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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [LINK] Stupidity -
terrorism futures & atom bomb rockets
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 12:29:06
+1000
From: Robin Whittle
<rw@firstpr.com.au>
Organization: First Principles
To: Link mailing list
Here is something so
breathtakingly stupid and counterproductive that I
think all those involved must be
completely mad, without any of them
realising it:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/29/1059244620059.html
(But read on
for the latest update!)
The US government, via the
Pentagon and DARPA, is funding a futures
market in which people can bet
and make money if they correctly predict
terrorist attacks. This is
supposed to be a way the government can tap
the knowledge of other people to
help predict such security problems.
What astounds me about the
scheme, and this article, is that there is no
mention of the most obvious
problem - that by betting on a future event
and then making it happen, you
can make legitimate money from terrorism!
It will be a piece of cake for
anyone, bin Laden, the Russian, American
or Italian Mafia or almost anyone
with a bit of money, a few connections
and few scruples, to clean up
with this.
Simply bet on a terrorist act in
some obscure place - and make it happen.
Its not hard to get someone to
place a bomb, poison a water supply, cut
fibre optic cables, set off an
explosive device with acid or glue and
fine strands of copper wire in an
electrical switching yard (I just made
that one up) etc.
Furthermore, there are plenty of people who would be
happy to do this and be paid for
it, because in their view, such acts
are *good* acts, because they
damage a pernicious society which needs to
have an attitude adjustment.
At least two factors would work
against profiteering like this.
Firstly, betting on some obscure
place would presumably increase the
scrutiny of that place - but such
scrutiny is probably next to useless
for preventing an attack or for
catching the perpetrators afterwards.
Secondly, anyone who profited
from an attack would presumably be subject
to scrutiny - but its not hard to
have communications and financial
relations with perpetrators in a
way which cannot be detected.
This makes me think of further
reasons why the system is flawed.
Lets say Mr, Ms or Mrs Cashed-up
Respectable Investor, who genuinely
despises terrorism, enters this
game and predicts and attack on city
XYZ. Before long, XYZ is
attacked, and the investor pockets a small
fortune. For ever more,
they will know that they profited from
someone-else's death and
suffering - and the whole world will know this
too. This is such a
miserable business that decent people would surely
stay out of it. On
the other hand, a decent person could have genuine
concerns about a future attack in
XYZ and see their putting their money
on the line as a way of
convincing the Authorities that they too should
be more concerned about attacks
on XYZ.
There could be runs of enthusiasm
as "investors" (==GAMBLERS) monitor
the trends in predictions in
particular places (or more likely assign
the task to brokers or their own
computer software) - so there would be
momentum and self-generating runs
on particular risk predictions. This
would be indistinguishable from
the predictions of people with genuine
knowledge of risk. Any such
speculators would be keen to hide their
speculative drive, I would think.
Here's another way of stuffing
this system up. Lets say the terrorists
want to mess with the
system. Every time there is a run on a particular
location, they lob a few sticks
of gelignite into the compound of the
US/UK/Australian/Whatever
embassy. Then the gamblers get their payout -
and the operators of the scheme
recognise that the system is generating
attacks and is worse than
useless, so they close it down.
This is a prime example of
something so bad and stupid that any
responsible government would
surely ban it outright. But instead it is
being paid for by the US
government! I can't imagine that governments
such as ours, part of the
conga-line of suck-holes, would be critical of
anything the US government does.
Normally, I would have said that
I had never heard of anything so stupid
for a long time, but this is a
special week. The other day I saw a book
on a US proposal for a nuclear
powered spaceship. I can't remember its
name, but the book was
purportedly - and apparently - based on recently
declassified material on a 1957
to 1965 or so project to launch people
and equipment into orbit.
The craft was 30 foot in diameter, like a
large artillery shell - to be
pushed upwards by the force of atomic
bombs detonated underneath
it. There were to be *427* or so bombs
stored in it, and they would be
pooped out the bottom and detonated
nearby. This seems so
nutty as to be unbelievable, but the book had
genuine looking photos of a 3
foot diameter test vehicle powered by five
or so conventional explosive
charges.
Googling " declassified rocket US
1958 atomic " finds a detailed,
illustrated, reference - Project
Orion.
http://www.mediamatic.net/cwolk/view/7049
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805059857
This is written by George Dyson,
about his father Freeman Dyson's
involvement in this
project. There is mention of *800* nuclear charges
to launch this 20 storey high
spaceship.
Human stupidity can apparently
have truly unlimited scope and magnitude!
OK - I just
Googled:
"Policy Analysis Market"
DARPA
and found:
News: Pentagon to Abandon
'Terror' Futures Market Plan - Washington
Post - 5 hours ago
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61718-2003Jul29.html
Warner Says Pentagon To Scrap
Terror-Futures Market Plan - Quicken - 8
hours ago
Pentagon to start futures market
for terror attacks - San Francisco
Chronicle - 16 hours ago
Market analysis of potential
events - Nanodot
... new Policy Analysis
Market web site, supported by Net Exchange,
The Economist Intelligence
Unit, and the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA),
to ...
http://nanodot.org/articles/03/05/28/0658256.shtml
The site still has its front page:
http://www.policyanalysismarket.org
but the sole link from there goes
to a missing file.
Google, of course, is our
friend! Using Advanced Search:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
for all pages in the domain
policyanalysismarket.org which do not
contain the word "zzzz" I find
several pages in the cache, with many of
the images still available from
the site.
In Google's cache, but not the
site:
pam_orgs.htm
Still on the site:
http://www.policyanalysismarket.org/pam_concept.htm
http://www.policyanalysismarket.org/pam_trade_info.htm
http://www.policyanalysismarket.org/pam_trader.htm
I have kept copies of these
pages. For a future museum of stupidity
(Google finds no such thing . . .
) But I have better things to do than
document such things.
I do have a copy of the old RIAA site designed
to make music copiers think they
were criminals . . .
- Robin
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meb1-pos3-5.gw.optusnet.com.au
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172 cw-gw.sffca.ip.att.net
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