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Right-wing billionaires are seizing control of
American media. The
Trump-supporting Ellison family struck a deal last week to acquire Warner
Bros., which would be merged with Paramount. Once approved, the Ellisons will
control CBS News, TikTok, CNN, Comedy Central, HBO, and other outlets.
David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount, already put
conservative pundit Bari Weiss in charge of CBS News. He reportedly promised
Trump he would make “sweeping changes” at CNN if the Trump administration
greenlighted his Warner Bros. acquisition.
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(Photo Illustration by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
On
February 28, the United States and Israel began major combat operations in
Iran. For some, the consequences of this action were fatal. By Monday, the
war had claimed the lives of at least six U.S. soldiers, hundreds of people in Iran,
and dozens more in neighboring Gulf states. The bombardment of Iran
reportedly destroyed a girls’ primary school, killing about 150 people, the vast majority of them students.
A spokesman for the U.S. military said CENTCOM takes the reports seriously
and is “looking into“ the allegation.
For
others, the beginning of the war was simply a money-making opportunity. In
the hours before the strike, six newly-created accounts on the prediction
market Polymarket raked in nearly $1 million by betting that the
U.S. would strike Iran by February 28.
Many
observers, including the analytics site that first flagged the suspicious
trades, suspect that the accounts
benefited from insider knowledge. But it’s impossible to say for sure. The
international version of Polymarket, where the bets were made, does not
require users to identify themselves and accepts bets in crypto.
One
such account, “dicedicedice,” made a single wager of
nearly $30,000 that the U.S. would strike Iran by February 28. Hours later,
the account recorded a profit of about $120,000.
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Overall,
“$529 million was traded on contracts tied to the timing of the strikes” on
Polymarket, Bloomberg reported.
The
White House “denied anyone in Trump’s orbit was behind the lucrative trades.” It’s unclear which members of the administration would be
considered “in Trump’s orbit.” Donald Trump Jr. serves as an advisor to both
Polymarket and its chief rival, Kalshi.
Moving
forward, Polymarket is offering dozens of markets on war-related
developments.
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On
its website, Polymarket describes allowing wagers on acts of war as a public service, claiming it provides vital
information to “those directly affected by the attacks.”
The promise of
prediction markets is to harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate,
unbiased forecasts for the most important events to society. That ability is
particularly invaluable in gut-wrenching times like today. After discussing
with those directly affected by the attacks, who had dozens of questions, we
realized that prediction markets could give them the answers they needed in
ways TV news and 𝕏 could not.
Popular
Information contacted Polymarket and asked which people directly affected by
the attacks had spoken with the company and why prediction markets could
provide them with “the answers they needed.” The inquiry was not returned.
Prediction
markets that serve U.S. customers are formally prohibited by the Commodity
Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) from offering any market “that involves, relates to, or references terrorism,
assassination, [or] war.” Polymarket offers its
war-related markets on an offshore trading platform that technically does not
accept customers from the United States. Nevertheless, many people in the
U.S. use Polymarket and shield their true location with a Virtual Private Network
(VPN). Polymarket is also rolling out a separate prediction market for people
in the U.S. that will comply with CFTC rules.
But
even for Kalshi, which operates a single prediction market that is regulated
by the CFTC, the restriction on war-related markets has little practical
impact. Kalshi offered a market on “Ali Khamenei out as Supreme Leader?” by
various dates.
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The
CFTC allows prediction markets to self-certify each market, and Kalshi
certified that this market was not related to war.
Controversially,
after Khamenei was killed on February 28, Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said the market would not
resolve to “YES” because the company has a rule not to resolve a market based
on someone’s death. Instead, everyone who bought a position in the market
will receive the value of that position just before Khamenei died. This means
traders who expected to receive $1 per share will instead receive about nine
cents.
Mansour
said he “learned a lot” from the Khamenei market and will handle things
differently in the future with markets “where a death might be a likely scenario.”
War-related
prediction markets are not just an opportunity for insider trading — they
create a national security risk. A letter from six Democratic Senators sent
to the CFTC last month argued that these markets create “incentives to incite violence, foment geopolitical conflicts,
and disclose classified information.”
In
mid-February, two Israelis — a military reservist and a civilian — were
charged with “serious security offenses” for placing bets on
Polymarket based on classified military intelligence. Several others were
arrested, but have not been charged.
The
Israeli military called the bets a “serious ethical lapse,” but said that they had
caused “no operational harm.”
Prosecutors
did not release the names of those arrested or information on the nature of
the bets. However, Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported last month that
the government was investigating an anonymous Polymarket account that placed
a series of bets related to Israeli military operations during Israel’s
12-day war with Iran in June 2025. The user walked away with over $150,000, raising suspicions that the
bets had been based on insider information.
A familiar playbook
Issues
with war-related markets did not begin with the new war in Iran. On January
2, just hours before Trump announced that the U.S. had captured Venezuelan
President Nicolás Maduro, an anonymous account on Polymarket bet over $30,000
that Maduro would soon be ousted. When the bet was made, Polymarket showed
just an 8% chance that it would prove
correct. However, by the next morning, the account was cashing out over
$400,000 in winnings.
This
bet, and the rest of the account’s betting history, raised suspicions of insider trading. The
account appears to have been created in December 2025, placing its first bet
on December 27 — $96 saying that the U.S. would invade Venezuela. The account
placed several more bets related to U.S. operations in Venezuela in the
following days, leading up to the final bet of over $30,000.
Experts
on prediction markets and insider trading told several news outlets that the
bets had the hallmarks of insider trading. One expert told CBS News that the most
suspicious factors were that the bet was placed late at night just before the
event occurred, a large amount of money was bet, and the bet was placed in a
relatively unregulated and opaque market.
There
have also been issues with markets related to the war in Ukraine. In
November, a live map tracking the war was falsely manipulated to show an
advance of Russian troops shortly before a Polymarket bet on the conflict
resolved, 404 Media reported. Users had placed bets on if
Russia would capture the city of Myrnohrad by various dates, generating “more than $1 million in trading volume.” Shortly before one of the bets was set to resolve on November
15, the map that Polymarket relied on for the market was edited to show that
Russian troops had taken control of an intersection in Myrnohrad. But after
the market resolved, the Russian advance was removed from the map. According
to Responsible Statecraft, the edit “triggered payouts as high as 33,000%” for those who bet that Russia would gain control over the city
by November 15.
Polymarket
uses a map tracking the Russia and Ukraine war from the Institute for the
Study of War (ISW). A statement by ISW said that “an
unauthorized and unapproved edit” to the map was “made on the night of
November 15-16” and “was removed before the day’s normal workflow began on
November 16.”
In
a statement to 404 Media, ISW
condemned the use of its map for prediction markets. “ISW has become aware
that some organizations and individuals are promoting betting on the course
of the war in Ukraine and that ISW’s maps are being used to adjudicate that
betting,” ISW said. “ISW strongly disapproves of such activities and
strenuously objects to the use of our maps for such purposes, for which we
emphatically do not give consent.”
