What Strange Things Does 2023 Have in store? by David Ignatius

Political Crossfire What Strange Things Does 2023 Have in store?

Take this quiz and find out

By David Ignatius

What a wild ride in 2022! War and upheaval – and that was just in the Republican Party. But as New York Times columnist William Safire once wrote in a yearend “Office Pool” quiz, when it comes to making bets about our crazy future, “Nostradamus himself couldn’t score over 50 percent.”

So, in the spirit of my late friend Safire, place your wagers for 2023. My picks are at the end. - - -

1. At the end of 2023, the endgame in Ukraine will be:

-A stalemate, with neither side winning -A negotiated cease-fire -Russia pounding Ukraine with newly mobilized troops -A Ukrainian counteroffensive that pushes Russia out of its territory

-Russian movement of mobile tactical nuclear weapons into Crimea

2. Russian President Vladimir Putin will end 2023:

-In a dacha outside Moscow isolated from the world -Preparing to run in a rigged election in 2024 following a humiliating defeat by Ukraine -Looking for a 2024 successor such as Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin to keep him out of jail -Dead

3. Time’s Person of the Year in 2023 will be:

-Volodymyr Zelensky for a second year in a row -President Biden -2024 dark-horse presidential candidate Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo

-Ukrainian Army commander and military hero Valerii Zaluzhnyi -Ukraine mediator and U.N. Secretary General António Guterres

4. The game-changing weapon of 2023 in Ukraine will be:

-NATO helicopter gunships -German Leopard tanks -American high-powered microwave systems that make drones fall out of the sky -U.S. ATACMS missiles that can reach targets inside Russia -Russian tactical nuclear weapons

5. The eeriest technology development of 2023 will be: -An AI system that wins the Defcon “Capture the Flag” contest, the world’s premier hacker competition -A Rand Corp. report showing how a rogue biologist could create a virus that kills billions -An AI successor to AlphaFold that can predict how a gene inserted into a cell will affect the organism -Terrorist pursuit of an AlphaFold model that could create a smallpox weapon that kills 90 percent of those infected -Evidence from the James Webb telescope that we are not alone in the universe

6. Iran in 2023 will be rocked by: -Continuing popular protests that bring down the regime -A leadership transition after the death of Iran’s 83-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -A powerful earthquake -Israeli strikes on its nuclear facilities -A Biden administration announcement that the 2015 nuclear agreement is

7. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un will mark 2023 by: -Taking bets on how many more times Washington will warn that a seventh nuclear test could come “at any time” -Writing a note to his daughter’s teacher explaining she didn’t do her homework because she was viewing a missile launch -Offering to host a LIV Golf tour event at Trump Club East in Pyongyang

Demanding a review copy of the latest Inspector O novel by James Church, in which the North Korean detective searches for the bones of Prince Potemkin, which disappeared from Kherson in October -A seventh nuclear test

8. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s biggest problem in 2023 will be: -A Covid-19 death toll by June that exceeds 1.5 million people and the resulting internal instability -Worries about a declining population that, according to U.N. forecasts, will by 2079 have more people outside working age than within it -The emergence of Japan and South Korea as potential nuclear powers after North Korea resumes nuclear testing -A pro-Chinese separatist movement in Siberia tizing Kids Benefits Us All,” by Adam Benforado -“Poverty, by America,” by Matthew Desmond -“Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy,” by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams

When it comes to making bets about our crazy future, “Nostradamus himself couldn’t score over 50 percent.”

9. The must-read book of 2023 will be: -“Never Give Up,” by Tom Brokaw -“Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity,” by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson -“A Minor Revolution: How Priori10. The biggest economic surprise of 2023 will be: -A stock market boom that follows resolution of the Ukraine war -A market sell-off triggered by Taiwan invasion fears -The Fed raises interest rates an additional 2 to 3 percent to bring inflation below 4 percent by year’s end -Fed tightening produces a wave of defaults in the leveraged loan market -A bipartisan bill to regulate cryptocurrency

My picks: A negotiated cease-fire; In a dacha outside Moscow isolated from the world; Volodymyr Zelensky for a second year in a row; American high-powered microwave systems that make drones fall out of the sky; Every answer is possible; A Biden administration announcement that the 2015 nuclear agreement is dead, triggering Iranian nuclear escalation and Israeli response; A seventh nuclear test; A Covid-19 death toll by June that exceeds 1.5 million people and the resulting internal instability; “Never Give Up,” by Tom Brokaw; Fed tightening produces a wave of defaults in the leveraged loan market AND a bipartisan bill to regulate cryptocurrency.

(c) 2022, Washington Post Writers Group

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