Novel Full Chapter 610: The Situation They All Found Themselves (4)
Chapter 610: The Situation They All Found Themselves (4)
Brussels. European Commission.
By 7 AM, three directorate-general heads had been called in. By 8, the meeting had expanded to include the Commissioner for Competition, the Commissioner for the Internal Market, the Commissioner for Justice, and the Director General of DG CONNECT.
The meeting expanded that fast not because of the $735 billion figure but because of what the article placed next to it.
The Commissioner for Competition spoke first and she began with the connection, because the connection was what had brought them all in at this hour and pretending otherwise would waste time.
"The Bloomberg article is about Liam Scott," she said. "I want to be clear that what follows is inference, not confirmation. But I want to walk through why this room is discussing Nova Technologies in response to an article about a private individual."
She pulled up the timeline.
"Nova Technologies made its first public appearance seven months ago. Liam Scott made his first public appearance seven months ago, arriving at LAX in a vehicle the manufacturer has publicly stated cannot exist in production form, departing in a private Airbus A380." She paused. "Both appearances are dated to the same two-week window. That is the first data point."
"The Bloomberg portfolio," she continued. "The Bellemere Family Office holds concentrated positions in semiconductor infrastructure, pharmaceutical companies, and life sciences. Those are not diversified holdings. They are deliberate sector bets.
They are also the exact sectors Nova Technologies is currently operating in — semiconductor-adjacent fabrication capability, medical technology through the clinical trial, life sciences infrastructure." She set the page down. "A portfolio built around those sectors, established on the same timeline as Nova Technologies’ launch, by a person whose wealth has no documented origin. That is the second data point."
"The third is JP Morgan." She looked at the room. "The Bloomberg disclosure shows Liam Scott holds 1.12% of JP Morgan Chase through the Bellemere Family Office.
JP Morgan Chase is the only institution in any public record that has a named, confirmed relationship with Nova Technologies.
The creator wealth management partnership was announced publicly four months ago. It moved JP Morgan’s market cap. It was in every financial publication." She paused. "We do not know the nature of any private relationship between Liam Scott and JP Morgan beyond the disclosed equity position. What we know is that he holds a stake in the only institution Nova Technologies has publicly named as a partner."
The room absorbed this silently.
"None of this is confirmed," she said. "Bloomberg drew the parallel and stopped short of stating it directly. Every intelligence service in the world is running the same calculation. We are running it too. And the reason this room is discussing Nova Technologies in response to a Bloomberg article about an eighteen-year-old is that the circumstantial case has become too complete to treat as coincidence while we wait for confirmation that may never come through public channels."
That was the foundation. The meeting moved to what it could actually assess.
"The data question," the Director General of DG CONNECT said. "I want to address this carefully because Nova Technologies has made a specific public claim and our regulatory concern needs to reflect what they have actually said."
He pulled up the relevant section of the Lucid device terms.
"Nova Technologies has publicly stated that all user data is processed and stored locally on each individual device. Not on servers. Not on a lunar installation. On the device itself, in the user’s possession." He looked at the table. "That claim, if accurate, represents a fundamentally different architecture than any platform the Commission has previously regulated. There are no servers to audit, no data transfers to assess, no centralized storage to investigate."
"If accurate," the Commissioner for Justice said.
"Yes. If accurate." He set the document down. "The GDPR does not distinguish between architectures. It assigns obligations based on the fact of processing personal data, not on where that processing occurs. The regulation requires a data controller designation — an identified legal entity responsible for compliance — regardless of whether data is stored locally, centrally, or on a device in a user’s pocket." He paused. "Nova Technologies has designated no data controller in any EU member state. Has submitted no registration. Has appointed no Article 27 representative. Has responded to no inquiry from any national supervisory authority."
"The local storage claim," the Commissioner for Competition said. "Can we verify it."
"No," he said. "That is the secondary problem. Nova Technologies produces technology that no engineering team has successfully reverse-engineered. The Lucid device cannot be opened, cannot be copied, and does not function for any user other than the registered owner. We cannot audit what we cannot access." He paused. "Which means we are in the position of having a public claim we cannot verify, from an entity that has no legal presence here, covering data belonging to approximately 450 million EU citizens."
