The Risks Others Are Missing: Strategic Insights from the 10th Annual NYU Riskathon

A decade ago, Wikistrat and NYU launched an experiment: bring together students and working analysts to crowdsource global risk analysis. The premise was simple. The world's most important risks don't emerge from a single perspective; they surface when diverse viewpoints collide. This December, 105 participants from 22 countries spent a week putting that premise to the test for the 10th time

What began as a single-course exercise has grown into an international collaboration spanning five universities across three continents. This year's NYU Riskathon simulation brought together 75 students and 30 Wikistrat experts to identify the risks that will shape 2026 and beyond. Over seven days, they surfaced nearly 300 distinct risks and debated them through structured scenario exercises.

The simulation's most striking finding was not a single risk but a pattern: the risks that matter most in the 2026-2030 window are those that compound. AI doesn't merely displace workers; it strains power grids while outpacing regulatory capacity to address either. Climate shocks don't merely cause displacement; they trigger cascades where each wave of migration weakens the institutions meant to absorb the next. Elections don't merely face interference; they face an environment where verification is structurally slower than virality.

This report distills those insights into four unconventional risks and four convergence scenarios that rarely appear in standard frameworks.

Download the full report here:

Wikistrat Report_ The Risks Others Are Missing Strategic_ Insights from the 10th Annual NY.

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