Byron Dorgan

Byron Dorgan appears in the book’s discussion of the proposed Policy Analysis Market (PAM) as one of the senators who led the effort to stop it. His opposition centered not simply on whether the market would forecast accurately, but on whether it was acceptable for members of the public to wager on catastrophic events. The controversy makes him a participant in the book’s broader examination of how institutions gather information—and of the moral costs that can accompany a potentially useful method.

Opposition to the Policy Analysis Market

PAM was conceived as a public market focused on the Middle East, intended to produce intelligence that conventional channels might miss. Unlike an internal market restricted to government participants, it would be open to the public and would let traders profit from correct forecasts. Dorgan and Ron Wyden led the effort to kill the proposal, condemning it as offensive as well as impractical. The public reaction described in the book was similarly hostile.

The objection had a distinctly moral basis. Dorgan and Wyden argued that wagering on possible catastrophes was offensive and wrong. The book acknowledges the visceral unease of betting on events such as an assassination attempt, but distinguishes that unease from the question of whether the market could provide useful information. Government analysts already assess political stability and the likelihood of upheaval; the proposed market would have brought people outside government into a comparable exercise, potentially drawing on information the intelligence community did not otherwise receive.

The Dispute Over Usefulness and Ethics

The author argues that a public market would not necessarily forecast less accurately merely because its traders were not government experts. Its proponents saw participation beyond official agencies as a way to surface information and judgments that institutional channels might overlook. Traders would also have a direct incentive to make accurate predictions, rather than to accommodate bureaucratic or political expectations. On that account, PAM could have helped aggregate information across institutional boundaries.

The argument does not claim that the market should replace conventional intelligence gathering. PAM was proposed as an additional source of information, not as a substitute for established methods. The book therefore presents the choice to cancel it as consequential: the project might have proved unhelpful, but ending it before it could be tested left that question unanswered.

Dorgan’s opposition thus marks a conflict between two standards for evaluating an information-gathering institution. One is practical: whether it improves forecasts by drawing together dispersed information and rewarding accuracy. The other is ethical: whether allowing people to profit from predictions of disaster is acceptable. The book contends that the project’s opponents focused on the second concern more than on the first, while arguing that a potentially valuable tool should not be rejected solely because its method offended public sensibilities.