WASHINGTON, DC — The Pentagon this week re­minded mil­i­tary per­son­nel not to use clas­si­fied in­for­ma­tion to place bets on on­line pre­dic­tion mar­kets, clar­i­fy­ing that sen­si­tive geopo­lit­i­cal in­tel­li­gence is to be mon­e­tized, dis­torted, and se­lec­tively dis­closed only through tra­di­tional American chan­nels. The warn­ing fol­lows a case in­volv­ing a Special Forces op­er­a­tor ac­cused of plac­ing a bet on the cap­ture of Venezuelan pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro shortly af­ter at­tend­ing a clas­si­fied brief­ing on an op­er­a­tion in­volv­ing the cap­ture of Venezuelan pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

Defense of­fi­cials said the is­sue was not that some­one tried to profit from priv­i­leged knowl­edge about an im­mi­nent for­eign in­ter­ven­tion, but that he did so in a man­ner more com­monly as­so­ci­ated with sports gam­bling than re­spectable na­tional se­cu­rity cor­rup­tion. “There are long­stand­ing, pro­fes­sional path­ways for con­vert­ing state vi­o­lence into pri­vate up­side,” one of­fi­cial said. “Defense con­tract­ing, ca­ble news con­sult­ing, con­gres­sional trad­ing, strate­gic ad­vi­sory work. We can­not have per­son­nel by­pass­ing that sys­tem just to make $180 on an app.”

Officials de­scribed the case as a cau­tion­ary ex­am­ple for younger ser­vice mem­bers, many of whom have grown up in a cul­ture that en­cour­ages turn­ing every hu­man event into a mar­ket. “Military op­er­a­tions are not a game,” the of­fi­cial added. “They are a solemn pub­lic re­spon­si­bil­ity whose fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits should ac­crue to the ap­pro­pri­ate firms, in­ter­me­di­aries, and elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives.”