Each year the Global Risks Report highlights numerous potential sources of danger and disruption. In this new Hindsight section, we dip back into previous editions of the report to consider three of the risks to which we have previously drawn attention: antimicrobial resistance, youth unemployment and the phenomenon of online misinformation that we termed “digital wildfires” when we discussed it five years ago. The aim here is to trace the progress that has been made in the intervening years. How have these risks and the global responses to them evolved?