On Election Night, millions of Americans will watch anxiously as the ballot counts stream in. Most will be worried about the political future of their country. Some will also have money on the line.

Over the past several months, election betting has gone mainstream. On Polymarket, perhaps the most popular political-betting site, people have wagered more than $200 million on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. The election forecaster Nate Silver recently joined the company as an adviser, and its election odds have been cited by media outlets including CNN, Bloomberg, and The New York Times. Polymarket is officially off-limits to U.S. users, but the website is still accessible using technical work-arounds. Americans can directly place bets on other platforms such as PredictIt and Kalshi, the latter of which was recently approved to offer legal election betting. Just this week, the investing app Robinhood launched its own presidential-election market.

In a sense, election betting is like sports betting: Think Donald Trump will win next week? Put money down on it, and profit if you’re right. But these sites present themselves as more than just a way to make a quick buck. They assert that how people bet, whether on the benign (who will be the next James Bond?) or the consequential (will Israel and Hamas reach a cease-fire before the end of the year?), can help forecast the future. Because there’s money involved, the thinking goes, these prediction markets leverage the collective wisdom of what people actually think will occur, not what they hope will. For example, this summer, prediction markets accurately forecast President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race. If they are right about the election, Donald Trump has the edge: On Polymarket, for instance, Trump currently has roughly a 65 percent chance of winning the election.

But what will happen if the outcome is contested? Many Trump loyalists are already preparing for the next “Stop the Steal” campaign rooted in unfounded claims of a rigged election. A disputed election could plunge these betting sites into chaos. Prediction markets sometimes describe themselves as “truth machines.” But that’s a challenging role to assume when Americans can’t agree on what the basic truth even is.

Prediction markets have become popular among Trump supporters—no doubt because they show that Trump is favored to win even as the polls remain deadlocked. If Trump loses, election denialists may look to the betting markets as part of their evidence that the race was stolen. The groundwork is already being laid. “More accurate than polls,” Elon Musk recently tweeted to his more than 200 million followers on X, alongside an image displaying Trump’s favorable Polymarket odds. “You shouldn’t believe the polls,” J. D. Vance has agreed. “I think that chart’s about right,” he said in reference to Kalshi’s presidential odds. Even Trump himself has talked up his betting odds, both online and in real life. “I don’t know what the hell it means, but it means that we’re doing pretty well,” he recently said of Polymarket, during a speech in Michigan. Indeed, if you follow only betting markets, a Trump loss might even be surprising, potentially fueling claims of foul play.

Prediction markets have already received significant attention in the lead-up to the election, but this might be only the start. Strange activity could occur on these betting sites after the polls close. That’s because most of these markets will remain open for bets for weeks and months after the election, in some cases as late as Inauguration Day. A significant amount of money will likely be wagered after votes have been cast, and the market odds could diverge from election results.

That’s what happened during the previous presidential election. In 2020, even after an audit had confirmed Biden’s win in Georgia and his victory was certified, PredictIt still gave Trump a nontrivial chance of winning the state, at one point reaching as high as 17 percent. Putting money on a Trump win after he officially lost wouldn’t make much sense—unless, that is, you genuinely believed that the election was stolen or that Trump would be successful in an extralegal attempt to overturn results. This time around, with more money on the line and election denialism already in the air, a contested election could result in even more anomalous election odds after the polls close. In other words, betting markets can’t be disentangled from a reality in which a segment of the country does not believe the election results.

Especially on Polymarket, such a scenario could get weird fast. Polymarket runs on the blockchain—bets are made with cryptocurrency, and official decisions about who wins are made by the holders of a crypto token called UMA. If there is a disagreement over what occurred, UMA token-holders can vote to determine the official outcome. These are not lawyers scrupulously analyzing predefined rules, but people considering evidence posted to a Discord server. Although token-holders have strong incentives to vote honestly, the system is still vulnerable to manipulation. And in a highly contentious election, things could get messy.

