michal_dubrawski

I am joining this question late, so I started with my own research first. It is always a time-consuming process, but there is something gratifying in challenging your own intuitions with asking questions and having a dialog with yourself: "Is that so? How do I know this? Let's check". Our mental models of the world are full of biases and inaccuracies introduced by popular culture, media, movies or opinionated pundits and talking heads. There is also outdated information and blind spots - knowledge gaps which we sometimes have creatively and unknowingly filled with fabricated information. Even our memory about things we think we know, cannot be fully trusted. It is great to update one's mind, replacing first impressions and long held assumptions or prejudice with information and data to create a more realistic, more accurate representation of reality. Never perfect but better. This is only my opinion, but I believe that cultivating the accuracy of our mental models, calibrating our judgment and practicing good thinking habits, is what makes a good forecaster.

Still, there is so much to learn, and we will never be able to remove all the blind spots and distortions, and some unknown unknowns. With limited time for each forecast, we need to prioritize some relevant questions over others, and hope that other forecasters will bring their knowledge, expertise and ideas, and that collectively we will create the map that is accurate enough to guide our predictive judgment well. 

It was a pleasure to read many excellent comments, many of them by my fellow pro-forecasters (I added my upvotes).

I agree that the mortality rate for 85 y.o. male is a good starting point (around 10%). We need to adjust it down due to Khamenei's likely getting better health care than the average person his age, even in the richer western societies. However, sanctions on Iran would likely limit his access to the world's top medical professionals and some but not all cutting-edge medical therapies should the need for them arise. Should the need arise Russia could provide their medical experts, maybe China would too. 

I agree with @gcahlik that the information about Khamenei's health is likely largely unreliable, but I think his health is very important here. I was thinking in particular about his lung damage from the 1981 assassination attempt - that may be important. Since COVID is deadlier for people his age, and especially people with preexisting lungs related problems. Some older COVID mortality rate data I found here https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/#:~:text=in%20the%20tables.-,Age%20of%20Coronavirus%20Deaths,no%20fatalities,-*Death%20Rat shows for 80+ y.o. 21.9% of confirmed cases, and 14.8% of all cases - this was likely before vaccination was possible, this data from 2021 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9377390/#:~:text=52%2C423%2C114-,(20.5),-862.38) show 20.5% mortality rate for General U.S. Population 65+ y.o., still we do not know the details, but I assume any lung damage from bomb explosion is a risk factor, even if he was 42 at the time of this assassination attempt. I cannot find much more about his condition after the bomb exploded. The 2007 "Ali Khamenei" book by John Murphy says: "He was hospitalized for several months and suffered permanent damage to his arm, vocal cords, and lungs." Wikipedia page about this assassination attempt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Ali_Khamenei#cite_note-Murphy-8:~:text=Portrait%20of%20Ali%20Khamenei%20(1981)%20in%20hospital%20Baharlo%2C%20Tehran) shows this image of Khamenei taken in the hospital -it does not look that bad... (but not sure when the photo was taken, but he still had bandages) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/Ayatolla_Ali_Khamenei_in_Hospital_after_Assassination_Attempt_by_khamenei.ir03.jpg/800px-Ayatolla_Ali_Khamenei_in_Hospital_after_Assassination_Attempt_by_khamenei.ir03.jpg

We know that at least officially he got locally made COVID vaccine COVIran Barakat, as he banned import of vaccines made in the western countries, claiming they are "completely untrustworthy"
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/irans-leader-gets-locally-made-coronavirus-vaccine-shot-2021-06-25/

On January 8, 2021, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said in a speech that “import of (Covid-19) vaccines made in the US and UK are prohibited.” In a tweet since hidden by Twitter, Khamenei claimed that vaccines made in the US or the UK are “completely untrustworthy. It's not unlikely they would want to contaminate other nations.” Following his statement, about 200 Iranian parliament members also called for banning the import of Covid-19 vaccines made in the US, the UK, and France.

He still could get these vaccines for himself, or at least some best Chinese or Russian vaccine, but if he really only got COVIran Barakat, then he might be less protected. At the same time he survived during the pandemic until now, so he likely is not that vulnerable to it as we may assume by his age and health consequences of assassination attempt.

I think that similar logic applies to his 2014 surgery for prostate cancer - if he survived that long it signals that it was early detection and that it was localized cancer or regional cancer and not metastatic prostate cancer as described below in the quote from this article: https://www.webmd.com/prostate-cancer/prostate-cancer-survival-rates-what-they-mean

Localized prostate cancer survival rate.Some92% of all prostate cancers are found when they're in the early stage, called local or regional. "Local" means there's no indication that cancer has spread beyond the prostate. "Regional" means it's spread (metastasized) to nearby lymph nodes or other structures on the body. Almost 100% of those who have local or regional prostate cancer will survive more than 5 years after diagnosis. 

Metastatic prostate cancer survival rate. Fewer people (about 7%) have more advanced prostate cancer at the time of diagnosis. Once prostate cancer has spread beyond the prostate and nearby structures, survival rates fall. "Distant" prostate cancer has moved into farther-away areas of the body, such as the bones, liver, or lungs. Among those with distant prostate cancer, about one-third will survive for 5 years after diagnosis.

