CBS News recently held a roundtable event that included predictions for 2024, and Catherine Herridge, the network's senior investigative correspondent, didn't pump out any rainbows and unicorns. Instead, she predicted a "black swan" event that could leave the United States in a very different place than it is today. 

.@CBS_Herridge predicts in 2024, the U.S. may have "a national security event with high impact that's very hard to predict," pointing to ongoing wars and U.S. division as factors creating "fertile ground for our adversaries like North Korea, China and Iran" to take advantage of. pic.twitter.com/Vx8MTnn1W8

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) December 24, 2023

CBS News' "Face the Nation" held a roundtable on Christmas Eve, affording various talking heads an opportunity to make predictions for 2024. While most of the predictions were relatively banal, one among them stood out, prompting critics to puzzle over its possible significance.

Network correspondent Catherine Herridge, the wife of a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, suggested that "2024 may be the year of a black swan event. This is a national security event with high impact that's very hard to predict."

(...)

Herridge told the other CBS News panelists Sunday there were a number of concerns that factored into her "dark" prediction, including that "this sort of enduring heightened threat level that we're facing, the wars in Israel, also Ukraine, and we're so divided in this country in ways that we haven't seen before. And I think that just creates fertile ground for our adversaries like North Korea and China and Iran."

On the one hand, it's a rather grim take to give on Christmas Eve. On the other hand, is Herridge really going out on much of a limb? Think about all the risk factors that are escalating under the Biden administration. 

Let's just start with the Southern Border as a front that hits close to home. It was revealed on Tuesday that there have been over 730,000 illegal immigrant encounters, not counting those who slipped across unnoticed, in less than three months.

NEW: CBP sources tell FOX there have already been over 730,000 migrant encounters at the southern border since Oct. 1st, a population size bigger than the city of Denver arriving at the southern border in less than 3 months. December on pace to set highest month ever recorded.

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) December 26, 2023

It's hard to gauge exactly how many illegal immigrants have entered the United States in the last three years under Joe Biden, but the number of encounters is somewhere over six million. It's not difficult to fathom that bad actors could use that abject chaos to facilitate the entry of terrorists. I mean, if you were a terrorist, isn't that what you'd do? I realize mentioning that possibility makes the press screech that there's "no proof" that's happening at any organized level, but there won't be "proof" until an attack occurs. That's the issue. 

That may not be the most obvious source of a cataclysmic event, though. Look at the current tinder-box that is the pro-Hamas movement within the United States. Right now "protesters" are testing the waters, fighting with police, disrupting Christmas events, and trying to annoy Americans as much as possible. What they are learning is that there are essentially no consequences for their actions. Again, how hard is it to believe that amid those large antisemitic mobs, there might be a few individuals willing to go a step further for their cause than fist-fighting the cops? 

Perhaps I'm thinking too small-scale, though. As I type this, Russia is still at war in Europe and there's no end on the horizon. Meanwhile, China continues to up its aggression toward Taiwan and in international waters. Oh yeah, and Iran is threatening to start a war with Israel. So yeah, there's ample opportunity for some major event to occur when it comes to foreign policy that could severely impact the United States. 

Then there's the possibility of another global pandemic. It seems like every week there's news of some new virus strain in China, and what better time for one to start spreading again than during a contentious election in the United States? And speaking of the election, what happens in the streets if Donald Trump wins? I can't imagine the global left sitting idly by given the events of the last several years. 

When you consider all those possibilities, Herridge is probably playing it safe by predicting a black swan event.