Betting on Terrorism

This struck me as an odd use of market forces.

The latest brainchild of a contentious Pentagon program — an online gambling parlor that allows anonymous investors to make money predicting assassinations and terrorist attacks — is drawing fire from Capitol Hill.

They were going to use a program called Futures Markets Applied to Prediction to try to assess terrorist threats. tw could profit from his Manhattan scenerio or bin Laden could lay a bet and blow something up. hmmm... maybe it was just a sting operation.

I'd call it a honeypot.

Aaaaaaaaaaand it's cancelled.

Yep, thats why I used the past tense, seems they're taking a powder over at Capitol Hill even as we speak.

I think we should just have a simple algorithm that automatically cancels anything and everything John Poindexter touches over there at the Pentagon.

Analog magazine had a story (maybe a "Probability Zero") about the same idea applied to the weather.

The problem there, as with the problem in using it for terrorism prediction, is people tend to cheat. Now, if you use pari-mutual betting, there's not much profit in bombing a place like Manhattan or D.C.(because everyone's expecting it). But watch out in East Bumfuck, KS, that ten-million-to-one shot.

Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

I don't understand all the emotion about a financial instrument to share or minimize the negative effects of terrorism ... or flood, or earthquake, or shipwreck. Farmers use future contracts to spin off risk onto other financial markets so that they don't suffer a 'sink or swim' situation every year. Unfortunately, insurance markets - even Lloyds - refuse to enter this needed market.

But here is the rub. If such markets are used, like flood insurance does today, to maintain a bad situation, then government will become the insurer of last resort - an unacceptable situation.

World markets are more than just distributing capital - creditors and debtors. Future's markets and risk markets are also essential to a productive world economy. Look what happened to CA when idiot corporate electric utility executives (lawyers and MBAs rather than people with electric utility experience) eliminated access to and use of future's contracts.

Heaven or hell will be defined in the details - how such a market sets up. But this is not something to be emotional about. This is a market made necessary by rare events called terrorism - like earthquakes, floods, tornados, crop losses, mine failures, etc.

Seems like a boon to terrorists. Use this attack to finance the next attack. You sure this isn't a sting?:rolleyes:

I haven't read much on it (dangerous radio news territory to follow) but I don't think there is an insurance angle. The only payout goes to folks who correctly predict an attack. The idea is that you'd get a lot of outside the box thinking about potential terrorist targets/methods.

Or the inside track for the perp.:mad:

Ron Bailey liked the idea.

Originally posted by Griff
Ron Bailey liked the idea.

Ron's missing the problem with the system. A terrorist organization can get money AND mislead at the same time. All they do is observe the prices of the futures contracts. Those which get expensive, they _don't_ do. Instead, they buy some cheap contracts on targets which the traders think are less likely to be killed. Then they assassinate said target while everyone is looking the other way.

I think Bailey got caught up in the moment. All those congressmen bloviating makes you really want to be on the other side. Unfortunately, for Ron, the blowhards got one right.

Blowhards only demonstrated another definition of an anti-America. A person who fears change. One who is so driven by their emotions, or by imposing their moral values on others (same crappy mential process) that they "fear to innovate".

Those who lined up in protestation did not even have a clue what the program was really about. They were classic anti-Americans. They used emotion to make a decision and could not even be bothered to learn enough facts to make a logical decision. Same reasoning used to justify the recent Iraq war and to claim that those aluminum tubes were for weapons of mass destruction. Just the people that George Jr needs to promote his adjenda. Get some people emotional and they will forget what intelligence really is. If watching the Watergate hearings summary on PBS; same type people Nixon needed to corrupt the US government. He could openly commit crimes and we thought that so acceptable as to vote for him in 49 states.

This is a discussion about those who are quick to decide based upon emotion verses those who meet an essential critieria of a patriotic American - one who first learns the facts.

essential critieria of a patriotic American - one who first learns the facts

Where in hell did you get that cock eyed definition? That has never been the American way and I doubt if it ever will be.
Russoto's right. The terrorists aren't all that particular who they kill as long as it disrupts stability.

You'll have to forgive tw...that's one of his pre-written messages...he must have hit the wrong button for today's message.