What about survival rates by time since diagnosis? When you group people with all stages of prostate cancer together:
    The 5-year relative survival rate is almost 100%. That means that 5 years after being diagnosed, the average person with prostate cancer is just about as likely to be alive as someone without the condition.
    The 10-year relative survival rate is 98%. Ten years after their prostate cancer diagnosis, they're only 2% less likely to be alive than anyone else.
    The relative 15-year survival rate is 95%. The average person with prostate cancer is 5% less likely to still be living than someone who doesn't have it.

I thought that it may also be good to find the video of some recent speech by him to get a feel about his general condition:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5qQHO7jPkw - this is from three months ago - a speech for a Death Anniversary Of Ayatollah Khomeini

I've been wondering after Nasrallah death if something like that could happen to Khamenei, @TBall has voiced similar thought in their comment here: https://www.randforecastinginitiative.org/comments/141275

My initial reaction to this question would be "no", but this reaction is based on thinking about current reality, if we think about the future and how escalation has been progressing, I am not no longer so sure it is below 1%.

Some quotes from the Politico article: "Israel on ‘high alert’ for possible retaliation after killing of Hezbollah chief"
https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-military-high-alert-after-killing-hezbollah-leader-hassan-nasrallah-lebanon-iran-hamas/

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on Muslims "to stand by the people of Lebanon and the proud Hezbollah with whatever means they have," Iranian state media reported. "The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront," he said.
"The blood of the martyr shall not go unavenged," Khamenei added later in a statement read on state television in which he announced five days of mourning. He threatened "even more crushing" blows against Israel. 

The Israeli military said this week that it was preparing for a possible occupation of territory in Lebanon, and has sent two brigades to northern Israel to train for a potential ground invasion.
"Are we ready for a wider escalation? Yes," Shoshani told reporters on Saturday. "We've been in a wider escalation, a multi-front war, for a year," since Hamas militants attacked Israel last October and killed 1,200 people. Hezbollah started its rocket fire against Israel the next day.
"Hezbollah has been escalating this for a year ... Iran is obviously behind this, it's no secret. They're backing Hamas, they're backing Hezbollah and other proxies. They even attacked us directly in April," Shoshani said.

There were reports that after the attack in which Hezbollah chief was killed, Ali Khamenei was moved to the safer location, so they too don't consider such attack impossible:

For example, see here: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iranian-leader-khamenei-calls-muslims-confront-israel-2024-09-28/

Another article https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-israel-hezbollah-airstrikes-28-september-2024-c4751957433ff944c4eb06027885a973 reports what Netanyahu said after the attack:

Netanyahu said Nasrallah’s killing would help bring displaced Israelis back to their homes in the north and would pressure Hamas to free Israeli hostages held in Gaza. But with the threat of retaliation high, he warned the coming days would bring “significant challenges” and warned Iran against trying to strike.
“There is no place in Iran or in the Middle East that Israel’s long arm cannot reach. And today you know how much that is true,” he said. 

  I think this claim may be closer to the truth than not, I believe that if the Israeli government would want Khamenei's death, then they are very capable and inventive and could succeed. However, would that make sense for Israel? Some say Netanyahu needs the war to continue (two articles with opposite views on that: https://www.vox.com/politics/369934/israel-gaza-protests-hostages-netanyahu-war-september  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/06/benjamin-netanyahu-israel-hostages-hamas/ - even if not, the mechanisms of escalation may at some point make assassination of Khamenei look to Israeli government like something worth consideration or even a logical next step.

There is also some threat from ISIS. As I wrote here in reply to @michalbod 's great comment here:  
In my opinion, they are unlikely to be able to get him, they lack track record of successful attempts at high ranking well-guarded government officials, but they were able to do these coordinated attacks in Tehran on the Iranian Parliament and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/6/7/gunmen-attack-irans-parliament-khomeini-shrine (For me, it does not look like a super-sophisticated attack nor with a strong force, but still, they were capable of reaching these high-profile places - probably the security has been increased since then).

ISIS also claimed responsibility for this bomb attack in January this year: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/04/iran-kerman-attack-islamic-state-suspicion-border-afghanistan-pakistan"

Interesting recent article from LightReading: How Huawei and open RAN misfires hurt Ericsson, Nokia and telcos 

Open RAN planning, Machiavelli-style

Despite offering words of encouragement to alternative RAN suppliers, telcos with brownfield networks have bought almost none of their products. Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia, the big three kit vendors, still account for roughly three-quarters of the global market, according to Omdia's data, and their respective market shares have barely changed since the birth of "open RAN," a bid to cultivate new suppliers by ensuring one vendor's products can be joined easily to another's (not possible in a traditional RAN).

But while they have failed to grab market share, those suppliers have certainly provided competition against Ericsson and Nokia in tenders that would previously have been less contested. Mavenir, a US software company that has branched into making radios, is known to have responded to a major Vodafone tender for supposedly 170,000 basestations across Europe and Africa. Rakuten Symphony, an offshoot of the Japanese e-commerce company, has competed vigorously for business in North America. Other Asian suppliers have done likewise.

