Bad news, war profiteers: efforts are underway in the US to ban public officials from placing Polymarket and Kalshi bets based on inside information —including ghoulish wagers on the death and destruction they know will follow military action.
Proposed to the US senate on Thursday, the new legislation would effectively ban any public official from placing wagers on prediction markets using nonpublic information. The individuals covered include employees at government agencies, regulatory workers, congressional staffers — and, of course, lawmakers and the president.
Should the bill pass, penalty fines would start off at $500, but could be as much as double the profit made on successful bets.
As Indiana senator Todd Young told the New York Times, prediction markets “create incentives for elected officials or other well-placed public individuals to change their behavior.” Young is a Republican sponsor of the bill, which he hopes will “cut down on any such incentives or temptations that those who hold positions of public trust might harbor.”
As these gambling platforms have exploded in popularity over the past few months, incidents like the one Young describes have become the norm. Both the US attack on Venezuela and the ongoing US war on Iran have had their own prediction market scandals, strongly suggesting that people with advanced knowledge of the deadly campaigns are cashing in.
Don’t be fooled into thinking lawmakers are experiencing a rare bout of moral clarity, however. For the bill’s sponsors, it’s less about the ethics of war gambling and more about practicing good operational security.
“It’s an operational risk,” Michigan senator Elissa Slotkin told the NYT. A former CIA officer and renowned national security hawk, Slotkin is the key Democrat-party sponsor of the bill. “If you’re just hanging out on one of these sites, and suddenly you see a bunch of people placing large bets on military action, that is a tell that we’re about to take military action,” she said.
While it remains to be seen how popular the bipartisan bill is in the senate, it would be a rare show of self-restraint for the nation’s elected officials, who have yet to address a long-running gap in regulation on similar stock market profiteering.
More on prediction markets: Polymarket Announces New Bar For Degenerate War Profiteers
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