They didn't make the bet until after the raid - but before the announcement. Surely they endangered people, perhaps more and different people than simply those on the mission
> prosecutors said Van Dyke bet more than $33,000 on Polymarket between December 27, 2025, and January 2, 2026, that Maduro would soon be out of office and that U.S. forces would soon enter Venezuela
Maduro was taken on January 3.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-soldier-charged-...
When someone bets 32k that a political opponent of the US is going to be kidnapped I think its fair to say some will assume it was placed by an insider.
You also have to think about leaning information: if people do this, bodyguards around the world are going to monitor betting markets looking for unexplained changes. The military doesn’t like anything which can leak timing information since that increases the risk of a mission failing.
What would be far larger source of risk is if they bet _against_ the operation and then personally sabotaged it. That's far more understandable but it's not what happened here.
It apparently and sadly needs to be said on Hacker News, I'm not defending him, and he should be punished, but I genuinely can't apprehend the risk assessment logic here.