On November 12, a small tranche of emails from the Epstein estate were released. Interest in Jeffrey Epstein as measured by Google Trends spiked.

Source: GoogleTrends, accessed 15 November 2025.

At the same time, US deployment of naval assets (by displacement) surged:

Source: CSIS, 10 November 2025.

I re-graph the Google Trends data, over the corresponding time frame:

Source: GoogleTrends, accessed 15 November 2025.

The astute observer will note that after a spike in the GoogleTrends series, deployments to the Caribbean increase; this was true in July, and it’s true in November.

Now one wouldn’t want to engage the in the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc; nonetheless the fact that deployment surges (one can count troops, and one gets a similar picture) once interest in Epstein spikes on two occasions is of note. In other words, get more instances, and you’re testing for Granger Causality!

I don’t think I’m the only one who conceives that the probability of Trump striking in Venezuela has gone up. Here’s Polymarket on the question (voluem over $3mn so nontrivial bets):

Source: Polymarket, accessed 15 November 2025, 2:40pm CT. Covers October 15 to November 15.

Note that odds went up roughly contemporaneously with the release by Democrats  of the first tranche of emails. Of course, working in opposition to the thesis of expectations of “wag the dog”, the subjective probability of a strike was pretty high during the shutdown.

Greater evidence in favor of “wag the dog” would come if actual strikes are nearly contemporaneous (with slight lag) to the release of even more politically damaging evidence, or perhaps an overwhelmingly positive vote on the House discharge petition on November 18th.