Pentagon Prepares a Futures Market on Terror Attacks

A bizarre new strategy in the war on terrorism is emerging from the headquarters of the US military. The Pentagon is creating an online futures market to predict the likelihood of terrorist attacks and assassinations. With the explicit aim of predicting the effects of US involvement in the Middle East, the program's website will begin registering traders on Aug. 1, and trading will begin on Oct. 1. A Defense Department statement explained the rationale behind the program: "Research indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective and timely aggregators of 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." Democratic senators are crying foul, however, charging that the markets is "absurd" and that the anonymity of the traders' identities could "encourage terrorists to participate, either to profit from their terrorist activities or to bet against them in order to mislead U.S. intelligence authorities." Questions remain as to how anonymity for online traders will be guaranteed, if limits on the number of traders will be imposed, who will have the power to propose potential scenarios, and how the trends the market displays will be interpreted and influence US policy decisions. – YaleGlobal