about the world that we live in:

I'm finding a lot of panic, people that are very online,

spending too much time on cable news and social media,

and maybe talking to their crazy uncle.

This is meant to be a counterbalance,

that you can keep the uncle

but you can also spend some time

thinking about deeper analytic trends

of what really is an issue

that's worth concerning yourself with,

how we might be able to respond to it,

and also all the things that, frankly,

don't merit the screaming headlines.

What we're talking about in the Top Risks Report

are those risks out there, globally,

that are going to have the most likely dramatic implications

in changing the way the world works

in ways that are unanticipated

by all of the major actors in that world:

the government actors, the business actors,

and the citizens.

And they're ranked in terms of impact,

imminence, and likelihood-

you put those three things together

and you get the top risks.

I'm Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group,

and these are the top risks of 2023.

Number 10: Water stress.

Around the world, so many people think of water

as a sudden emergency

that needs a quick and immediate policy response.

Increasingly, this is an ongoing,

real-time issue for everyone.

Some people have too much water;

massive floods in California.

Some people have too little;

huge challenges with shipping in Europe.

Farmers having to consistently change the way they go

about their basic productivity on a season-to-season basis

because they do not have adequate resources

to be able to plant a normal season.

This is having the biggest impact on the Middle East

and sub-Saharan Africa, but it's a global issue.

There are global responses,

just like the COP summits on biodiversity

and on carbon emissions,

there's a COP summit on water,

but no one's ever heard of it

because it doesn't really do anything,

it hasn't become a priority,

therefore, it's not getting the resources,

and therefore it's getting worse every single year.

2023 is really the first year

that I think we can talk about global water

as being the kind of ongoing condition of stress

that we've already come to learn

about carbon, about biodiversity.

Number nine: TikTok boom.

It's not actually about TikTok,

it's about the generation that has grown up on TikTok.

It's the most diverse generation we've ever seen

in the West.

It's also, by far, the most activist.

At a young age, believing that they can do much more

by getting online and by demonstrating,

than they can by voting,

and that has much greater impact,

both in terms of driving agendas

that are very important to them, like on climate,

like on social equity-

also in terms of changing outcomes

for people in positions of power,

and here I'm thinking not just about political leaders

but also about industry leaders, CEOs, bankers,

and the like.

That is going to create big ripple waves

across the global economy

precisely because it's the most progressive generation,

and as a consequence, it will cause more volatility,

will lead to more political and economic change-

much of which will eventually be welcomed-

but the getting from here to there is, of course,

gonna be a challenge.

Number eight: Divided States of America.

Now, the fact that it's number eight, the United States,

and the U.S. is the most powerful country in the world,

kinda means it almost didn't make the list,

means that we are not panicking

about the future of the United States, but still,

divisions in the United States, politically,

are massive, they're much greater

than those of other advanced industrial economies

around the world,

that makes it a lot harder to functionally govern.

You saw this with 15 votes

to get Kevin McCarthy barely over the line

as Speaker of the House,

and he's gonna have an impossible time

actually holding that party together.

You also see this

with inability to even address fundamental issues

like improving education,

or dealing with immigration in the United States,

even though we all know what the basic answers are.

But the big positive in this risk is the fact

that all of the people that were running

for key positions of governor and Secretary of State

to oversee upcoming elections,

those that were claiming

that this election was gonna be stolen

and they had to stop the steal, they all lost.

So as we look forward to 2024,

the likelihood of a constitutional crisis

in the United States is virtually zero.

Number seven is arrested global development.

For 50 years, the world has seen

incredible human improvement in education,

in health and lifespan,

in economic growth across the world-

it wasn't just a tiny group of rich people

that were taking advantage, it was the emergence

of a global middle class.

We are now seeing that turn around:

we're seeing more people driven into poverty,

we're seeing more children leaving school, and particularly,

a burden on women being driven into sexual trafficking,

being driven into the informal economy,

not being able to experience the basic human rights

that they've worked so hard to achieve

over the last 50 years.

The United Nations estimates

that five years of human development on the planet

has been lost in the three years

since the pandemic has begun, and in 2023,

those losses will only accelerate.

