Preventive Priorities Survey Launch: What Conflicts to Worry About in 2025

Panelists discuss potential and ongoing crises that may erupt or escalate in 2025, as well as their global political implications. This event will explore the results of the 2025 Preventive Priorities Survey, which will be available on CFR’s website on Wednesday, January 8, 2025.

KARL: Hello and welcome to the CFR meeting “What Conflicts to Worry About in 2025”. I’m Jonathan Karl, the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News. I will be your presider here.

We’re joined by CFR members here in this room, and also via Zoom. This record—this meeting is on the record. And we are here to talk about the CFR’s new report, 2025 Preventative Priorities Survey, which is an annual survey of foreign policy experts to identify and evaluate thirty ongoing or potential conflicts based on how likely they are to escalate or to occur in the next year, and their possible impact on U.S. interests.

So we have an incredibly good panel here. We’ve got Steve Biegun, down at the end, the senior vice president of global policy at the Boeing Company. Former Deputy Secretary of State Michèle Flournoy, cofounder and managing partner of WestExec Advisors, the former undersecretary for policy at the Department of Defense. Meghan O’Sullivan, director and professor of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, and former special assistant to the president, deputy national security advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan. And Paul Stares, who is the man behind this.

First, Paul, I want to turn it over to you. And as I do, I just want to read one sentence from the beginning of this report. It says that the level of anxiety that survey respondents feel about the risk of violent conflict over the coming twelve months has never been greater. So thank you for the optimistic note, and—(laughter)—tell us about the survey.

STARES: No sugarcoating there. (Laughter.) So, well, thank you, Jonathan. And thank you all for being here, being in presence here and online. And a particular shoutout for those of you who may have actually filled out the survey. We rely on you every year, so tip of the hat to you.

So for those of you who are not familiar with the survey, I thought I’d just sort of give a brief kind of overview of what we do. So we’ve been doing this survey since 2008 now. And it’s essentially a poll of many hundreds of U.S. foreign policy experts. And, as Jonathan indicated, we provide them a list of thirty sort of conflict-related scenarios or contingencies that we think are plausible for the coming twelve months. And then we ask the survey respondents to assess each of them in terms of their likelihood and impact on U.S. national interests. And then we sort them into three tiers of relative priority. The simple premise there is that not every potential crisis or conflict is equally important to the U.S., and there’s only a finite amount of time and energy resources that busy policymakers can devote to anything. So they should sort of essentially pick and choose what is really the most pressing conflicts to focus on.

As you say Jonathan, this year’s results are quite remarkable, frankly unprecedented, in terms of what people are worrying about next year. We’ve never had so many what we call high-high contingencies, high likelihood, high impact. And I think the highest we’ve ever had before is, like, three. And that was last year. Usually it’s one at most, but we have five this year. Moreover, twenty-eight of the thirty were either high likelihood or moderate likelihood, i.e., around 50 percent. Also unprecedented. And over half of them were also considered to be high impact, moderate impact. Again, extraordinary. So the level of anxiety out there is quite extraordinary.

In terms of where people seem to be most concerned about, I think four of the top twelve tier one are Middle East related. Gaza led the way. West Bank, Lebanon, and also Iran, Israel. Another four have to do with, one way or another, China and Russia. Ukraine is clearly one of the most, I think, pressing issues on people’s mind, and whether we will get a ceasefire there this year. Taiwan has been in the top tier for many years now. Russian interference in Eastern Europe, Georgia, Moldova are also up there. And then we’ve got some sort of homeland security-type contingencies in the top tier, which is possibility of major cyberattack. That’s what we call a hardy perennial. It’s there every year. A southwest border kind of contingency, in which the Trump administration sends security, or more security forces to the border, and that leads to rising tensions with Mexico.

And probably the most surprising contingency this year is Haiti. That rarely rises above tier three, but it was on a lot of people’s minds this year. And—

KARL: It’s in tier one now.

STARES: It’s in tier one. And finally, political violence, domestic terrorism around this sort of increasing polarization of American society, and that leading to instability in the U.S. That was number one last year, people will remember. It’s still a tier one concern. So that’s the broad overview.

KARL: OK, so Paul, before I get to the others in the panel just a very quick question. You said the survey was conducted in November. Was it conducted before or after November 5? So to pick a date. (Laughter.)

STARES: It was—it was—we made sure it was after the election so none of the—you know, the respondents had no—there was no doubt who would be in the White House. So it was very much with the expectation of a second Trump administration. I think that, you have to think, had some effect on how people responded. But—

KARL: Do you think it resulted in more conflicts being elevated to concern level tier one?

STARES: I think—I think that’s a fair supposition. But, you know, conflict trends in general in the last few years have been worsening. And something that is a particular concern to me, sort of the red lines that used to essentially contain conflicts have been steadily eroding over the last year or so.

You know, who would have thought—who had, you know, a major missile barrage between Israel and Iran on their bingo card last year? You know, China routinely violates the median line between the mainland and Taiwan. Again, that was seen to be sacrosanct until a few years ago. We got the Houthis launching missiles into Israel. Again, quite extraordinary. And then, say, you know, far from the least, we have Russia conducting very aggressive kind of hybrid tactics in Western Europe—assassinations, dredging up cables. Again, quite brazen, very aggressive, potentially very destabilizing.

So these kinds of red lines that we’ve, you know, accepted as sort of the normative constraints on international behavior are eroding. And I think that might be a factor in how people think about the future and worry about the future.

KARL: Michèle, let me kick it to you. How does this correlate to how you see the threat level right now?

FLOURNOY: Well, I understand why people have a lot of anxiety. (Laughs.) The world—there’s—you know, it’s hard to remember a time when there was so much turmoil. So it’s a pretty daunting inheritance for any new administration. I have to believe that some of the reaction, you know, that was registered in the survey was not only about the conflicts, but just about the degree of uncertainty surrounding how we would respond to those as well. You have, you know, uncertainty of U.S. policy in a new administration, but you also have a weakening of many of the traditional alliances, institutions, tools that we would use to either prevent these crises from becoming conflicts or to deal with them, you know when they do.

And so I think that erosion of norms that Paul cited, but also the weakening of institutions and the potential weakening of some of our alliances. I think in the last, you know, several years, we’ve seen a strengthening of some key alliances, which is very heartening, you know, with, you know, Japan and Korea and Australia and others. But I think it’s not clear, kind of, what the fate of our—some of our alliances are going forward, given a different ideological perspective, sort of the America first perspective that is going to be more dominant in American foreign policy going forward.

So, you know, I share—I was surprised by the same things you were. You know, Haiti in tier one, for example. The dropping of North Korea down to—way down to—

STARES: Yeah.