Originally posted by sycamore
You'll have to forgive tw...that's one of his pre-written messages...he must have hit the wrong button for today's message.

Good one syc :D

Once he started railing against the "blowhards", I wondered how he was gonna work George Jr. into the discussion. Silly me.

Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
Where in hell did you get that cock eyed definition? That has never been the American way and I doubt if it ever will be.

Unfortunately some people will run around waving the flag in hyperactivity to prove their patriotism. Same type people are what Hitler needed to kill Jews and anyone else promoted as inferior (ie gyspies). Flag waving will inspire the mentally naive to, for example, follow a lying president into invading another sovereign nation. Flag waving is what most struck the investigators on Watergate hearings. In Watergate, they couldn't be concerned with understanding basic facts such as the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Even Nixon before the Supreme Court tried to claim he was a sovereign leader like the King of England. In Iraq, an American president would outrightly lie about WMD, provided no supporting facts, and the same 'flagwavers' would promote and support an illegal and unprovoked war. Those 'self described' patriots can be a threat to the nation. As leming, they can be manipulated. Lemings definitely are not American patriots.


History is full of great American patriots. They don't make conclusions based upon flag waving. They are too smart to, for example, use the pathetic Daily News or local gosip Action News as infomation sources. Instead real Patriots learn facts before making decisions.

It is unknown whether the DARPA futures market idea had merit. But demonstrated is that classic anti-Americans opposed it that day because, by definition, they could not bother to first learn the facts. Myopic morality was all the proof they needed.

Flag waving does not create intelligence nor prove patriotism. Flag waving can identify a mentally blind and naive follower. ""Kill the bastards. They don't think like we have always thought; therefore must be evil."" A problem that innovators must often face - the anti-American who does not first learn and therefore fears change while hyping the flag.

Name any great American in history. He is always an innovator. Essential to the definition of an American patriot. Surprising how many so hate America as to think their emotions are sufficient to judge that DARPA terrorist market idea. But then many still never really learned what makes a patriotic American.

they could not bother to first learn the facts.

You're making an assumption. You have no way of knowing what they knew or didn't know and when. They could have known weeks before this became public knowledge.
As far as waiting for all the facts before acting, that's exactly what they did at Pearl Harbor.

How often do you read an epic novel in one day? Hyping leaders had but one day in which they were already expressing opinions. And yet to understand a futures market - even the one called Penn Jersey Maryland electric grid - is hundreds, maybe thousands of pages. Value or the devil is in the details. Without knowledge of those details, those emotional type immediate jumped to conclusions.

Had those politicians been acceptable leaders, then it would have taken closer to a month to understand whether this futures market had merit. But some leaders did not. They knew that most people out here cannot tell the difference between a smart thinker and an emotional hyper. How many others had seen this enough to say, "Wait a minute. We don't have any facts to make such a decision."

In the first days, I looked everywhere for even hints as to how this terrorist futures market would work. It is clear even from the reporters reports that no one knew details - meaning no one had the right to be making blanket declarations about the morality of that concept.

But then decisions were being made on morality - which is an early indication that the decision maker is his own worst enemy. Decisions based predominately on 'morals' is how the extremists like to impose their values on everyone else - to save us from ourselves.

Hyping leaders had but one day in which they were already expressing opinions.

So you think the DARP came up with this scheme over lunch and went public when they got back to the office. Pullleeessseee.

It is clear even from the reporters reports that no one knew details

No, it just means the reporters weren't asking the people that knew or the people that knew weren't talking.

Decisions based predominately on 'morals' is how the extremists like to impose their values on everyone else - to save us from ourselves.

I agree but there is nothing wrong with saying, hey, it looks like a duck, I want to hear it quack.

Originally posted by xoxoxoBruce
No, it just means the reporters weren't asking the people that knew or the people that knew weren't talking.

Hundreds of reporters all with access to Congressman who would love to 'brief' a reporter on background - off the record. And yet still the reporters could not describe what kind of futures market the DARPA study was proposing. Notice it was only $8million to further study the idea - not implement it.

It if walks alike a duck - fine. But it did not even get a chance to be incubated because so many Americans, so irresponsible, could not separate their inferior, silly emotions from logical thought. The quashing of this DARPA study is completely and totally a result of little minds with too much emotion and looking to appear to too many mentally weak or uninformed Americans.

