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In what’s becoming an annual ritual, I’m putting together a list of predictions for the year to come to share with some like-minded friends, mostly for fun and discussion. They’re still a work-in-progress, mostly cobbled together yesterday on the toilet, so I’m keen to tweak them. Format is straightforward.
<5% chances
Four things that you are extremely confident will not happen, the less obvious the better (no points for “the sun goes supernova”). To get top score, none of these should happen.
(1) Chinese invasion or full-scale blockade of Taiwan.
(2) Domestic terror attack in Western country killing >500 people
(3) Major housing price collapse (>25% YOY fall) in any G7 economy
(4) Nuclear weapons used outside Ukraine
~25% chances
Four things that you think are fairly unlikely to happen in 2023. For perfect calibration, exactly one of these should happen.
(5) At least one nuclear weapon used in Ukraine.
(6) Trump declares he will not/cannot run in the 2024 election.
(7) New serious COVID variant triggers new serious round of pandemic (more than 30 days of national lockdowns in UK)
(8) Average OPEC oil price for 2023 >$110
50% chances
Here I’m shooting for 2/4 to come true.
(9) BTC price recovers to at least $25k within first six months of 2023.
(10) Twitter announces bankruptcy.
(11) Western-made jets supplied to Ukraine
(12) Erdogan to win June 2023 Turkish national elections
75% chances
Shooting for 3/4.
(13) No new UK General Election.
(14) Vladimir Putin still President of Russia.
(15) A free Open Source LLM available by December 2023 with equivalent functionality to ChatGPT and no hard content restrictions.
(16) UK economy experiences net negative growth in 2023
>95% chances
Shooting for 4/4 here, but again, less credit for extremely obvious stuff.
(17) Joe Biden still President of USA at end of 2023
(18) SCOTUS overturns Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
(19) Xi Jinping remains Chairman of Communist Party
(20) SpaceX has first successful orbital flight of Starship.
Would love to hear your thoughts!
Why only 50% for Erdogan winning? I don't really keep up with Turkish politics, but it seems to me that his grip on power is as strong as ever. Has anything changed in the past couple of years?
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I think this is higher than 5%. Maybe 25%
Meanwhile, I would put nuclear weapons use at < 5%
Unless he dies for some reason, would put at 95%.
You may as well go by actuarial tables here.
It'd put that at <5%. More likely falls to 10k . Chart, price action very weak, too many scams.
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50% chance of bankruptcy for Twitter seems quite high, but maybe you know something I don’t. (I haven’t been following Twitter’s post-Musk finances very closely.)
it would be a strategic bankruptcy, not because twitter is in dire risk of running out of money. Because twitter is no longer public, worrying about shareholders is not as much of a concern. this is common with private equity: the company is taken bankrupt and costs are cut. it then emerges from bankruptcy more valuable than before.
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Nukes seem overrated even in Ukraine. I’d still put used in Ukraine at the under 5% bucket.
Housing price collapse >25% in real terms seems guaranteed. But my guess is it happens over 5 years. So 25% for one year seems close.
Ukraine is expected to get F-16 by the experts. Alperovitch expects Ukraine to get full Nato weapons in time. Maybe not 2023 but there coming when the west has a game plan for post war and are ready to speed up victory.
Joe Biden president at end of 2023 is close to right. I’d go lower. Biggest risks imo is health. He’s old enough that 5% chance of a health issue seems plausible. Plus any risks something gets pinned on him with Hunter.
I’d have to do more analysis but 75% seems high for UK negative growth.
Twitter bankruptcy seems high for next year. Musks can bail them out. And I think they have some cash on balance sheet to get thru the year. Without Musks having cash it might be 50%. Musks might even just buy out the debt at a discount personally. If Twitter was pe owned etc then the finances might be closer to 50-50. But for reputatational risks he’s got enough money to fix them.
UK house prices need a ~50% collapse to get to reasonable values, even comparing to other advanced economies. We basically have a housing cartel where government regulations strictly limit builds and cause untold amounts of misery to the young and the high earners/low wealth people.
