• Prosecutors say Gannon Van Dyke used military secrets to make trades on Polymarket.
• Kalshi says he tried to open an account on its platform but was blocked.
• Van Dyke, a master sergeant at Fort Bragg, was indicted on multiple felonies.

The Army Special Forces soldier indicted on charges that he used military secrets to win over $400,000 in Polymarket trades was blocked from opening an account on rival prediction market platform, Kalshi.

Elisabeth Diana, head of communications for Kalshi, told Business Insider that Gannon Van Dyke did not make it past the verification and know-your-customer process but declined to provide more details. Reuters, citing an unnamed source, had earlier reported that Van Dyke tried but failed to gain access to Kalshi.

Van Dyke, a 38-year-old master sergeant assigned to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, was charged with wire fraud and other felonies for placing more than $33,000 in trades related to US action in Venezuela, prosecutors said.

The career soldier was involved in the planning and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and used classified information to make his bets, the indictment alleges.

Van Dyke is being prosecuted in New York, but made his first appearance in federal court in North Carolina on Friday. The court docket states that the government did not seek to detain him, and he was released on $250,000 bond.

He is represented by federal public defenders, who did not respond to a request for comment. He also did not respond to a call from Business Insider.

Polymarket did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the vetting Van Dyke underwent when he signed up for an account. The company said that it tipped off the feds to Van Dyke's trades.

In a statement on X, CEO Shayne Coplan said, "Noise aside, the reality is we work proactively with all relevant authorities on any suspicious activity on our marketplace. We flagged this, referred it, and cooperated throughout the process. This happens constantly behind the scenes, despite what many are led to believe."

Critics have raised alarms about the potential of insider trading on prediction markets and fretted about the possibility that the markets or the current events that fuel them could be manipulated for profit. Kalshi bans insider trading, and Polymarket bans trades based on confidential information.

Kalshi earlier this week said it suspended three political candidates for trading on their own elections as the platform moves to crack down on insider trading.

Asked about the Van Dyke case by reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, President Donald Trump said he wasn't a big fan of prediction markets.

"The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino," Trump, who once owned several casinos, said. "I don't like it, conceptually, but it is what it is."

Michael Selig, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction markets, has defended the businesses, at one point calling them "valuable to society."

The commission filed a civil complaint against Van Dyke in federal court on Thursday.

• The US Army's Bavaria base hosts over 16,000 troops ready for instant deployment.
• Its origins date back to pre-World War I. Later, it became a major training hub for the German Wehrmacht.
• Today, US troops train in trenches — rain or shine — honing skills for potential conflicts with Russia.

Just a couple of hours north of Munich, the US Army runs its largest training site outside the United States. Once a Nazi artillery training ground, the sprawling base is now home to more than 16,000 troops kept ready to fight at a moment's notice.

Soldiers train in trenches and with armored Stryker combat vehicles to maintain constant combat readiness "so they can answer America's call in an instant," said Hermes Acevedo, who was the command sergeant major and senior enlisted advisor to the garrison commander at US Army Garrison Bavaria when Business Insider's Graham Flanagan visited last April.

That readiness serves as deterrence. From Bavaria, troops can reach the Czech Republic within about an hour and Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, in roughly 18 hours by road. "By us being ready, by us being here in this location, [it] kind of sends a signal," Acevedo said.

He didn't name a specific adversary, but soldiers in the trenches know who they're preparing for.

As Russia's war in Ukraine continues, the US Army's presence in Germany is crucial. These soldiers could be the first ones in the fight, defending NATO's eastern flank.

From Nazi training ground to NATO backbone

US Army Garrison Bavaria's origins date back to pre-World War I, when the Royal Bavarian Army developed a training area for its own artillery forces.

That role expanded under Adolf Hitler, when the Third Reich used the same grounds as a major training hub for the German Wehrmacht — Nazi's unified armed forces.

At the end of World War II, US forces took control of the area. Today, it anchors US and NATO operations in Europe.

The installation spans four main areas, including Tower Barracks and Rose Barracks. It houses the 7th Army Training Command — which sets standards for US Army Europe and Africa — and the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, a forward-positioned ground force.

"We're not going to deploy to an incident in Europe," Acevedo said. "We are already here."

Training for a potential war with Russia

Troops can leave their barracks and reach live training ranges in less than two minutes, Acevedo said. Once there, they train in all conditions — snow, rain, heat, and cold — to build what he described as instinctive responses.

