What if allies ban quantum-computing technology exports to China?
An allied ban on cryogenics and dilution refrigerators to China/Russia is a niche, long-horizon control with minimal near-term earnings impact - the 6-18m timeline and small qubit market mean the -2.5% TSMC/Nvidia cascade is overstated. No strong market analogue; closest is the slow-burn 2024 quantum/Wassenaar additions. China and Russia are the targets; the forward angle is this is pre-emptive denial of a non-commercialized technology, so it is more a signaling escalation than a tradeable shock - roots are too broad on semiconductor_risk.
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 6–18 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. Allied bloc bars export of cryogenics, qubit-control, and dilution refrigerators to China and Russia. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Trade tension ▲ · Geopolitical risk ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.