Chapter 623: Panicking And Throwing Around Their Weight
Chapter 623: Panicking And Throwing Around Their Weight
Beijing. Zhongnanhai. 3 PM Local Time.
The minister had watched the livestream twice and had read the announcement three times and had spent the hours since thinking about the difference between his situation and Washington’s.
Washington was scared of what Liam Scott might do. Beijing was scared of what the platform would show.
Those were different fears and they produced different responses.
Washington could afford to be cautious because the gap between America’s disclosed and actual fiscal position, while significant, was a story its political system had the infrastructure to manage. It was a bad story. It was not an existential one.
Beijing’s gap was existential. And this wasn’t because the numbers were catastrophically worse, though they were worse. But because the Chinese government relationship with its population rested on a specific compact — stability, growth, competent management of the national finances — and that compact depended on the population not having direct access to what competent management actually looked like when the full picture was visible.
LucidNet Finance was not a financial threat. It was a legitimacy threat. And legitimacy threats were the category the government had no tolerance for.
"The Firewall goes up today," the minister said. "Full block on LucidNet domain, every associated IP range, every protocol we can reach."
His deputy nodded, as this had been expected.
"The Lucid device holders," the minister said.
"We have close to 1,800 confirmed Lucid device holders in China," his deputy said. "The connectivity architecture is outside our blocking capability. We have known this since Month 2. We also have Lucid Air connections. Considering that the last pre-order night saw all Lucid users, old and new, get a Lucid Air, we are talking about tens of thousands of more connections that we can’t do anything about." He paused. "What we can do is flag every account. Intensive monitoring. Content restrictions on what they share through standard networks. Social credit review for the most active ones."
"Do it."
"As for the state media narrative," the minister continued. "I want it deployed before the announcement reaches significant domestic penetration. LucidNet Finance is a Western financial intelligence operation designed to destabilize developing economies. It is a tool of American economic warfare disguised as transparency. The data it will publish about China is fabricated, politically motivated, and part of a coordinated campaign to undermine Chinese sovereignty and damage investor confidence in the Chinese economy."
His deputy looked at him.
"We will need to sustain that narrative against a platform that publishes actual figures," he said carefully. "When citizens who have access compare what the platform shows to what state media says—"
"The citizens with Lucid devices number fewer than one hundred thousand," the minister said. "The citizens who receive state media number one point four billion. The narrative doesn’t need to be believed by everyone. It needs to be the dominant frame before the alternative frame establishes itself."
His deputy nodded.
The minister looked at the window.
He was not afraid of Liam Scott in the way Washington was afraid of him. He had watched the livestream and felt the voice and had sat with what it meant, but the political calculus that governed this room did not have space for personal fear. What it had space for was threat assessment and response options.
The threat was real but the response options were limited. The Firewall was imperfect. The narrative was a holding action. The Lucid device holders were a leak he couldn’t seal.
He was not afraid. He was cornered. Those were different things and the difference mattered for what came next.
"Draft the outreach message to Scott," he said. "Carefully. Frame it as an opportunity for bilateral dialogue on matters of mutual interest. Do not mention the platform directly."
"You believe he will respond," his deputy said.
"No," the minister said. "But not responding is its own message. And right now I want to know what his silence means before I decide what to do about the things his silence is letting happen."
***
Los Angeles. Daniel Conley’s Office. 9 AM.
The two FinCEN representatives arrived at 9 AM and Daniel had known they were coming since 7, when a former colleague from JP Morgan had called to tell him that the word moving through certain channels was that the Bellemere Family Office was going to receive a visit.
He had contacted Lucy at 7:15.
"Master is aware," she had said. "He says to cooperate with everything lawful. Keep a full record of every interaction. He will handle everything later."
The FinCEN representatives were professional and thorough and produced credentials and a formal review notice that the lawyers examined for eleven minutes before nodding at Daniel.
Daniel cooperated with everything they asked. He produced the documents they were entitled to. He answered the questions he was legally required to answer and declined the ones he wasn’t, and each declination was noted in the record, and the lawyers noted every note.
The review took four hours.
When the representatives left, Daniel sat in his office and looked at the stack of documents his lawyers had spent the morning reviewing and thought about what had just happened.
He had done nothing wrong. The Bellemere Family Office had done nothing wrong. Every position was registered, every transaction documented, every filing complete. The review would find nothing because there was nothing to find.
But the review had happened. It would happen again. This was the beginning of a process that was going to make his professional life significantly more difficult in ways that had nothing to do with anything he had done and everything to do with who he worked for.
But he wasn’t worried because he trusts that Liam would handle everything, as he had said. He understood that the US government were panicking and throwing around their weight, but it won’t last for long.
But even though he knew this. It didn’t make the review less uncomfortable. But it made it smaller. And that was enough for him for now.