"It's all about readiness," Acevedo said.

The base also runs an opposing force, or OPFOR, that mimics enemy tactics. "We're basically supposed to act like Russians," Spc. Aaron Jude said, noting they study the war in Ukraine sometimes through open-source material like social media.

OPFOR units use AK-style rifles and train in trench warfare, reflecting the realities of the conflict.

"That's what's so awesome about this unit," said Staff Sgt. Daniel Johnson, an OPFOR soldier. "Not only are we being able to train to our standards, but we're also training to Russia's standards. Honestly, to me, that's like a really good way to understand our adversaries."

Sensors across the training area collect data, allowing commanders to analyze performance and refine strategy. That constant feedback loop is central to the base's role, allowing it to test equipment and decision-making under pressure.

A self-contained military ecosystem

The installation is designed to support both troops and their families. It includes more than 3,400 housing units, K—12 schools, childcare centers, and recreational facilities. Many families live both on and off base, integrated into nearby communities.

Acevedo said that these support systems help ease one of the biggest challenges for troops arriving from the US: uncertainty.

That environment is part of what keeps the base functioning at scale. Soldiers can focus on training and missions, while families have access to services designed to mirror life in the US.

The result is a well-oiled rapid-response war machine that turns a historically significant site into a modern military hub, readying troops for a hard fight.

Business Insider got exclusive access to see how the US Army's Germany-based 2nd Cavalry Regiment is training for a possible war with Russia.

A group of soldiers known as OPFOR pretends to be the enemy, practicing the same style of trench warfare that has become commonplace in the Russia-Ukraine war.

An Army platoon must traverse mountainous terrain before finding the OPFOR's trench and attacking it.

• Western militaries need to study one Ukrainian operation in particular for drone warfare lessons.
• Officials say Operation Spiderweb, which struck dozens of Russian jets, offers key lessons.
• The US Army's drone course director told Business Insider it's "the one event that I teach to the students."

Western militaries are investing heavily in drone warfare after seeing their impact in Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion. And while it isn't necessary to absorb every lesson, current and former military officials say one major operation is worth studying closely.

Maj. Rachel Martin, director of the US Army's Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course designed to accelerate training on small drone warfare, told Business Insider that the 2025 Operation Spiderweb is "the one event that I teach to the students."

Offensive potential

In the operation, Ukraine smuggled drones into Russia, drove them to positions close to Russian airfields, and launched them at strategically valuable aircraft. The Ukrainian drones hit 41 Russian warplanes and caused an estimated $7 billion in damage.

The strikes showed how arsenals of small, cheap drones can destroy high-value military assets far from the front — and how difficult they are to defend against.

The operation was complex and took roughly a year and a half of planning, but, Martin said, it showed "that a small amount of money could be spent to destroy something at the strategic level," in this case, bombers and other high-dollar aircraft.

It cost Russia billions of dollars when it "is already hurting financially from being in a prolonged war."

Seeing that kind of low-cost attack destroying assets that could take years to replace, she said, "was a big eye-opening experience for the world." It highlighted not only what was possible with attack drones on offense, but also critical vulnerabilities.

Defensive realizations

The Ukrainian operation sparked a realization in the West about the need for significantly more protection at air bases, especially those hosting essential mission tools, such as nuclear deterrence elements.

Lt. Gen. Andrew Gebara, the deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration for the US Air Force, said of the operation last year that "disruptive" technologies like the drones seen in the Ukraine war "will have big implications not just for our bomber force or our nuclear force but really any critical infrastructure."

"We have counter-drone capabilities at these bases. Do we need to continue to modernize? Do we need to accelerate?" he said. "Yeah, absolutely, all that."

The majority of the most strategic US air assets are based inside the continental US. American airpower also depends heavily on warplanes stationed at air bases around the world. Defending against drones has proven challenging at both home and abroad, as the Tower 22 disaster and a number of domestic incidents have highlighted.

European air bases have likewise grappled with the challenge of drones, making the lessons of Operation Spiderweb particularly poignant.

Retired Air Marshal Greg Bagwell, who spent 36 years in the British Royal Air Force and served as its director of joint warfare, said last month that Operation Spiderweb holds key lessons that NATO allies need to learn.

