The Limits of Monitoring the Situation

Tyler McBrien on prediction markets, open-source sleuthing, and Trump’s big war

War in the Middle East keeps expanding, oil prices are rising, and an unpredictable American president has everyone trying to guess his next move. As trust in media institutions hits an all-time low and disinformation spreads online, how can we begin to make sense of things? The proliferation of open-source intelligence, or OSINT, offers one answer. While it’s possible to glean certain insights from these sources, they can also mislead people to wrong conclusions or game booming prediction markets.

In this episode, the Institute for Global Affairs’ Jonathan Guyer is joined by friend of the pod Tyler McBrien, managing editor at Lawfare. Tyler recently wrote a piece on the perils of obsessively "monitoring the situation” for The Baffler. He and Jonathan discuss Trump’s wars, why prediction markets and geopolitics shouldn’t mix, and more.

Tyler McBrien is managing editor at Lawfare and regularly contributes to its Rational Security and Lawfare Daily podcasts. He previously worked as an editor at the Council on Foreign Relations. His writing has appeared in The Baffler, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, Mother Jones, and The New Republic, among others.

Find Tyler on X: https://x.com/TylerMcBrien

Tyler’s piece in The Baffler: https://thebaffler.com/latest/situational-unawareness-mcbrien

Check out Tyler’s new series on who blew up the Georgia Guidestones: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-blew-up-the-guidestones/id1880399073

Jonathan’s piece in The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/article/208781/trump-iran-venezuela-one-big-war-world

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