DARPA Creates Opinion Aggregator to Predict Attacks

The Defense Department’s research wing, DARPA, usually involved in
more mundane projects like inventing the Internet and Robot
Races, may
soon be selling
shares in Usama Bin Laden. The idea is an extension of the proven
power of free markets to predict non-marketplace behavior, like the selling
of futures in the varying presidential candidates as a menthod of
predicting their chances to win.

This particular bright idea involves setting up a commodity-style
market to use real investors — putting down real money — to help its
generals predict terrorist attacks, coups d’etat, and other turmoil around
the globe. It is the brainchild of a virtual who’s who of anti-terrorism
braniacs: sponsored by the Defense Department, uder the aegis of the
Information Awareness Office, whose director is retired Admiral John
Poindexter, the former Iran-Contra figure, and the Economist Intelligence
Unit, research arm of the publishers of The Economist magazine.

The idea is simple; use investors’ saavy and the proven predictive power
of an open market to track and anticipate the chances of world events. The
market would be a tool for combining, or ”aggregating,” the informed
opinions of many people into a single assessment. If
this sounds like a wacky boondogle, you are not alone. ”Spending taxpayer
dollars to create terrorism betting parlors is as wasteful as it is repugnant,”
Democratic Sens. Wyden and Dorgan said yesterday in a letter to the Pentagon.
”The American people want the federal government to use its resources
enhancing
our security,
not gambling on it.”

from the Boston Globe