When it comes to modern drone warfare, the West has more to learn from operations like Spiderweb than from day-to-day front-line drone fighting, he said at the UK think tank Chatham House. The West doesn't necessarily need to engage in heavy quadcopter warfare at the front when it has artillery and substantial airpower.

"The lessons that we need to learn are more from Operation Spiderweb, where Ukraine employed these drones in a much more sophisticated way and really did start to take out some significant targets," Bagwell said. That operation had a high-level strategic effect on a stronger adversary for a comparatively lower cost. It's asymmetric warfare that the West can't ignore.

Picking up lessons from the war

The US is using drone warfare in ways beyond what Spiderweb demonstrated, drawing on other lessons from the war. In its war with Iran that started last month, it has used drones to attack Iranian targets, including the new one-way attack LUCAS drones.

It's also still employing traditional drone tactics, using platforms like the uncrewed strike and reconnaissance drone MQ-9 Reaper.

The Army's new drone course is just one of the many ways that it is advancing its drone warfare capabilities, along with other moves like plans to buy at least a million drones in the next two or so years. Allies across NATO are taking similar steps.

Martin said their power is undeniable, and the course itself was created because the Army could see that it was behind in small drone warfare and needed to fix that. But the US is not in the same existential fight that Ukraine is, nor is it facing the same weapons shortages.

Drones have kept Ukraine in the fight against Russia even as other weapons ran out. They haven't been decisive, though, indicating that deep stocks of traditional and advanced weaponry still matter.

The US Army course teaches soldiers that drones aren't always the right weapon.

Bagwell also cautioned against leaning too heavily on drones. He said that drones have been "hugely useful" for Ukraine, but "these have not won the war for either side."

He said that Ukraine has "had to adapt and fight the way they can only fight, and I applaud them for what they have done. But there is a question for us in the West as to whether that is the way we want to fight."

• US forces used ATACMS to sink Iranian warships during Operation Epic Fury, the top US general said.
• Gen. Dan Caine announced that US artillery has helped to render the Iranian navy ineffective.
• ATACMS provide substantial striking power to ground forces.

The top US general revealed Friday that American troops involved in Operation Epic Fury have used a ballistic missile system to sink Iranian warships, including a submarine, offering some insight into the targets US artillery is engaging in this war.

Artillery soldiers and Marines are "sinking ships, destroying depots, and launching Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS," and "Precision Strike Missiles, or PrSMs," Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a Friday press briefing.

"From outside Iran, our Army and Marine artillerymen are hitting sites that Iran relies on to project power beyond their borders," he said.

"In just the first 13 days of this operation, our artillery forces have made history," Caine said.

"They fired the first precision strike missiles ever used in combat, reaching deep into enemy territory," he said. "They've used Army ATACMS to sink multiple ships, including a submarine."

US forces are "continuing to destroy the Iranian Navy to ensure freedom of navigation. He said that the US military is targeting mine-laying vessels and the ability to target commercial vessels.

"In less than two weeks, we've rendered the Iranian Navy combat ineffective and continue to attack naval vessels, including all of their Soleimani-class warships, which were armed with anti-ship missiles and anti-aircraft weapons," Caine said.

Other naval targets sunk include Iran's new purpose-built drone carrier.

Army Tactical Missile Systems are typically used to target land-based targets, such as enemy air defense systems and logistics hubs.

Each missile costs upward of $1 million, depending on the range and type of warhead. ATACMS missiles can hit targets out to as far as about 200 miles away and are fired using the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System or M240 Multiple Launch Rocket System launchers. The HIMARS can also fire PrSMs and much shorter-range guided rockets.

The Lockheed Martin-built ATACMS is guided by GPS and inertial navigation that tracks its flight toward a designated target, and hence cannot be used to accurately fire on moving targets. For this reason, it's likely that the ships destroyed were pierside or moored.

The ATACMS augments the strike power of Army and Marine Corps artillery, allowing land force commanders to hit critical targets without relying on air or naval forces to deliver the strike. The system was designed during the Cold War and first used in combat in the 1991 Gulf War.

The Ukrainians have also used their limited supply of US-provided ATACMS to hit Russian military facilities. With these weapons in short supply, Ukraine has since developed its own domestically built capabilities.

US forces have attacked over 6,000 targets in Iran, Caine said on Friday. As the US and Israel have established air supremacy over Iran, allowing bombers and fighters to fly overhead, they've shifted to munitions like gravity bombs, which are much cheaper to produce and more plentiful in the US arsenal than missiles.