"Four hundred and fifty million EU citizens using a platform daily," the Commissioner for Competition said, "whose data controller is unidentified, whose architecture cannot be audited, and which has produced no GDPR compliance documentation of any kind. Not because it is non-compliant. Because it has simply not engaged with the framework at all."
That was the data position. Uncomfortable in a different way than they had expected. There was not a server on the moon to point at, but a claim they had no mechanism to evaluate.
The Commissioner for Justice moved to the clinical trial.
"French citizens, Polish citizens, citizens from at least six member states are enrolled. The trial is operating outside EMA oversight, outside every national medicines authority framework. The outcomes being documented — and the observer reports are public record — represent medical intervention at a scale and efficacy that no approved therapeutic has ever demonstrated." He paused. "We have citizens on the moon receiving treatment that no European regulatory body has assessed, approved, or has any visibility into. And the Bloomberg article now places an individual with possible connection to that trial in possession of significant equity stakes in the pharmaceutical companies whose treatment models that trial may eventually replace."
"The competitive dimension is not hypothetical," the Commissioner for Competition said. "If the trial outcomes hold, the conditions being treated are not managed — they are resolved. That is not competition with existing pharmaceutical products. It is obsolescence of the treatment model those products exist to serve."
The room was quiet.
"The DMA question," the Director General said. "LucidNet surpasses every threshold the Digital Markets Act establishes for gatekeeper designation, by significant margins. It has not submitted a notification. It has not designated a point of contact. It has not engaged with a single DMA obligation." He paused. "The DMA has enforcement mechanisms. Those mechanisms require a legal entity within jurisdiction. There is none."
The Commissioner for Competition set her pen down.
"Let me state what we have clearly," she said. "Approximately 450 million EU citizens are daily users of a platform whose data architecture we cannot audit, whose operator has no legal presence here, and whose possible owner — if the Bloomberg inference is correct — holds equity in the companies our pharmaceutical and semiconductor industries depend on." She looked at the table. "We have spent fifteen years building the most comprehensive regulatory framework for technology in the world. It was built for companies that existed within reach. Every enforcement mechanism we have requires a point of presence. There is no point of presence."
The meeting ran for two more hours. It produced a formal request for legal analysis on jurisdictional options, a directive to all national supervisory authorities to document every EU citizen interaction with Nova Technologies products, and a resolution to raise the matter at the next European Council meeting.
By the time the meeting ended, it did not produce a mechanism that can regulate Nova Technologies.
***
London. HM Treasury. Whitehall.
The Chancellor’s economic advisor arrived at 8 AM with a briefing he had been writing since 5, and he began where Brussels had begun — with the connection — because without explaining the connection, none of what followed made sense.
"The Bloomberg article is about Liam Scott," he said. "What it has done, by placing his wealth profile and timeline next to everything we know about Nova Technologies, is give every government that has been watching Nova Technologies for seven months a name to run against what they’ve been watching." He set the briefing on the table. "We are not confirming the connection. We are explaining why every institution in this room has been on the phone since 6 AM."
He walked through it. The timeline match. The sector alignment. The JP Morgan equity position against the publicly known creator partnership. The same pattern Bloomberg had described — everything verified, nothing explained — appearing in both the company and the individual simultaneously.
"Nobody has confirmed it," he said. "But the circumstantial case is the same one Washington has and the same one Brussels has. An eighteen-year-old with $735 billion and no documented origin, a portfolio built around the exact sectors Nova Technologies operates in, appearing on the same timeline. We are discussing Nova Technologies because the article makes it difficult not to."
The Chancellor nodded. "The regulatory picture."
The UK’s reaction was different from Brussels’ and the advisor had spent two hours thinking about why.
The EU’s frustration was architectural — a framework that couldn’t reach its target. Washington’s concern was strategic — a variable that didn’t fit any national security model. London’s reaction had a third dimension that neither of those captured, and the advisor was going to have to state it directly.
