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Hi Dem, I don't really have a defined framework for thinking about existential threats. I have read quite a lot around AI, Nuclear (command and control is a great book on the history of nuclear weapons) and Climate Change. I tend to focus mainly on the likelihood of something occurring and the tractability of preventing it. On a very high level I've concluded that the AI threat is unlikely to be catastrophic, and until a general AI is even invented there is little research or useful work that can be done in this area. I think the nuclear weapons threat is very serious and likely underestimated (given the history of near misses it seems amazing to me that there hasn't been a major incident) - but this is deeply tied up in geopolitics and seems highly intractable to me. For me that leaves climate change, which has ever stronger scientific evidence supporting the idea that it will be really bad, and there is enough political support to allow it to be tractable - which is why I have chosen to make it the area of my focus. I also think economic development for poorer countries (or the failure to do so ) is a huge issue on a similar scale to the above, but again I believe that it's too bogged down in politics and national interests to be tractable.