KARL: That’s because of all the work Steve did with Kim Jong-un.

FLOURNOY: And I was joking in the green room, we hope that Kim Jong-un doesn’t see the report, because that will incentivize him to get back into—(laughter)—do something to get back into tier one. But, no, I think it’s a good snapshot of, you know, how people—how concerned people are about any number of areas where we could move from crisis into conflict. That has lots of implications for how we posture ourselves and so forth, but I maybe will say that for another question in the future.

KARL: Yeah. And I don’t want to turn this into—this is about the world, not necessarily about the developments in the United States. But let me just, before we leave this notion, Joe Biden just gave his kind of farewell foreign policy address. We’ll have the actual farewell address tonight. You know, and he’s making the case that he’s left the world a better place, essentially. That his policies have had a positive impact. Looking at this report, Steve, you might think that maybe that’s not the case. Or, again, how much of this is the concern about what’s coming with a Trump administration? How do you—how do you—you’ve been—you were there at the transition. You served in important roles in the last Trump administration. You were there right until January 20 of 2021. You’ve seen transitions. How do you think this is going to play out?

BIEGUN: So, Jon, I think the report is an excellent measure of anxiety.

KARL: Yeah.

BIEGUN: So I think—I think that’s actually a hidden feature of the report, rather than simply the observations. Because if you go through the conflicts, leaving aside a couple of outliers like where Haiti is rated in ’25, it’s largely the obvious conflicts, quite honestly, that we all know about. So it’s not like there’s some shocking revelation in the list of crises. It’s maybe some of the issues that Michèle referred to is more about our ability to contend with those. It also probably suffers a little bit from confirmation bias. These are the—these are the conflicts people want to worry about. And then, you know, it is just the nature of the policymakers’ fate to worry about the problems and not balance that out by thinking about the opportunities.

And when you—when you surrender to anxiety, you also—you also, I think, almost accept a sense of powerlessness. And I think—so if I go back to 2021, you know, I think about all the things that happened during President Biden’s term. Some of them quite, quite challenging. Some of them, the response was actually the reassuring thing, not just solving the conflict. You know, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not a success, but mobilizing an international coalition to respond to that it is. So you get both ends of that. You get the anxiety of a full-scale Russian invasion of its neighbor, but you also get the counterweight of a policy that was designed and, so far, has managed to stop that.

You certainly—you know, I looked at the 2021 Preventative Priorities Report, because I thought that would be instructive in understanding how this—how well this wears. You know, the collapse of the Afghan government, for example, was not in there. Afghanistan was, but the collapse the government, the full-scale—the rapid and disorderly withdrawal of the United States was not. That’s a policy decision. That’s not—you know, that’s not something that just happened. We decided that that was going to be our policy. And then, you know, as I—

KARL: It was a policy—by the way, it was one of the few things that actually Biden and Trump were essentially in agreement on, quick withdrawal from Afghanistan.

BIEGUN: I would say at the high level the goal was to bring about the end of the fighting there and the withdrawal of U.S. forces, if not entirely, substantially. But I don’t think this is how it would have played out in a Trump administration, in all candor.

KARL: So, Meghan, if you look at tier one, and the most anxiety-inducing part of tier one are your five conflicts that are high likelihood, high impact. And three of the five are the Middle East—Gaza, West Bank, Iran, Israel. Again, this was a survey that takes place in November. We have a ceasefire agreement that has just been announced as we all came in with Gaza. We’ll learn the details of all of that. We have also a ceasefire with Hezbollah. The argument’s been made that Iran has been significantly weakened over the last several months, its proxies severely diminished, Hezbollah Hamas. What is your sense? Is this an accurate reflection of your view—you have so much experience in the Middle East—of your view of the Middle East, that we should be more anxious, or actually there are maybe some hope that wasn’t there at the beginning of the year?

O’SULLIVAN: Sure. Thank you. Let me first just say—give a shoutout to Paul and the report. Over seventeen years, you know, this has been a report that a lot of us refer to. And it’s an occasion to not just highlight conventional wisdoms or confirmation bias. I’m sure there’s some of that in there. But I think in this report, even this year, having Mexico as a tier one potential, I think, is useful. Having Sudan as tier two. You know, two things that I think probably don’t get enough attention, but this report does highlight and elevate a bit.

In terms of the Middle East, it’s complicated I like the idea that was kind of inherent in what Steve was saying, that maybe there needs to be a complimentary opportunities report as well as a, you know, challenges and conflicts report, because I would put the Middle East in both of those. It’s a testimony to how quickly things have changed in the Middle East, not just in the last year but literally in the last few months, that the top three contingencies listed in tier one almost seem, you know, important, but a bit antiquated in their presentation. You mentioned the reports that literally, just as we were walking in, there may be a ceasefire, or there is a ceasefire. The details are unclear.

But that—if and when there’s a ceasefire that’s executed, and I’m hopeful that that will be soon, that will create opportunities to defuse some of the other crises that are on that list. So if there’s a ceasefire in Gaza, there’s been the expectation that this would ramp down things with the Houthis. It would be good for other parts of the Middle East, in Lebanon and elsewhere. We’ll get to test that proposition now. Is it in fact—have the Houthis decided this is actually such a win for them to be conflict instigators that a factor of a ceasefire in Gaza is no longer relevant? We’ll be able to see that.

On the Middle East, what I’m struck by in this report is the two things—three things that I would have high on my list have almost dropped out or are not present in the report, never mind in tier one. And that is, again, not a reflection of the report, but a reflection of events on the ground. The first is Syria. You know, Syria, I think, in my—in my formulation would be a tier one issue right now. Obviously, a lot of opportunity with the collapse of the fifty-two-year-old authoritarian regime in two weeks, virtually. But also an enormous amount of risk, not just to Syria but also to the region, particularly to Jordan. And we may talk more about that.

Secondly, I would say it’s very interesting that regime fragility in Iran dropped off the report this year, where I would say that is something it’s very hard to know. I certainly would never want to be, you know, being perceived as making a prediction. But it’s a very, very difficult time for the regime in Tehran. A lot of forces at play that could go in a variety of ways, and a Trump administration that is very intent on kind of pressing its advantage economically for sure in terms of sanctions, but potentially in other ways as well.

And then Iraq I don’t think, is mentioned in the report. Which is—you know, is in a nervous place right now. You may have noted that there had been a call for U.S. troops to withdraw completely from Iraq. There’s a small contingent of U.S. troops there now. And the Iraqis are now saying, well, we don’t actually mean it, or let’s do that another time, because of the uncertainty in the region, because the fragility of Iran, and because of the fact that they’re doubling down on the proxies that they still control, which are the ones in Iraq. So I think there’s a—there’s a lot of opportunity in the Middle East. There’s also lots of fragility. And because of the rapid pace of change in the Middle East right now, it was impossible for the report to fully reflect it.

