It’s worth further reflecting on some of the bigger macro risks. Let’s start with the recent remarks of CIA director William Burns on China and Taiwan, which seem to represent a shift in the CIA’s historically sanguine assessments.

Those who claim to have knowledge of the CIA’s thinking on the subject were asserting last year that the intelligence agency attributed a very low probability to the prospect of China trying to take Taiwan by force, and this then triggering a kinetic conflict between the two superpowers.