattle elsewhere as well, perhaps undetected.
A person in the US state of Iowa with variant H1N2 (H1N2v) flu infection was hospitalized and has since recovered. It is not known how the person was infected with the virus, which ordinarily infects swine.
The number of people in the US aged 16 and over with a disability continues to climb, most likely because of the effects of Covid. The numbers had been plateauing for several years before the pandemic around 30-31M but have now increased to nearly 35M.
Seven contacts of a confirmed case of Sudan ebolavirus in Uganda have been confirmed to be infected as well. Almost 300 contacts are being monitored. As of now, there is no FDA-approved vaccine for the Sudan virus, and the Ebola vaccine currently available is not effective against it.
Researchers have detected the first henipavirus in North America, the Camp Hill virus. Examples of other henipaviruses include Hendra virus and Nipah virus.
OpenAI launched its Deep Research AI system: “An agent that uses reasoning to synthesize large amounts of online information and complete multi-step research tasks for you… It accomplishes in tens of minutes what would take a human many hours.”
No system card has been released for Deep Research; it’s understood that this will come when it is rolled out to more than just ChatGPT Pro users (the $200/mo subscription tier).
On Humanity’s Last Exam, it scores significantly higher than OpenAI’s o3-mini (high), and judging by this benchmark, it appears to represent a (another) significant advance in AI capabilities:
HuggingFace researchers released an open-source AI research agent called "Open Deep Research" within 24 hours after OpenAI released Deep Research. Open Deep Research scored nearly as well as Deep Research on the General AI Assistants benchmark.
Sam Altman says that he doesn’t think he’ll be smarter than GPT-5, and reportedly told Trump that AGI will be achieved during his administration.
There are reports of a gigantic data breach at OpenAI, with ChatGPT user credentials apparently stolen. OpenAI says there is no evidence of this “to date.”
DeepSeek reportedly has code hidden in its programming which has the capability to send user data directly to the Chinese government.
Google's parent company Alphabet removed its pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance.
Sixteen British lawmakers from the two biggest parties signed a campaign statement calling for the UK to introduce binding regulation on powerful AI systems, and highlighting the AI risk of extinction to humanity. The UK government has previously said an AI bill would be forthcoming, but this has faced delays. The statement was released along with polling by YouGov showing that majorities of UK citizens support strict measures to address AI risks.
OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s new company is in talks to be valued at $20b.
OpenAI co-founder John Schulman, who left OpenAI for Anthropic last year, has now left Anthropic.
OpenAI will be developing AI products for South Korean chat app operator Kakao, which holds a 97% market share.
Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI may go to trial in part: "[Elon Musk will] sit on the stand, present it to a jury, and a jury will decide who is right."
Taiwan's top chip designer MediaTek is running simulations exploring the possible effects of US tariffs on Taiwan.
South Korean ministries have blocked DeepSeek because of security concerns.
In a new paper, climate scientist James Hansen argues that global warming of more than 2°C is now locked in because global energy use is rising. Moreover, reductions in shipping pollution that have slowed warming, and faster warming from burning fossil fuels than was previously thought, mean that the world is heating faster than previously expected (though other scientists dispute this). Hansen and his colleagues expect 2°C of warming to be reached by 2045.
Temperatures at the North Pole are currently 20°C above average, and above the temperature at which ice will melt.
It is estimated that climate change will wipe out about $1.5 trillion in US home values over the next 30 years and increase wealth gaps within communities. Homeowners' insurance premiums are expected to increase by an average of 29.4% over the same period.
An asteroid named 2024 YR4 has a 2.2% chance of hitting Earth on December 22, 2032, according to the European Space Agency. But the probability estimate has changed over time because of outliers being ruled out and fluctuations in the quality of observations, rising from 1.3% on January 29 to 1.7% on February 1, then dropping to 1.4% on February 2, then rising to 2.3% on February 6 before dropping to 2.2% on February 7.
Most astronomers think it's likely that as the asteroid is studied further over the next couple of months, the probability will fall to close to zero, as occurred with Apophis (which was once given a probability of 2.7% of hitting Earth in 2029 and which had a higher rating on the Torino impact scale).
Some of the potential impact locations for 2024 YR4 could be densely populated areas, and the asteroid could cause an 8-megaton explosion (comparable to that of a single thermonuclear weapon). For reference, the Tunguska event in 1908 (the largest impact event in recorded history) caused an explosion of 3-50 megatons over a sparsely populated area, which felled 80 million trees, damaged a few buildings and caused up to 3 fatalities. If needed, deflection would probably have to occur in 2028.
Very useful compilation, thanks for putting it together and sharing it here
Thanks!