TrishBytes

This question can equally be rephrased to “Will Turkey approve Sweden’s membership of NATO?”. The Swedish government has already gone through the motions of approving the membership internally (“March 22, 2023: The Riksdag approves Sweden’s accession to the North Atlantic Treaty.) In this vein, analysts seem to have placed their bets on Erdogan’s election victory leading to a softening on the Turkish opposition to Swedish membership. “Economic difficulties mean that Mr. Erdogan will be more careful abroad, Mr. Peker said. “He can’t afford the wheels to come off” while seeking investment and aid. “Turkey’s relations with the U.S. and the E.U. will remain transactional and tense,” Mr. Peker said, but Mr. Erdogan will want to avoid Western sanctions over Russia, restraining Turkish banks and companies from doing major trade deals with Moscow. “Ankara is likely to ratify Sweden’s NATO membership this year, in return seeking to finalize F-16 purchases from the U.S.”” Honestly, I’m quite surprised that the crowd forecast is so low. Starting with a conservative 55% and keeping an eye on the narrative in the coming weeks. Sources: https://www.government.se/government-policy/sweden-and-nato/swedens-road-to-nato/ https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/29/world/europe/erdogan-turkey-sweden-nato.html

Taking note of the Brooking index highlighted by another forecaster, which says that Russian control over Ukrainian territory has been in steady decline. Also noting this Bloomberg report that says that compared to the beginning of the invasion, Russian forces have changed their tactics/adapted to changing battlefield conditions faster and better. However, broader operational direction is still pretty unchanged, and of course as the war rages on, the appetite for continued losses will dim. How long that will take is the question. And Ukraine continues to receive arms, munitions from the West (though it is losing this hardware at a pretty high rate as well). Considering all these factors, it is pretty likely that Russian control will decline to 12-13%, unless there is some fundamental change in Russian operations, or support for Ukraine. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-18/russia-is-adapting-arms-and-tactics-ahead-of-ukraine-offensive https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/ukraine-index/?

Following the question clarification, referring to this page [1], there are 7 publications up as of May 20. If the current rate continues, the Quantum AI lab will fall short of 20 publications. Scoured the team's social media profiles for inklings of upcoming publication to no luck. 

Lowering accordingly.

Looking at the Google calendar of events, looks like they have an annual quantum conference in July so will keep an eye out for a possible spur of paper releases around that, though this is just conjecture. Dropping the link to the 2022 conference playlist for those interested! [2]

[1] https://research.google/pubs/?area=quantum-computing

[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpO2pyKisOjLmyDOYwa8akgOHnCkXrKFg

Confirmed previous forecast

Confirming last forecast. Haven’t seen any info yet that would lead me to revise this probability.

According the OpenAI founder Sam Altman, “We are not and won’t for some time…So in that sense it was sort of silly.” Importantly, this was in response to the AI pause open letter so even if they were working on a new release, they may be hesitant to race ahead due to the letter and general regulatory climate. EU regulators are evaluating the risks of generative AI, China has drafted regulations. https://www.reuters.com/technology/behind-eu-lawmakers-challenge-rein-chatgpt-generative-ai-2023-04-28/ https://news.cgtn.com/news/2023-05-12/VHJhbnNjcmlwdDcyMzA4/index.html

This question would resolve if both an emergency and a shutdown occur.

Earthquakes:  Wikipedia (if anyone has better source, please link) mentions 16 earthquakes between 2012 and 2022. The ones is 2016 and 2022 were significant, causing injuries, loss of life and damage, but only the 2016 quake resulted in a shutdown.

Power outages: Power outages are common. One Nikkei article mentions 22 power outages in 2 months in 2022. In 2021, an outage resulted in a "brief dip", but reportedly no shutdowns at TSMC.

Cyber attacks: As the description mentions, in 2018, TSMC fabs were shut down due to a virus attack. The volume of cyber attacks on Taiwan, especially from China, have been on the rise. In 2022, there was a 10% increase in volume of cyberattacks.

I am also going with the crowd forecast on "Will the People's Liberation Army invade, blockade, or attack the main island of Taiwan in the next six months?" of 1%.

Noting that TSMC has taken several measure to bolster the physical and cyber resilience of its facilities.

Starting at 3%.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Taiwan

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Taiwan-s-frequent-blackouts-expose-vulnerability-of-tech-economy

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-starts-rotational-electricity-blackout-after-power-plant-outage-2021-05-13/

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4783488

https://www.infer-pub.com/questions/1257-will-the-people-s-liberation-army-invade-blockade-or-attack-the-main-island-of-taiwan-in-the-next-six-months

Europe is going through tech company layoffs, amidst the economic slowdown caused by COVID plus war in Ukraine. Layoffs surged in November, Q4 layoffs were the highest within this year.

It's a cold winter.

https://hr.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/trends/europe-inc-cuts-jobs-as-economy-sputters/95674364

https://layoffs.fyi/

Quantum computing resources are concentrated in two countries: US and China. Beyond this, there's a handful of facilities in the UK, Japan, India.

A few factors to consider:

1. Increasing volume of cyber attacks. Check Point Research reported a YoY increase of 38% in 2022. [1]. Research and educational institutions were the most-targeted. 

2. Geopolitics: US-China competition in quantum computing could lead to cyber-enabled IPR theft or other forms of cyber attack.

3. Cybersecurity compliance of quantum research facilities: I can't speak on this with much confidence, but my assumption is the nature of research necessitates strong cybersec protocols.

4. Secrecy: Relating to point 3, because quantum computing is so high-stakes, I wonder also if entities would be inclined to publicly report an incident.

Starting with a low non-zero forecast. While I see the pressures of points 1 and 2, I am not convinced we will see an incident reported this year.

[1] https://pages.checkpoint.com/cyber-security-report-2023.html#:~:text=Non%2Dstate%20affiliated%20hacktivist%20groups,2021%20indicating%20a%20concerning%20shift