What if PLA fighter weapons-locks a US recon plane over the SCS?
A radar weapons-lock during a close intercept escalates a US-China aerial incident; a brief risk-off wave hits Asian equities and EM FX, lifting VIX, gold and the dollar.
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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 0–6 months 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…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. A radar weapons-lock during a close intercept escalates a US-China aerial incident; a brief risk-off wave hits Asian equities and EM FX, lifting VIX, gold and the dollar. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Volatility (VIX) ▲ · Dollar/reserve confidence ▲ · Geopolitical risk ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.