fionack

Likely too late updating but it looks like this just happened https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-iran-strikes-live-coverage

Drone strikes against Israel could escalate https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-iran-strikes-live-coverage

Increasing this quite a bit based on escalations and news of immensity retaliatory attacks from Iran that could spiral quickly. This may calm down again in the next few days but it could also become quite a bit worse and even lead to war. 

Increasing quite a bit (but still remaining overall low) based on news that retaliation is imminent and clarification that drone attacks count. It seems likely this would resolve one way or another in the next few days (if nothing occurs then I will reduce again). 

Decreasing based on no promising change as far as I can tell, and because of that, to be closer to the crowd

Iran has vowed to retaliate against the recent attack, but that could be through other means not as direct as sending missiles targeting Israel - I assume targeting Israel and failing will not be good enough of a retaliation (say Iran sends them expecting the missiles to be blocked). Then again this is certainly more likely to escalate to missiles/airstrikes than it has been in months. https://links.morningbrew.com/c/i_M?mblid=b329b85932e5&mbcid=34890787.504100&mid=061a57aed6c02d497dc6024e1e5e9613&mbuuid=SWERww2oXMZGTvpmKbiFDHxV

Focusing in on a piece of this: I think a complete closure and cessation of activities (rather than opening up a new lab and moving some researchers there) is highly unlikely since the ability to operate in that country may be essential to gaining and retaining talent. Some talent originally from China just may prefer to work from China/be near family (other may prefer access to other countries/salaries but likely not all) and it is complicated (even with remote working options) to give people that opportunity without having an official lab set up there. Then again, AI research is an area that doesn’t necessarily require a location base and I believe international organizations with remote work policies are still able to have employees based in and working from other countries without a full organization set up there, so if their remote work policies becomes more flexible and they are able to retain talent maybe this is more likely? Also I may be putting too much emphasis on this when in reality there is plenty of talent in other countries and/or willing to migrate - but also then why go to the effort of shutting it down in the first place to try and retain and move employees other than for political reasons (maybe some IP/technology transfer concerns and increased tensions but they don’t seem quite high enough to lead to this)?