Okay, I must be missing something here. At first I thought Daschle's opening quotation in this story must be over the top and hyperbole.



The Site



Someone please try to defend this idea. The Pentagon is starting a futures market where investors can invest on the likelihood of terrorist attacks or assassinations.



IMO this would be seen as perverse and unfortunate if a private market developed. But something like this coming from the Pentagon? It is perverse and unfortunate. Hopefully I misunderstand this issue. Please put me at ease or in my place and provide a reasonable justification.

And make it better than this


Daschle Urges Bush to Stop Terror Market

Looks like the Pentagon is back-pedalling on this one quite quickly: Terror Betting Dropped (Sky News, 07/29/03)

I heard a lot of angry comments about this from the Senate from both sides of the aisle today. The agency behind it is headed by Admiral Poindexter and there were strong implications that he should be held accountable for this pr disaster.

The Senators were also upset because this project apparently went under the radar of appropriations approval.

This was the worst thing the Pentagon could ever think of.

If only.

The Pentagon seriously considered some kind of "dead pool" for their international opponents??

Wow.

This kind of thing is sick and lowbrow enough when it happens in a smoky bar among a group of friends, but to think that an arm of government in the most powerful nation on the planet even considered it is, frankly, frightening. Thank heavens there are still enough sane people in Congress to send the idea back where it came from.

The fact that this was another Poindexter contribution explains a lot. So far his leash has been kept on and as long as it remains the world can breath a small sigh of relief. Of course having this lying criminal back and serving in our government again at all is insulting in itself.

I saw this today:

For once Julian, I'll agree with you.

Stupid idea, I wonder what lowlife actually came up with this idea? aye aye aye.

--cheers

After 9/11, the Pentagon was trying to "think outside the box" and come up with inventive new ways to develop intelligence and come up with new predictive methodologies. The program in question was thought up as a way to tap into a wide network of private thinkers, sort of a "think tank," that might come up with interesting theories and predictions (interwoven with actual facts, some known, some unknown, some secret but revealed in due course) that would assist our counter terrorism efforts. Remember the book "The Pelican Brief," where a third year law student dreams up an explanation for why two Supreme Court justices were murdered, and accidentially gets it right, setting off a chain of events with the powerful perpertrators behind the whole affair and the U.S authorities? Same kind of idea, basically.

The people who came up with this weren't trying to create some kind of morbid death market, or make a joke out of it. They didn't have nefarious intentions. But as with everything, there are pros and cons and it doesn't sound like the project was well thought out with regard to the negatives and the morbid implications and possibilities that would arise as a side effect.

The Pentagon was right to shut the project down and abandon it. But we shouldn't condemn people as "lowlifes" for original thinking in this area and trying to be creative in their counter terrorism efforts... I think a tremendous misunderstanding has taken place regarding their intentions.

I am surprised that none of the usual "intellectuals" around here didn't defend this one...

I guess I will put the case forward.

Futures markets are a good indicator of trends, and are actually a kind of polling. The argument goes that since you need to "put your money where your opinion is" the results are more serious and thought out.

Now, the government could use "bubbles" in the futures market to predict specific (or non-specific) terrorist incidents. Futures on an attack on the Sears Tower are sky-rocketing? Something is probably afoot, since there will always be people who want to take financial advantage of a crisis.

Sure the idea on its face is a little repulsive, but this kind of market would have been a great indicator of people's confidence level that they are being protected, and a great indicator of specific problem areas.

Money makes the world go 'round. Tracking where people put their money is a great way to find out how they feel about any issue.


These Senators had a knee-jerk reaction, not a surprise, really.

You know if the pentagon were really ruthless, they would allow terrorist attacks to occur and through the future market make a fortune through their "insider" knowledge.

Not that the Pentagon would ever do that!

Not the same idea at all.

In the movie Julia Roberts comes discovers a pattern to events which have already occured. She's working inductively -- piecing together an explanation for a particular set of already observed facts -- whereas Poindexter's program would have been completely deductive and rather useless unless those with knowledge of attacks were the majority bidders.

While I don't have any experience or in depth knowledge of future markets, it seems that this program would be useless with random bidders participating. What good would it have done to have 70% of those who bid on the Sears Tower be American business men with no knowledge what-so-ever about upcoming terrorist attacks?

Even were those with direct knowledge of attacks participating in the bidding, what might there be to stop them from using the program to their advantage? High interest in the Sears Tower? Bomb the Brooklyn Bridge instead.

And what of those with or without direct knowledge who bid accurately? How would they weed through the "winners" to determine who actually had information on the attack and who profited out of sheer luck? Somebody with information that could prevent an attack might be encouraged to withold that information from authorities on the basis that they could profit from it later.

It was a terrible idea from a terrible military misfit. They can't get rid of Poindexter or his political circus fast enough.

The idea is NOT to find perpetrators through this system.

The idea was to ascertain credible beliefs of those participating. Those participants want to profit from what they see as a deductive assessment of the probabilities involved.

The fact that any certain individual (or group of individuals) would profit from this is not of any concern. But a rise in the confidence level that any particular attack might occur IS a good indicator that the actual probability is rising. Moreso, because people are willing to put their money where their mouth is.

This is not a system where we bust those who profit. Obviously, that would only be useful once (or maybe a few times). The idea was to tap the vast database of publically available knowledge and let the public, essentially, do the polling for free.

The idea is innovative, and therefore, shot down before any objective assessment is even given.

Remembering for a moment that this is the same geographically challenged public that, in a majority poll, felt Saddam Hussein was responsible for September 11, I don't know that I would hold them to be very reliable in calculating the probabilities of attacks in the United States.

"Hey Bill, what do you think the odds of the Sears Tower bein' hit are?"
"Pretty darn good, Jim. California's a big target from what Mark in accounting says..."

I don't see that this program would have given them any more accuracy in predicting attacks than some other revolutionary idea like... oh, I don't know, gathering, verifying and monitoring intelligence? Winning a few bombing deaths two Fridays out of the month doesn't mean those who won will provide accurate insight the remaining Fridays out of the year.

The "idea" I was referring to was that someone in the public might come up with something unusual and interesting that the authorities hadn't thought of.



Couldn't we in theory have done both? Its not like we're faced with a choice between only doing one or the other.

If there is a reason for them to not pursue the futures program, its because of the undesirable side effects (such as someone trying to bet on something they are implictibly involved in), not because we're skeptical anything of intelligence value could be gleaned from it.