WASHINGTON-The Pentagon on Tuesday bowed to political and public pressure and stopped a proposed terrorism future market from being established by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency.
“The FutureMAP research project was meant to explore the power of futures markets to predict and thereby prevent future terrorist attacks. Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as election results; they are often better than expert opinions. The program was part of DARPA’s overall thrust to find new ways to thwart terrorism,” said DARPA. “Our job at DARPA is to explore new ideas and innovative research to enhance national security. The resources that would have been applied to this project will be applied to other more fruitful pursuits. DARPA believes it is important to continue funding research that examines how to better use advanced information technologies and processes as predictive tools for terrorist acts.”
The wireless industry is familiar with DARPA because a lot of mobile-phone technology has its roots in DARPA.
The program, which would have set up a trading mechanism to predict future terrorism, was promptly halted after it was made public Monday. That did not spare Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz from a grilling from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. While Wolfowitz tried to defend DARPA, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) especially rebuffed his attempt at humor.
“I don’t think we can laugh off that DARPA program,” said Boxer. “There is something very sick about it. And if it’s going to end, I think you would end the careers of whoever it was who thought that up.”
The Policy Analysis Market, which was set to open for trading Oct. 1, received funding in the House version of the defense spending bill, but the Senate bill did not fund it.
It was two senators who brought the program to light and led to its demise.
The futures market is one of several DARPA projects that have recently come under scrutiny for going too far in zeal to counter terrorism.
