404 Media

2026-03-02 17:26:08

With Iran War, Kalshi and Polymarket Bet That the Depravity Economy Has No Bottom

The main bet on the front page of Polymarket right now is “Will the Iranian regime fall by June 30?” The site has this at a 41 percent chance of happening as I write this.

On Polymarket, more than $5 million has been spent gambling on this question. On Kalshi, a competing prediction market where users can bet on almost anything, $54 million was spent on “Ali Khamenei out as Supreme Leader?,” a bet whose results somehow ended up ambiguous even after Khamenei’s assassination.

In a series of tweets over the weekend, Kalshi’s CEO and founder Tarek Mansour repeatedly twisted himself into pretzels attempting to explain how the absurd, grotesque exercise of allowing people to bet on politics, geopolitics, and world events is not supposed to allow people to profit from death.

“We don’t list markets directly tied to death. When there are markets where potential outcomes involve death, we design the rules to prevent people from profiting from death,” he wrote. He then posted the underlying rules of the bet, which read “If <leader> leaves solely because they have died, the associated market will resolve and the Exchange will determine the payouts to the holders of long and short positions based upon the last traded price (prior to the death).”

That we are discussing the ins-and-outs of which random gamblers get paid out during an illegal war in which already hundreds of school children have been bombed to death feels like the type of grotesque sideshow that is only possible because the U.S. government is only interested in regulating its perceived political enemies, and which only feels possible because much of the American economy feels held together by cope and the gobs of money being thrown into AI, data centers, and gambling. All of this is part of the perverse Silicon Valley, AI, crypto, and X-adjacent hustlebro gambling economy, which was legalized by companies like DraftKings and FanDuel, who spent eyewatering sums lobbying states to allow their gambling apps, and has been “legitimized” by sports leagues who wanted to print money and media companies desperate for the advertising dollars that came from gambling and has turned this all into a massive industrial complex that is not-so-slowly bankrupting a generation of underemployed people addicted to gambling. Polymarket and Kalshi took the DraftKings and FanDuel model and let people bet on basically anything, so now you can bet on which countries Iran will launch missiles against on the same app you bet on the Nuggets/Jazz game or the winner of the Best Picture Academy Award. The new model is so good at parting people from their money that DraftKings and FanDuel themselves have been anxious to get into prediction markets.

This is how we end up with extremely underregulated companies more or less making up rules on the fly as they hop from crisis to crisis trying to determine the nature of reality, such as whether a suit is a suit or whether a dead guy is still in charge of the government, with each disputed bet having millions of dollars on the line. Both Polymarket and Kalshi have decided to go with the line that letting people bet on war, politics, and the general nature of reality will not distort reality through the insider trading we’ve already repeatedly seen, but will somehow improve public trust in the reporting of news. Polymarket has added a note to all Iran-focused bets that says “The promise of prediction markets is to harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate, unbiased forecasts for the most important events to society. That ability is particularly invaluable in gut-wrenching times like today. After discussing with those directly affected by the attacks, who had dozens of questions, we realized that prediction markets could give them the answers they needed in ways TV news and X could not.”

This is, conveniently, a stance that allows Polymarket to continue to profit from death and war, and allows its customers to continue to bet on it. Polymarket’s X feed is kind of like a fucked up newswire service for degenerates, its tweets today including things like ““BREAKING: 41% of all scheduled flights to the Middle East have been cancelled today” and “NEW POLYMARKET: New Supreme Leader of Iran by…?” Polymarket’s recent integration with Substack means, I guess, that we’re about to see a generation of people who “get their news from gambling apps,” which is sure to lead to a healthy society. A recent interview on Polymarket’s own Substack valorizes a gambler named “Betwick” who lost 70 percent of his money largely because he “lost quite a bit on ‘Israel strikes Iran’ at the last minute, where it looked like they were going to negotiate for a few more days and Israel did the surprise attack” but was confident he could rebuild it by continuing to bet on various Iran war scenarios.

That these gambling apps will do anything to restore trust in how society operates or will in any way make it healthier is obviously, blatantly untrue. We have seen people manipulate maps to win Polymarket bets on the war in Ukraine, what appeared to be obvious insider trading on the U.S. attack on Venezuela, and numerous people banned or fired for insider trading on companies that they work at. Already there are allegations from lawmakers that there has been insider trading on the Iran markets. We have seen early research, meanwhile, that shows the resurgent gambling industry is sucking in huge numbers of young people and that people lose their money faster on these prediction markets than they do on sports gambling platforms. Missed out on Bitcoin? Missed out on GameStop? Missed out on NFTs and memecoins and dropshipping? Polymarket and Kalshi are here now.

The obvious farce of all of this is that Kalshi’s line that “we design the rules to prevent people from profiting from death” is obviously untrue on its face, it’s just that the company would rather let you bet on the deaths and suffering of civilians rather than dictators and presidents. Betting that Khamenei would stay in power is an explicit bet that he would be allowed to continue silencing dissent and killing those who oppose him; betting that he would be deposed is an explicit bet on what has already become a very deadly, illegal regional war. Even bets on things like “Will Iran close the Strait of Hormuz” and gas prices are explicit bets on the escalation or deescalation of this war and thus a bet on people's deaths, which is obvious on its face but becomes more clear as you dig into the “rules” of any given bet.