All this reinforces industry suspicion that telcos never intended to do major deals with smaller vendors. Their somewhat Machiavellian open RAN scheme, say critics, was to maintain pressure on their traditional vendors and drive down prices. Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung, active in this market since the 4G era, now show up as the main open RAN winners. Without apparent shame or any sense of irony, AT&T has even marketed its decision to rip out Nokia and become almost solely reliant on Ericsson under the banner of open RAN.

AT&T's Ericsson deal is the most egregious example of what the industry now calls "single vendor open RAN." In this phenomenon, telcos demand compliance with open RAN specifications but take all products from the same vendor. Commercial arrangements are largely identical to those of a traditional RAN deal.

Ericsson, then, is now AT&T's sole provider of RAN software, service management and orchestration, a RAN intelligent controller (RIC) and a containers-as-a-service platform for that RAN. It is also down to supply most of the radios. Dell and Intel will contribute some IT hardware, but the only remaining opportunities for third parties are as developers of RIC applications or suppliers of radios in the few areas where AT&T has decided not to use Ericsson. Fujitsu, a longstanding Ericsson partner, is the only radio alternative AT&T has identified since announcing the deal nine months ago.

It made me realize that from the perspective of Huawei joining Open RAN Alliance AND at the same time making their hardware compatible with Open RAN software seem like a bad move to make for someone with their position on many markets and with their price to quality advantage (or maybe both price & quality advantage) because that would undermine their future negotiating position with the clients on the markets where they already dominate or where they will be considered. If their clients will be able to easily substitute one vendor’s component for another, Huawei would lose its strong negotiation position, and would open these markets for other competitors, so they may be forced to offer lower prices in the end. 

From the same article:

An unnecessary technological distraction

Maintaining the competitive pressure on suppliers is instinctive behavior for any business. But after years of mergers between kit makers, the recent initiatives linked to supply chain diversity and open RAN have arguably backfired, leaving telcos in a precarious position, with less solid choice than before. Not only has open RAN, judging by Omdia's data on market shares, failed to produce new viable alternatives to Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia, but it has also weakened the Nordic vendors as an additional source of pricing pressure and technological distraction that has nevertheless gobbled resources.

At a basic level, executives from Ericsson and Nokia have had to field questions from reporters, analysts and investors about open RAN's impact. In an industry that was already drowning in associations, they have had to commit resources to groups such as the O-RAN Alliance, the body in charge of specs, or face the charge they are unsupportive.

They have also had to invest in O-RAN compatibility that will have all the usefulness of the male nipple in a largely "single vendor open RAN" market. Incorporating new interfaces is not as straightforward as simply unlocking a door, as endless disputes about functional splits show. Ericsson, for instance, would rather build its radios with equalizers, which address interference, and its baseband products without them. But to be O-RAN compliant, it must put equalizers on both sides, even when a customer buys everything from Ericsson and the baseband equalizer is redundant.

It is a similar story for Nokia. Mismatched algorithms could affect the performance of massive MIMO, an advanced 5G technology, in multivendor networks, said Tommi Uitto, the head of its mobile networks business group, at the start of the year. "It can be done, but the performance is lesser, and some work is needed to make it feasible, make it practical, make it something that actually can be used in the field," he said. Yet this would all seem like wasted effort if the market dynamics do not change.

This supports one of the points we made earlier - that if Huawei is more advanced in some solutions it may be hard for them to make their hardware run on Open RAN compatible software and discussion on the standards between partners may take a lot of time which may be blocking or slowing Huawei new R&D efforts.

We also mentioned before that while there are calls from German telcos for a way to run Huawei hardware by Open RAN software provided by other companies, Huawei has not confirmed any efforts to do that. Also, the moment to join Open RAN to keep their hardware in the EU countries banning  Huawei may have already passed, unless the rest of the EU countries will ban it as well. So far in the EU, only "eleven countries, fewer than half the 27 EU member states, have used legal powers to impose restrictions on telecom suppliers that are considered high-risk, such as Huawei and ZTE, for 5G network infrastructure"

At the same time, this is not a question "Will Huawei join the Open RAN before 1 October 2025?", even if my mind would like to substitute the harder question we were asked with that simpler one. 

Actual formulation "This question will be resolved as “Yes” if Huawei or the O-RAN Alliance announce a collaboration between them on or before 1 October 2025. Such a collaboration might include, but is not limited to, Huawei joining the O-RAN Alliance, testing or developing equipment with O-RAN standards, or making financial or resource commitments. "

I believe these resolution criteria are broader and easier to satisfy with something like even announcement by Huawei that as they were asked by their clients they created a team to evaluate this idea of their hardware being controlled by Open RAN software and the team would likely conclude that it would lead to higher costs of development, higher prices, lower innovativeness, lower efficiency etc. I am not saying it is likely, but there is a room for a resolution of this question as "yes" with some announcements about some collaboration.

Some great forecasters whom I highly respect are currently much higher than the crowd (currently the mean - I believe it is the mean and not median - is 7%).

To name a few (in alphabetical order):

@404_NOT_FOUND - 12%

@Akkete - 13%

@cmeinel - 13%

@ctsats - 13%

@DimaKlenchin - 23%

@ScottEastman - 14%

@sebawi - 13%

I won't speak for them, but they are highly nuanced. Maybe their higher probabilities are a result of them seeing these possibilities of resolution as "yes" by other ways than announcement about Huawei joining Open RAN. 

