olavo_sg

ANGOLA: Fitch rates them as B (considering Short Term Issuer Default Rating), which indicates an "uncertain capacity for timely payment." The IDR (Issuer Default Rating) is also B, with a "stable outlook." Fitch expects Angola to continue having current account surpluses in 2025, despite a decrease in oil prices. Based on this, I would estimate the country's risk to be less than 5%.

KENYA: Kenya's situation appears more complicated, with short-term debts being rolled over at very high interest rates and an increasing fiscal deficit, which tends to push interest rates even higher, potentially leading to an unsustainable scenario. Fitch's B- rating reflects this fragility. In this context, I estimate Kenya's risk at 12%.
ETHIOPIA: Ethiopia's situation is even riskier, with Fitch rating the Short Term Issuer Default Rating as C, and the country having recently defaulted (late 2023). The political situation is also very delicate, with conflicts between the central government and ethnic groups such as Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and Somali. On the other hand, the country has secured an agreement with the IMF — the institution has approved a bailout of $3.4bn (£2.6bn) for Ethiopia to support its economic reforms over the next four years. In this context, I estimate the risk of default at 30%.
NIGERIA: seems the less risky. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has projected that Nigeria’s current debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio of 50.7 percent will drop in 2025. Fitch Affirms Nigeria at 'B-' with outlook Positive. Thus, I estimate the risk of default at 2%.

A first important consideration is that the ranking is based on user votes, having been developed by researchers at UC Berkeley SkyLab and LMSYS.

Thus, it is reasonable to assume that most voters are from the West and possibly from the US. This creates a bias in favor of OpenAI, Google, and others.

Let’s now analyze the current ranking. Considering there are ties, the top 10 includes 15 models:

Meta has 2 models;

X has 1;

OpenAI has 5;

Anthropic has 1;

Google has 3;

Nvidia has 1;

O1 has 1;

Zhipu has 1.

Assuming each company focuses on a single top-tier model, we have 8 competitors, 2 of which are Chinese. In a simple analysis, I’d estimate the probability as 2/8, or 25%. Considering the bias of the ranking being US-based, I would reduce it by another 5%, arriving at 20%.

Of course, this is a simplification. Perhaps companies focus on more than one model with equal effort. Perhaps Chinese companies benefit from government support that their Western counterparts do not. And it’s certain that companies already in the top 3 have a comparative advantage, meaning their odds are not equal to others. But these factors somewhat balance each other out, so I think this is a reasonable estimate.

Slightly increasing the odds due to the reinforcement of troops by North Korea and the expectation of large operations in the coming days (although reports claim it will be a counter-offensive in Kursk).

Additionally, a Ukrainian diplomat (Prystaiko) told The Economist that the next three months will be terrible.

Time passage + Elections in Georgia (anti-Western government has won)

Although @o-maverick  provides good reasons why a nuclear test would be irrational, news here and there suggests this possibility, apparently based on South Korean espionage. So, I'll follow the crowd.

I think there’s a good chance this could happen sometime in the next fifty years, but considering the six-month window here, I estimate the likelihood as low…

I believe the likelihood is low because it requires the accumulation of three hypotheses:

(i) Russia would need to want to carry out an attack with kinetic effect, which is not obvious, as they might fear provoking NATO's wrath too much;

(ii) Russia would need to succeed in the cyberattack with regard to achieving a kinetic effect;

(iii) It would need to be proven or acknowledged that the attack was directly ordered by the Russian government.

My forecast is based on the apparent downward trend.