KARL: We’ve had three consecutive presidents, very different presidents, who all, in one way or another, made in an effort to pivot U.S. attention from the Middle East to Asia, as the—you know, as China being the real long-term threat. It’s interesting here that, again, obviously, the Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, are both here, but they’re not in your high likelihood, high impact. They’re not in your high likelihood. They’re high impact, for sure, but moderate likelihood. What do you make of that, Steve?

BIEGUN: Yeah. So certainly, what you said has been tried. But there are certain things that return to the mean in foreign policy. You know, we’ve had very different presidents proposing very different sets of policies, and yet in significant ways they’ve resembled each other across that period as well. In the case of the Middle East, you know, there’s two fundamental challenges. One is what happens in the Middle East doesn’t stay in the Middle East. And so to pivot away from it is to expose yourself to risk. You can’t simply just leave the Middle East to itself. The other is that nature abhors a vacuum. And so as we began to diminish our presence in the Middle East, there were other actors that were more than willing to begin to step theirs up in ways that we did see as challenging to our interests, China and, of course, Russia as well.

KARL: Mmm hmm. Michèle.

FLOURNOY: Yeah, no. I mean, I think, you know, strategically there’s a lot of bipartisan consensus around the notion that we really do have to invest more in competing with China, in every way. But that includes, from a military perspective, building out our posture there, really deepening our alliances and partnerships there to really bolster deterrence. I mean, the name of the game with China is to never get to tier one. (Laughs.) I mean, it is to deter any sort of actual conflict over Taiwan or ever elsewhere.

That said, you know, as Steve said, it’s very hard to extricate yourself from other regions where you have vital interests, especially when they are as unstable and unpredictable as the Middle East. But that said, I think one of the things that is driving President-elect Trump’s discussion of, you know, let’s get a peace deal in Russia-Ukraine, and I’m going to bring, you know, peace to the Middle East, and perhaps another round of Abraham Accords that realigns the region—that is all motivated in part—part of it’s probably motivated by his desire to get a Nobel Peace Prize. (Laughs.) But part of it is all strategically—

KARL: He’s been nominated. (Laughs.)

FLOURNOY: Strategically I think those around him, it’s very much motivated by freeing up senior leader bandwidth, resources, assets, to actually execute more of a pivot than we have been able—you know, than he was able to do in his first term.

I actually think the last four years, you know, although the military is still stretched, from a building, investing in relationships and thickening alliances and deepening cooperation and broadening cooperation, there’s been a lot of success in the Indo-Pacific. Whether it’s AUKUS, or the Quad, or bilateral issues with Japan, and Korea, Australia, and others. So I think, you know, it’s not going to show up in tier one, because I don’t think anybody thinks China is going to invade or blockade Taiwan tomorrow, or even this year. But I think it is the underlying sort of strategic problem that is motivating efforts to try to resolve—or, adding to the motivation of efforts to solve some of the other problems that have bogged us down.

KARL: Meghan.

O’SULLIVAN: So I agree with both what Michèle and Steve said about this. I would just add that the primary vector of competition with China right now is actually on the technology side, which doesn’t show up in a report about potential conflict. So while there’s still a high level of anxiety about Taiwan and South China Seas, I would say the real anxiety about U.S.-China right now, and the real focal point—I mean, not to the exclusion of those other two contingencies—is the technological race. And we saw just this week, the Biden administration on Monday announced a very sweeping new set of, you know, executive orders and a new framework for the diffusion of AI, which really is quite an ambitious vision of how to affect the diffusion of American-generated chips and AI around the world.

And this is done in the context of the belief that AI is moving very quickly, that frontier models are getting closer and closer to AGI, and that having an advantage and being the first ones to actually reach AGI is going to be a big national security advantage. And, therefore, the U.S. needs to continue and double down on its strategy of trying to keep those kinds of chips away from China. So I would say that that’s where so much of the U.S. policy effort on China is going, is into the technology side. Of course, the more kind of traditional challenges notwithstanding, but that’s the piece that, I think, again, looking at conflicts and crises and contingencies won’t capture. But it is so much at the heart of the U.S.-China relationship right now.

STARES: Yeah, I would totally agree with Meghan. And, you know, people who look at this every year, they always sort of point to, well, there’s nothing here about, you know, technological shocks that create instability around the world. Nor are there, you know, the potential effect of natural disasters or, you know, long-term climate change, or economic shocks. You know, it’s really hard to capture that in this kind of survey instrument. But that’s not to say that we don’t think it’s important. Obviously, it is. (Laughs.) And, you know, if people have a good idea about how to capture these sort of underlying trends and potential sources of instability that are not around, you know, specific events, then we’re all ears to it. Because that’s something that every year we kind of—people say, well, why isn’t there more on climate change? Why isn’t there more on, you know, energy shortages? Things like this.

KARL: I mean, with the artificial intelligence, you have—you have two aspects. You have the race to—you know, who’s going to have the advantage, but you also have the dire predictions of what AGI could mean. I mean, was it Elon Musk who said it could mean the end of mankind? And he’s not actually alone in making that prediction. I mean—

O’SULLIVAN: Just to respond to Paul, I would say that it is a strength of the report to say this is what we do, and this is what we don’t do. And I think if you put some of these very serious transnational issues into the report, then the methodological advance, you know, benefits of it, being able to categorize and predict and all of that, kind of would fall away. Then it would just become a—you know, a top ten list of what you’re worried about. Which is valuable, but it would serve a different purpose. So I think it’s a little bit hard.

Things like technology and climate, all the things come into the report in a sense. We know climate is a threat multiplier. So in certain places, you could see a drought might exacerbate a situation. In the case of Syria, it led to big urbanization that created strife and is believed to have added to the conflict, you know, twelve years ago. So you could see that those factors come in and might, you know, manifest themselves in actual conflict. But it would be very hard to use the rigor of your methodology and apply it to every kind of potential instability in the world.

KARL: While we’re in Asia, can I just come to North Korea, since you were obviously a big part of Trump’s initiative to have his summits with Kim Jong-un. Do you think—so this report takes—North Korea goes from tier one to tier two. And the reason why it’s dropped, not—the impact is still high. Obviously, if there’s a conflict with North Korea it’s going to be very high. But the likelihood is low. Do you agree with that? Would you have answered it that way?