@DKC keep making good points - see Dawna's comments here  and here 

Good comments by @404_NOT_FOUND here  and @VidurKapur here  (Vidur makes a good point about other non-NATO members states that may become Russias next targets more likely if they would be up for a next war)

Some interesting recent articles on the topic:

Army preparing to enter Ukraine, politicians leaving the country – how fear of being dragged into war is spread in the Baltics by Re:Baltica republished by European Digital Media Observatory 

'Too dangerous to ignore' – Russia's malicious activity in the Baltics set to test NATO resolve by Kyiv Independent

Some quotes from the above article:

A draft decree posted on the Kremlin's website on May 21 declared Russia would be unilaterally redrawing the maritime border with Lithuania and Finland in the Baltic Sea.
Then, as quickly as it appeared, the draft decree vanished on May 22.

There has been no public explanation from the Kremlin as to why it was taken down, but Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis described it as "an obvious escalation against NATO and the EU."

A day after the draft decree disappeared, so did buoys on the Narva River which mark the separation of Russian and Estonian territory.

Both countries agreed on the buoys' location in 2022, but the Kremlin then backtracked and disputed the placement of more than half of the 250 markers, which Russian border guards unilaterally began removing on May 23 without providing an explanation.

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas described it as a "border incident" and said it was being investigated.

“You see quite a lot of change in the Baltics. We are trying to convince our people to spend more on defense, to build up factories, to cooperate more with Ukraine, and to learn everything that we can because we feel that if Ukraine is unable to stop the Russians, then the Russians will not stop, and then who knows what will happen next,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told the Kyiv Independent in an exclusive interview.

The Latvian defense minister shared a similar concern.

"We are in a hybrid conflict right now," Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds told the Kyiv Independent on Aug. 23.
"Unfortunately, this is the neighbor we are facing," he added.

Throughout 2024, Western and NATO officials have been sounding the alarm on Russia's expansionist ambitions beyond Ukraine.

Denmark's Defence Minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, said on Feb. 9 Russia could attack a NATO country "within a three–to five-year period."

A top German general a day later said Germany should be prepared for a war with Russia within the next five years. And a senior Estonian official told the Financial Times (FT) in the same month that Russia’s "intent and capability” to attack a NATO country before the end of the decade was "pretty much consensus" within the military alliance.

If accurate, a simple matter of geography puts the Baltic states in the crosshairs of these future scenarios.

While on paper, NATO is far more powerful than Russia, Dr. Jan Kallberg, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, Washington D.C., and a fellow at the Army Cyber Institute at West Point, said the Kremlin could be relying on an inefficient and incoherent response from the military bloc to offset this.

"They maybe think the Western leadership isn't tough enough to stand up when things really hit the fan," he tells the Kyiv Independent, adding: "They might think that they can act quickly and the West won't have the time to do force generation in the area and they can, with little means, just capture the Baltics and the West faces a fait accompli.”
"Their bet is that the Western leadership would cave in," Kallberg said.

Does Russia want war in the Baltic Sea region?

As alarming as the prospect of further Russian invasions, naval assaults, and "demonstrative" nuclear explosions are, Braw (a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council) cautions against getting too wrapped up in looking for outright signs of military aggression.
"Frankly, I don't think taking over the Baltic states is Russia's first objective," she said.
"If you invade a country, if you break it, you own it – and occupying and administering occupied territory is extremely cumbersome, as Russia is seeing in Ukraine. I think weakening them, destabilizing them, and making them in many ways failed states is more what Russia wants,” Braw added.
Braw points to things like GPS jamming forcing and the mysterious disappearing decrees on maritime borders as actions designed to waste the time and resources of the Baltic governments and "making them uncertain about what's next."
"And this is intended to create a sense of paranoia and inferiority where you eventually say, 'we just have to live with a great deal of Russian influence in the region,’" she added.
Braw also points out that there is little NATO can do about such things as it's only set up to respond to overt military aggression.
"The Russians have been imaginative before, this is what they're good at," she said.
"They think of different ways of harming other countries, achieving their goals, and they do it underneath the threshold of Article 5, which means the affected countries struggle to respond.”

Kallberg agrees that if the situation in the Baltic Sea escalates further, whatever comes next won't be an outright declaration of war but something designed to test NATO's response.
“For us, it's very important to keep this transatlantic bond. As far as defense (goes), the U.S. should be number one (leading) in this case,” President Karis said. 

That last part I quoted above is good to see in Kyiv Independent and speaks well of their journalism - as a psychologist, I am aware how easy our mind can play tricks on us, and even if Chris York is a British journalist working for Kyiv Independent and covering the war, he could have fallen for a trap "this happened in Ukraine, this certainly will happen here as well". 

Also, a meta - level comment - in my previous forecast I called for the study of misperceptions between the West (which is not a monolith and has different perspectives and likely different misperceptions) and Russia.  A few further thoughts on that. 

