[herewulf]

Imagine doing an easy tour in your air conditioned Kuwaiti logistics office and then getting blown to bits by a ballistic missile because no one bothered to tell you about the war that was being initiated which would cause such missiles in retaliation. Yeah, that's demoralizing too.

[int32_64]

There will be derivative contracts of prediction markets to predict if an insider is indicted for betting on a specific prediction.

And those prediction markets will have derivative markets to predict if an insider in the prosecutor's office bet on that contract.

And those prediction markets will have derivative markets to predict if a special prosecutor will prosecute the other prosecutor.

And those prediction markets will have derivative markets to predict if an insider in the special prosecutor's office bet on the other contract.

(additional derivative markets will exist up to the divine wrath of god).

[pyrale]

> additional derivative markets will exist up to the divine wrath of god

We already know that Jesus will come back in an election year

[rcbdev]

> derivative markets will exist up to the divine wrath of god

We already bet on the weather.

[Freak_NL]

Which is totally up the gods — or a hairdryer:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/23/hairdryer-or-l...

[throwaway2037]

I would offer a small correction to your point: Instead of "ballistic missile", I would substitute "Shahed-type drones". It is much easier to detect (and shoot down) a ballistic missile than a Shahed-type drone.

[ywvcbk]

I don't think this is true at all? A ballistic missile is way harder and more expensive to shutdown (they are flying at Mach 5-10 while you can outrun that type of drone with a mid tier car on the freeway)

Shahed is very primitive in general and not hard to shot down but because its extremely cheap it can be used to overwhelm any type of air defenses. Wasting $4 million to destroy a $50k drone doesn't scale at all.

[throwaway2037]

The OP wrote:

    > Imagine doing an easy tour in your air conditioned Kuwaiti logistics office and then getting blown to bits by a ballistic missile because no one bothered to tell you about the war that was being initiated which would cause such missiles in retaliation.

The purpose of my response wasn't about cost effectiveness; rather, it was about the lethality of a ballistic missile vs Shahed-type drone.

A ballistic missile is easily detected by a network of outer space satellites owned and operated by the US Space Force. Whether or not you can defend against it is a different question. There is sufficient time from the detected of ballistic missile launch to move to a hardened underground bunker. All US bases in the Middle East will have these. Soldiers will regularly train for incoming ballistic missile attacks and when/how to move to underground bunkers. As a result, it is very unlikely that soldiers in an "air conditioned Kuwaiti logistics office" would be killed by an incoming ballistic missile.

On the other hand, a Shahed-type drone (similar to a cruise missile) is much harder to detect because they fly very low and difficult to catch on rader until close to base. As a result, soldiers on base will have much less time to move to underground bunkers.

[bijowo1676]

start charging congresspeople with insider trading first, before you charge any regular soldier

if rules dont apply universally, then screw these rules altogether

[breppp]

If you are in Kuwait you will find yourself under rockets whether you knew in advance or not

I think the worse aspect is if the news of an attack being leaked to the defender and you are being blown to bits as their ballistic missiles are not decimated in their preemptive strike.

[watwut]

They referred to soldiers that were killed by the start of the war. They thought the situation is normal, war was started without them knowing, got killed.

Not knowing in advance was an important factor

[breppp]

Soldiers can't catch a flight back home when war starts (or about to), and by the time the Iranians were able to attack back after the initial shock, all US soldiers knew there's a war going on

That's why I am having great difficulty following that argument

[bawolff]

I mean, surely everyone in the middle east knew a war was on the horizon. Obviously not the exact plan or day, but it wasn't a secret that usa was gearing up for a war.

[watwut]

The war was surprised and host of people said so - goverments, expats living ij region, locals. And were pisssed

[bawolff]

I imagine they were pissed. I dont think anyone likes being in the middle of a war. Nonetheless in the weeks leading up it was clear USA was moving massive amounts of naval assets into the region. It was on the news 24/7. I'm sure everyone in the military would have been able to read the tea leaves that something was going down soonish, even if they didn't know precisely what or when.

[SparkyMcUnicorn]

They should have kept an eye on the prediction markets.