BIEGUN: You know, one of the—one of the things that’s in the nature of the North Koreans is not to be ignored. And it won’t be on the basis of being downgraded in the Preventative Conflicts Report. (Laughter.) But it will be in terms of its—I think it’s self-evident that North Korea is not on the incoming president’s agenda in the same place it was in 2017. It’s just by every measure. The president has appointed bespoke envoys for the Middle East, for the war in Ukraine. He’s even appointed an envoy for the United Kingdom, for goodness sake, but not for North Korea. Now, Ambassador Richard Grenell has this in his catch-all basket of issues.

KARL: Right, he’s the envoy for everything, right?

BIEGUN: For special missions, or something along those lines. So it’s not complete. But the president isn’t reaching out the same way. I think it’s likely he will at some point. But the North Koreans do not like to be ignored. And so at some point they will impose themselves on the agenda, is my expectation.

KARL: Are you surprised that Trump’s completely stopped talking about that? I mean, after all the talk of love letters—

BIEGUN: Well, he hasn’t completely stopped talking about it.

KARL: Well—

BIEGUN: He’s referenced it—

KARL: Well, he’ll talk about his success in the past, but it’s not something he’s talking about—yeah.

BIEGUN: Yeah, both before and after the election he referenced it. And the North Koreans listen to every word we say. So whether it was as warm or as inviting an approach as he might have done in the past, the North Koreans are heard it loud and clear. And right now they’re sitting in Pyongyang overthinking, predictably, how to play this out, that the president will do something, and then they’ll do this, and this, then this, this, and this. And that’s kind of—that’s how they plan these things out, except it all falls apart on the step one, and then you’re nowhere with the North Koreans. They’re thinking about it. I can assure you that. I hear that. I hear that. I was just—I’m just back from China. Heard that from North Korea experts in China. I hear from the Europeans, who actually do have regular contact with North Korean embassy people. They’re thinking—the North Koreans are thinking about this.

KARL: And acting out means, like, what? Another nuclear test, or?

BIEGUN: You know, we’re all getting a little bit used to their ballistic missile tests.

KARL: Yes.

BIEGUN: You know, as dangerous as they are, and they’re all in violation of unanimous United Nations Security Council resolutions as well, they’ve become mundane. The nuclear weapons test is obviously the dramatic step that’s available to them. That actually probably invites more pressure on them than they want, because China will not tolerate another North Korean nuclear weapons test. The Russians are in a very different place now.

And, by the way, I don’t think the Russians have particularly endeared themselves to the Chinese on this because, as you may know, Foreign Minister Lavrov just in the past couple of weeks has made it clear that in Russia’s point of view the issue of North Korea possessing nuclear weapons is settled business. It’s off the table. It’s not an issue for Russia anymore. This is one of the seeds of division between China and Russia.

KARL: Well, one thing that’s not on here is war with Denmark. (Laughter.)

STARES: We laugh, but we shouldn’t be laughing.

KARL: Well, I mean—I mean part of—I mean, again, the report, the survey, is post-election. And the approach of the United States is going to affect each and every one of these conflicts in some way. I am struck—and I just interviewed the incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz—there is actually—and I’d like to hear from all of you on this—there is perhaps a surprising level of consistency on a number of the key conflicts. There’s obviously a lot of very, very heated rhetoric. What does—I mean whoever wants to take this—what do you—what’s your assessment? I mean, talking to Mike Waltz, he doesn’t sound that much different than Jake Sullivan on a lot of these issues. And he talks about how they’ve been—

FLOURNOY: Oh, you mean across administrations, yeah.

KARL: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

FLOURNOY: Well, I think—I think that may be true in some cases, like the desire to get a ceasefire and hostage exchange in the Middle East, or to, you know, re-get the Abraham Accords back on track, or even to, you know, end the fighting in Ukraine. But when you peel that back a few layers, you may get to very different positions. We haven’t talked much about Russia-Ukraine.

KARL: Yeah, let’s go there, yeah.

FLOURNOY: And I do think the president-elect has that high on his list as a negotiation effort. I think he—you know, he’s—part of his transition team has gone out to Ukraine, to Poland, to the region to talk to people and assess, you know, where’s the Venn diagram between, you know, what Russia would accept and what Ukraine would accept, what the Europeans would accept, and so forth. So they’re trying to pursue that. I mean, I think the real question there is, you know, personally—(laughs)—I don’t see a huge Venn diagram right now in terms of what—you know, what Putin would accept and the Ukrainians would accept.

But I do think everybody wants to see some end to this war. And given that neither side can win on the battlefield, then a negotiated settlement is ultimately going to have to happen. The question is the terms. And also, the question is, you know, how united will the United—the transatlantic community remain in supporting Ukraine? Will the Trump administration be willing to accept terms that some of our European allies, you know, will not, or Ukraine will not? I think the key thing is how this comes out, you know, there’s going to have to be compromise, but if Putin experiences this as a win this will just be, you know, the first of a series. I mean, you will watch Moldova, will watch Georgia.

He will rebuild, reconstitute, reenergize. And then he will—if he’s rewarded for this aggression, there will be more of it in the future. And that’s a very different future for Europe than I think what we would all like to see. Some of the key things that would allow Ukraine to accept some at least de facto territorial concessions, even if they wouldn’t de jure recognize the territory being lost to Russia, things like some kind of very clear path to NATO membership, is exactly the kind of thing that is probably going to be unacceptable to Putin. That’s why he—you know, one of the motivations to launch the aggression the first place.

So I’m having trouble seeing a win that is—or a win-win sort of situation that doesn’t sell out the Ukrainians, especially if the administration tries to pursue an agreement very quickly. It’s going to take time for Putin to understand that he’s going to—you know, there are consequences for him not—if he doesn’t make compromises. And will the administration keep arming the Ukrainians? Will they keep—will they lift some of the restrictions on how American weapons are used? I mean, will they actually try to increase Ukrainian leverage so that the negotiations can be more successful? These are all big questions. But I think this is one of those items that’s going to be very high on the list early in the administration.

KARL: I mean, for all the—all that Biden did to put this at the top of the priority list, obviously a lot of frustration on the part of Ukraine to those limitations.

FLOURNOY: Yeah.

KARL: I mean, a lot of—I mean—and, I mean, what’s your sense? Is Trump going to force major concessions from Ukraine? Or is he going to take off some of those limitations as he tries to get a deal?

BIEGUN: So on this being the top policy—foreign policy issue on the president’s agenda, I completely agree with Michèle.

KARL: Yeah.

BIEGUN: I do think that’s the case. I think—and the president—this is the one consistent foreign policy issue the president has come back to during the entire campaign. It’s very important, I think, for the president. And the stakes are high because he recognizes that there are very few things that will reconcile the divisions within his constituency, but actually a good peace deal that is fair and just to Ukraine is something that can actually close that gap. But the president’s problem with negotiations isn’t going to be finding the terms. It’s that Putin doesn’t want negotiations. Putin wants Ukraine. And so—but herein lies some risk for Vladimir Putin. If he diddles Donald Trump, or if he rejects Donald Trump, President Trump’s initiatives, he runs the risk of overplaying his hand.