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It would be a tactical bankruptcy. Twitter already survived a decade and the stock price was at $45 despite losing money, so imminent bankruptcy seems very unlikely, especially with Musk's cost cutting. Musk would not buy a company for $43 billion at risk of imminent bankruptcy. He would wait for the stock to crash and then buy it.
No clue if you understand bankruptcy. You cant just go bankrupt. Need to wipe out your equity which wouldn’t exists now. You can’t change the balance sheet without completely wiping out the current equity.
Musks loses control of twitter if he declares bankruptcy. The debt currently owned by banks becomes equity and they can sell the debt out to the highest bidder as new equity.
Musk would still be the CEO during bankruptcy and retain ownership if after emerging from bankruptcy, being that he's the debtor-in-possession. If it went chapter 7 then he would lose everything. This occurs when there is no way to rectify the situation, but twitter still earns $600 million/year. Twitter has $18 billon in debt. bankruptcy would allow twitter to renegotiate the terms of this debt on more favorable terms. Asbestos and tobacco companies have filed chap 11 bankruptcy when faced with litigation, to reduce of the burden of this debt. When emerged from bankruptcy, the old holders simply get new stock , they don't lose everything. Musk would not float the idea of bankruptcy if it meant irrevocably losing the $25 billion he put into it.
The debtors wouldn’t take a write down on their debt without taking over the equity. The debtors would be the equity.
He would need to own the debt to maintain control.
right but musk would still own part of twitter too after it emerges . It would make no sense for companies to ever go chapter 11 if it meant the owner losing everything.
No that’s normal. You go bankrupt the equity goes to zero. And the debt takes over.
Litigation might be a bit different with unlimited liability. But debt taking over equity is completely normal and the standard.
You are 100% correct companies don’t go bankrupt because they want to. They go bankrupt because they had a bill to pay and their bank account say 0.
I could see Musk buying some of the debt that seems discounted from face about 40 cents on the dollar. Buy the debt to make sure you retain some control post bankruptcy.
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Not necessarily. That is what a strategic bankruptcy is. Chapter 7 means twitter is worthless and the assets that remain sold off to pay off creditors, and musk loses everything. Chapter 11 allows twitter to reorg while giving Musk an opportunity to retain some of his wealth and run the company. Creditors would prefer to get paid than not, so reorg is better than defaulting. let's say twitter is worth $30 billion. $18 billion is debt. that $12 billion does not go away. It does not go to the creditors. unless twitter becomes worthless then musk loses everything . If it thrives, Musk's stake could be worth more when it reemerges. https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/06/02/3-bankruptcies-that-actually-helped-investors.aspx
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Not going to happen. China is building its military at an incredible rate, western militaries havent ramped up their anti China programs such as B21 and are in an awkward position maintaining cold war era tech, dismantling the low end war legacy in the middle east and trying to start new programs. The amount of munitions going to Ukraine is astounding. It is better for China to push a potential war well into the future. This includes their domestic market. They are building new nuclear power, trying to build their own supply chains etc. A war in 2023 would be horribly premature.
This isn't that dramatic and probably more likely.
The threshold for nukes is very high and i is unlikely that they would be used outside an all out war between NATO and China/Russia.
More likely MIGs supplied by someone else. Building an Airforce of Gripens/F16s is a big job.
The death rate for people at his age is roughly 5%. That doesnt count people becoming vegetables after a stroke. The chances of him not making it through the year are more like 10%.
We overestimate what will happen in the next 3 years and underestimate what will happen in 10-30 years. A year in a massive rocket program is nothing, these projects easily stretch well over a decade. Spacex is fast but falcon 1/9 were not speedy programs. If they are in commercial service 2027 it would be fast. Their rocket is incredibly ambitious and test-cycles will be long as a new rocket is expensive and slow to replace. I give them a 40% chance of reaching orbit next year and I would be mightily impressed by their speed if they succeed in 2024.
Do they even want to land though? Like, ever? They could as well just blockade the entire island until Taiwan gives in. Think what happens when there is no food imports, no fuel, etc. It would only need to happen for a few weeks for there to be significant chaos.
