If you ask Polymarket, the United States did not invade Venezuela on January 3rd, 2026.

They did, however, arrest Venezuela's President Maduro during a military raid in Caracas. They captured him and his wife, flew them to the USS Iwo Jima, and then to Brooklyn, where Maduro was detained and pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges. At least 80 people were killed. 

Later that morning, at a press conference from Mar-a-Lago, President Trump declared: "We are going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition."

So, when the market for “Will the U.S. invade Venezuela by…” failed to resolve to  “Yes,” Polymarket users weren’t shy about their frustration:

And:

They felt the market’s rules had been incorrectly interpreted. 

The original rules for the market “Will the U.S. invade Venezuela by…” read:

The commenters here are correct that there’s some ambiguity in what’s considered to be “a military offensive intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela” as some amount of control over some portion of Venezuela was necessary for the operation to be completed. 

Polymarket acknowledged this ambiguity when they issued a clarification:

The clarification, however, came on January 4th; this was after the raid and after Trump's "run the country" statement.

Although the clarification tried to be more precise, it still created new ambiguities:

Plus, it added information that would have influenced traders' positions if known beforehand.

Unsurprisingly, this clarification didn’t go over well with everyone. Responses ranged from: 

And: 

To: 

Fair question.

It’s not super clear. Neither international law nor U.S. law seems to actually define "invasion."

In UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 (1974), the term “invasion” appears as an example in the definition of “aggression” where it says in Article 3 of UNGA Res 3314:

“Invasion” here is never explicitly defined, rather it’s used if the meaning of the word is self-evident. 

The Rome Statute's 2010 Kampala Amendments, which created the crime of aggression for the International Criminal Court, adopted the same approach; invasion appears as an example of aggression, but remains undefined. 

A clear definition is also not found in U.S. law. The Constitution uses "invasion" four times:

But these all refer to being invaded, not conducting invasions abroad, and none address what constitutes a U.S. invasion of another country.

Article 42 of the Hague "Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land" identifies "occupation" as: 

Article 2 of the Geneva Conventions, relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, makes it clear that: 

This makes it clear that even a partial occupation -- that is neither the subject of a formal declaration of war nor involving armed resistance -- will still be considered to fall under the rules of war.

Black's Law Dictionary defines “invasion” as "the incursion of an army for conquest or plunder." This would arguably cover Venezuela, given Trump's explicit statements about taking Venezuelan oil. But no federal statute provides a definition.

Further, the meaning of "invasion" is actively being litigated right now; however, this is in the context of immigration, not military operations. Trump issued an executive order claiming it does, which would trigger powers under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Legal scholars sharply disagree. And the Fifth Circuit is hearing cases on whether migration across the southern border constitutes "invasion" under the Constitution. 

A full exploration of this is beyond this piece's scope, but the point is that the “correct” interpretation of “invasion” is up to debate. And Polymarket’s use the word “invasion” as though it had a clear legal meaning when it, in fact, does not, added to people’s frustration and confusion.

A tricky aspect of prediction markets is that you’re not necessarily taking a position based on the outcome of the question; you’re taking a position based on the rules of resolution for that market.

It’s sort of like how, when Stephen Colbert asked Ruth Bader Ginsburg if a hot dog was a sandwich, her response was, “You tell me what a sandwich is and I’ll tell you if a hot dog is a sandwich.”

You can watch the full exchange here: 

Once he provided a definition, her answer was that it was considered a sandwich according to his definition of a sandwich. 

The same logic applies to this market. 

If you tell me what an invasion is, I’ll tell you if what happened in Venezuela was one.

A common pitch is that prediction markets are truth-discovery mechanisms. The premise is that if you aggregate enough bets from people with skin in the game and you surface the probability of real-world outcomes you can arrive at the “truth.” However, when contracts use vague or contested terminology, this starts to fall apart, because instead of measuring what actually occurred you’re measuring whether or not you think the outcome will align with the stated rules of resolution.

This isn’t the first time Polymarket has faced a definitional controversy. In July 2025, a $237 million market asking whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would wear a "suit" before July resolved to "No" -- despite BBC, New York Post, Reuters, and The New York Times all describing his June 24 NATO summit outfit as a suit.

The contract's criteria stated: "The resolution source will be a consensus of credible reporting." More than 40 global media headlines called it a suit. Yet UMA's oracle ruled there was no "consensus of credible reporting" and finalized the outcome as No.

The problem was that the market never defined what a "suit" meant. As menswear expert Derek Guy (who recently started a column in Bloomberg) told Wired: "It meets the technical definition [of a suit]... I would also recognize that most people would not think of that as a suit."

