A widening US-Iran kinetic exchange in the Gulf and an intensifying Black Sea naval war dominate today's outlook, while Beijing's patient leverage over Moscow — refusing to conclude Power of Siberia-2 — underscores Russia's deepening junior-partner status even as its home front strains under fuel shortages and demographic decline.

Under Xi, anti-corruption is a rolling mechanism of elite discipline, not a closed chapter — the base rate for a senior action within any six-month window is high. Xi's profile (patient elite management, 'stability maintenance' as core constraint, policing of cadre loyalty) directly supports continued purges, and slowing 4.3% growth raises distributional stress inside the system, increasing the value of selective purges. The political analyst set 0.70; the Skeptic (risk 84) endorsed the base-rate logic with only mild confirmation-bias caveat. Given my geopolitics under-prediction bias (~21pp) and the favorable base rate over a long 180-day window, I raise to 0.75.