And I’ve said this many times, Jon, in the past months. That if Putin does that, and Trump internalizes that, President Trump will be more dangerous to Vladimir Putin and his regime than President Biden was on his best day. This will be—this will be—the president will pour a massive amount of military assistance into Ukraine. He said so. And it will help change the dynamic on the battlefield.

KARL: You agree with that, Meghan?

O’SULLIVAN: I agree. I’m going to take it in a slightly different direction. It’s hard to know exactly what Donald Trump will do in a particular contingency. But I think what’s true is that, as we sit here, it doesn’t look like Putin has an incentive to negotiate. However, if Putin were thinking strategically, he’s interested in Ukraine. But he’s also interested in remaking the European security architecture. This is what the war has been about for him. What is a big benefit to him is suddenly having a president in the White House who is not committed to the transatlantic relationship in the same way that President Biden has been committed, is not invested in the institutions at all in the same way, and in many cases has articulated Europe as being at least the main economic competitor to the United States.

So Putin might look at the situation and say: I actually can make more progress in dividing Europe by placating Trump somewhat on Ukraine, at least negotiating if not doing it in good faith and with an intent to have an agreement immediately. But the last thing I think that Putin would want would be to unify the Europeans and the Trump administration in a way that they’re no—you know, they’re not going to be unified on day one next week.

KARL: Paul.

STARES: So, you know, the conventional wisdom is that Putin, you know, has no interest in cutting an early deal on a ceasefire with Ukraine. And there’s logic to that. You know, the battlefield movement is in Russia’s favor at the moment. But two factors, I think, could be part of the calculus that would suggest that actually, no, he would sit down. One is the level of casualties that Russia is sustaining at the moment. People say, well, they don’t really care, but these are horrendous rates of death and wounded. You know, 1,200, 1,400—

KARL: I mean really unimaginable horror.

STARES: I mean, really extraordinary. And so you’ve got to wonder how long can that be sustained? Some people say, well, indefinitely. But there’s talk that at some point you would have to have a mobilization, which will not be popular.

KARL: Right now he’s mobilizing the North Koreans.

STARES: Right? (Laughter.) And so, you know, that’s one factor. I think the most important, though, is Russia’s macroeconomic outlook. You know, their economy, it’s been ramped up for wartime purposes, but it’s really feeling the squeeze in terms of inflation. The ruble has cratered. And he’s got to, you know, be hearing this from people around him. And I can’t believe that won’t be a factor in incentivizing him to maybe cut a deal in the short term. So I’m—you know, I think the basis of a deal is there, that Venn diagram is a very complex one but I think, you know, the triple overlap, or the quadruple overlap—that there is a basis of a deal to be had there.

KARL: Michèle, you said there wasn’t much in the Venn diagram. But what—I mean to try to—and we’re going to come to questions in just a moment. But where is the optimistic scenario on Russia-Ukraine?

FLOURNOY: The optimistic scenario is that—

KARL: Even if that’s a low likelihood, just help me—

FLOURNOY: Yeah, yeah, for all the reasons Paul is saying, and looking at President Trump as his counterpart in having other—a broader agenda with the Trump administration, that he would say, OK, you know, hasn’t gone the way I hoped. This is the best moment to negotiate on terms that might be favorable to me. I’m going to call anything I get a win. I’m going to reconstitute, live to fight another day. And, you know, that he’ll come to the table. I think, you know, on the Ukrainian side I really—I cannot see them allowing any—you know, not having all of their territory, which they won’t have, without—you know, unless they have some guarantee—some substantial set of security guarantees, that almost certainly includes a real path to NATO membership.

And that’s the one where I’m just not sure Putin can swallow it, unless, to Meghan’s point, you know, he tries to convince the Trump administration and others that this is an opportunity to rethink the whole Russia-NATO relationship, and the security architecture of Europe. But, again, you’re going to have a lot of skepticism on the European side, and on most, you know, U.S.-NATO support side, for what—you know, how credible would that be? How much in that interest, our interest, would that really be?

KARL: Yeah. Meghan.

O’SULLIVAN: Could I just say one clarification?

FLOURNOY: Yeah, please.

O’SULLIVAN: When I was saying for Putin this is about the European security order, I wasn’t saying he wanted to, you know, become—Russia become part of NATO or something. It was talking about dividing, dividing Europe, and basically neutralizing NATO, that type of thing. So, a negative vision on his part.

Another piece that I think makes the Venn diagram difficult is the presidency of Zelensky. And that Vladimir Putin does not want to negotiate with Zelensky. He wants a different leader in Ukraine, and one that he thinks is going to be, you know, amenable to whatever arrangement comes out. And I think that’s going to be a very big sticking point, for obvious reasons.

BIEGUN: Other than a measure of the exhaustion of each side in this fight, I don’t see much in this so-called Venn diagram. But I do think that the end of this conflict—any negotiation is going to turn on four issues, Jon. It’s going to turn on territory, it’s going to turn on accountability and international justice, it’s going to turn on economic reconstruction or reparations, and it’s going to turn on security. Two of those will be resolved on the battlefield. Territory is going to be a reflection of where the lines are drawn at the end of the fighting. It’ll be a de facto but not a de jure recognition of those as lines. And the force of history will then be set to work, like it did with a divided Germany which less than four decades after it joined NATO was unified under democratic government.

War crimes and international justice, accountability is unresolvable unless the Ukrainians somehow miraculously marched on Moscow. That’s not going to happen. So there’s going to be no justice in this. But there also the force of history may bear upon it, as the Russian people ultimately will be the ones—if anybody holds their government accountable for this, it is some future, more democratic, Russia. On reparations, that’s within our control. There’s $300 billion in frozen Russian assets. I think the Russians—you know, you talk about the Venn diagram. I think the Russians have already mentally written off that $300 billion. And so that’s at least there to support—

KARL: What does that mean? Where are those 300 billion (dollars)?

