johnnycaffeine

I may have been a little overconfident before, so I'll adjust this to 2% per quarter for this year. Ultimately though, on questions like this (LinkedIn notwithstanding) you really just have to go with the base rate. There's a long history of US tech companies doing R&D in the PRC. The first ones to go in hard and heavy like HP and IBM are still very much there. I can't really find much information about US tech companies ever closing their R&D centers in the PRC, so this is a low base rate.

As this PDF discusses, companies have a lot of advantages to doing R&D in China, which can't really be replicated elsewhere at the same price. They get access to some of the best talent in the world, at extremely cost-efficient rates due to foreign exchange and also the low cost of hiring Chinese workers. The PRC government has a long history of  supporting the practice of R&D centers being located in the PRC. Of course it's a bit of a faustian bargain since it just makes it that much easier for the PRC to siphon some of the intellectual property to itself. So a lot of this will depend on how much pressure the US government can exert on Microsoft over time. 

I'm not sure I'd put much weight on job opportunities at the R&D Center in China btw. Any decision to pull out of China would be made at a higher level than the people who work in HR at the R&D Center, and the odds that anything about this would be communicated by upper management to those lower in the organizational chart are pretty low.

Maintaining at 6%, given the Crowd is at 11%. 

Update based on passage of time. I think 1% per quarter is probably a fair estimate at the moment. 

Reducing on the passage of time. There's also the possibility, mentioned in this recent Washington Post story, that it wouldn't be publicly disclosed. 

Re-upping my 5% for a 6-month period. I'm not always sure how the scoring works here, but the Crowd is at 3%. I think if you ran the next 6 months 20 times, this would happen at least once, for these two reasons: 

1. The war could end at any moment. We don't know what sorts of behind-the-scenes negotiations are going on. 

2. Netanyahu could be out at some point in the next few months, since his current coalition is getting more fragile by the day. 

3. All that's required for this to resolve as Yes is "both Israeli and Saudi officials must publicly acknowledge that they are resuming normalization talks." That's simple enough.

As @DimaKlenchin points out, the recent statement certainly seems inconsistent with the notion of Iran leaving the JCPOA.

Raising a little to get closer to the Crowd. The low level exchanges of fire are still going on (including, apparently, a trebuchet), so it remains a volatile situation. On the other hand, one could also argue that these clashes have gone on with both sides always making sure not to go too far.

Raising to match the Crowd on these. As @cmeinel points out, Netanyahu may be on his way out. If you're an Arab country there's a huge difference if you're dealing with Netanyahu vs. if you're dealing with someone like Benny Gantz. Metaculus here has a 55% chance of Netanyahu being out at some point in 2024.