Consider how the Venezuelan presidential election this summer played out on Polymarket. According to Polymarket’s rules, the winner was to be determined based primarily on “official information from Venezuela.” Given that the authoritarian incumbent Nicolás Maduro controlled the election, bettors initially favored him by a sizable margin—in part, because it seemed likely that he would stay in power, regardless of how Venezuelans voted. That’s what happened. Although the opposition candidate, Edmundo González, got more votes, Maduro stole the election. But the UMA arbiters declared González the winner, overriding Polymarket’s original rules. Some bettors defended the decision: Rubber-stamping Maduro’s fraudulent win, they argued, would be “very bad, even dystopian.” Others felt they had been scammed. “What happens next, if Trump doesnt recognize the election results,” wrote one user in the Polymarket comments section.

Venezuela is a unique case. Trump cannot steal the election like Maduro did—he’s not even currently in office. Still, UMA decision makers could go against official sources if the results are disputed. Even in the case of a contested election, such an outcome would be unlikely because it would be a massive blow to Polymarket’s credibility, Frank Muci, a policy fellow at the London School of Economics, told me. However, he added, “if there are Supreme Court rulings and dissenting opinions and Trump is saying that the election was really stolen, [then] politics may override the narrow bottom line.” Polymarket, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment, could always intervene and overrule UMA’s results. It didn’t do so after the Venezuela debacle, but earlier this year Polymarket refunded some users after UMA got a resolution wrong.

Other election-betting sites have more precautions in the case of a contested election. Both Kalshi and PredictIt determine market outcomes in-house. Xavier Sottile, the head of markets at Kalshi, said in an email that if Kalshi’s users have a credible reason to dispute who is declared the winner on the platform, the company has “an independent market outcome review committee” that includes “election-focused academics” to verify the resolution. But if people disagree on who won the election, some percentage of bettors are destined to be deeply unhappy, no matter how fairly these markets are resolved.

After the election, betting sites may look less like oracles than mirrors, reflecting the nation’s disunity back at us. In 2020, Trump’s outsize odds on prediction markets following Biden’s win led Nate Silver to write that that markets were “detached from reality.” So too is our country. Many Republicans falsely believe that Trump won the last election, a lie that Vance has repeated of late. In a way, prediction markets act as a microcosm of America’s political psyche, distilling the confusion of our political moment into tidy charts.

Pair honoured three months after election they say was rigged in favour of President Nicolas Maduro.

In an underground parking lot beneath an ordinary building in an ordinary Ukrainian city, dozens of what appear to be small, windowless fishing boats are lined up in rows. The noise of machinery echoes from a separate room, where men are working with metal and wires. They didn’t look up when I walked in one recent morning, and no wonder: This is a sea-drone factory, these are among the best engineers in Ukraine, and they are busy producing the unmanned vessels that have altered the trajectory of the war. Packed with explosives and guided by the world’s most sophisticated remote-navigation technology, these new weapons might even change the way that all naval wars are fought in the future.

Certainly, the sea drones are evolving very quickly. A year ago, I visited the small workshop that was then producing the first Ukrainian models. One of the chief engineers described what was at the time the drones’ first major success: a strike that took out a Russian frigate, damaged a submarine, and hit some other boats as well.

Since then, the sea drones, sometimes alone and sometimes in combined attacks with flying drones or missiles, have sunk or damaged more than two dozen warships. This is possibly the most successful example of asymmetric warfare in history. The Ukrainian drones cost perhaps $220,000 apiece; many of the Russian ships are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The military impact is enormous. To avoid Ukrainian strikes, Russian ships have mostly left their former headquarters, in the occupied Crimean port of Sevastopol, and moved farther east. They no longer patrol the Ukrainian coast. They can’t stop Ukrainian cargo ships from carrying grain and other goods to world markets, and Ukrainian trade is returning to prewar levels. This can’t be said often enough: Ukraine, a country without much of a navy, defeated Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