"The FCA first," he said. "The equity positions are clean. No filing violation, no disclosure failure. The Bellemere Family Office is properly registered and its beneficial owner is now publicly identified." He paused. "The origin of the capital is not in any record the FCA can access. The Proceeds of Crime Act provides for Unexplained Wealth Orders when there is reasonable cause to suspect assets are connected to serious crime or held by a politically exposed person. He is neither. He is a private US resident with no political position in any jurisdiction. The UWO mechanism was designed for oligarchs and foreign officials. He does not fit the profile and a court would not grant the order."
"The data question," the Chancellor said.
"This is where we need to be precise," the advisor said. "Nova Technologies has publicly stated that all user data is processed and stored locally on each user’s device. Not transmitted. Not stored centrally. But on the device itself." He looked at the briefing. "The ICO’s concern is not that data is going somewhere we can track. It is that we cannot verify the claim. The UK GDPR requires a data controller designation regardless of architecture. Nova Technologies has designated no controller, appointed no UK representative, responded to no ICO communication." He paused. "The ICO cannot audit a device it cannot access. They cannot confirm or deny the local storage claim. They are in the position of accepting a public statement from an entity that has no obligation to engage with them and no legal presence in the UK."
"50 million estimated UK users," the Chancellor said.
"At minimum. The ICO believes it may be higher."
"The CMA."
"The Competition and Markets Authority has been monitoring LucidNet since Month 2. Dominant platform, market power, potential foreclosure effects on competing services. The investigation framework requires the company to respond to information notices." He set the page down. "Nova Technologies has not responded to any communication from any UK authority. It has no registered presence and no legal obligation to respond."
The Chancellor looked at the window.
"The third dimension," she said. "Say it."
The advisor had been waiting for her to ask.
"The UK positioned itself after Brexit as the jurisdiction of choice for technology companies that found the European regulatory environment constraining," he said. "Light-touch regulation. Speed of approval. A more permissive operating environment." He paused. "Nova Technologies didn’t choose Brussels. It didn’t choose Washington. It didn’t choose London. It didn’t choose any jurisdiction. It chose the moon." He looked at the briefing. "Seven months of announcements that have rewritten every assumption about what technology can do, a platform with more daily active users than any in history, a clinical trial that has produced outcomes no approved therapy has ever approached — and none of it required a single government to say yes to anything."
The Chancellor said nothing.
"The uncomfortable truth in this briefing," he continued, "is that the regulatory conversation we are having this morning — the FCA, the ICO, the CMA, the MHRA — is a conversation about how to apply frameworks to an entity that has never needed any of them. Not evaded them. Not violated them. Simply operated entirely outside the space where they apply." He set the final page down. "Brussels has the same problem. Washington has the same problem. We all built our frameworks for companies that needed something from us — a market, a license, a jurisdiction, a legal address. This one doesn’t appear to need any of it."
The Chancellor closed the briefing folder.
"Then what is available," she said.
"The only honest answer," the advisor said, "is that we watch, document, and prepare for the moment contact becomes something he initiates rather than something we attempt." He paused. "Because every approach that requires us to reach him ends at the same wall. The only path that doesn’t require a door we don’t have is being ready when he opens one."
"You’re describing waiting."
"I’m describing positioning," he said. "There is a difference. We map every point of contact between UK citizens, UK institutions, and Nova Technologies products. We build a complete picture of what the relationship already is, on the ground, regardless of any regulatory framework. We identify what we have that is worth offering." He paused. "Because whatever he is building, it will eventually intersect with something we have. UK citizens are already inside it. UK institutions are already affected by it. When the conversation happens — and it will happen, because nothing operating at this scale operates in complete isolation indefinitely — we should know exactly what we bring to it."
The Chancellor stood and looked at the Thames through the window. The bridges. The buildings that had housed the machinery of British institutional power for centuries.
"Set up the working group," she said. "Full cross-agency. FCA, ICO, CMA, MHRA, Treasury. Complete documentation of every point of contact. Not for enforcement." She paused. "For when the conversation eventually happens."
She picked up the briefing folder.
"And someone find out everything publicly available about the JP Morgan creator partnership announcement. Not the private relationship — we won’t get that without a court order we can’t justify. The public announcement. What Nova Technologies chose to say publicly about their only named institutional partner, and what that tells us about how they make those decisions." She looked at the advisor. "Because if there is one door in this entire picture, that partnership is the closest thing to one. And I want to understand it before anyone knocks."