There are lots of structural reasons for that,

some of it is, of course, the dangers of the pandemic,

some of it is the challenges that came

from the disruptions of the Russian invasion of Ukraine,

all the supply chain challenges,

and the inflation that came on the back of it,

some of it is climate change.

You put all of those things together

and global development is changing trajectory.

Number six: Energy crunch.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine means

that the Europeans are no longer getting their gas

and much of their oil from Russia,

one of the largest energy producers in the world.

But the Europeans need their energy,

what are they doing?

They're spending as much as humanly possible

to get the energy from anywhere else they can,

that drives prices up,

but it also means that developing countries

that don't have access to the same deep pockets

that the Europeans do are really taking it in the teeth.

So over the course of the year,

the Europeans are going to experience

another challenging winter,

in many ways more challenging in 2023 than in 2022,

because they don't have the benefits

of all of that Russian energy that was coming in

at the beginning of the year like they did last year,

but also it means that the knock-on challenges

for the poorer countries that are not commodity producers

around the world, gonna feel very great stress this year.

Number five: Iran in a corner.

Demonstrations across Iran erupted months ago

with the killing of Mahsa Amini, a young woman

who was not correctly wearing her head scarf,

killed by the "morality police," so-called, in Iran,

and it touched off the greatest demonstrations

they've had on the ground since the 1979 revolution-

and the Iranian government is only repressing in response,

there's no willingness to have a dialogue or compromise.

No, in fact, we see, increasingly,

the Iranian government is willing to execute their citizens

with no reason.

At the same time as that's going on,

the JCPOA, the Iranian Nuclear Deal

the Americans stepped away from unilaterally,

well, the Iranians are stepping away from it too,

and they've now achieved 'nuclear breakout,'

their willingness to engage

in nuclear development enrichment that would allow them

to build nuclear weapons when the inspectors aren't there.

And finally, the Iranians are Russia's best friend

on the global stage.

Chinese aren't providing them

with military support to invade Ukraine, but Iran is,

that's angering the Americans, angering the Europeans.

The likelihood we see regime change in Iran

is relatively low, and even if it were to occur,

it would probably be towards a military dictatorship,

not to a democracy;

it's not gonna help in resolving any of these issues.

But the likelihood that we see military confrontation

between Iran and a new Netanyahu-led right-wing coalition

in Israel,

Saudi Arabia, and even the United States,

that's higher than at any point

since the Iranian Nuclear Deal was signed.

Number four: Inflation shockwaves.

Should surprise no one that,

after a staggering contraction of the global economy

that came with COVID,

the global economy basically shut down,

and an enormous fiscal outlay

from every major economy in the world to ensure

that all the people that were suffering,

had their businesses closed,

and lost their jobs, would still be able to get through

while the economy contracted,

and then the economies open up, but not at the same time,

and the shipments and ships, they're not in the right place.

So what happens is a consequence of all of that:

While people are ready to spend money,

supply chains are massively disrupted,

costs go way up, and costs go way up around the world,

doesn't matter if you were Biden,

or you were the Europeans,

or you were the Chinese, the Brits, the Japanese,

everyone experiencing generational levels of inflation.

Overall, global growth from 6% in 2021 to 3% in 2022,

expecting less than 2% in 2023- that's a global recession.

The implications of that around the world

will be very serious,

especially given levels of present inflation.

The wealthy countries have the money

to be able to continue to ensure that their working classes,

their middle classes, are taken care of,

but the real issue is for developing countries

who don't have the fiscal space

to be able to make these payments

to the rest of populations;

they'll put policies in place

that will only make

the much-more indebted dollar-denominated debt,

in many cases, with higher interest rates

that they will not be able to service, leading to collapse.

The social instability, the political instability

that comes from these economic challenges

on much of the developing world, is at higher levels in 2023

than we have seen in decades.

Number three: Weapons of Mass Disruption.

The United States, back in 1989 when the wall came down,

was the leading exporter of democracy around the world,

not always with successful outcomes,

frequently hypocritically, but nonetheless,

that's how the wall came down,

that's how the Soviet Union was defeated.

In 2023, only 30 years later,