Another great quote from Robert Jervis: “Perceptions of the world and of other actors diverge from reality in patterns that we can detect and for reasons that we can understand.” I do not have all the answers about how to do that, but I like listening to Mark Galeotti's "In Moscow Shadows" Podcast and reading his articles and book. 

Additionally, I think that a good way to look at these problems beyond rational actor theory is the Indicators Method - that way we will be looking for things which could start changing our minds (these signals my come not that much in advance - I guess months rather than years, but it may be a good way of preventing fixing our minds permanently on the current consensus, which would make us blind to changes). We can also use scenario analysis or backcasting (tagging @NukePirate who is an expert, and may want to comment).

@Gael-Tapia-Carbajal and @Rene reported news about the new "company law" which China is applying to the foreign companies, you can read more in Rene's comment here. This looks like something potentially important, but this part about law already in place since 2017 is interesting - from the NYPost (I know) article which @Rene found:

When asked by Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) in June if the company follows a 2017 law requiring companies to cooperate with the CCP’s intelligence services, Microsoft executive Brad Smith said no — and hinted that the company was somehow exempt.
“There are two types of countries in the world. Those that apply every law they enact, and those who enact certain laws but don’t always apply them. And in this context, China, and that law, is in the second category,” Smith said.

This new Chinese law may be something to watch, but the law from 2017 seems like much bigger problem, and it has not made Microsoft pull out from China.

@TrishBytes, @geoffodlum and others wrote about IBM pulling out from China, headlines say this is because of geopolitical tensions between the US and China, but what is also interesting is the business side of the explanation of this decision (which highlights the difference of the situation between IBM and Microsoft) - for example CNN here: 

Falling revenue

In the statement, IBM added that Chinese companies, especially privately owned firms, are increasingly focusing on hybrid cloud and AI technologies and that its strategy was to cater to those opportunities.
After years as a growth market, China is no longer the promising bright spot it once was for a number of industries. IBM said in its most recent annual report that revenue in the country fell by 19.6% last year.
(...)
Like IBM, Microsoft has worked hard to build goodwill in China.
It entered the market in 1992 and for decades counted on its influential research lab, Microsoft Research Lab Asia, to help it build influence. Its software is used by the Chinese government and companies, and Bing is the only foreign search engine with any traction in China.
But it, too, has been facing challenges, as geopolitics cloud the business outlook for American companies working in AI and cloud computing research in China.

More about this aspect from FT here (highlights with bold added by me):

IBM’s local business faces Chinese rivals benefiting from top-down Beijing directives to local governments and state-owned groups to buy more tech products from domestic providers.
“In recent years, IBM has been continuously reducing their presence — part of the decoupling,” said a former employee.
Sales at the China arm fell nearly 20 per cent in 2023 from a year earlier, while the Asia-Pacific region as a whole contributed 11.7 per cent of IBM’s $62bn in revenues. The tech group has also been trimming staff in other regions to boost its bottom line.
Some affected IBM employees in China were given the option to relocate to other countries, while others were offered severance based on the length of their employment if they agreed to their exit packages within three weeks, two staff members said.
The US group closed another big R&D unit — the Beijing-based China Research Lab — in 2021.
Another former employee noted IBM’s business in China faced difficulties. “Just like it sold the ThinkPad [laptop] business to Lenovo, it now has to shut down CDL and CSL. The businesses were not making good profits,” the person said.
Chinese corporate records show IBM has more than 7,500 staff in the country, with a big office in the north-eastern city of Dalian. A large research team in China could complicate winning contracts from the US government, a major customer for “Big Blue”.
IBM said it “adapts its operations as needed to best serve our clients, and these changes will not impact our ability to support clients across Greater China region”.

Here is a good article form Forbes about Microsoft business in China: 

Although Microsoft acknowledges that state-supported Chinese actors are exploiting its products to steal foreign intellectual property and penetrate vital infrastructure, it has not slowed its business activities in China. Quite the opposite. It sells over 70 products in the People’s Republic and employs thousands of software engineers—many of whom work on cutting-edge innovations.
(...)
In 2014 Microsoft became the first foreign company to offer public cloud computing services in the Chinese market. It has continued to offer new products in China, including cybersecurity software such as Sentinel, Defender and Azure Firewall. The company announced in March of this year that it would begin offering OpenAI as part of its cloud services. Many of its products in the Chinese market are supported by or marketed through a network of 17,000 Chinese partners.

Not related directly to the Microsoft position and investments in China, but something worrying from the same article:

The People’s Daily reported on March 5, 2003 that Microsoft had given the Chinese government access to the source code for its widely used Windows operating system. Windows has since been used to perpetrate attacks against a variety of foreign assets, including most recently U.S. infrastructure. Under the terms of the cybersecurity law, Microsoft potentially is required to reveal highly sensitive features of its product software, such as encryption keys.
Malware Vulnerabilities. Microsoft has increasingly warned that the unusual degree of access to intellectual property afforded by Chinese law and regulation has security implications for users of its products. The Chinese government insists that when software vulnerabilities are detected, they must be reported to the government before other organizations are alerted.
This demand is enforced even against domestic companies. For instance, Alibaba was sanctioned for reporting a vulnerability to Apache in its source code before it was reported to the government. Unfortunately, the government may be using such early reporting to support its own cyberattacks around the world. Microsoft expressed that fear in its 2022 Digital Defense Report:
Many of the attacks coming from China are powered by its ability to find and compile “zero-day vulnerabilities”—unique unpatched holes in software not previously known to the security community. China’s collection of these vulnerabilities appears to have increased on the heels of a new law requiring entities in China to report vulnerabilities they discover to the government before sharing them with others.
In other words, Microsoft has agreed to terms for its market presence in China that facilitate China’s efforts to compromise information systems around the world. Because Microsoft products are so ubiquitous and China demands unique access to their source code and potential vulnerabilities, they can be readily weaponized by state-supported hackers.

