Andrew Sheves Good morning and Happy Friday. Some headlines to set you up for the weekend.

🚢 US dockworkers held off from striking over Christmas but that deal expires on January 15th. Talks begin next week to avoid a dockworker strike and automation will be a major theme issue to resolve. [More - Bloomberg]

💥 Both New Year terror attacks in the US — killing 15 in New Orleans and the attacker in Las Vegas — were conducted by American servicemen but appear unconnected, according to the FBI. [More - Bloomberg]

🇸🇾 Asaad al-Shaibani, Syria’s interim Foreign Minister, traveled to Saudi Arabia on the HTS-led government’s first foreign visit following the fall of Bashar al-Assad. [More - Al Jazeera]

🏛️ The US Congress returns today (Friday), and its first job is to elect the Speaker. Incumbent Mike Johnson is President-elect Trump’s preferred candidate but Johnson faces opposition and it not guaranteed victory. Moreover, the tone and conduct of the vote will be an indication of how the 119th Congress will operate. [More - Washington Post]

Coming Soon - AI Implementation Workshops

A byproduct of building AI tools is that you get a lot of questions on how to implement AI generally. Doug Grey and I tackled the security risk management applications in our AI implementation white paper last year, but that was a higher-level view of what AI could do. The feedback: “Good, but what about my organization specifically? You should be running workshops.”

**So, after a successful pilot in December, I’m starting a series of AI implementation workshops in mid-January. **

These will look at implementing AI into your organization’s risk and crisis function and will be largely practical with the aim of providing the skills needed to use AI along with an actionable plan to help you implement these tools into your workflows.

I’ll share more next week, and as a SITREP reader you will have the chance to attend the first cohort at a significantly reduced rate. If you plan to lean into AI in 2025 but aren’t sure where to start, these workshops will set you up fort success.

Key Metrics

WTI is $70.38 (Down)

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Wheat is $185.735 (Down)

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EuroDollar is $1.03 (Down)

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YuanDollar is $0.14 (Unchanged)

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Graphs are illustrative to show comparative price over last 180 days

Metrics via AlphaVantage updated Jan 02 2025 21:16 UTC

Africa

Carpe tomorrow!