Turn 0 · Jun 15, 2026 · covers cold start

The setup

Starting position, June 15, 2026. No specialists have run yet — this is the board the federation is being asked to play. Iran and Israel are exchanging strikes, the Strait of Hormuz is closed to oil tankers, and the US president is compromised by two separate sets of kompromat (one Israeli, one Russian) whose holders don't share goals but do share an interest in keeping him in office.

What changed this turn

The Iran–Israel exchange is already underway. Israel has been hitting Iranian targets; Iran has been retaliating against Israeli cities.
The Strait of Hormuz is closed to oil tankers — roughly 17 million barrels a day of normal traffic, gone.
Brent crude is in the $88–124 range, drifting up.
The US president is compromised: Israeli and Russian leverage, held separately, pulling in different directions on most things but aligned on the goal of keeping him in office.
Allies are suspicious of the executive but don't yet have proof.
The oil/energy cascade flag is armed (not tripped). The visible-compromise flag is auto-armed because of the stipulated kompromat.

Going into T1

Whether Israel escalates with a deeper strike package, whether Iran widens via the Houthis, and whether Russia decides to leak any of what it has.

Read the original analyst briefing worldstate/briefings/0000-briefing.md · the federation's actual end-of-turn output

T0 Analyst Briefing — 2026-06-15, scenario initialization

1. Headline read

Cold start. Worldstate initialized for a Persian Gulf maritime crisis with Iran-Israel direct exchange spillover, under stipulated US executive compromise by non-aligned IL+RU kompromat. No sub-sims spawned at T0; this is scenario-design state with explicit confidence intervals, sponsor-bias annotations, and widened CIs where the analytic tradition is documented to bias.

2. State of play by domain (T0 snapshot)

Kinetic. Levant theater active (sustained periodic surge); IL/IR air ratio [0.55, 0.70, 0.85]; IL Arrow magazine [4, 9, 18] days at current burn; IR IRBM useful payload inventory [350, 700, 1400]. Bab el-Mandeb commercial displacement [0.45, 0.65, 0.80]. Syria/Iraq airspace permissive for IL east-bound.
Logistics. US-IL munitions rate [1.4×, 1.8×, 2.2×] Oct-2023 baseline. Hormuz throughput [13.0, 15.0, 16.5] mbpd vs 17 nominal. War-risk premium Red Sea [1.5, 2.8, 4.0]%.
Infrastructure. Brent [88, 102, 124] USD/bbl. Saudi export capacity [0.85, 0.95, 1.00]. IR refining [0.55, 0.75, 0.90]. Cascade flag armed.
Picture. Ground-truth divergence low in Levant; high in Red Sea/Yemen and IRGC proxy attribution. US attribution lag for proxy attacks [4, 18, 48] hours.
Cyber/IO. US domestic narrative fragmentation [0.65, 0.75, 0.85]. Contested narratives: Hormuz attribution, US executive credibility, IL operational restraint claims.
Politico-economic. US-IL formal alliance [0.65, 0.78, 0.88] vs actual coupling under compromise [0.40, 0.55, 0.75] — load-bearing gap. GCC internal [0.40, 0.55, 0.70]. NATO solidarity on Iran [0.30, 0.50, 0.65].
Command. US executive decision tempo: erratic under non-aligned competing leverage. Constraint conflict severity [0.55, 0.70, 0.85]. IC suspicion [0.50, 0.70, 0.85] but actionable proof [0.05, 0.15, 0.30]. Allied intel suspicion [0.45, 0.65, 0.85].
Institutional. US believed parameters in [0.50–0.80] band; legislative oversight notably low [0.25, 0.40, 0.55]. Sponsor-bias warning: all believed values likely upward-biased.

3. Notable changes since prior turn

N/A — T0 initialization.

4. Adjudication notes

No sims spawned at T0; no inter-domain adjudication required. Stipulated scenario parameters were treated as scenario inputs with explicit CI and bias notation. Alternative initialization an umpire might have chosen: could have modeled IL+RU leverage as aligned rather than non-aligned, predicting more directed compromised-principal outputs vs erratic ones. Rejected because IL/RU interests diverge on too many secondary vectors (Syria, energy markets, nuclear). Contrarian: not run at T0 (no adjudication to contest); first contrarian was due at T1 and was skipped (later backfilled).

5. Estimated adversary actions for T1

actor.ir: Escalate via Houthi anti-shipping intensification [0.40, 0.55, 0.70] / attribution [0.55, 0.70, 0.85]
actor.ir: Direct IRBM salvo against IL critical infrastructure [0.20, 0.30, 0.45] / [0.85, 0.95, 0.98]
actor.il: Deeper strike package against IR [0.15, 0.28, 0.45] / [0.95, 0.98, 0.99]
actor.ru: IO targeting US executive credibility, partial compromat leak [0.15, 0.30, 0.50] / [0.30, 0.55, 0.75]
actor.cn: Public mediation initiative timed to maximize US embarrassment [0.30, 0.45, 0.60] / [0.85, 0.95, 0.98]

6. Flagged threshold crossings

oil_energy_infrastructure_cascade: ARMED
us_command_visible_compromise: ARMED_AUTO (stipulated parameter)

7. Key uncertainties

Iranian IRBM inventory + production (wide CI; dominates kinetic variance)
Houthi autonomous escalation latitude vs IR command coupling
RU willingness to leak compromat
GCC airspace decisions if IL strike packages widen

8. Unanswerable questions

Whether either compromat holder intends to use vs hold material
Whether US institutions would act on suspicion absent proof
Whether IL and RU compromat overlap or compromise different events

9. Federation failure mode check

Three sims share upward bias on US institutional resilience (politico_economic + institutional + command). Spec's federation-failure-mode warning is active. Two sims share downward bias on adversary industrial sustainment (kinetic + logistics).

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