As I reported before here, Microsoft cloud was one of the cloud services used by Chinese companies to bypass restrictions on access to high-end US chips.

China still operates on Microsoft Windows - estimates say they have 80% of the desktop OS market there: 

But for the Chinese desktop market, Windows has become indispensable. It’s hard to get solid numbers on desktop OS usage in China, both because of piracy and general secrecy, but some analysts have estimated Microsoft’s share as high as 80%. Given the nature of Windows, that portion is probably heavily focused on offices and industry. With so much of the excitement and growth in the sector focused on mobile devices, there are few Chinese tech companies interested in challenging Microsoft in the desktop space, so there’s been no real threat to its dominance. If you’re making a product for desktops, you’re making it for Windows.

Microsoft's Bing Remains Most Popular Desktop Search Engine In China With A 37.5% Share 

So my point is that we should not update our probabilities that much on IBM pulling out of China because the business side of such a decision is very different for Microsoft. That likely is a signal (part of the decision is likely due to political tensions, but these tensions were also affecting their business both in China and in the US), but I do not see it as a strong one.

I know that Laplace's Rule of Succession is overused in judgmental forecasting, but the formula might be some reference point if we can treat the process behind the event occurrence as having a constant probability in the analyzed period.
It is likely not constant, but as I see it, this is a decision which can be made at any point of time, so treating it as something with constant probability may be reasonable - do you agree?
I mainly object to using it in cases of forecasting related to evolving processes, where we in fact have more information indicating the progress of such process. Like for example, the company is developing a game, and it has been announced to be released on date X - then using this rule and taking the months or days between its initial announcement and today as time when it has not been released as a basis for our calculations of probability of its release is absurd. The probability cannot be the same for the first days after the announcement and the days around the date of its planned release. It would be more appropriate to look at the usual delays for previous productions of that studio, or delays of similar game projects by similar game studios. We could include cases of games which were never released for a separate probability of project being abandoned or the studio going bankrupt during the work on the project.
You may see this as obvious, but I have seen people I highly respect as forecasters using the Laplace's Rule like that - good forecasters can make mistakes too, I make mistakes not as rarely as I would want 😉 and I am very happy to learn from all of you, please let me know when you think you see a mistake in my thinking, knowledge, assumptions or calculations.

So, we've observed 78 months where the event didn't occur (since February 2018 when O-RAN started)

The number of successes (s) is 0

The number of trials (n) is 78

Applying the formula:

P(event occurs in a single month) = (0 + 1) / (78 + 2) = 1 / 80 = 0.0125

We want to know the probability of this event occurring at least once in the next 13 months (the time till end date). This is equivalent to 1 minus the probability of it not occurring in any of those 13 months:

P(event occurs in next 13 months) = 1 - P(event doesn't occur in next 13 months)

= 1 - (1 - 0.0125)^13 ≈ 15.09%

So, I don't think we are at the time of peak probability of that happening, the highest motivation for Huawei to join O-RAN was before they started to be removed from NATO countries (see this article: https://www.lightreading.com/5g/europe-s-inaction-on-huawei-may-have-come-at-the-worst-5g-time), and they were dismissive about O-RAN in the past in their official comments.  Now the probability still might be a bit higher than for a random month because of what is happening in Germany - https://www.infer-pub.com/comments/134520 - but the lack of comments about that from Huawei in more than a month after the article still makes me think it is more probable that this is Huawei clients initiative which Huawei may not support. So that part of my last forecast stays the same: https://www.infer-pub.com/comments/137717

I changed my mind, updated my beliefs on several things:
1. The resolution criteria are quite broad and inclusive, and the threshold for a  resolution as "yes" is lower than the title of the question suggests. 

This question will be resolved as “Yes” if Huawei or the O-RAN Alliance announce a collaboration between them on or before 1 October 2025. Such a collaboration might include, but is not limited to, Huawei joining the O-RAN Alliance, testing or developing equipment with O-RAN standards, or making financial or resource commitments.

2. This article https://www.lightreading.com/5g/europe-s-inaction-on-huawei-may-have-come-at-the-worst-5g-time makes me update on the argument that Huawei may not want to resign from software because they would lose the opportunity for spying or sabotage: 

Software is a feature of not just the management systems but also the baseband units that process mobile signals and are usually found at the bottom of a mobile mast. Even if Huawei was evicted from the management system, it could still introduce malicious code into the baseband software, said one industry source on condition of anonymity. Lum agrees. "The baseband unit is a security issue," he said.
Huawei maintains that its software has undergone more rigorous scrutiny than that of any other vendor. The UK even established a dedicated facility, the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre, that puts the Chinese vendor's source code under a microscope. No other vendor is subject to the same examination. And despite this, no one has produced conclusive evidence of any wrongdoing by Huawei. 

