The Policy Analysis Market (PAM), part of the FutureMAP project, was a proposed futures exchange developed, beginning in May 2001, by the Information Awareness Office (IAO) of the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and based on an idea first proposed by Net Exchange, a San Diego, California, research firm specializing in the development of online prediction markets. PAM was shut down in August 2003 after multiple US senators condemned it as an assassination and terrorism market,
Opposition
At a July 28, 2003, press conference, US Senators Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) claimed that PAM would allow trading in such events as , assassinations, and terrorist attacks, due to such events appearing on interface pictures on the project website. "On the web site, as a backdrop to bold text, were faint background sample screens. In a small (less than 2 percent) section of two such screens, Polk had included as colorful examples of possible miscellaneous items an assassination of Yasser Arafat, a missile attack by North Korea, and the overthrow of the king of Jordan."
They denounced the idea, with Wyden stating, "The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque", while Dorgan called it "useless, offensive and unbelievably stupid". Other critics offered similar outrage. Within less than a day, the Pentagon announced the cancellation of PAM, and by the end of the week John Poindexter, head of the DARPA unit responsible for developing it, had offered his resignation.
PAM had first been proposed and funded in 2001,