Political polarization, something many general counsel might have given little heed to a few years ago, has landed on consulting firm Gartner’s list of top five emerging risks for the first time—snagging the No. 2 slot, behind only mass generative artificial intelligence availability.

Polarization was cited by 69% of the 347 senior risk executives Gartner surveyed in November. Mass gen AI availability came it at 76%, fueled in part by concern that adoption is occurring much faster than regulation. The remaining three were cloud concentration risk, which Law.com explored here (64%), market effects from higher borrowing costs (53%) and overzealous cost-cutting (52%).