No.
01
Probability
80%
Industrial Power Confirming Active
80% chance that the U.S. applied tariff on Chinese-origin goods remains above 30% for ≥12 consecutive months between Jan 1, 2026, and Dec 31, 2028
Resolves
2028-12-31
VOL · 01 — FORECAST SCOREBOARD
This scoreboard operationalizes the Latent Mobilization thesis as 52 dated, probability-weighted forecasts — 45 thesis-confirming and 7 thesis-disconfirming. Each forecast is public, dated at the time of publication, and resolved against the stated evidence threshold on or after its resolution date. Disconfirming forecasts are included by design: a thesis that cannot be falsified is not a thesis.
80% chance that the U.S. applied tariff on Chinese-origin goods remains above 30% for ≥12 consecutive months between Jan 1, 2026, and Dec 31, 2028
65% chance that China will add 40 or more foreign firms to the Unreliable Entity List by December 31, 2028
70% chance that the IMF's National Industrial Policy Observatory will record 3,000 or more new industrial policy measures in a single year between 2025 and 2027
30% chance that the average global tariff rate weighted by trade volume will exceed 15% by 2030, compared to 6.3% in 2020
80% chance that the EU will make the Russian gas ban a permanent law by the end of 2027
90% chance every H100 family member and every first-generation successor GPU will require a BIS license for export to China by December 31, 2026
60% chance that China's domestic semiconductor production will achieve 20nm process capability at scale (>100,000 wafers/month) by December 2027
65% chance that by 2028, an open-source AI model will achieve ≥95% of the best proprietary model performance on the MMLU benchmark
55% chance that ≥3 EU or Five-Eyes nations mandate complete removal of Huawei/ZTE 5G equipment from public networks by December 31, 2028
55% chance China demonstrates a quantum computer achieving quantum advantage on a commercially relevant problem before the US by 2030
60% chance that at least five nations will restrict exports of CRISPR technology or synthetic biology equipment to rival blocs by 2027
70% chance the dollar's share of global foreign exchange reserves will fall below 50% by December 2030 (from 59% in 2024)
65% chance that at least 10 countries will conduct over 20% of their bilateral trade through multilateral CBDC by 2027
55% chance that the BIS mBridge project clears ≥$50 billion cumulative transactions by December 31, 2028
65% chance that at least one nation will conduct commercial seabed mining, extracting >1,000 tons of polymetallic nodules by 2028
60% chance that Indonesia will impose an export ban on the raw ore of at least one additional critical mineral beyond nickel by the end of 2027
70% chance that China will impose export controls on at least five additional critical minerals beyond current restrictions (germanium, gallium, antimony) by December 2026
65% chance that at least 10 developing nations have Chinese-operated ports or critical infrastructure under 50+ year leases by 2028
95% chance that, by December 31, 2028, at least three additional nations beyond the United States and China will have implemented new export controls on solar panel components, EV battery materials, or wind turbine inputs (raised to 95% in 2026 and tightened to "additional ... beyond the U.S. and China" because as of the date of this paper, China's existing controls on graphite, antimony, gallium, and germanium and U.S. controls on certain solar wafers/cells already plausibly satisfy a less-tightly-worded version of this forecast)
65% chance the U.S. Space Development Agency completes deployment of ≥120 Tracking-Layer satellites in its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture by the end of 2029
70% chance that China or Russia will establish a permanent, year-round Arctic research facility hosting ≥150 personnel by December 31, 2029
65% chance China will deploy a permanent crewed lunar base before the US by December 2036
90% chance that the WTO Appellate Body remains non-functional (zero judges or insufficient judges to seat a 3-member appellate panel under WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding Article 17) through December 31, 2027 (raised to 90% in 2026; the AB has been non-functional since December 2019 and restoration requires U.S. consent which is structurally unavailable as of the date of this paper)
60% chance that at least 3 NATO members will publicly refuse to join a US-led initiative to impose comprehensive export controls on a critical technology sector to China by 2028
70% chance ASEAN formally adopts a neutrality doctrine preventing exclusive military exercises with either the US or China by 2029
65% chance that annual global economic losses from climate disasters exceed $500 billion in each of at least 3 years between 2025-2030
70% chance that at least five nations will implement export bans on food staples due to climate-induced shortages by 2032
40% chance that there will be >= 70 million climate migrants by 2030
