Ana Marie Cox on the societal scourge of prediction markets
"This is the illusion of participating in society."
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One of the subplots of President Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran was how gamblers seemingly operating with inside information cashed in.
The New York Times reported that on Polymarket, in the hours before Trump’s attack began, “at least 16 accounts that placed bets predicting a strike each ultimately profited by over $100,000 [and] at least 109 accounts made over $10,000. One anonymous wallet that spent over $60,000 on ‘yes’ shares, mostly in the days before the attack, made nearly half a million dollars.”
That wasn’t the first time eyebrows have been raised about large sums being made on bets surrounding the activities of Trump, his administration, and his allies.
To cite just two examples, in January, an anonymous trader made $400,000 on wagers placed hours before the US military’s raid into Venezuela. And last summer, a trader with the handle “ricosuave666” made more than $150,000 wagering “with suspicious accuracy” on Israel’s June 2025 strikes on Iran. (Two Israelis last month were charged in connection with using classified information to make bets on Polymarket.)
To get some 30,000-foot perspective on the growth of prediction markets and the corrosive effect they’re having on politics and society, we connected with Ana Marie Cox, contributing editor at The New Republic and author of a recent piece entitled “Prediction Markets Are Eroding Our Civic Soul.”
She writes:
These markets are easily gamed by exactly the kind of ethically bankrupt monsters attached to the Trump administration who would have foreknowledge of the strike — or those fortunate to overhear the matter being discussed over drinks. (If you are already OK with civilian casualties, profiting directly on them is just a short hop further away from humanity.) Sure enough, the market-tracking company Bubblemaps announced that six crypto wallets established within 24 hours of the strikes had won $1.2 million buying contracts on it.
In our conversation with Cox, we discussed why being encouraged to bet on everything is so bad for people, how it’s corrupting polling and the news media (Kalshi sponsors segments on CNN, for instance), and the sense in which prediction markets provide “the illusion of participating in society,” as she put it.
“It’s not actually caring about global events. It’s seeing them as things that only have outcomes you benefit from or you lose from, not what they might actually do to people,” Cox said. “You’re betting on bombings, conflicts, whether or not a US civil war breaks out before the end of this year. Who’s gonna win that bet? It’s like betting on Russian Roulette. It’s corrosive in so many ways.”
A full transcript of Cox’s conversation with Public Notice contributor Thor Benson, lightly edited for clarity, follows. If you’d like to read it but aren’t already a paid subscriber, please sign up. Paid subscribers make Public Notice possible and keep the vast majority of our work free for everyone.
Thor Benson