BIEGUN: Largely in Europe. And in largely in European funds. And it ultimately is a decision of the Europeans to release this, for reasons of both reliability of their financial institutions to hold financial assets for third parties as well as some kind of nagging concern that there will be a precedent here that allows reparations to be paid out of state assets, and reopen some rather ugly debates across not-so-recent European history between former belligerents. The last issue, though, and this is the one that the whole thing will turn on, is security. And there’s nothing in the Venn diagram between Ukraine and Russia—

KARL: I mean, there’s no path to NATO that Putin will ever, ever—

BIEGUN: And this is going to be the challenge for the president-elect. This is going to be a challenge for our partners, friends, and allies. Is there any method, any mode of security that we can deliver that will prevent Putin ultimately from what he aspires to, which is even if he reaches a ceasefire or some sort of pause in the fighting here ultimately still claiming control the entirety of Ukraine, whether it’s by putting his own chosen leader in place or destabilizing or corrupting the country to the point where it collapses? He has not changed his objective one bit since day one of this conflict.

KARL: I mean, one thing that will be interesting to—Trump, of course, has repeatedly said that there would—the war would end before January 20. So we can—

STARES: Unlikely.

KARL: See if that’s on the—OK. (Laughter.) All right, it’s time for questions. A reminder, this is on the record. And questions—we’ll start here in Washington.

Q: Thank you. I’m a member of the press. I’m from the Voice of America.

And my question to all of the panelists, about your thoughts. So the new Iranian President Pezeshikian is coming to Moscow, literally in two days. So what do you think about what is achievable in this situation for Putin and Pezeshikian? And also, so defeat in Syria, for Putin and for Iranian regime, means that probably relations will change. Is it possible that the coming U.S. administration will speak with Putin to ask him to lower his support for Iran in exchange to, you know, concessions on Ukraine, from the American side? So how Ukraine could play in U.S.-Iran relations and Russia-Iran relations. Thank you.

KARL: Who wants to take that?

BIEGUN: Well, I’ll start. To go on—to go beyond your question, it’s also, I think, understood that part of the purpose of the visit is to ink a security arrangement between the United—between Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran. You know, I lost count how many times Iranian presidents have gone to Moscow. So it’s not like it’s an extraordinary thing for the Iranian president to be going to Moscow. And quite honestly, it’s just as likely the Iranian president is going to take stock because his friend Bashir Assad fell about a month and a half ago, despite the purported support of the Russian Federation to keep his dictatorship in power. Iran is in a weakened state and this is an act, to some extent, of weakness for the Iranian president to go to Russia. But quite honestly, Russia is already overexposed in the world as well, as the collapse of Assad’s regime also demonstrated. And so for the Russians, any commitment they make to the security of Iran, in my view, is not going to be worth the paper it’s written on.

STARES: Just to follow—go ahead, Meghan.

O’SULLIVAN: Just to comment a little bit more broadly. I think one of the things that the new administration will face that’s different even, from when it was in office four years ago, is this closer relationship between Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Steve mentioned how there are fissures in that, and those are definitely being examined and looked for and thought about. But I think that dynamic was one that didn’t exist in anything but a more rhetorical sense a few years ago. Now we’re seeing that there’s some real validity to concerns around the extent to which these four countries—you know, with very different strengths and weaknesses, and, you know, at some levels different interests—how they are aiding one another, and perhaps in a way that requires the United States and its allies to think differently about what kind of contingencies it may need to face, and how many contingencies it may need to face at the same time.

You know, your question is interesting. It sounds a little farfetched right now, the idea that there’d be a negotiation with Putin—with Ukraine over—that involves Iran. I don’t actually—it’s hard for me to imagine that in the future. However, I would say I don’t completely discount the idea that the U.S. and Russia might still be aligned on a desire not to see Iran become a nuclear weapon state. And that was an important piece of the 2015 negotiation. Obviously, the landscape has changed dramatically. At the time I don’t see a lot of cooperation there, but I would not rule it out entirely that there could be still a common interest on that front, if Iran does decide its weakened state, that we’ve referred to, leads it to a position where it really wants to become a realized nuclear weapon state.

KARL: The U.S., Russia, and China, right? I mean—

O’SULLIVAN: China? But, yeah.

FLOURNOY: Can I just comment on that scenario? If, you know, a weakened Iran decides that it’s finally going to dash towards a nuclear weapon, I think that could put onto the agenda a very—you know, a big crisis early in the administration. You hear talk when you—you know, when you’re—when you go to Israel. And there is an active debate inside Israel whether is now the time to do something about—to take action against the Iranian nuclear weapons program, because they perceive Iran as on its heels? I think that it will be a discussion that they bring to the Trump administration early on. And I think that is—you know, that’s a whole other scenario that has, you know, lots of nuances and risks to think through.

KARL: How do you think Trump would take—would take that? I mean, are there a conflict—if you look back at the first administration, first Trump administration, I could see you had the Soleimani assassination, but he also, you know, pulled back the idea of taking out that Iranian drone. I mean, what—he’s not an—in the first administration, he was not a military interventionist.

BIEGUN: Yeah, I think there’s going to be—it’s going to be a struggle to reconcile the policy on this, for sure. Because the president doesn’t—you know, he takes pride in the fact—you know, it’s a talking point for his campaign.

KARL: No new wars.

BIEGUN: No wars started under his tenure. And one can imagine that this would be a pretty big war. And it’s not—it’s not inconceivable that it could also draw in proxies in support of Iran. So notwithstanding the fact that I think Russia’s overextended, you know, there’s still probably some residual ability to provide assistance. And, you know, Russia is—you know, we shouldn’t exaggerate this. Russia has been providing arms to Iran for a very long time—sophisticated arms at that. So it’s not—it’s not like that’s going to be triggered by such a conflict. But such a conflict, you know, once you start it, you got to finish it. But I do agree with Michèle. I think this debate is very much happening, certainly in Jerusalem if not in Washington yet.

KARL: How do you assess the likelihood of Iran making the dash towards a—to a nuclear weapon?

STARES: I obviously don’t have any intimate insight into this. You know, I can see some will say, look, you know, the ultimate defense and deterrent for us is to have that weapon. You know, history shows that very few, if any, nuclear weapon states have been attacked when they have—in possession of a nuclear weapon. The only one I can think of is India by Pakistan. But, you know, the general rule is that is seen as, you know, the ultimate source of security. So I can see some voices saying, you know, we got to do it. But I can see others, the more moderate ones, saying, this will—this will be disastrous for us. You know, the level of further economic sanctions on an already weak Iranian economy would just—

KARL: Or inviting an attack. I mean, what happens in the world the day after the Iranians test a nuclear weapon?

STARES: Yeah, that’s true too. That’s true too. So I—you know, I can see voices in both directions.

KARL: There are questions here. Yes.

Q: Thanks. Jeff Pryce, SAIS.

And I know this wasn’t in the methodology of the report—which is, by the way, very, very helpful, very useful. But thinking about these crises, the knock-on effects, the ripple effects, the networked effects of one crisis on the other keeps coming to my mind. Syria happened in part because of what happened between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel and Iran, and Russia and Ukraine. And we’re seeing a lot of knock-on effects. This is what I’m particularly interested in, but other examples might be interesting too, of the Russia-Ukraine war weakening Russia, and then having ripple effects in other crises. And I wonder if the panel has thoughts on sort of the broader knock-on effects of some crises, maybe ones that we’re looking to see in the coming year.

