Top items:

• Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act against Venezuelans and the Tren de Aragua gang. He subsequently deported 238 alleged members to El Salvador, ignoring a court order.
• Chinese “invasion barges” were deployed in an exercise.
• The US resumed military aid to Ukraine, and a ceasefire in the next six months at 50/50

Forecaster Estimates

Forecasters, on aggregate, think that a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine in the next six months is a coin toss (48%, ranging from 35% to 70%). Polymarket’s forecast is higher, at 61%, for a ceasefire of any duration by July.

Forecasters also consider it a coin toss (aggregate of 49%; ranging from 28% to 70%) whether an agreement to expand France’s nuclear umbrella will be reached by 2027 such that French nuclear weapons will be deployed in another European country by 2030. They emphasize that the US is revealing itself to be an unreliable defense partner, and that Germany’s bases could be refitted to accommodate French weapons, but also that timelines for such developments are usually very long.

Forecasters think there’s a <1% probability that the US military will invade Canada, with an aggregate estimate of 0.2% by the end of 2028.

Geopolitics

United States

Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act against Venezuelan gang members, and used it to deport 238 alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador, ignoring a court order. The deportation flights were already in the air when the court order was received, and administration officials claimed that the court order did not apply because the flights were over international waters at the time.

Trump claimed that Biden’s pardons of a January 6 committee are “void” because they were made using an autopen, even though autopen signatures are legally binding.

DOGE efforts to reduce the federal workforce are ongoing. The Department of Education staff has been cut by about 50%. All DHHS employees have been offered a $25,000 buyout.

A federal court ruled that thousands of federal employees were fired illegally and must be reinstated. When asked if the Trump administration will comply with court orders, White House Press Secretary Leavitt said the judge’s orders were “unconstitutional” and that the administration would appeal the decision.

The chief architect of Project 2025 said that the project’s goals have been implemented to an extent “actually way beyond my wildest dreams”.

US plans to revoke visas and green cards of people identified using AI to be Hamas supporters.

Trump's “border czar,” Tom Homan, has said that, "there are limitations to free speech," as pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was detained for protesting against Israel.

The US has been added to an international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms.

In a speech at the Department of Justice, Trump said, "I believe that CNN and MSNBC, who literally write 97.6% bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party. And in my opinion, they are really corrupt and they are illegal. What they do is illegal."

A US government shutdown has been averted. Not everyone is happy with the resulting compromise.

The US Southern Command has been instructed to develop plans to gain control of the Panama Canal.

The Trump administration’s foreign aid cuts also froze aid to IAEA nuclear inspectors.

Canada imposed retaliatory tariffs on a wide range of US products.

A LessWrong blog post speculates that Elon Musk may have a mood disorder and may be moving from bipolar type II to bipolar type I, which has more extreme mood swings.

Europe

The US has resumed delivery of military aid to and sharing intelligence with Ukraine, as Kyiv says it is ready to accept a ceasefire proposal. The US has also introduced additional sanctions on Russia. Putin has said that he won’t agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine unless many harsh conditions are met.

The Russian army launched a major counteroffensive in Kursk. Putin and later Trump claimed that Ukrainian troops in the Kursk area were encircled and called for their surrender to avoid a massacre. But Ukrainian troops were not encircled.

Kremlin officials continue to use narratives similar to those that the Kremlin has used to justify its invasions of Ukraine to set informational conditions to justify future aggression against NATO member states, says the Institute for the Study of War.

The captain of a container ship, a Russian national, has been arrested and charged after his ship crashed into an oil tanker that was providing fuel for the US military in the North Sea.

The Latvian president said that European countries should “absolutely” introduce conscription.

The US and Europe have been relying on Russia for nuclear fuel. Finding alternative sources won’t be easy.

European countries are wondering whether the US puts secret “kill switches” in its military aircraft and weapons systems.

The EU is considering imposing sanctions against Russia's “shadow fleet.”

Middle East

Trump is pushing to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, and said recently that, “something’s going to happen very soon” with Iran. Ayatollah Khamenei continues to resist serious nuclear negotiations with the US, although the country has signaled some limited willingness to talk. Iran’s resistance to negotiations with the US increases the probability that the US or Israel will engage in military action against Iran.

A Russian official has said that Iran may agree to limit its nuclear program if sanctions are lifted. Iran held trilateral nuclear talks with China and Russia in Beijing on March 14, shortly after rejecting a negotiation offer from Trump.

Russia, China and Iran launched their annual joint naval drills in the Gulf of Oman. The exercise is themed, “Creating Peace and Security Together”, and observers from other countries, including South Africa, Pakistan, and Oman, are witnessing the exercises.

