Win money betting on terror for the pentagon

[Animal]

The really disturbing part in this is the knowledge that the very same people who though up this scheme, are in charge of the US military.

[Seahorse]

Pentagon Abandons Threat-Bet Program




By Ken Guggenheim
The Associated Press
Tuesday, July 29, 2003; 6:00 PM


The Pentagon on Tuesday abandoned a plan to establish a futures market that would have allowed traders to profit by correctly predicting assassinations and terrorist strikes in the Middle East.

Facing outraged Democratic senators, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said he learned of the program in the newspaper while heading to a Senate Foreign Relations hearing on Iraq.

"I share your shock at this kind of program," he said. "We'll find out about it, but it is being terminated."

Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said in an interview that he received assurance from the head of the Pentagon agency overseeing the program that it would "stop all engines on this matter today."

Warner spoke by telephone with Tony Tether, head of the Pentagon's Defense Research Projects Agency, after consulting with Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Appropriations Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. The three agreed "that this should be immediately disestablished," Warner said.

Warner said that DARPA "didn't think through the full ramifications of the program."

The little-publicized Pentagon plan envisioned a potential futures trading market in which speculators would wager with one another on the Internet on the likelihood of various economic or political events in the Middle East, including terrorist attacks or assassinations. A Web site promoting the plan already is available and registration of traders was to begin Friday.

When the plan was disclosed Monday by Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, the Pentagon defended it as a way to gain intelligence about potential terrorists' plans.

Wyden called it "a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism." Dorgan described it as "unbelievably stupid."

Criticism mounted Tuesday. On the Senate floor, Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle of South Dakota denounced the program as "an incentive actually to commit acts of terrorism."

"This is just wrong," declared Daschle, D-S.D. At an Armed Services Committee hearing, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton called it "a futures market in death."

Republicans joined in the criticism. At a news conference, Warner, Stevens and Roberts said they had not been told details of the program and would never have supported it. "This defies common sense. It's absurd," Roberts said. Warner called it "a rather egregious error of judgment."

At the Foreign Relations hearing, Wolfowitz defended DARPA, saying "it is brilliantly imaginative in places where we want them to be imaginative. It sounds like maybe they got too imaginative," he said, smiling.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told Wolfowitz "I don't think we can laugh off that program,"

"There is something very sick about it," she said. "And if it's going to end, I think you ought to end the careers of whoever it was thought that up. Because terrorists knowing they were planning an attack could have bet on the attack and collected a lot of money. It's a sick idea."

DARPA has been criticized by Congress for its Terrorism Information Awareness program, a computerized surveillance program that has raised privacy concerns. Wyden said the Policy Analysis Market is under the supervision of retired Adm. John Poindexter, the head of the Terrorism Information Awareness program and, in the 1980s, national security adviser to President Reagan.

Warner said Poindexter and Tether had personally reviewed the program. Warner, Roberts and Stevens declined to say whether the two men should be fired. Tether was to meet with lawmakers later Tuesday.

The program is called the Policy Analysis Market. DARPA said it was part of a research effort "to investigate the broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks."

Traders would have bought and sold futures contracts -- just like energy traders do now in betting on the future price of oil. But the contracts in this case would have been based on what might happen in the Middle East in terms of economics, civil and military affairs or specific events, such as terrorist attacks.

Holders of a futures contract that came true would have collected the proceeds of traders who put money into the market but predicted wrong.

A graphic on the market's Web page Monday showed hypothetical futures contracts in which investors could trade on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown. Although the Web site described the Policy Analysis Market as Middle East market, the graphic also included the possibility of a North Korea missile attack. The graphic was later removed from the Web site.

In a statement Monday, DARPA said markets could reveal "dispersed and even hidden information. Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions."

According to its Web site, the Policy Analysis Market would be a joint program of DARPA and two private companies, Net Exchange, a market technologies company, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, the business information arm of the publisher of The Economist magazine.

Trading was to begin Oct. 1. The market would have been open to at least 10,000 investors by Jan. 1.