Nor is Ukraine’s talent for asymmetric warfare confined to water. During a recent trip, I visited another basement, where another team of Ukrainians was working to change the course of the war—and, again, maybe the course of all subsequent wars as well. (I was allowed to tour these operations on the condition that I not identify their locations or the people working at them.) This particular facility had no machines, no engines, and no warheads, just a room lined with screens. The men and women sitting at the screens were dressed like civilians, but in fact they were soldiers, members of a special army unit created to deploy experimental communications technology in combination with experimental drones. Both are being developed by Ukrainians, for Ukraine.

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This particular team, with links to many parts of the front lines, has been part of both offensive and defensive operations, and even medical evacuations. According to one of the commanders, this unit alone has conducted 2,400 combat missions and destroyed more than 1,000 targets, including tanks, armored personnel vehicles, trucks, and electronic-warfare systems since its creation several months ago. Like the sea-drone factory, the team in the basement is operating on a completely different scale from the frontline drone units whose work I also encountered last year, on several trips around Ukraine. In 2023, I met small groups of men building drones in garages, using what looked like sticks and glue. By contrast, this new unit is able to see images of most of the front line all at once, revise tools and tactics as new situations develop, and even design new drones to fit the army’s changing needs.

More important, another commander told me, the team works “at the horizontal level,” meaning that members coordinate directly with other groups on the ground rather than operating via the army’s chain of command: “Three years of experience tells us that, 100 percent, we will be much more efficient when we are doing it on our own—coordinating with other guys that have assets, motivation, understanding of the processes.” Horizontal is a word that describes many successful Ukrainian projects, both military and civilian. Also, grassroots. In other words, Ukrainians do better when they organize themselves; they do worse when they try to move in lockstep under a single leader. Some argue that this makes them more resilient. Or, as another member of the team put it, Russia will never be able to destroy Ukraine’s decision-making center, “because the center doesn’t make all the decisions.”

Members of Ukraine’s 22nd Mechanized Brigade assemble a Poseidon reconnaissance drone in Sumy province, near the Russian border, in August. (Roman Pilipey / AFP / Getty)

I recognize that this account of the war effort differs dramatically from other, grimmer stories now coming out of Ukraine. In recent weeks, Russian glide bombs and artillery have slowly begun to destroy the city of Pokrovsk, a logistical hub that has been part of Ukraine’s defensive line in Donetsk for a decade. Regular waves of Russian air strikes continue to hit Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure. The repeated attacks on civilians are not an accident; they are a tactic. Russian President Vladimir Putin is seeking to deprive Ukrainians of heat and light, to demoralize the people as well as the government, and perhaps to provoke a new refugee exodus that will disrupt European politics.

Russia remains the larger and richer country. The Kremlin has more ammunition, more tanks, and a greater willingness to dispose of its citizens. The Russian president is willing to tolerate high human losses, as well as equipment losses, of a kind that almost no other nation could accept. And yet, the Ukrainians still believe they can win—if only their American and European allies will let them.

Two and a half years into the conflict, the idea that we haven’t let Ukraine win may sound strange. Since the beginning of the war, after all, we have been supporting Ukraine with weapons and other aid. Recently, President Joe Biden reiterated his support for Ukraine at the United Nations. “The good news is that Putin’s war has failed in his core aim,” he said. But, he added, “the world now has another choice to make: Will we sustain our support to help Ukraine win this war and preserve its freedom, or walk away and let a nation be destroyed? We cannot grow weary. We cannot look away.” Hoping to rally more Americans to his side, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spent much of last week in the United States. He visited an ammunition factory in Pennsylvania. He met with former President Donald Trump, and with Vice President Kamala Harris.