3.  Interesting article shared by @DimaKlenchin   https://www.telecoms.com/telecoms-infrastructure/open-ran-is-failing-to-deliver-on-its-ultimate-promise showing that the idea of O-RAN might be losing its market attractiveness as it has not delivered what was promised:

The big hope for Open RAN was that it would flood the market with a tsunami of innovative, competitively-priced vendors, leaving operators spoilt for choice as to whose products they could use in their networks. By extension, it was also hoped that Open RAN would make it less costly for Western operators to replace equipment supplied by China's Huawei and ZTE.
The reality today is markedly mundane. Operators are still interested in deploying Open RAN, but most of them are using products from familiar names like Ericsson, Nokia, and – albeit to a slightly lesser degree – Samsung.
With the notable exception of CSPs in Germany, most telcos that needed to replace Chinese-made kit are well on their way to doing so, and as such, one of the driving forces behind Open RAN is ebbing away. 

Great find by @ScottEastman here: https://www.infer-pub.com/comments/134520 but more than a month has passed from that news and I haven't seen any Huawei remarks that they consider such a move as a solution (likely technical side of the process would take a long time).
That may not mean anything, but It looks to me as this talk about Huawei joining O-RAN to be able to stay in Germany came from Huawei clients rather than Huawei itself. However, it is important signal, since Huawei clients must have talked with the company about that option and it was publicly suggested as a way for Huawei to stay in Germany as a hardware provider.
According to this article western markets may not matter that much for Huawei and its biggest shareholder - the Chinese Government because the global market is big, and the company already handled the problem of being kicked out from the US and a few other western countries and is on the growth trajectory. One perspective is that for the Chinese government, with their global ambitions, Huawei might be worth more as an asset which can be used for espionage than just a source of income. From that point of view, keeping their own close source proprietary software seems like a much better move than joining O-RAN and allowing other countries to use other software providers with their equipment (see this article about technologies supposedly developed by Huawei - see the quote below since this is behind a paywall). Of course, I don't know Chinese decision makers preferences on that, but cases in which Huawei employees were accused of espionage activity (for example: link, link) or when the company was investigated for potentially malicious intent (link) strongly suggest that they do not see it only as a business. 

Quotes from the Washington Post's article  "Documents link Huawei to China’s surveillance programs" from December 14, 2021 mentioned above :

A review by The Washington Post of more than 100 Huawei PowerPoint presentations, many marked “confidential,” suggests that the company has had a broader role in tracking China’s populace than it has acknowledged.

These marketing presentations, posted to a public-facing Huawei website before the company removed them late last year, show Huawei pitching how its technologies can help government authorities identify individuals by voice, monitor political individuals of interest, manage ideological reeducation and labor schedules for prisoners, and help retailers track shoppers using facial recognition.

and:

The Huawei slides shed light on the company’s role in five surveillance activities in China: voice recording analysis, detention center monitoring, location tracking of political individuals of interest, police surveillance in the Xinjiang region, and corporate tracking of employees and customers.

They still have open job postings for the AI Research LAB in China (both posted two days ago on August 21st) - @PeterStamp already posted about that here: https://www.infer-pub.com/comments/137603): 
https://jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/job/1755631/Principal-Applied-Scientist-(WPO-team)
https://jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/job/1743227/Researcher

There was recent information published by Reuters that China state controlled entities used Amazon and Microsoft cloud service to bypass restrictions on access to high-end US chips. So the US government may update a law to remove that way of bypassing this ban, but that should not affect the Microsoft AI lab in China.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/chinese-entities-turn-amazon-cloud-its-rivals-access-high-end-us-chips-ai-2024-08-23/ 
https://www.reuters.com/technology/list-chinese-entities-who-have-turned-cloud-access-restricted-us-tech-2024-08-23/

With the clarification provided by @dante here, and especially this part "something like a sabotage mission or covert operation we wouldn’t consider large enough for an invasion. ", I reduce my probability for invasion of Lithuania to below 0.5% (so it rounds to 0%).

Even if by 2027 Russia has achieved their military objectives in Ukraine (however they will define them at that time) and declared victory, on a rational level, I think it is very unlikely they would want to start another confrontation this soon, and with a stronger opponent. The only scenario which comes to my mind of a large-scale invasion happening which could be considered as not violating the rational actor theory, is the one when it happens shortly after the start of the US-China military confrontation, most likely over Taiwan, especially, if China would be winning. However, a large-scale Chinese military confrontation with the US happening in this timeframe, likely would not fit into rational actor theory even if China would be confident about their military having the upper hand, because of the risks to their economy (I am not an expert on this, but I read that in Krzysztof Wojczal's book "Trzecia Dekada" and it makes sense to me). So that scenario itself seems very unlikely because there are a lot of "if" conditions to be satisfied first. Even if the US would leave NATO (again, something with very low probability - Metaculus community median is currently at 97% that the US will remain in NATO until at least January 1, 2029, I would probably say 99% here), I doubt that the US would just be watching the Russian invasion of NATO countries in Europe and doing nothing. There might be of course some other scenarios I have not thought of. 

