Technology & AI risk-off · 1–3 years
A what‑if from the future

What if evidence emerges that AI can help design bioweapons?

Hard bio-uplift evidence forces a safety-driven capability rollback, so the market re-rates the AI-capex run-rate, not just sentiment: NVDA leads lower as the buildout's terminal demand is questioned, dragging Broadcom/Micron and crypto beta. Rhymes with the Jan-2025 DeepSeek shock, when a single demand-assumption hit knocked NVDA double digits intraday. Forward angle: regulatory (not efficiency) trigger means no quick 'cheaper-compute' rebound — the de-rating is stickier.

8%
our model probability
over 1–3 years
prediction markets — the market's odds
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Anchored to measured history 8% · 90% range 1–16% · 40 dated precedents behind it — a wider range means thinner evidence

Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.

The butterfly cascade

How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.

Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving

Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 1–3 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…

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What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Evidence that a model materially aids bioweapon design forces capability rollbacks and hard regulation. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — AI capex ▼ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Market odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-08-13.