KARL: Paul.

STARES: Well, you know, I mentioned at the beginning that one source of concern is the erosion of what I call the checks on vertical escalation. And I think a similar trend has happened on the lateral horizontal escalation. And we’re seeing that conflicts that we used to treat as relatively self-contained no longer self-contained. You know, you we’ve got North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine for god’s sake. And you know, who would have imagined that? There’s presumably some quid pro quo there, which means that Russia will be probably providing North Korea with, you know, technical advice and potentially military support if there’s a contingency on the on the peninsula.

But we’ve seen this and other cases, where, you know, you literally cannot kind of draw a bright, you know, line around conflicts, and think that they’re not going to spill over, or have spill in. You know, and we can point to numerous cases. And so, you know, while each of these, you know, contingencies in here are treated as if they’re self-contained, they’re not. They really do have these sort of spill in and spill over implications to them. And, you know, I could pick any one here and show how that could escalate in ways completely unforeseen. And, you know, probably the biggest challenge of any sort of policymaker is trying to anticipate the second, third, fourth-order effects.

You know, I remember doing—sorry, I don’t mean to go on—I remember, you know, we were tasked to think through, you know, what would be the implications of Russian aggression in Ukraine. And we’ve talked—we talked about oil markets, we talked about, you know, impact on security guarantees. No one considered the impact of the disruption of Ukrainian grain markets on grain supplies in in the Global South. Wasn’t connected. And another—just another case. Anyway, sorry.

KARL: Michèle.

FLOURNOY: No, I was going to say, another example of knock-on is, you know, I think other parties take the measure—a measure of how they see a country’s resolve and its capabilities. So, for example, you know, we know that Xi Jinping has been watching the Russia-Ukraine war fairly closely. At a very tactical level, things like going back, you know, to the PLA and saying, you know, look what—the Ukrainians resisted, even though they’re much smaller and weaker relative to Russia. What if we had a resistance in Taiwan? Never had—I don’t think they’d ever thought about that in their planning. Very tactical, again.

You know, the weakness in the Russian—one weakness in the Russian military approach was the lack of logistic resilience. And even though it was a fairly short, you know, overland sort of supply chain, if you will. Logistics is a lot harder across 200, you know, nautical mile strait of water. And so for the first time last summer we saw the Chinese starting to exercise logistics support for a Taiwan scenario. But then at the higher level, there is the measure of resolve. So, you know, the U.S. and NATO came together, extraordinary cohesion, new—you know, enlarged the alliance, have stuck it out together.

But if this ultimately falls apart, that’s a lesson, you know. Again, China may conclude, well, you know, yeah, they may come on strong initially, but if you just make it last long enough and it’s painful enough, they’ll fall apart and withdraw, you know, or give up at the end. So I think there’s also the sort of demonstration effect, or the lessons that others take from watching behaviors in these particular conflicts. And then it influences their calculus with regard to quite—you know, how to approach their objectives in their own region.

KARL: Did the Russians and the Chinese also take lessons from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan?

FLOURNOY: Yeah, no, I think it’s—so the narrative—it’s—yes, it played into the narrative of the U.S. does not have staying power, et cetera. Yeah.

KARL: U.S. resolve is not what it was anymore. Yeah, yeah.

Another question.

Q: Hans Nichols with Axios. Thank you all very much for doing this.

This is going to be more of a housekeeping question. What numbers should we be using for casualties and dead in Ukraine, because you see three different estimates? And does it matter? Thank you.

STARES: Well, the—you know, there is a U.S. figure, there’s a British figure. The Ukrainians obviously aren’t saying much about their casualties above, you know, a certain level. Same with the Russians. I think when you combine the British and the U.S. one, it’s probably pretty good, pretty close to what is actually happening.

KARL: And that number is, roughly?

STARES: In terms of Russian casualties, I think they’re up to something like 700,000—600(,000)-700(,000) killed and wounded. I think the Ukrainian figure is around 400(,000)-380,000. Of course, there’s all the people displaced, and civilians killed too. But this is horrendous. And, you know, again, unimaginable a few years ago that this kind of war would be playing out in Europe. Just extraordinary. Now, you know, there are also horrendous casualties going on as we speak in Sudan, which don’t get the attention it deserves, and other places too. But that—I would say that’s the broad parameters in Ukraine.

KARL: Let me ask you. Haiti appearing on this list, as it does, moving up. Do you have a sense, Paul, why? I mean, what in terms of—because, also, I mean, Haiti’s a disaster. Has been a disaster for a long time. Why is it elevated on this list?

STARES: It’s a great question, Jonathan. You know, obviously, as I think, you know, someone said that survey is always just a snapshot of opinion in those two weeks in November. And people are influenced by what’s in the headlines and so on. And I think Haiti was in the headlines then, and the situation has been pretty dire. I think, if I were to guess, it’s probably the sense that there would be spillover effects in terms of unregulated migration into the U.S. from Haiti, and that probably would be driving it. But it was a surprise, nonetheless. (Laughs.)

KARL: We talked about—and I meant my crack about Denmark, but you said we have to take this seriously. What is—what is the sense when Trump comes in not ruling out military action against Panama, against Denmark, talk of making Canada the fifty-first state. What is the impact of that rhetoric on these other conflicts? I mean, Steve, you’ve worked for him before.

BIEGUN: Yeah, well, whatever the purpose of the rhetoric, which is not rhetoric that I would certainly embrace or recommend, it is a reflection of—it’s an interesting reflection of pursuit of interest well beyond the United States that is—does, at some level, challenge, some of the central foreign policy tenets that the president has been representative of. That, you know, we’re talking—you know, in the abstract, we’re talking about enhancing United States security commitments to European territory here, which is somewhat antithetical to so much of the rhetoric that we heard during the campaign and in the first term of the president.

And in the case of the Panama Canal, it seems to me as much just a throwback issue from a different era, but also exacerbated by the growing global competition with China, because China is at the core that. You know, it’s interesting because I’ve been around Republican politics long enough to remember it was an article of faith to oppose the handover of the Panama Canal. And if you traced it all the way back to Seward’s tenure as secretary of state, as we all now know, President Trump is the fourth United States president who’s sought to acquire Greenland for the United States of America. So when I say throwback, I mean in some cases way back. (Laughter.) Although those efforts were renewed in—around World War I and around World War II as well. Greenland—you know, the one constant here is Greenland is an incredibly important piece of geography. And our awareness—

KARL: And more important now, perhaps, than ever.

