This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
We have an indictment of a special forces soldier, who participated in the planning/execution of the Maduro raid, for making Polymarket bets on questions about Maduro and US involvement in Venezuela.
Specifically, Gannon Ken Van Dyke used USDC.e to trade on at least four markets: "Maduro out by ... January 31, 2026", "US forces in Venezuela by ... January 31, 2026", "Trump invokes War Powers against Venezuela by ... January 31, 2026", and "Will the US invade Venezuela by ... January 31, 2026?" The last of the four markets actually resolved to NO, but he sold his position at some point before he took losses.
He apparently didn't do a great job of hiding it. He transferred his winnings to "a foreign cryptocurrency 'vault' which advertises that it generates interest for depositors" and then a couple of weeks later, transferred them to his crypto exchange account. At some point after (the indictment doesn't say), he cashed it out and transferred it to a brand new Interactive Brokers account (which was presumably in his real name). The only steps they mention him taking to try to cover his tracks were asking Polymarket to delete his account (claiming that he had lost access to the associated email address) and changing the email address on his crypto exchange account. I think the implication in the indictment is that the original email account associated with his crypto exchange account was "subscribed to in his name".
To my knowledge, this is the first US prosecution of someone trading in 'war prediction markets' using classified insider information. Unsurprisingly, they throw in quite a few different counts, and I'm not qualified/would have to do more work to have a sense on whether some of them are unlikely to succeed (did he do a sort of "fraud" in some technical sense? somebody would probably have to know the case law of the particular statute).
Everyone has known that this sort of thing was possible; some have criticized prediction markets for even having specific markets that are vulnerable to this type of insider trading on sensitive national security matters. The buzz on military subreddits by soldiers is that they're confident civilian politicos have also made a bunch of money by trading on this stuff. Are they not getting prosecuted because they're connected to the powers that be, while lowly grunts have examples made out of them? Are others just better at hiding their tracks?
If I had one observation of my own to add, I would reflect on the nature of monetary incentives. They're potentially large; this guy allegedly made about $400k. I think back to the story of cyber crime generally. Some stylized accounts say that long ago, internet viruses or whatever were kind of a game that people sort of did for fun. Some people just liked causing damage or they just wanted to see what it was possible to do. There weren't super easy ways to make a bunch of money with it. It certainly wasn't non-existent, but there were genuine, significant frictions. Then, when crypto made it vastly easier to extort folks for real money from the other side of the world, it took off on industrial scales.
In some sense, I feel a bit of that here. People getting in trouble for bad use of their access to classified information obviously isn't a new problem. Folks have been doing it because of a girl they like or because they decided they now believe in some other government/social or political movement/whathaveyou more than their promises to their own government. Maybe some folks even just found it fun. There was at least the one guy who posted classified information in the forums of a video game, because he wanted the US tanks in the game to be stronger. Foreign governments have long been trying to monetize this, as well, paying handsomely for information provided by insiders. But that path to money is kind of hard and cumbersome. You have to find some legit way to contact some component of the foreign government, possibly build a relationship, etc. Now, there are big piles of money, just sitting there, ready to be taken, and my guess would be that it's probably easier for folks to think that they can figure out how to cover their tracks while they bank a bunch of money this way. Many of them might actually be wrong, be bad at covering their tracks, and get caught. Others might succeed, and I have no real sense for how much this phenomenon will grow.
I think people are trying to make this into a more interesting story than it is. There are interesting discussions to have about insider trading and prediction markets, but this isn't one of them. Soldiers are supposed to keep secret military operations secret. Making trades on markets which exist primarily to broadcast information to the world is the opposite of that. No different than if he had posted "Hasta la vista from me and the boys from the 75th!" on Instagram or something.
This is sort of precisely where I think there is a simmering culture war, the clash between your comment and that of @JTarrou.
Scoping out a bit, the stylized story I might tell would be that back in ye olde days of Snowden/Assange, there was this sense of "information is meant to be free" and "sunlight is the best disinfectant". My sense is that at least some of those folks had a change of heart when their own ox was gored. But I think it's still a significant culture war.
Are soldiers supposed to keep secret military operations secret? Or is part of the point of things like prediction markets specifically to say something like "information is meant to be free", even governments shouldn't be able to keep even that sort of stuff secret, and it's good to build tools with the "whole point" being to prevent folks from being practically capable of keeping even stuff like that secret?
I certainly don't think this culture war has been won in either direction. It's just sitting there, menacingly, underneath a variety of these related debates.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link