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Zelensky also presented a victory plan that asked, among other things, for Ukraine to have the right to use American and European long-range missiles to strike military targets deep inside Russia. This kind of request is now familiar. In each stage of the war, the Ukrainians and their allies have waged public campaigns to get new weapons—tanks, F-16s, long-range missiles—that they need to maintain a technological edge. Each time, these requests were eventually granted, although sometimes too late to make a difference.

Each time, officials in the U.S., Germany, and other Western powers argued that this or that weapon risked crossing some kind of red line. The same argument is being made once again, and it sounds hollow. Because at this point, the red lines are entirely in our heads; every one of them has been breached. Using drones, Ukraine already hits targets deep inside Russia, including oil refineries, oil and gas export facilities, even air bases. In the past few weeks, Ukraine’s long-range drones have hit at least three large ammunition depots, one of which was said to have just received a large consignment from North Korea; when attacked, the depot exploded dramatically, producing an eerie mushroom cloud. In a development that would have been unthinkable at the beginning of the war, Ukraine has, since early August, even occupied a chunk of Russian territory. Ukrainian troops invaded Kursk province, took control of several towns and villages, set up defenses, repelled Russian troops, and have yet to leave.

But in truth, the imaginary red lines, the slow provision of weapons, and the rules about what can and can’t be hit are not the real problem. On its own, a White House decision to allow the Ukrainians to strike targets in Russia with American or even European missiles will not change the course of the war. The deeper limitation is our lack of imagination. Since this war began, we haven’t been able to imagine that the Ukrainians might defeat Russia, and so we haven’t tried to help those who are trying to do exactly that. We aren’t identifying, funding, and empowering the young Ukrainian engineers who are inventing new forms of asymmetric warfare. With a few exceptions, Ukrainians tell me, many allied armies aren’t in regular contact with the people carrying out cutting-edge military experiments in Ukraine. Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s minister of strategic industries, says that the Ukrainians have spare capacity in their own drone factories, and could produce more themselves if they just had the money. Meanwhile, $300 billion worth of frozen Russian reserves are still sitting in European clearinghouses, untouched, waiting for a political decision to use that money to win the war. Biden is right to tout the success of the coalition of democracies created to aid Ukraine, but why not let that coalition start defending Ukraine against incoming missiles, as friends of Israel have just done in the Middle East? Why isn’t the coalition focused on enforcing targeted sanctions against the Russian defense industry?     

Worse—much worse—is that, instead of focusing on victory, Americans and Europeans continue to dream of a magic “negotiated solution” that remains far away. Many, many people, some in good faith and some in bad faith, continue to call for an exchange of “land for peace.” Last week, Trump attacked Zelensky for supposedly refusing to negotiate, and the ex-president continues to make unfounded promises to end the war “in 24 hours.” But the obstacle to negotiations is not Zelensky. He probably could be induced to trade at least some land for peace, as long as Ukraine received authentic security guarantees—preferably, though not necessarily, in the form of NATO membership—to protect the rest of the country’s territory, and as long as Ukraine could be put on a path to complete integration with Europe. Even a smaller Ukraine would still need to be a viable country, to attract investment and ensure refugees’ return.   

Right now, the actual obstacle is Putin. Indeed, none of these advocates for “peace,” whether they come from the Quincy Institute, the Trump campaign, the Council on Foreign Relations, or even within the U.S. government, can explain how they will persuade Russia to accept such a deal. It is the Russians who have to be persuaded to stop fighting. It is the Russians who do not want to end the war.

Portraits of Russian service members killed during the invasion of Ukraine are projected onto the State Council building in Simferopol, in Russian-occupied Crimea, in April. The letter Z is a symbol of the Russian invasion. (AFP / Getty)

Look, again, at the situation on the ground. Even now, two and a half years into a war that was supposed to be over in a few days, the Kremlin still seeks to gain more territory. Despite the ongoing Ukrainian occupation of Kursk province, the Russian army is still sending thousands of men to die in the battle for Donetsk province. The Russian army also seems unbothered by losing equipment. In the long battle for Vulhedar, a now-empty town in eastern Ukraine with a prewar population of 14,000, the Russians have sacrificed about 1,000 tanks, armored vehicles, and pieces of artillery —nearly 6 percent of all the vehicles destroyed during the entire war.