Blockades are an act of war, so they would earn some of the sanctions that are currently reserved for Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
More importantly, the US has a history of being dedicated to freedom of navigation in the Taiwan strait. So if CCP really wants to enforce that blockade they are going to have to start by attacking ships of the US Navy. Unlikely.
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Agree. People seem to systematically overestimate the likelihood of escalation of geopolitical events.
To be clear, in my original prediction, this was listed at <5% (ie not going to happen this year)
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I think this is far less likely than you think. The issues of spare parts, tools, how many people would need to be trained in maintenance procedures, availability of compatible weapons, and ability to integrate with existing air defense infrastructure, including radios, radars, IFFs etc seems to me to make this virtually impossible.
I think you're forgetting Ike's warning.
The point of supplying munitions to Ukraine is not so that Ukraine can use them effectively to beat Russia, it's so the military industrial complex's pocket senators have an excuse to order more munutions on the US taxpayer's dime and to Lockheed Martin's profit.
No-one cares if the jets can actually work effectively, they're an accounting strategy, not a military strategy.
Though it would presumably be bad for sales if they were a complete dud?
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Yeah, I am dead sure this won't happen.
The others look reasonable to me.
I'm glad someone picked up on this. 25% is perhaps a little exaggerated (20% seems closer to the mark), but this an area where I'm far more pessimistic than most of the general public. However, among the nuclear policy scholars and geopolitics wonks in my circle, the mood is pretty bleak.
A few of my reasons for pessimism:
Russia is currently losing the war. It has failed to make any significant gains since Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in the summer, and those came at huge costs in terms of expended artillery shells. It has suffered major setbacks in Kharkiv and Kherson, its offensive in Bakhmut has been a bloody disaster, and it's now under pressure again in Northern Luhansk. Mobilisation has stemmed the bleeding but looks unlikely to change the course of the war. Meanwhile, Western military supplies continue apace, and Ukraine shows no sign of capitulating through loss of political will.
Russia has burnt many of its boats and committed itself to fairly maximalist war aims. By formally annexing Donetsk and Luhansk and even more so by annexing Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, it's made it constitutionally very difficult to accept any kind of compromise peace. Through its partial mobilisation and high casualties, it's made it more difficult to justify a loss to its citizenry. And its new economic situation is not one it can easily walk back from; Europe is now investing billions in new LNG infrastructure and signing deals with Qatar and the UAE, foreign companies will take decades to regain investment confidence in Russia, and many of the talented Russians now in Turkey, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Serbia will never return. The consequence of this is that Russia has little to gain (at least in the short-/medium-term) from reconciliation with the West; and equally, Russia has little to lose from further antagonizing the West.
The upshot of all of this is that if a Russian loss looks imminent, and it can be averted by using nuclear weapons, then Russian may well decide to do so; "might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb", as the saying goes.
But would Russia really violate the nuclear taboo? The nuclear taboo is one of those things that feels like a deep law of history, but it's far more contingent than most people realise. It was very much up for grabs in the early Cold War, and through the 1960s-1980s was largely maintained due to factors like (i) well-defined zones of influence and control, (ii) reasonable parity in conventional weapons, and (iii) fear of rapid escalation towards a full strategic exchange. None of those factors apply anything like so strongly nowadays: Russia's weakness relative to the EU and the West as well as emerging powers means it can no longer maintain control over its old sphere of influence; Russia's military might is dramatically inferior to what it once was; and there is far less likelihood of either the West or East deciding to go 'all-in' on a full blown pre-emptive counterforce strike if things start to get hairy. My sense is that the nuclear taboo is in a very fragile state, and its persistence in a post Cold War world is very much up-for-grabs.
It's often been pointed out (including by me) that 'battlefield nukes' are of limited operational value, at least in the absence of the massive tank formations and chokepoints of the Cold War in Europe. However, there are plenty of ways Russia could make effective use of nuclear weapons to stave off a defeat, such as targeting Ukrainian command and control, infrastructure, and logistics hubs behind the frontlines. This would obviously result in civilian casualties, but judicious target selection and the use of smaller warheads could limit these to perhaps 100,000 or so. Also note that the diplomatic consequences of using 1 nuke are not significantly less than the consequences of using 15 or so, hence Russia could do a lot of damage to Ukraine at relatively fixed cost to itself.
