Sure, but then what if in the several hours before the decision is executed, new information comes in?

Your decision maker is now going to make decisions differently than they would if they hadn’t made the bet, due to the financial incentive. It hopefully won’t be blatant, but they’re going to be more committed to the original decision.

> It's much more effective to make the decision first and the bet second.

What did I say that contradicts this?

> Why almost certainly?

Because I haven't seen any clear reporting with evidence documented down to the level of individual decision-making.

> What did I say that contradicts this?

I'm pointing out that the version where the market causes the decision is the much less effective way to do things. So I don't think it's so certain to have happened.

When the decision comes first it's still a problem but it's a very different problem.

I should make this explicit, I guess: If you make the decisions before betting, you don't really care what the market says beforehand, you'll make plenty of money either way.

(Having seen your edited and clarified comment, I think we basically agree.)

> the version where the market influences the decision is the much less effective way to do things.

Okay, so two possible scenarios: "market influences decision" and "decision influences market."

1. Polymarket offers a contract called something like: "Will the US launch any lethal boat strikes in the Caribbean on April 30, 2026?" A commander of a drone unit for the US military bets $500 on "yes". At 11:51pm on April 30, he's trying to decide whether or not to issue an order to fire on a boat, or to wait 15 minutes for better visual identification of the target. As a result of his bet on Polymarket, he's strongly incentivized to issue the order right now.

2. It's 11:51pm on April 30. A commander of a drone unit for the US military is reviewing images of a potential target boat. He idly opens a browser tab to Polymarket. Lo and behold, he sees that the odds of "Will the US launch any lethal boat strikes in the Caribbean on April 30, 2026?" are at only 0.3%. He's strongly incentivized to issue an order to strike right now and to quickly buy that Polymarket contract before news of the strike breaks.

Does it matter which of these two scenarios might actually be taking place? I don't think so.

The payout is much higher if you make an unlikely thing happen. "Unlikely things" in politics & warfare are probably highly correlated with irrational or irresponsible decisions.

If you're in a decision-making position you have lots of events passing by. Your limits are in trying not to get caught, not in searching for the biggest ratios for single bets.

Also there's plenty of things that are unlikely because they're specific, not because they're irrational. Things happening in specific date ranges are an easy one.