I see nothing but curious interest in a terrorism futures market especially when those who would most suffer from such catastrophic disaster cannot even get insurance from Llyods for such a problem. But again, the mentally fearful (typically extreme conservatives or liberals) fear change - fear to innovate - fear to be pragmatic when poltical rhetoric is so much more important -fear to go where no man has gone before. And so they would advocate the firing of Adm Poindexter and agree with a the administration of a mental midget president rather than study would could be a major innovation for mankind - terrorism futures markets.

Those Congressman and Senators were not informed about this proposal until the proposal was made - just days ago. In 24 hours, they were lining up to prove to the mentally weak (people who only make decisions based upon emotion) what moral men they were. In reality, they were the classic example of why morality is so evil - why the moralists insist on saving us from ourselves - even when we don't need and don't want to be saved.

Smart men would have said spend the money and lets see what could happen - what a study might learn. Smart men from the same organization spent money on something else that every major organization in the field - IBM, AT&T, etc - said could not and would not work. That innovation - because men did not fear to innovate - is called the internet.

In a board of free thinkers, the local response to this DARPA study is also weak kneed, pathetic, and anti-innovative. But then the Cellar does suffer from a problem. Too many of its contributors have the East coast disease. "Fear to innovate".

Remember, you heard it here folks. All those moral bastards exposed by TW the immoral.

Any argument that can be used to seperate Poindexter from state power is moral.

Originally posted by Griff
Any argument that can be used to seperate Poindexter from state power is moral. ]

And Poindexter did what to deserve such a conclusion?

from here Poindexter was convicted on multiple felony counts on April 7, 1990 for conspiracy, obstruction of justice, lying to Congress, defrauding the government, and the alteration and destruction of evidence pertaining to the Iran-Contra Affair. The conviction was overturned in 1991 on the grounds that he had been granted immunity from prosecution as a result of his testimony before Congress.

Its my contention that the loopy congresscritters, who btw knew this was coming, were waiting for an opportunity to get rid of the admiral.

I think 13 years at his paygrade is ample reward for his treachery.

aside- Like to help you out Griff but that website demands waaaaay to much info.:(

This article has a little more info. The bets were limited to $100 which would eliminate the funding terror angle. They also mention that HP has used a similar process which explains why tw left his knee-jerk anti-Republicanism behind on this one. ;) It is a shame that the program wasn't laid out properly to the press.

Well that article indicates TW might have been right on this one.
Just goes to show the dangers of constantly crying wolf*.


* no offense. Eva. :D

Originally posted by Griff
It is a shame that the program wasn't laid out properly to the press.

The press had no facts to lay out the program with. Their sources, including those Congressman, also had no facts. The press had to report the emotional response of those Congressman, et al because the only fact was the emotional response.

It demonstrates why so many must be poltically correct. Notice the large numbers of posters even in the Cellar who vocalized negative responses to the DARPA terrorist futures markets - when no essential details were still available. They responded emotionally. ""Marketing in death. It must be bad."" However they forgot to include other examples that are even more heinous - such as the gross by undertakers at funerals. Why only an emotional response advocated by the party?

BTW if I am so anti-republican: the only party I registered with was Republican - and I was a treasurer of a Republican action organization. Grew among nothing but Republicans. But learned to first seek facts - rather than jump to emtional conclusions for quick political gain. Problem with such a thinking process - some are so conjoined to their political agenda that they assume other contrary opinions must also be based upon emotional responses and political agenda. My only political agenda is to first mistrust every response from a politician or political party. Which is why some responses will be contrary to popularly held yet illogical beliefs - such as Saddam is building WMD to attack the US. For this I am labeled anti-republican?

Again an emotional response based upon no facts. There are some Republicans so extremist as to not work for American such as the Project for a New American Century. Currently a president who would lie like Nixon, to invade another sovereign nation while facts be damned. For citing that glaring fact up front before the invasons; for that I am anti-Republican? Better add Senators McCain and Spectre to the list for some of their anti-Republican thinking. But then the list need no facts? Emotion is more than sufficient to replace logic.

such as Saddam is building WMD to attack the US.

Tell me TW, who said this?