Winning the Khamenei bet required any number of things that definitely would involve the deaths of many people and “requires a broad consensus of reporting indicating that core structures of the Islamic Republic (e.g. the office of the Supreme Leader, the Guardian Council, IRGC control under clerical authority) have been dissolved, incapacitated, or replaced by a fundamentally different governing system or otherwise lost de facto power over a majority of the population of Iran. This could occur via revolution, civil war, military coup, or voluntary abdication, but only qualifies if the Islamic Republic no longer exercises sovereign power. Routine political events such as elections, reforms, or leadership succession do not qualify. Internal coups or power shifts that preserve the Islamic Republic’s core structures also do not qualify. Only a clear break in continuity—such as a new provisional government, revolutionary council, or constitution replacing the Islamic Republic will qualify.”

Meanwhile, over on Polymarket, “Will Iran strike a Gulf State on March 2” requires the definition of a “qualifying strike,” which is “the use of aerial bombs, drones, or missiles (including cruise or ballistic missiles) launched by Iranian military forces that impact a gulf state's ground territory.” In case you’re wondering, “Missiles or drones that are intercepted and surface-to-air missile strikes will not be sufficient for a ‘Yes’ resolution, regardless of whether they land on a gulf state's territory or cause damage. Actions such as artillery fire, small arms fire, FPV or ATGM strikes, ground incursions, naval shelling, cyberattacks, or other operations conducted by Iranian ground operatives will not qualify.”

There is no chance any of this ends well. It’s already a disaster. Wanna bet?

Benzinga

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) is introducing legislation to outlaw war betting after insiders made $1.2M on US strikes on Iran. Trump-linked platform involved.

^{Daragh Thomas (Benzinga)}

404 Media

2026-03-02 15:59:51

Amazon Data Centers on Fire After Iranian Missile Strikes on Dubai

Amazon’s cloud services are down in some of the Middle East after “objects” hit data centers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) causing “sparks and fire.” Around 60 services tied to AWS are down in the region, affecting web traffic in the UAE and Bahrain. The outage comes following Iranian attacks on the UAE as retaliation for US and Israeli strikes on Iran.

Customers in Bahrain and the UAE began to report outages tied to the mec1-az2 and mec1-az3 clusters in AWS’ ME-CENTRAL-1 Region on March 1 after Iranian ballistic missiles and drones struck targets in and around Dubai. Amazon did not confirm that AWS was down in the Middle East due to an Iranian attack and instead referred 404 Media to its online dashboard.
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“At around 4:30 AM PST, one of our Availability Zones (mec1-az2) was impacted by objects that struck the data center, creating sparks and fire,” AWS said on its health dashboard. “The fire department shut off power to the facility and generators as they worked to put out the fire. We are still awaiting permission to turn the power back on, and once we have, we will ensure we restore power and connectivity safely. It will take several hours to restore connectivity to the impacted AZ.”

As of this morning at 9:22 AM ET, the damage had spread. “We are expecting recovery to take at least a day, as it requires repair of facilities, cooling and power systems, coordination with local authorities, and careful assessment to ensure the safety of our operators,” AWS said. “We recommend customers enact their disaster recovery plans and recover from remote backups into alternate AWS Regions, ideally in Europe.”

Amazon later shared more information about the attack and confirmed it was the result of drones. “Due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, both affected regions have experienced physical impacts to infrastructure as a result of drone strikes. In the UAE, two of our facilities were directly struck, while in Bahrain, a drone strike in close proximity to one of our facilities caused physical impacts to our infrastructure,” it said. “These strikes have caused structural damage, disrupted power delivery to our infrastructure, and in some cases required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage. We are working closely with local authorities and prioritizing the safety of our personnel throughout our recovery efforts.”

On Saturday, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury and struck targets inside of Iran, killing several political and military leaders including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s Supreme Leader. In retaliation, Iran launched drone and missile attacks against Israel and multiple US-allied targets in the Middle East.

According to the Emirati defense forces, Iran attacked the country with two cruise missiles, 165 ballistic missiles, and more than 540 drones. The UAE and its capital city Dubai are often seen as a safe and stable destination in the Middle East. The country hosts wealthy people from across the region and influencers from across the world. Footage shared on social media showed the neon towers of the UAE backlit by missiles and munitions.

It’s unclear how long it will take for Amazon to restore services to the region or how far the damage will spread. Amazon’s dashboard is promising to bring things back up in “at least a day” but the war is far from over. Iran continues to strike targets in the Middle East and it’s unclear what America’s plan of attack is or how long this war might grind on.

Update 2/2/26: This story has been updated with more specifics about the attack from Amazon.

https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/status

View the overall status and health of AWS services using the AWS Health Dashboard.

^{health.aws.amazon.com}