Taiwan & the Pacific
The Taiwan question attracts certainty in both directions. The entries below are deliberately split — a high probability on the taboo holding, a real probability on an incident, and a tail scenario priced separately — because those are three different claims and collapsing them is how forecasts become theatre.
The ledger — hash-sealed, scored in public
CORRECT if, through 2029-12-31, no exchange of live fire between US and PRC military forces is confirmed by either government or independently documented by three or more major international news organizations. Collisions, lasing incidents, cyber operations and proxy engagements do not count — live fire only.
Resolves by 2029-12-31. Status: PENDING.
Live projections
Not full war — a collision, a shoot-down, a blockade probe that produces casualties and forces both capitals to the brink before de-escalating. Allison found that 12 of 16 rising-vs-ruling power transitions ended in war; the modern tripwires are Taiwan (which fabricates ~90% of leading-edge chips) and the Second Thomas Shoal.
Wrong if: through 2031 there is no US-China military contact producing casualties AND PLA air incursions into Taiwan's ADIZ fall back below their 2021 tempo for a sustained year.
Window: 2026-2031.
Average US tariffs at their highest level since 1934, Chinese rare-earth export controls, and parallel payment rails mean fragmentation is no longer a scenario — it is the trendline. The open question is depth: a two-bloc split costs the world roughly 5% of real income on WTO simulations, and swing states (India, Brazil, the Gulf) decide how deep the cut goes.
Wrong if: the US and China execute a broad tariff rollback and world goods-trade volume growth returns above 4%/yr for two consecutive years before 2029.
Window: 2026-2030.
Tail scenarios
Taiwan fabricates the overwhelming majority of the world’s most advanced logic chips — TSMC alone makes roughly 90% of sub-7nm silicon. A blockade, quarantine or conflict removes that supply with no near-term replacement: a leading-edge fab takes three-to-five years and tens of billions to build. This is a single point of failure wired into the entire digital economy; Bloomberg Economics has put the cost of a full-blown Taiwan conflict near $10 trillion in lost output.
Other subjects on the record
Every claim above is also listed in the full projection registry and the calibration ledger. Scoring is explained in how a prediction is made.