RFI has selected six Pro Forecasters as RFI Adjuncts within RAND's Defense and Political Science Department. As adjuncts, this team of experienced forecasters will be collaborating with researchers across RAND to build up the organization's internal forecasting capabilities.

RFI is seeking forecasts that explore emerging capabilities in biotechnology and the biomedical sciences, helping to gauge the probability that critical scientific and regulatory breakthroughs might prove feasible over the next decade. RAND technology and security policy (TASP) fellow, Jordan Despanie discusses how crowdsourced forecasting will inform this research effort.

We are pleased to share our Best of 2024, a list recognizing forecasters who consistently raised the bar for accuracy and engagement this past season. 

We're proud to share the progress that the RAND Forecasting Initiative has made in setting the groundwork for integrating crowd perspectives with expert analysis to aid in high-stakes policy decisions.

RAND associate information scientist Lennart Heim shares insights on his experience as a Pro forecaster and the application of forecasting in AI compute trends and policy.

The RFI Team is collaborating with RAND researchers to investigate China's semiconductor industry, focusing on lithography technologies. This effort aims to explore how U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductor technologies are shaping China's strategy in the global AI leadership race.

Learn how a collaboration with RFI and RAND's Information Warfare Research Team will provide predictive insights around the influence of Russian disinformation in Europe, with a particular focus on Russian propaganda in the 2025 elections in Germany. 

RAND fellow Jordan Despanie shares insights on crowdsourced forecasting techniques and their application to technology and security policy in a new blog interview.

Q&A with Marie Jones, co-director of the RAND Forecasting Initiative (RFI). Learn how new forecast questions on Africa contribute towards research on key under-examined security issues impacting Africa and African diaspora countries.

A new blog post from RAND highlights how their researchers are using crowdsourced forecasting to augment traditional RAND expertise and analysis in their assessment of the potential that Israel may declare war on Hezbollah.

INFER has launched a new strategic topic on the Open RAN ecosystem for a U.S. government stakeholder to determine the extent to which the U.S. should continue investing in this effort.

We spoke to some of the forecasters who ranked in the top 20% of the 2023 leaderboard about how they approached the forecasting process, and what techniques they believe made their performance stand out during the season.

We talked with Pro Forecasters Geoff Odlum and Trent Hesslink about their experiences in forecasting, and the impact of crowd forecasting for governments and national security. 

We're pleased to announce that INFER is now the RAND Forecasting Initiative (RFI). 

INFER is pleased to share the Best of 2023 list, celebrating our most accurate and engaged forecasters from last season.

We are concluding INFER’s second year of crowd forecasting following a year rife with uncertainty for policymakers. INFER’s community of forecasters parsed complex issues to make sense of critical events that will shape the future for years to come.

INFER forecasters and experts weigh in on questions related to the Israel-Hamas war, including the chance of a ceasefire in Gaza, the likelihood of Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel, of Iran and Israel going to war, and more. 

INFER has launched a new strategic topic to support a U.S. Government stakeholder who wants to understand the future outlook of Iran’s influence on violent non-state actors.

Three years after the U.S. pulled out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, Iran began ignoring the deal’s restrictions on its nuclear program. Now, using our issue decomposition process, INFER is assessing the likelihood that Iran will produce a nuclear weapon.

A recap of a special forecasting event INFER hosted about the future of AI, attended by select INFER forecasters and nearly two dozen forecasting enthusiasts who work at Google, joining in a personal capacity.

INFER aims to strengthen the connection between science and policymaking when it comes to assessing risks by providing a new source of information that can serve as a complement to scientific assessments.

Does the JCPOA—or something like it—have a future? Forecasters at INFER have been tackling a series of questions related to the deal and to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. They’ve forecasted the likelihood of Iran leaving the JCPOA, as well as of other participants enacting “snapback” sanctions.

In this post, we explore how you can use an AI tool like ChatGPT to gain a quick understanding of a complex forecast topic as well as improve the logical support behind your rationale.

Are we entering an era of even more rampant misinformation with the rise of AI? That was the focus of a recent talk supported by INFER as part of the Phoenix Challenge, a seminar series for senior officials in governments, think tanks and other policy experts. See how the INFER crowd forecasts on this topic compared with the experts.

All spring, the world waited for Ukraine’s counter-offensive against Russia to begin. Now that it is under way, policymakers around the world are closely monitoring its prospects. Forecasters at INFER are tracking the conflict, too, and predicting the amount of territory each side will hold by the end of the year.