The Assessment
The Assessment podcast examines the geopolitical questions that matter most. Each episode opens with an AI-generated probability forecast, which a panel of leading experts then interrogates - testing the assumptions, weighing the evidence and probing the limits of what forecasting can reliably tell us. The Assessment podcast show is hosted by Charlie Edwards, Senior Fellow for Strategy & National Security; Head of Analytics, Six Analytic. The podcast is produced by the IISS Crowd Forecasting, Collective Intelligence and Strategic Risks programme and supported by Acacia. For more information, visit https://www.iiss.org/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episodes
What happens to US defence funding if Democrats win the House?
In the final episode of this series of The Assessment, Charlie Edwards asks a conditional forecasting question: if Democrats hold a majority in the US House of Representatives on 3 January 2027, will Congress enact full-year FY2027 appropriations for the Department of Defense by 31 March?
An aggregate forecast from leading AI models puts the probabilit...
In episode five of The Assessment, Charlie Edwards is joined by Caroline Bain, founder of Bain Commodities Research, and Natalie Scott-Gray, Senior Metals Demand Analyst at StoneX, to unpack the tightening outlook for the copper market. With ore grades falling at ageing mines and Chinese smelters facing record-low treatment charges, is the market heading for a structural deficit, or will new supply come through faster than expected...
In episode four of The Assessment, Charlie Edwards is joined by Dr Dan Watson, Research Associate for Conflict, Security and Development at the IISS, and Paul Melly, Consulting Fellow in the Africa Programme at Chatham House, to unpack the deepening crisis across Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. With insurgents making gains against the Malian junta, is Russia's Africa Corps quietly shifting from counterinsurgency operations to serving...
In the third episode of The Assessment, Charlie Edwards, Emile Hokayem and Elliot Hentov probe an AI forecast suggesting that it is unlikely that major carriers will announce a full resumption of services through the Strait of Hormuz before the end of the year.
They explore Iran's 17 August fee deadline, the insurance and mine-clearance bottlenecks and what a semi-permanent Cape detour would mean for global trade.
In episode two of The Assessment, our experts revisit the Hague summit pledge of 5% of GDP on defence by 2035 one year on and ask whether it's already fiscally out of reach for key NATO members.
Host Charlie Edwards is joined by Fenella McGerty, Senior Fellow for Defence Economics at the IISS, and Howard Mustoe, Editor of The Rearmament. They interrogate an AI generated forecast that assesses it is highly likely that, following ...
Most analysis tells you what just happened. The Assessment podcast asks what comes next.
Hosted by Charlie Edwards, each episode takes a geopolitical question and opens with a forecast generated by an AI-powered platform. That forecast is then put to leading experts who examine its assumptions, identify its limits, and bring regional and subject-matter expertise to bear on the question the models alone cannot resolve. Th...
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