There's an insider group betting 'almost exclusively' on imminent U.S. military actions

I find it astonishing that we have now learned, without question, of an organized insider trading scheme placing bets on imminent U.S. military actions and yet so far, there seems very little media and public alarm about that.

To be sure, there's a lot of corruption to keep track of these days. The news that Trump is indeed going ahead with his $1.7 billion government slush fund meant to pay cash rewards to those who committed crimes on his behalf is rightly a shocker, and it's not just me calling it the most corrupt act ever committed by a U.S. administration. The news that Donald Trump has been pump-and-dumping individual stocks, purchasing shares in specific companies immediately before boosting those companies in speeches or on television, is pretty damn dire.

It's all in a day's work for the most corrupt presidency and political party in U.S. history, but the confirmation of a pattern of insider trades based on about-to-get-underway U.S. military options? Hoo boy.

The short version: Somebody is selling out U.S. soldiers for the sake of winning Polymarket bets. And it keeps happening.

Nine connected Polymarket accounts have raked in more than $2.4 million betting almost exclusively on U.S. military actions in what digital detectives from the data analytics firm Bubblemaps have identified as a potentially egregious case of insider trading.

The anonymous accounts made winning bets on the specific dates of pivotal moments in the war with Iran: the first U.S. strikes, the removal of Iran's supreme leader, and the announcement of a ceasefire.

Across more than 80 bets, the accounts had a 98% win rate, even as many wagers were made when the odds of winning were low, according to Bubblemaps co-founder and CEO Nicolas Vaiman, who shared their findings first with 60 Minutes.

"This might be the most insane pattern we have found on Polymarket so far," Vaiman said. "Luck alone cannot explain those numbers."

That's from CBS News, and you should definitely click over and read every word of it. There's lots there to chew on. And if you're wondering how the Ellison-owned, Bari Weiss-controlled 60 Minutes was allowed to break the story, my suspicion is that the story is too complex for Weiss to have realized how damning it is. No matter what the truth turns out to be, it will be a disaster for this (crooked, crooked, so damn crooked) White House.

A few weeks ago, we learned that a previous insider bet made just before a U.S. military raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was allegedly made by A U.S. special forces soldier involved with the raid. What we're seeing in these other Polymarket trades, however, is evidence that someone with access to higher-level diplomatic and military discussions—in other words, planning from inside the White House itself—is placing the bets.

Fighting in Iran had been raging for more than three weeks and it was a slow trading day in oil futures. Then suddenly, according to data from the financial firm LSEG, at 6:50 a.m. ET on March 23, more than $800 million was staked on the chance of oil prices dropping.

Fifteen minutes later, President Trump posted on Truth Social that the White House and Iran had "very good and productive" conversations about ending hostilities. The news sent the price of oil plummeting more than 10%, meaning whoever executed those trades made a fortune.

An up to $80 million dollar gain in fifteen minutes—on nearly a billion dollars of bets—has all the marks of an inside job. Somebody close to Donald Trump, somebody perhaps so close to Donald Trump that they're wearing his suit and orange makeup, rushed to cash in on what Trump was about to announce.

The problem here is not just that a small group of somebodies are using insider access to bet on U.S. military operations and associated outcomes. As I keep repeating, the much more alarming problem is that now that this pattern of insider trades has been revealed, U.S. enemies can and now almost certainly are monitoring those prediction markets to get advance notice of future U.S. strikes.

From CBS:

Bubblemaps head of investigations, Deebs, worries the insider trading on prediction markets could have national security implications. If market watchers can spot irregular trades, enemies of the U.S. can, too — and they'll make war plans accordingly.

"Just to put it plainly, this could be putting people's lives at risk," Deebs said. "Other adversaries may be using this information in order to plan their own strategy."

Of course this is putting lives at risk. There's no question about it. An hour or even 15 minutes of advance notice of an imminent U.S. strike is enough to put defenders on high alert and send troops scurrying to fortified positions; having even that much time to prepare can make the difference between successfully shooting down an American plane or not getting off the shot.

At this moment, by far the greatest (self-imposed) military crisis is the Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz, an act which now has world economies teetering. There are only two realistic options for reopening the strait without Iran's cooperation: either the U.S. escorts every individual oil tanker through the strait to limit (but not remove) risk of attack, or the U.S. military launches a ground invasion to seize the whole of the Iranian coastline at the strait—which would also not fully eliminate the risk of Iranian attacks on shipping, but would reduce it by giving Iran much easier military targets to aim at.

You'd better believe that the Iranian military is now monitoring Polymarket and other prediction sites 24/7, waiting to see the precise moment new big-money bets on U.S. actions in the Gulf get placed. Who needs radar when your enemy is selling their soldiers out on internet gambling sites?

There's still another alarming aspect of these trades. Yes, it seems to be the case that somebody with top-level White House access is placing bets on U.S. strategic operations.

That doesn't, however, necessarily mean that it's somebody in the White House that's doing it. These bets might also be coming from foreign actors, such as any one of the countless loosely government-affiliated foreign espionage groups that blend traditional communications hacking with for-profit organized crime.

This isn't just the most crooked presidential administration in history, it's also quite possibly the least secure one. We've already seen multiple scandals come from the seeming inability of major administration players like Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, and JD Vance to follow even the most basic security protocols. We've seen Trump's cabinet set up curtained-off "situation rooms" to guide U.S. military strikes from inside Trump's Mar-a-Lago club.

For all we know, a group of hackers in Russia or China has realtime access to Donald Trump's phone and has been listening into every burp, grunt, and strategy meeting. And that group might be placing Polymarket wagers on what they learn because God help ya, if you had to monitor a decaying Donald Trump's every word you'd probably think you deserve a special reward too.

I don't know how long it'll take until we learn the identities of these traders. If the perpetrators are in Trump's inner circle, we can presume the case will be "unsolved" for a good long time; if it's a foreign player, we'll probably never get a resolution either; if it's somebody expendable, like Barron, maybe they'll throw that person to the wolves in short order. Who knows.

But this really is a national security crisis no matter what the answer turns out to be. The military has a hell of a lot of procedure and regulation that bars their "warfighters" from leaking evidence that would be useful to the enemy. None of it does much good if you've got members of the Sedition Presidency eagerly using the same information to place internet bets.