Russia has not changed its rhetoric either. On state television, pundits still call for the dismemberment and destruction of Ukraine. Putin continues to call for the “denazification of Ukraine,” by which he means the removal of Ukraine’s language, culture, and identity—as well as “demilitarization, and neutral status,” by which he means a Ukraine that has no army and cannot resist conquest. Nor do Russian economic decisions indicate a desire for peace. The Russian president now plans to spend 40 percent of the national budget on arms production, sacrificing living standards, health care, pensions, broader prosperity, and maybe the stability of the economy itself. The state is still paying larger and larger bonuses to anyone willing to sign up to fight. Labor shortages are rampant, both because the army is eating up eligible men and because so many others have left the country to avoid conscription.

Negotiations can begin only when this rhetoric changes, when the defense machine grinds to a halt, when the attempts to conquer yet another village are abandoned. This war will end, in other words, only when the Russians run out of resources—and their resources are not infinite—or when they finally understand that Ukraine’s alliances are real, that Ukraine will not surrender, and that Russia cannot win. Just as the British decided in the early 20th century that Ireland is not British and the French decided in 1962 that Algeria is not France, so must the Russians come to accept that Ukraine is not Russia. At that point, there can be a cease-fire, a discussion of new borders, negotiations about other things—such as the fate of the more than 19,000 Ukrainian children who have been kidnapped and deported by the Russians, an orchestrated act of cruelty.

We have not yet reached that stage. The Russians are still waiting for the U.S. to get tired, to stop defending Ukraine, and maybe to elect Trump so that they can dictate terms and make Ukraine into a colony again. They are hoping that the “Ukraine fatigue” they promote and the false arguments about Ukrainian corruption (“Zelensky’s yachts”) that they pay American influencers to repeat will eventually overwhelm America’s strategic and political self-interest. Which, of course, might be the case.

But if it is, we are in for a nasty surprise. Should Ukraine finally lose this war, the costs—military, economic, political—for the U.S. and its allies will not go down. On the contrary, they are likely to increase, and not only in Europe. Since 2022, the military and defense-industry links among Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China have strengthened. Iran has delivered drones and missiles to Russia. Russia, in turn, may be providing anti-ship missiles to the Houthis, Iranian proxies who could use them against American and European commercial and military ships in the Red Sea. According to a recent Reuters report, the Russians are now constructing a major drone factory in China. The Chinese stand to benefit, that is, from the huge technological gains that the Russians have made, in many cases by imitating the Ukrainians in drone warfare and other systems, even if Americans aren’t paying close attention.

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A failure to defeat Russia will be felt not just in Europe but also in the Middle East and Asia. It will be felt in Venezuela, where Putin’s aggressive defiance has surely helped inspire his ally Nicolás Maduro to stay in power despite losing an election in a landslide. It will be felt in Africa, where Russian mercenaries now support a series of ugly regimes. And, of course, this failure will be felt by Ukraine’s neighbors. I doubt very much that Germany and France, let alone Poland, are prepared for the consequences of a truly failed Ukraine, for a collapse of the Ukrainian state, for lawlessness or Russian-Mafia rule at the European Union’s eastern doorstep, as well as for the violence and crime that would result.

The means to prevent that kind of international catastrophe are right in front of us, in the form of Ukraine’s drone factories, the underground sea-drone laboratory, the tools now being designed to enable the Ukrainian army to beat a larger opponent—and also in the form of our own industrial capacity. The democratic world remains wealthier and more dynamic than the autocratic world. To stay that way, Ukraine and its Western allies have to persuade Russia to stop fighting. We have to win this war.