There was a situation in the Situation Room.
The 80-plus screens that had been erected inside the K Street pop-up bar sponsored by Polymarket, the online betting market for everything, were supposed to be displaying news, flight trackers, X posts, Bloomberg terminals and live feeds of global markets — a data-rich backdrop for the kinds of decisions facing the young men and women of the nation’s capital amid the social and geopolitical disruptions of 2026. Decisions like: How much money should I bet on whether there will be a Houthi strike on Israel by March 31? Or whether Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell will be arrested? Or whether Clavicular will get frame-mogged by Gorlock the Destroyer on stream during Mog World Order (21 percent odds as of Sunday morning)?
