Market of Strategic Information Slash Influence Is Too Right!

A small news item July 29th, pg. A12 deserved more attention. "Pentagon betting plan attacked" was a fair title for the disturbing program aimed at intelligence gathering but too little useful information was provided. In such a system, traders would and apparently (in some cases) already do, bet on outcomes of foreign policy, elections and military actions. Other sources (MSNBC) indicate it would start with 100 experts and expand, then the sponsors DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) claim that they would not be able to identify traders who sign up.

It sounds similar to the former fiasco Office of Strategic Information/Influence, now titled a Futures Market. Reports on 9-11 have indicated the poor handling of the volume of Intelligence that was already there and now they expect to have help from the economic forecasting arena? Not to mention the idea that misinformation that was hypothetically strategically planted somehow missed processing by any Office in the Administration that would keep things straight.

Markets may be efficient indicators of the futures, but they may be too efficient for interpretations that would be meaningful in time. Setting aside the aspect that DARPA would be sponsoring or turning a blind eye to insider trading, which would admittedly be a required component, how would they separate trading by terrorists from ideologues and analysts from capitalists? Not that there is anything wrong with some of that.

Efficiency would have been if voters had taken warning from the markets (in 2000) at the risk of a Bush election.