Say what you will about the Bush Administration’s War Against Terror posse, they are Can-Do players. Take for instance Retired Rear Admiral John Poindexter, head of the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The aptly named Poindexter came up with an idea he called FutureMAP, or “Futures Markets Applied to Prediction.” It would have established a futures trading market in which speculators could wager, via the Internet, on the likelihood of a future terrorist attack or on events in the Middle East, including government overthrows and assassination attempts. From the trading patterns, DARPA hoped to gain clues about possible terrorist attacks because, “markets are often better than experts in making predictions.”
Given the recent track record of US Intelligence agencies, so is Miss Cleo.
At a Capitol Hill hearing, senators criticized the program as “just wrong,” “a futures market in death,” and “ridiculous, grotesque, unbelievably stupid.” But they also agreed it was at least “far better than the new Ben Affleck / J.Lo movie.”
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz defended DARPA by saying, “I share your shock at this kind of program. But it is brilliantly imaginative in places where we want them to be imaginative,” adding with a smile, “It sounds like maybe they got too imaginative.”
He also conceded that the sky was possibly too blue.
Poindexter, who, by the way, was shit-canned for his efforts, has been a wellspring of “imaginative” ideas for years. He served as Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser where he devised the plan to sell arms to Iran and illegally divert the profits to the Nicaraguan Contras. Completely unethical and illegal? Yes, but imaginative.
His first big idea for the Bush43 administration was the Total Information Awareness program, designed to identify “potential terrorists” by gathering every conceivable bit of information about every person’s life from a variety of sources including credit card, medical, school, surveillance, and travel records, then indexing all the information to make patterns searchable. The irony here can’t be overstated, since Poindexter got nailed in the Iran/Contra flap because he didn’t think to delete email backup files.
Once you get past some of the minor, nitpicky sticking points like, say, terrorists profiting from an attack by betting on it beforehand, the Poindexter’s Anarchy Lotto is no more obnoxious than any other get rich quick scheme. For instance, realize that South Carolina’s Education Lottery funds math education by taking money from people who are apparently unable to figure out odds.
In fact, if Poindexter had structured FutureMAP towards the lottery market, it would probably have gained wider acceptance.
“Gimme a six of Bud, some Marlboro Lights, five Powerball tickets, and a futures contract on finding WMD in Iraq.”
C’mon Miss Cleo, pick me a winner.
This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2003.
