A DARPA plan to use Idea Futures in Dealing With Terrorism (focusing on the Middle East - how about domestic wackos?) was killed. [John Warner] announced the decision not long after Senate Democratic Leader [Thomas Daschle] took to the floor to denounce the program as "an incentive actually to commit acts of terrorism."... [Byron Dorgan] said "Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in ... and bet on the assassination of an American political figure or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?"..."Surely such a threat should be met with intelligence gathering of the highest quality - not by putting the question to individuals betting on an Internet Web site," [Byron Dorgan] and [Ron Wyden] said. Would that be the same quality that prevented the World Trade Center attack? This is so fucking sad. Shall we shut down the Open Source Intelligence efforts, too, since it involves reading negative things that people say about us? I think we should outlaw short-selling of company stock, too.

I also find the War On Iraq more "morally repugnant" than this setup.

More seriously, I think this could have been an extremely useful learning experience, not just for [Military Intelligence] but for the application of Idea Futures to Society Design problems.

This was going to be set up by [Net Exchange].

Here are Trade Sports contracts on politics and current events. Other commentary from John Robb and also Doc Searls and [Eric Norlin].

James Surowiecki from March'03 on [Decision Markets]: There is, perhaps, something ghoulish about gambling on war... But in a sense the [News Futures] traders are only trying to do what op-ed writers, TV pundits, and presidential advisers attempt to do every day: predict the future. The big difference is that the betting markets are far more likely to be right.

Aug1: John Poindexter resigned over this.

Robin Hanson was directly involved in the market design.

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