In Syria, a peace agreement was reached that incorporates the largely Kurdish, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces into the Syrian army. On the other hand, more than 1,000 people have died and Alawite civilians have been massacred as sectarian violence and revenge killings roiled Syria. The UN Security Council agreed to issue a statement to condemn the massacre of Alawites in Syria. After violence in Syria, Israel says it is prepared to defend Syria’s Druze population.

The UN reports that no supplies are entering Gaza, as Israel imposes total food and energy blockades. Israel has cut off the electricity supply to Gaza, according to Israel’s energy minister, in an effort to force Hamas to release its remaining hostages. The Israeli blockade also threatens Gaza’s water supply.

The US and Israel have approached the East African countries of Sudan, Somalia and Somaliland about the possibility of resettling civilians from Gaza.

Houthi rebels have warned that they will resume attacks against Israeli vessels in the Red Sea if Israel continues its blockade of Gaza. The US has launched attacks against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Africa

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the government and the M23 rebels will begin direct talks next week according to officials in Angola, which will be mediating the talks.

In parallel, South Africa is withdrawing its troops from the eastern DRC, where it has been supporting the DRC government in its fight against the M23 rebels, as fighting there has escalated beyond what South Africa is willing to commit its troops to.

The African Union is warning that Sudan is at risk of partition.

Tigray officials have warned that Ethiopia and Eritrea are on a path to war.

Asia

China's 'invasion barges', which we reported a few weeks ago, have been spotted on drills for the first time. Video footage of the barges is also now available. Taiwan has a limited number of beaches that would support a D-day style invasion, and the significance of these barges is that they might greatly expand the range of initial invasion spots, making war planning more tricky for Taiwan.

North Korea announced that the country is building a nuclear-powered submarine. For North Korea to be successful, Russia’s help would probably be required. But even then, the country’s first-generation submarines would likely be noisier and would perhaps not provide for a full nuclear deterrent.

The US and South Korea held joint military exercises.

The Myanmar junta chief announced that elections would be held in December or January. However, we aren’t holding our breath, as elections have been postponed before.

Pakistan warned that the Pakistani Taliban are becoming more powerful.In Pakistan, Baloch rebels captured over 100 hostages, and the group claims they killed 214. A rescue operation was messy and deadly.

In Bangladesh, student protestors whose actions sparked the ouster of the former premier have formed a new political party.

Biorisk

Europe has reported the highest number of measles cases in more than 25 years, according to UNICEF and the WHO.

Namibia has seen its first cholera case in a decade.

Tech and AI

OpenAI published a paper in which they found that their AI models engage in reward-hacking behaviour. When using a monitor to catch “bad chains of thought” and train a model not to engage in this behaviour, they found that monitoring only caused the model to hide its intentions in such a way that the monitor did not catch the behaviour; the AIs still engaged in the behaviour.

The company warned that by doing this, we could lose our ability to measure when models are hiding their intent:

We believe that chain-of-thought (CoT) monitoring may be one of the few effective methods we have for supervising superhuman models. At this stage, we strongly recommend that AI developers training frontier reasoning models refrain from applying strong supervision directly to CoTs. Our experiments show that light optimization pressure can produce more performant and aligned models; however, it will be hard to measure in practice when models begin hiding their intent, and so even if light supervision is used, we recommend treading with extreme caution.

OpenAI made proposals for the US AI Action Plan (full submission), in which they said that the “AI race” with China is lost if they don’t get to train AIs on copyrighted materials. Shakeel Hashim finds their lobbying inconsistent with OpenAI’s Deep Research System Card

Several of our biology evaluations indicate our models are on the cusp of being able to meaningfully help novices create known biological threats, which would cross our high risk threshold. We expect current trends of rapidly increasing capability to continue, and for models to cross this threshold in the near future. In preparation, we are intensifying our investments in safeguards.

OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane told Axios that:

"Globally, the conversation around AI has changed," said Lehane. "There's been a definite pivot. ... Maybe the biggest risk here is actually missing out on the opportunity. There was a pretty significant vibe shift when people became more aware and educated on this technology and what it means."

The former head of Airbus has urged Europe to shift attention towards building armed robots.

Meta began testing its first in-house AI chip.

The US FTC is moving ahead with an antitrust probe of Microsoft that was opened in the final days of the Biden administration.

Sam Altman has called DeepSeek a state-controlled AI developer and has called for “PRC-produced” (People's Republic of China-produced) models to be banned.

Climate

The Trump administration is considering ending the lease for the support office for the NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory on Mauna Loa in Hawaii, calling into question the future of the laboratory. The station has been monitoring CO2 levels since the 1950s.