Replace “suit” with “invasion” and you have the same problem with the Venezuela market.

There are arguments on both sides.

Before the January 3rd raid, the U.S. had already imposed a naval blockade on Venezuela. UNGA Res 3314 explicitly lists this as an act of aggression. Under this definition, even a brief military occupation qualifies as aggression. The resolution doesn't require permanent territorial control, any military occupation, regardless of duration, counts. By this standard, the Venezuela operation, which involved armed forces entering sovereign territory and temporarily occupying parts of Caracas, appears to meet the definition of an "invasion or attack."

Trump said the U.S. would "run the country." He added that "U.S. oil companies would take charge of oil-rich Venezuela's struggling nationalized operations." And when pressed on how the U.S. would oversee Venezuela, Trump said an unspecified group was being formed that included Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to manage the country. This language directly suggests "establishing control,” which is an operative phrase in the contract.

The Brookings Institution noted that “[t]he closest parallel may be the invasion of Panama in 1989, when the United States captured the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and put him on trial on U.S. soil."  Although Panama involved 27,000 troops who stayed for weeks and Venezuela involved a smaller force that withdrew within hours, both operations captured a head of state on drug charges, were framed as "law enforcement" domestically, and violated the UN Charter according to international legal consensus. Today it's universally called an invasion, including by official U.S. government sources.

Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith, who served in the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel, called the Venezuela operation an invasion in his analysis -- while noting the administration frames it as "law enforcement." And because different labels trigger different legal frameworks, the administration has strong incentives to avoid the word “invasion” regardless of whether it applies.

U.S. Army doctrine explicitly distinguishes between raids and operations to seize and hold terrain, defining a raid as a surprise attack as “for a specific purpose other than seizing and holding the terrain... [it] always ends with a withdrawal.”

The Caracas operation fits that category: forces entered, captured Maduro, and withdrew. The 1976 Israeli raid on Entebbe isn't called the "Israeli Invasion of Uganda." The 2011 operation that killed bin Laden isn't called an "invasion of Pakistan." 

Joint doctrine for "forcible entry" operations, by contrast, explicitly covers "seizing and holding a lodgment" in hostile territory. Under this doctrinal framework, the Venezuela operation looks more like a raid than an invasion:

Secretary Rubio explicitly told NBC: "…this was not an invasion. This is not an extended military operation. This was a very precise operation that involved a couple of hours of action." UN Ambassador Mike Waltz told the Security Council: "We are not occupying a country." Secretary of Defense Hegseth called the operation "a joint military and law enforcement raid." 

That said, there is a counterargument to be made that military doctrine serves operational purposes, not legal or semantic ones. The fact that the Pentagon calls something a "raid" doesn't mean it isn't also an "invasion" under other definitions. A raid can be a type of invasion. 

But when the resolution criteria require a “consensus of credible sources,” administration framing matters. And in terms of contract resolution it doesn’t matter if what occurred is objectively an invasion if there is not a consensus of credible reporting that it was one.

Multiple governments used the word "invasion" or "aggression": 

However, mainstream English-language outlets described the event in softer terms:

Add to this statements by the White House and other government agencies, a consensus around the word “invasion” did not materialize, at least not in the sources Polymarket would likely consider authoritative for resolution purposes.

The most effective resolution risk management is simply to avoid markets with ambiguous resolution criteria and to stick to ones with objective, binary, easily verifiable outcomes.

But if you decide to do so anyways, here are some things to keep in mind:

Was this an "invasion" by some reasonable definition? 

Armed forces entered sovereign territory, killed at least 80 people, removed the head of state, and the president said the U.S. would "run" the country. A naval blockade -- itself an act of aggression under international law -- preceded the raid. UN experts called the operation a "grave, manifest and deliberate violation" of the UN Charter. Multiple governments used the word "invasion." International law's definition of "aggression" includes military operations "however temporary." The DOD's own manual describes occupation by "invading forces."

Did it satisfy this specific contract? 

The contract required "military offensive intended to establish territorial control" plus "consensus of credible sources" supporting that characterization. 

That consensus didn't materialize in U.S. media, one could argue in part because the administration itself had legal incentives to describe it differently, and partly because major outlets opted for softer terms like "raid" and "intervention."

Polymarket's resolution may be defensible under its stated rules. It may also feel like the rules changed mid-game, with clarifying criteria added after positions were taken, after events unfolded, and after many traders concluded the market should resolve to "Yes.”

Both things can be true.

When resolution criteria are clear, prediction markets can surface the truth. But when the contract relies on vague or contested terminology, we’re no longer predicting reality, we’re predicting whether reality aligns with someone else’s definition.