But my point is that the rational perspective (at least if we define rationality as in rational actor theory) is not everything. Before full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia the consensus of most of the Superforecasters was for a long time that this will not happen. I remember that I initially agreed with their rationale, that this wouldn't be a rational move for Russia, but facts on the ground made me change my mind. I remember feeling bad going against the consensus of such a wise group of people with such a great track record (people I really respect and have a few friends among them), but I decided that to learn anything, after considering all the information I have, I need to follow my thinking and my judgment wherever it leads me. Some of my Superforecaster friends also changed their view on this, and the consensus eventually changed as well. There were also superforecasters and other great forecasters who were convinced about this happening very early, but they were a minority, an exception. I remember that Metaculites have done quite a good job there, but as a community we also haven't seen that months in advance. Some members of the great Samotsvety Forecasting Team won good money on prediction market betting that this will happen - I wonder if part of the success could have been non-western centered perspective and insights of Misha Yagudin - a great forecaster who is Russian.
My point here is that the consensus of so many great minds was for quite some time in its essence that Russia won't do it because it is not the rational thing to do for them.

As Robert Jervis wrote in his book "Perception and Misperception in International Politics":

"A state that is not willing to run major risks may misperceive or miscalculate and undertake very dangerous actions. The state’s behavior would not correspond then to its basic intentions. For example, the Russians probably grossly mis-estimated the risks they were running by putting missiles into Cuba. And at many points Hitler may have been reckless not because he willingly tolerated a high probability of war but because he was certain that the other side would back down. When his generals opposed his policy on the grounds that it was too dangerous Hitler did not argue that the risks were worth running. Rather he told them that the risks were slight. Indeed it may be that states that use force to alter the status quo often differ from others less in their willingness to run perceived risks than in the fact that they perceive low risks in situations where others perceive high ones."

and:

"(...) because differences in firsthand experiences lead to differences in perceptual predispositions, the chance of misperception is increased by events that one actor experiences but that others with whom he interacts know of only indirectly. Furthermore, each actor may be unable to understand how the other is perceiving and why it is behaving as it is."

Miscalculations and miscommunication happen and quite often lead to armed conflicts. I think it is safe to say that Russia miscalculated in 2022 with their initial goals, but we are yet to see how it ends for them in the long run.
Other example which comes to my mind is Iraq invading Kuwait. Here is the long quote from "Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein" book by John Nixon a CIA analyst who interrogated Saddam Hussein after his capture in 2003:

Saddam was forever puzzled by his country’s relationship with the United States. When we talked about U.S.–Iraqi relations, Saddam often got a perplexed look on his face, as if he was still trying to figure out where the relationship went wrong. “The West used to say good things about Saddam,” he said. “But after 1990 all that changed.” (Interestingly enough, this comment was echoed by officials from the George H. W. Bush administration during an NBC roundtable discussion on the twentieth anniversary of the Gulf War. Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser, said that after 1990, Saddam just changed. James Baker, the former secretary of state, shook his head in agreement. They couldn’t understand why. Things had gone along well in the 1980s, but somehow Saddam changed. Saddam had remained remarkably consistent in his governing and his penchant for doing the unpredictable. The Bush 41 administration had been caught unaware by Saddam’s foray into Kuwait. I strongly doubt that if Washington had made it clear to Saddam what it was willing to do to reverse any hostile Iraqi move against Kuwait, he would have crossed that red line.) Pointing out that America had supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam said, “If I was wrong, why did the U.S. support me? If I was right, why did they change?” In Saddam’s mind, it was the United States that had suddenly and inexplicably changed course. “Iraq had a good relationship with the U.S. in [President] Reagan’s time, but it took a wrong turn during the [Bush] father and son era,” he said. “I saw the day in the 1950s when Iraqi youth would line up for information about America. Now what does it look like? The embassies all have guns.”

So my main point here is that I think we should be looking at how the current war between Russia and Ukraine can affect these misperceptions between Russia and NATO in the future.

We all talk about how Russia doesn't have red lines, and how the western politicians are gradually overcoming their mental barriers regarding what types of weapons can be provided to Ukraine and how Ukraine can use them against Russia. However, we should also be thinking about how this affects Russians perceptions and how it can cause misperception.

Russians are told by their government and media that they are fighting NATO, and they not only see NATO equipment fighting them in Ukraine, but now after the Kursk offensive also in their own territory (not to mention that many of them undoubtedly perceive occupied parts of Ukraine as Russian territory, but this still must be kind of next level of confrontation for them). And in a way, they are fighting with NATO, as NATO provides weapons, ammunition, intelligence, money, training and other supplies and support to Ukraine. So, I think for Russians and Russian soldiers and officers, armed confrontation with NATO soldiers may be easier to imagine and accept as an act, than before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Would a kind of mirror-imaging cause them to think the same about NATO red lines as we now think about theirs? Would their own experience lead them to doubt the resolve of NATO countries to follow Article 5 over things like soldiers crossing Baltic country border? I don't know, but I believe we should be thinking about that.