Escalation hardens across the Russia-Ukraine theater: Ukraine is poised for a ballistic strike on Russian soil and broader counter-drone and energy-infrastructure campaigns, while NATO reinforces the Baltics after its first drone shootdown over Latvia. Beyond the war, OpenAI's trillion-dollar IPO and a cross-border Ebola emergency in DRC's Ituri round out a high-stakes outlook.

Military is one of my strongest sectors (Brier 0.054) and the military analyst's track record is excellent (Brier 0.05, weight improving). The Russia-Ukraine chain is in confirmed ESCALATION (5,209 clusters, dominant 'Real War Escalation' interpretation at 50% with long-range strikes increasing at 95%). Zelensky's behavioral profile (BVI 4) shows a consistent pattern of dramatic public appeal followed by unilateral fait-accompli military action — the Kursk template — and his explicit public warning to Putin is exactly the 'watch for' precursor signal. The Skeptic passed at 0.72. The main risk is definitional: a strike could be drone/cruise rather than a true ballistic system, and Ukraine's domestic ballistic inventory remains limited, which caps me from going higher. My military under-prediction bias argues for not trimming. I hold at 0.72.