2019 NYE AMA Archive
15 Jan 2019
2019 AMA Forecasts Overview & Results
2019 Ask Me Anything (AMA) Results I started a tradition on New Year’s Eve 2018. “Ask Me Anything” about a topic in the coming new year and get an improvised, off-the-cuff, unsourced, but what I hope is an interesting forecast. This document presents each question asked in the 2019 New Years Eve AMA followed by
14 Jan 2019
Q 1What will happen in Yemen?
Forecast as of New Years Eve 2018 (What’s this?) That one’s unfortunately easy. Continued quagmire escalating into a worse conflict. With the US withdrawal from Syria and (my anticipated) drawdown in Iraq – Iran has completed its geographic encirclement of the GCC. The weakest spot in that encirclement however is Yemen and since I don’t
13 Jan 2019
Q2 What’s the long term impact of cybersecurity attack on newspapers?
Forecast as of New Years Eve 2018 (What’s this?) Not really my area. But my general view is that we tend to overthink cyberattacks that are startling and gain attention at the time because they hit close to home, but don’t have catastrophic results (like the NY Times paper printing) with ones that we didn’t
12 Jan 2019
Q3 Whether the South China Sea dispute will resolve?
Forecast as of New Years Eve 2018 (What’s this?) No. I pretty much put a litmus test out in the 90’s, which was if China could complete the Three Gorges Dam it was going to be a steamrolling superpower and I wouldn’t want to bet against it somehow eventually getting what it wants until I
10 Jan 2019
Q5 What is Russia’s response to any impeachment proceedings?
Forecast as of New Years Eve 2018 (What’s this?) Admit nothing, deny everything, shift blame, counter-accuse and let Trump swing. They got their money’s worth with the initial DNC breach and were playing with the house’s money when Podesta doubled-down by clicking on the link in Gmail. They they’ve been riding the crest of one
09 Jan 2019
Q6 How long will the shutdown will last?
Forecast as of New Years Eve 2018 (What’s this?) I think it breaks the record and lasts over 21 days. But I’m not sure how much longer after that. The contingencies to watch for is “deals” being offered that clearly don’t have the blessing of the base are DOA. For example Graham’s Wall-for-Dreamers is certainly
08 Jan 2019
Q7 Will Libya become unified and/or stable?
Forecast as of New Year’s Eve 2018 (What is this?) Stable yes, unified no. The momentum is towards increased stability and some form of power-sharing, coalition style government. But at its core Libya is as much a tribal society as Afghanistan is – and I think one of the risks in countries like that is
07 Jan 2019
Q8 What is the single greatest threat to the downward trend of crime in America?
New Year’s Eve 2018 Forecast (What is this?) I’m going to stick with violence because it’s what I know and reframe it as “What is the single greatest threat to the downward trend in violence?” This differentiates it from questions like “how do we reduce the prison population?” because although both involve crime, not all
06 Jan 2019
Q9 Will org LARPing remain a mess?
2018 New Year’s Eve Forecast (What’s this?) So yes and no. Yes, in that orgs will continue the long journey to take things seriously. I think White Wolf’s botch over V5, and its fallout sends a clear message of the consequences of failing to properly handle concerns. These messages have been accumulating in society but
05 Jan 2019
Q10 Will Brexit remain a mess?
2018 New Year’s Eve Forecast (What’s this?) In systems theory we often describe how there are so many balancing loops constraining behavior that systems tend to revert to the mean and away from chaos. That usually only leaves shock events as capable of creating chaos, and then the balancing loops activate and drive the system
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