An active US-Iran shooting war dominates the outlook: with US personnel killed in Jordan and CENTCOM striking Iranian targets nightly, further US strikes, a Gulf missile-defense surge, and continued maritime incidents near Hormuz are all likely within weeks — though Trump's history of abrupt escalate-then-deal reversals caps the certainty. Secondary threads span the AI industrial buildout (Alibaba's next Qwen, Oracle's Wisconsin power bottleneck), fraying EU sanctions unity, and tightening Russian financial and diaspora-repression measures.

The Skeptic approved at risk 83, noting multiple search hits confirming Oracle's lawsuit, PSC pushback, and financing friction, and that large power-hungry data centers frequently hit permitting delays. The $7B collateral requirement is a concrete, documented signal rather than hype. Three-model council consensus (0.65-0.72). This is a valuable cross-domain forecast showing power/permitting — not capital — as the real chokepoint on the AI buildout. I hold at 0.66, just above the dead zone: the mechanism is credible but 'formal delay or scope revision' within a specific 180-day window still carries genuine timing uncertainty. Pillars: infrastructure_readiness, competitive_dynamics.