Pentagon Folds Hand in Online Terrorism Futures Scheme

Sen. John Warner (R.-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, said during a Tuesday morning hearing he had contacted the program's director and the Pentagon had agreed to scuttle the program that had ignited a firestorm of criticism. U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) first brought attention to the program in a late Monday press conference. The Policy Analysis Market (PAM), the first phase of the project, is already online with funding from a federal grant and was scheduled to begin a beta testing on Friday. The Defense Department had also requested $8 million for its "Futures Markets Applied to Prediction" (FutureMAP) initiative, which would expand on the Policy Analysis Market's terror-wagering scheme. "Analysts often use prices from various markets as indicators of potential events. The use of petroleum futures contract prices by analysts of the Middle East is a classic example," the site's concept overview states. "PAM refines this approach by trading futures contracts that deal with underlying fundamentals of relevance to the Middle East." According to site, PAM will initially focus on the "economic, civil, and military futures of Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey and the impact of U.S. involvement with each."