BIEGUN: And our awareness of the—of the geological content of Greenland have made that geography even more important. But I actually think there’s—I think there is a deal to be had here. I do think the Danes—my sense is the Danes would be interested in enhancing the security of Greenland. And the people of Greenland, the indigenous people of Greenland, would be equally interested in developing the economic resources that that lie underneath our feet. And so there is a winning formula here. I just—you know, like so many others, I balk at the even—whether it’s in gesture as an opening bid in a negotiation, to leave hanging out there, you know—

KARL: That we might invade.

BIEGUN: That we might invade is—it just doesn’t seem to be productive to get at that goal.

STARES: Someone made the crack to me, is why is Trump pushing NATO to raise its defense expenditure, when he only wants to invade one of the countries?

KARL: (Laughs.) Right. And how does Article 5 work, if it’s—(laughter)—anyway, sorry.

FLOURNOY: Yeah, exactly.

O’SULLIVAN: As someone who went on vacation to Greenland last year—

KARL: Wow.

O’SULLIVAN: I can say that there is not the infrastructure existing to develop and exploit all these resources, which is not to say it couldn’t be built. But this is a long-term endeavor. And it’s one that the people of Greenland have been lukewarm about, whether or not they want that kind of investment. They’ve ruled out offshore drilling and those types of things. So it’s a very complex question.

I want to respond to your question more directly about what should others think about this? I think at a meta level it raises the question of is Trump talking about an American sphere of influence? Is he going back to a time where the U.S. would have a more continental approach.

KARL: A little Monroe Doctrine.

O’SULLIVAN: Monroe Doctrine type thing. And if so, what does that mean for an American tolerance of a Russian sphere of influence or a Chinese sphere of influence? And so that, I think, becomes an interesting set of questions, which none of us are in a position to answer right now.

KARL: Because he did talk about withdrawing troops from South Korea. He did talk about withdrawing troops from Germany last time around.

O’SULLIVAN: And the commitment to Taiwan has come up again and again. So it’s just a question that I would have in my mind if I were looking at this from afar.

Can I raise one? I don’t know how long you’re going, so I—

KARL: Yeah. No, no, we have another five—we have six minutes. So go ahead.

O’SULLIVAN: OK, good. I did want to come back to come back to this question about Russian casualties. And to—you know, apart from just the magnitude of them and the atrocity of it all, I think it does raise questions about the long-term future of Russia. You asked, does it matter? I don’t know what the breakdown is between deaths and casualties in that number of 7(00,000) or 800,000. And maybe someone knows. But, I mean, what this means is a Russia with hundreds of thousands of young men who may need long term care by a state that has no capacity to do this, and in regions of Russia that may not be very well connected.

So I think the seeds of a longer term problem may be being sowed right there. And going back to your question about the second order effects, I think it’s a great one. And the Syria case is a great example of how shortsighted many of us experts can be about—you know, it should have been on people’s radars, with all the dynamics happening. I would look at Africa and I’d look at Central Asia as places where Russia has been involved and probably is no longer in any position to hold its interests in the same way as it has in the past, and maybe even the Caucasus.

KARL: How does the level of casualties compare to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?

O’SULLIVAN: I think It’s much, much, much greater.

KARL: Which, of course, had a big impact on the ultimate breakup of the Soviet Union.

O’SULLIVAN: Yeah.

KARL: Question here.

Q: Thank you. Guillermo Christensen, partner at K&L Gates. Lead our national security practice, and was one of the early participants in CPA when it first started back in 2001.

First, I noticed we don’t have Greenland on the map up there. (Laughter.) So I don’t know what happened. You know, this is—this is a serious oversight.

KARL: It’s literally not there.

Q: It’s literally not there. So I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe it’s—I don’t know, it’s already under escrow, for purchase. (Laughter.)

But two suggestions for next year’s report. One is, did you put some of these questions through a generative AI tool? And the reason I ask is I just did an interesting survey of black swan type events, comparing experts to one of the reasoning ChatGPTs, the o1, which really thinks through, and you can see it. And it came up with some interesting examples that I think were very plausible, perhaps more so than the experts. And many of the examples—to Meghan’s point about background type of events, you know, climate, et cetera—many of them were enhanced by the brittleness of that conflict susceptible to something external. For example, an Asia-Pacific conflict, if we had a solar storm that wiped out GPS capability, interesting problem. So would be interesting to run some of this and maybe have a column at the end, what does AI tell us about these things and how does it compare to the experts?

On the cyber contingency, I would encourage you to split that up into a couple of different types. There’s obviously cyber war, but there’s also the brittleness of the international technology system, our digital economy. We just saw this year, you know, most of the Windows computers around the world went down because of a small update. I think I would include that in there because, again, it can have massive effects, especially if you’re talking about critical infrastructure, industrial control systems, and things like that. Imagine California having a simultaneous problem with water from that kind of an attack while we see what’s happening now. So two suggestions there. Thank you.

STARES: Just quickly. I know we don’t have much time. I very much appreciate that. And I think it’s a great suggestion. Where I thought you were going was in the realm of asking ChatGPT, solve the Ukraine problem, find the Venn diagram. (Laughter.) And I threw that out at another meeting, and they said, yes, we actually asked ChatGPT to come up with the perfect armistice agreement that would actually try to satisfy everybody’s equities on it. And sure enough, it spat it out. And it’s an interesting exercise.

KARL: Did it look particularly plausible?

STARES: It’s not far off. You know, you have to suspend disbelief about some things. But yeah.

KARL: All right, I think we had one more question over here. Am I right? Yes. This will be—you’ll be our final question.

Q: Well, mine’s more just following along the lines of just a question more about the report, or maybe in a future year. Did you or have you thought about doing this yearly report card, assuming there’s no—of how the predictions were for the last year, assuming there is no influence on that report, as we kind of joked about with North Korea that way? Of saying, like, here’s how the experts predicted, and here’s what happened this way?

KARL: This ought to be an interesting one.

STARES: Yeah, we do periodically look back. And our batting average has been, I say, pretty respectable. You know, last year’s we—I think seven out of the nine all, more or less came to—I don’t like to say the word “fruition”—(laughter)—they manifested itself in ways not dissimilar from it. But, you know, as others have pointed out, we’ve missed ones. But so has the intelligence community. But we’ve seen—you know, we have taken a look and looked at broad trends. And you could draw some interesting conclusions from that.

KARL: All right. I think that we are out of time. I just want to thank Steve, Michèle, Meghan Paul. Thank you for being here. Thank you to the Council on Foreign Relations. And to all of you, great discussion. Thank you. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.