95% chance China's working-age population (15-64) will decline by over 50 million between 2025 and 2030 (raised to 95% in 2026; the UN World Population Prospects medium-fertility scenario already projects a decline materially exceeding 50 million over the window)
75% chance that by 2028, at least 10 developed nations will spend over 15% of their GDP on age-related social welfare
60% chance China's social security/healthcare spending growth exceeds science/technology spending growth by ≥1.5x in at least one year, 2026-2030
80% chance that by December 2027, at least 3 OECD countries will implement UBI pilots covering >100,000 citizens due to AI displacement
70% chance that US-China scientific co-publications will fall below 10,000 annually by 2027 (from >50,000 in 2020)
75% chance that global industrial-robot density in manufacturing will reach 200 robots per 10,000 employees by 2030
60% chance that the cumulative share of the OECD workforce changing 2-digit occupation groups is ≥15% from 2025 to 2030
80% chance that by 2028, at least five nations will require domestic versions of social media platforms with more than 10 million users
75% chance that China's global share of AI research citations will exceed 30% by 2028
75% chance that by 2028, a state-level or major sectarian conflict will occur where AI-generated deepfakes and disinformation are cited as a primary contributing factor to the outbreak of violence
70% chance that global ransomware payments and recovery costs will exceed US$40 billion in calendar-year 2027
65% chance that ≥1 cloud-service provider outage caused by a malicious cyber-attack will disrupt operations for ≥500,000 client organisations for 24 hours or longer before 31 Dec 2028
70% chance that at least 10 emerging-market sovereigns will record interest-to-revenue ratios above 25% for two consecutive years between 2026 and 2029
65% chance that global public-sector net interest outlays will exceed 3.5% of world GDP in at least one year between 2027 and 2030
60% chance that three or more G-20 members will suffer a sovereign-credit-rating downgrade to sub-investment-grade by a major rating agency before 31 Dec 2030
70% chance that >=30 countries will have procured AI-enabled loitering munitions or swarm-capable drones from private vendors by 2028 (tightened in 2026 from the prior >=15-country threshold, which had already plausibly been satisfied as of the date of this paper given documented procurement by Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Turkey, the U.S., the U.K., Australia, France, Germany, Poland, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others; the higher 30-country threshold preserves a meaningful predictive bar)
65% chance that the global deployed headcount of private military-security contractors operating outside their home countries will exceed 50,000 personnel in any given month before the end of 2027
15% chance that the U.S. dollar's share of allocated global foreign exchange reserves rises above 60% in any quarterly IMF COFER release between Q1 2026 and Q4 2030 (from 59% in 2024). A YES resolution falsifies the multipolar-finance thesis component of the Bloc Fragmentation flywheel.
20% chance that global goods trade as a share of world GDP returns to or above its 2008 peak (~25%) in any single year between 2026 and 2030. A YES resolution falsifies the deglobalization thesis component of the Bloc Fragmentation flywheel.
20% chance that the U.S. and China announce and implement a comprehensive trade agreement that removes >=50% of the existing tariff overlay (measured by trade-volume-weighted average bilateral tariff rate) on or before December 31, 2028. A YES resolution materially falsifies the Industrial Power flywheel and represents the rapprochement scenario stress-tested in DDQ section 5.3.
15% chance that a composite index of critical-minerals prices (lithium, cobalt, copper, rare-earth basket; equal-weighted USD-denominated) declines by >=30% from its end-2024 level in any rolling 12-month period between 2026 and 2030. A YES resolution falsifies the scarcity premium that the Biosphere Scarcity flywheel depends on.
20% chance that gold (LBMA PM fix in USD) declines by >=25% from its end-2025 closing level in any 6-month rolling window between 2026 and December 31, 2028. A YES resolution falsifies the only flywheel currently earning a standalone risk premium in the Investment Manager's empirical attribution (Sovereign Debasement; gold-vs-sovereign alpha = +13.75%/yr per DDQ section 2.2).
15% chance that an open-source non-proprietary AI model achieves >=98% of the best closed-frontier model's score on both MMLU-Pro and SWE-Bench-Verified by December 31, 2027. A YES resolution falsifies the compute-supremacy thesis: if frontier capability is replicable in open weights, the chip-control flywheel's investment thesis (long the proprietary stack) is undermined.
10% chance that the WTO Appellate Body is restored to a functional >=3-judge quorum at any time between 2026 and 2030. A YES resolution falsifies the institutional-decay sub-thesis of the Bloc Fragmentation flywheel and would specifically reverse forecast #23.