Bomber bingo!
The news that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA) --
the agency whose predecessors were responsible for the primordial
development of the Internet -- has planned to open an anonymous global
futures market or gambling parlor in which participants can bet on
future terrorist acts has elicited understandable perplexity and
consternation. Sen. Byron Dorgan tells the New York Times he has had
trouble persuading people it's not a hoax.
But the project does not seem quite so outlandish if you are versed in
the latest trendy theories of the market and emergent behavior. The Web is
full
of these operations, play markets in celebrity and reputation, most of
them relatively frivolous or fun, like blogshares or the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Why not harness
the collective wisdom of the market to save terror victims' lives? Why not
let the invisible hand stop the terrorist's hand?
Here's why.
Markets depend on good information. The DARPA plan is based on the
theory that an open market will draw out the best information from multiple
sources. That's fine if, in fact, the incentive of making money in the
market is strong enough to overcome other motivations of participants. If
you were a terrorist planning an attack, would you try to make a little
money on the side by using your insider knowledge to place a winning bet?
Or would you allocate a little extra money in your operating budget to
placing decoy bets to delude those who you knew were turning to the U.S.
military-funded terror market for intelligence? Or would you simply stay
away, distrusting the market's anonymity mechanism on the assumption that
its American designers will have built in some sort of back door? It's
nearly impossible to imagine any set of circumstances in which this market
would provide untainted information.
Which leads us to the other problem, which just exploded in the face of
the Bush administration: How could the folks at DARPA not understand that
they had created an unbelievable PR gaffe? What tone-deaf idiot there
couldn't see that the relatives of victims of terror attacks or the
families of soldiers risking their lives ostensibly to fight terrorism
might find it a wee bit disturbing that the government was funding an
operation which, if it worked properly, would allow terrorists to profit
from their knowledge of their plans?
Here it is useful to remember that today's version of DARPA is the same
outfit that brought us the infamous Total Information Awareness program.
And all these brilliant efforts have been spearheaded by Admiral
John Poindexter-- who apparently learned nothing from his years fending
off conspiracy charges relating to his last bout of foreign policy
innovation in the Iran-contra scandal.
If there were a futures market in Poindexter's career it would
just have cratered.
POSTCRIPT Apparently this project has already met a swift end. Think of it as a sort of anaerobic-bacteria idea -- hatched in the darkness of an agency, unable to survive once exposed to the oxygen of public awareness.
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