But wouldn't the West respond? Honestly, I doubt it. The second a nuke goes off in Ukraine, there will be large scale panic in Western populations. Russia would probably say something ambiguous like "any direct offensive retaliation from NATO will be met in kind, utilising all appropriate weapons systems at our disposal". While Biden might be tempted to do something like sink the Black Sea fleet, most Europeans would likely push him to take a diplomatic approach, condemning the attacks wholeheartedly and putting increasing pressure on China and India to distance themselves from Russia. I think there's a good chance this would work, and Russia would be left extremely isolated, which is why I still think Putin will refrain from using nuclear weapons. But note that neither India nor China are currently critical to Russia's war effort; its main external weapons supplies have been coming from North Korea and Iran, countries unlike to switch posture as a consequence of a first-use of nuclear weapons by Russia.
So, to give a concrete scenario: in September 2023, after nine months of attritional warfare, the UAF finally make a major breakthrough in Zaporizhzhia and are pushing south towards Melitopol and Mariupol. Russia's hard-won land-bridge to Crimea looks under threat. Russia responds by launching 15-20 nuclear-tipped Iskander missiles at Ukrainian military C3 and logistics, halting the advance and giving Russian force time to regroup and counter-attack. Immediately before the launch, Russia would notify NATO as to what it was doing, and warn them not to interfere. The gambit works, Ukrainian forces are decimated and fall back. Russia announces that any further attempts to attack its territory will be met with nuclear response, and attempts to freeze the conflict.
I'm not saying this is likely - but if I was a diehard Russian nationalist facing defeat, I'd be seriously considering how I could best use nuclear weapons to force a favourable end to the war. Hence 20-25% seems about right for me.
20% is way too high, imho. The last time nukes were used for was was 1945. It's one of those things that seems inevitable given how many nukes there, but no one wants to cross that rubicon.
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I've always thought this argument would be deeply unconvincing to anybody living in Russia or Japan. To them it might sound like
If this taboo needs to be enforced with the might of a thousand gods, the United States cannot be allowed to continue to exist. If they are allowed to exist after using nukes - well maybe their enemies have a chance of achieving the same feat.
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Which is why I’m so against the current funding of Ukraine. It is one thing to prop it up and put it in a situation where it can achieve a reasonable negotiated peace.
But the current level of funding being provided is increasing the odds of something really catastrophic happening over a country that is not a close ally and is corrupt. Ukraine could be America and we could be France; but Ukraine could also be Afghanistan. Just isn’t worth the risk.
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All very well said. But I think this would all happen much faster than we're used to in previous wars; there won't be any time for call-ups or general mobilisations. Here's a simple sample timeline -
T0 - Russia launches 20 Iskander SRBMs at Ukrainian C3 targets, triggering a collapse in unit cohesion and allowing Russian to seize key objectives
T+24 hours - A day of international outrage and emergency meetings. Strongest possible language from Biden & other NATO leaders. Fairly strong condemnation from China, India, and Brazil. Meanwhile Putin announces he's putting all nuclear forces on high alert and initiate civil defense drills across Russia.#
T+36 hours - After much wrangling, Biden achieves NATO support for a strike on Russian naval assets across the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Some 200 cruise missiles are launched, sinking a dozen Russian naval assets and hitting seven key bases in the region.
T +48 hours - Russia retaliates by launching a series of cruise missile strikes on NATO bases in Poland.
T +56 hours - NATO begins SEAD operations against bases on Russian soil in response to Poland attacks.
T +60 hours - After a JDAM hits a SAM site at a Russian airbase where nuclear bombers are stationed, Russia launches a series of three tactical nuclear strikes at American airbases in Poland. Putin announces that any further attacks on Russian nuclear sites (=most Russian airbases) will result in a full-scale counterforce strike on NATO nuclear assets worldwide.
What would you advise Biden to do? Should he have gotten off the train somewhere prior to this point? Escalation has a lethal logic all of its own, and there's a good reason why the West may decide to stick with diplomatic responses to limited Russian nuclear use in Ukraine.
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Well,* you're* no fun! 😁☀💥
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