“The Uncanny Valley”: Iran’s threats to American technology, Trump’s midterm election plans, and the failure of Polymarket

Kate Nibbs: So, you went twice?

McKenna Kelly: Yes Kate. I went twice.

Kate Nibbs: I missed it.

Zoe Schiffer: Wait, is Pentagon Pizza a joke about pizza predicting war?

McKenna Kelly: Yes.

Zoe Schiffer: Oh, my God.

McKenna Kelly: Because they had pizza tracking devices in the Pentagon. When I came back the second night, yeah, I came back the second night. Everything worked for the most part. There are still some screens that are turned off, but I never saw any actual Bloomberg terminals. There were some Bloomberg-type terminal things that Polymarket seemed to have developed themselves, but a real $50,000 Bloomberg terminal was nowhere to be found. And yes, on the second night, again, most people were looking forward to gawking at the action, except that I found some people who had placed some bets on platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. One of them was called William, and he said he was a member of the army, but he wouldn’t give me his full name. And he got involved in this for the first time last year by putting all of his tax returns, I think, into sports betting in Oklahoma City.

McKenna Kelly, archival audio: Ok, did you use everything?

William, archival audio: Yes.

McKenna Kelly, archival audio: When did you first start using the service?

William, archival audio: Maybe when I got my tax return back.

McKenna Kelly, archival audio: Yes.

William, archival audio: So, I filed my taxes really early and said, “Oh, honey. I’ve got my tax return. What am I going to do with it?” So, I was like, “I’ll put it on Calcchi.”

McKenna Kelly: He said he went up and down by $100, but didn’t make any big gains. Some of the things we heard. Some people make crazy insider bets and make millions and millions of dollars. It seems like this is just a guy who was interested in this game and just playing it for fun.

Brian Barrett: Kate, what do you see when you see a pop-up like this and Polymarket is trying to do this – is it an attempt to legitimize themselves just a marketing ploy? And how does that relate to what you’re seeing with these companies anyway, which is that there’s this exponential growth that they’re trying to reach a lot of people and get a lot of people addicted to what you’re offering?

Kate Nibbs: I mean, this particular event certainly seems like a very bold effort to attract D.C.-based journalists, if nothing else. The one thing McKenna said that kind of sums up what’s going on right now, the thing about guys wearing Palantir jackets. So, I think it was the same week that this bar opened. Polymarket has announced a partnership with Palantir and Palantir to help them protect the integrity of their sports marketplace. So, Palantir will basically be trying to help Polymarket catch insider traders and market manipulators across all sports, which is kind of weird. In fact, I asked Polymarket last week if they had any other deals with Palantir when I was trying to get them to say anything about whether they were investigating Iranian bets that raised a lot of eyebrows. They said Palantir was only helping them with sports, which I thought was very strange. And he talks about how they’re expanding quickly, but doing it in this really chaotic way that doesn’t really make sense. Because I was like, “If you’re going to get Palantir involved, why not have them do this geopolitical stuff instead of March Madness?” Yes, wild, wild times.