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MEDIA
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Monday, August 04, 2003
Defending terrorism futures.
Last Friday, during my weekly appearance to discuss media issues on
WRKO Radio (AM 680), talk-show host Pat
Whitley said he was going
to take a controversial stance: in the 10 a.m. hour, he would come
out in favor of John Poindexter's idea to create an Internet-based
futures market aimed at predicting acts of terrorism.
Well, Whitley's attempt to make
waves got overwhelmed pretty quickly. To an extent one couldn't have
imagined, what seemed like a
bona fide terrible idea
when it was first reported last week was quickly embraced by media
pundits seeking to be counterintuitive.
Here are the examples I saw -- and
I'm sure I missed a few:
- Beating Whitley to the punch,
New Yorker financial columnist James
Surowiecki wrote a piece
for his alma mater, Slate, on July 30 in which he argued,
"If the price of getting better intelligence is having our
sensibilities bruised, we should be willing to pay
it."
- On Sunday, the New York
Times' Floyd
Norris suggested that
the idea was a useful one, and explained why the US government had
to get involved in order for it to work: "The answer is that
Uncle Sam had been picked to play the role of designated loser in
the gambling." In other words, if the terrorism-futures market
were private (and there already is one), it wouldn't be as useful,
since there would be some bets that no one would take.
- Also on Sunday, the Boston
Globe's Gareth
Cook (ex of the
Phoenix) reported that the market idea was just one of a
number of creepy and potentially vital projects being undertaken
by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the office that
Poindexter will continue to head for at least a few more
weeks.
- McGill University lecturer
Reuven
Brenner, in an op-ed
piece for the Wall Street Journal last Friday that was
posted to the free OpinionJournal.com site on Sunday, writes in
defense of the market idea -- but, in true WSJ fashion,
argues that there is "no reason" for government
involvement.
- This morning, the
Globe's Hiawatha
Bray offers a defense.
Unfortunately for him, he writes that "there's nothing to stop
some businessperson from launching a similar project," showing
that he didn't read Norris's Times piece. Or maybe he read
Brenner's piece instead.
- Also today, the Boston
Herald's Ted
Bunker, his weekly
"Capital Focus" column, interviews former DARPA scientist Vincent
Cerf, who complains that the political pressure being exerted
today might have hampered the development of the Internet, an
earlier DARPA innovation.
So, was the Policy Analysis Market,
as the terrorism-futures lottery was formally known, a good idea?
Damned if I know. I remain deeply suspicious for two reasons: the
involvement of Iran-Contra figure Poindexter, and the notion that
futures markets are far better at predicting mass behavior -- say, a
presidential election, or changes in soybean prices -- than they are
at predicting the behavior of a few mayhem-minded
individuals.
But this much is certain: what had
seemed like a deeply controversial idea when it was first revealed
may not actually be very controversial at all.
posted at 9:06 AM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
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