The Web site says government agencies will not be allowed to participate and will not have access to the identities or funds of traders.

The Policy Analysis Market is part of a DARPA project called FutureMAP, or "Futures Markets Applied to Prediction." FutureMAP is run by Poindexter's division of DARPA, the Information Awareness Office, and the products of FutureMAP were to be given to the Terrorism Information Awareness project, another one of Poindexter's programs, for evaluation.

© 2003 The Associated Press

[Stratos]

It's good that this project have been dropped. These DARPA chaps need a long vacation, preferably away from planet Earth.

I couldn't help but wondering, if investors betted a large sum of money that this ot that 3rd world dictator would get assassinated, wouldn't it be possible that they could 'manipulate' some events to ensure a profit?

[ 07-30-2003, 09:52 AM: Message edited by: Stratos ]

[Rokenn]

Originally posted by Stratos: It's good that this project have been dropped. These DARPA chaps need a long vacation, preferably away from planet Earth. I couldn't help but wondering, if investors betted a large sum of money that this ot that 3rd world dictator would get assassinated, wouldn't it be possible that they could 'manipulate' some events to ensure a profit?

This was one of the big concerns with the project.

As for DARPA coming up with silly ideas, well that is their job [img]smile.gif[/img] They did invent the Internet after all.

I did some reading on the theory behind what they were attempting to do and the idea is interesting and may have actually worked. But given the nature of human greed it would have only been a matter of time till someone did a little ENRON style market manipulation to making a true 'killing'.

[Skunk]

I already knew that the US intelligence services lacked skill in detecting and predicting acts of terrorism from the report to Congress - but this news lowers my assessment even further!

What, were they hoping that the terrorists would place a bet for the day that they planned their attacks and then hoped to grab them when they collected their prize?

Doh!

[pritchke]

Originally posted by Ziroc: Oh geez. I SWEAR, I thought when I highlighted your link, it was going to go to the Onion. Very sad.

That is what I thought to. It is "unbelievably stupid". What is to stop some fairly wealthy guy from making bets and arranging the attacks themselves. While difficult do to the fact that the feds have been informed if he is crafty enough he can make quite a bit of money.

Or someone slightly involved with terrorism could be informed of attacks and for the terrorist organizations it is win/win. They get a successful attack, or lose a few guys but get a bunch of money for it.

Not to mention all the phoney predictions.

[Rokenn]

The more I read about the theory behind this idea the more I think Congress was wrong for killing it. And that the Darpa guys should have gotten out in front of the controversy and tried to explain things better...

The Case for Terrorism Futures (Politics 2:00 a.m. PDT)

The Senate wasted no time in smacking down a proposal to create a
futures market that would allow people to wager on the likelihood of
terrorist strikes, but supporters of the idea say lawmakers may have
missed the point. By Noah Shachtman.

[ 07-30-2003, 03:23 PM: Message edited by: Rokenn ]

[Chewbacca]

Astrology is a proven predictor of trends and events. Ask Ronald Reagan.

Remote veiwing has an 80% accuracy rate. Of course the U.S. supposedly scrapped its alledged secret remote veiwing project back in the 90's.

Neither of these would allow direct profiteering on tragedy.

[ 07-30-2003, 05:19 PM: Message edited by: Chewbacca ]

[Moiraine]

Originally posted by Stratos: I couldn't help but wondering, if investors betted a large sum of money that this ot that 3rd world dictator would get assassinated, wouldn't it be possible that they could 'manipulate' some events to ensure a profit?

And if you take that line of reasoning one step further, would it be possible that the Pentagon was hoping to catch terrorists this way ? In other words, would there have been a special watching on people who would have happened to bet on terrorist events ?

[Ar-Cunin]

A now ex-admiral Poindexter is re-retirering [img]smile.gif[/img]

(Heard it on the Radio today)

Goodbye

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This case was so unbelievebly stupid that when I first heard of it, I thought: "This has to be a hoax" Apparently I was wrong

[ 08-01-2003, 03:04 PM: Message edited by: Ar-Cunin ]