What exactly would that look like from the position of an individual low rank unit? What would $32k of risk look like on a foreign battle field? I'm struggling to understand this prerogative.

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.

He's a master sergeant, once of the highest enlisted ranks, involved in planning the mission. Not low rank at all.

A lot of people were involved with the mission that were not themselves directly endangered but could still stand to profit.

Easy to think of a scenario where he should stand down but instead continues with the mission, risking the lives of his team mates, or maybe civilians.