Angeles Times magazine she is the author of The New York Times bestseller Operation Paperclip Area 51 and most recently the pentagon’s brain an uncensored history of DARPA America’s top secret military research agency please join me in welcoming Annie Jacobson for a conversation
About the past present and future of DARPA the defense Department’s secretive military research agency thank you for joining us Annie thank thank you for having me um I’d like to begin um by discussing the the mission of the defense Advanced research projects agency or DARPA DARPA
Is created is credited with creating the internet GPS aspects of virtual reality not to mention a mindboggling number of acronyms it is an agency that makes Science Fiction come to life or as you describe it the agency that makes the future happen um for much of its history this was done
In secret but more and more that is happening now in in in the open um talk to us a little bit about in what ways how and by whom our destiny and the destiny of fure generations is being decided now
Well first things first I mean as an introduction to DARPA uh consider this it’s the most powerful most productive military science agency in the world and it’s also one of the least reported on
So it puts you in a position of saying well what has been going on at DARPA and what does that mean for the Future and another thing I think that’s important to consider as you look at um DARPA
They have a press office sometimes I call it the DARPA advertising agency they put certain ideas out there about what DARPA is doing and they’re usually kind of gung-ho ideas DARPA does many great things it of course created the internet originally called the arpanet because of DARPA
We have GPS technology um sensor technology but darpa’s mandate as was instructed to Congress when DARPA was created in 1958 is to create vast weapon systems of the future that’s the quote and when I found that quote I thought hm I must always keep that in mind when I’m researching and Reporting
On DARPA because that is its job so everything is about military technology everything that it works on is how does this support National Security and that is of course a double-edged sword because that which keeps you safe can also harm you so with that in mind there let’s start at the origins
Of DARPA there’s really two watershed moments that give rise to DARPA one is the detonation of the 15 Megaton hbomb as well as um the sputnick launch and really the um off- theark estimation by the US of Soviet aggression and capabilities talk to us a little bit more about how DARPA was created
And what its original Mission was well I begin the book with this extraordinary explosion 15 Megaton it was called Castle Bravo bomb I interviewed two scientists who were worked on that bomb who were there that were witness to that test and I think from hearing their eyewitness testimony about this
Explosion you get the real sense right away of like these are Big weapons and DARPA was created to defend against the weapon which we had created American scientists so it begins with this idea of the military industrial complex existing and having a built-in obsolescence that the weapon
We created will pretty soon uh be Obsolete and a new weapon system will have to be created but the real moment that DARPA began was several years later when the Soviets launched Sputnik and so Sputnik was just a little 23in sphere and we might say looking back at history well what’s
So threatening about that but the Soviets had beaten us into space and not only that Sputnik was lofted by an ICBM and the idea was well if they if the Soviets can get spotnik into space
They can also get a nuclear warhead into space and down onto Washington DC real soon and so DARPA was created literally in a matter of weeks after the launch of sputnic to make sure that we we America were never again taken by technological surprise and what’s interesting in all these decades since
DARPA has done its job in essence because we’ve never been taken by technological surprise DARPA has also done its job to create this very powerful almost omnipotent military industrial complex that is forever creating new weapon systems once the other once the weapon systems become public and
The enemy creates that same weapon system and I mean that that’s really a part of an irony of of the creation of DARPA and the Eisenhower Administration when it was created and coming out of that administration his warning to the American public about being concerned about
The rise of and and that event omnipotence of that military industrial complex and so just to take us to today really quick in terms of DARPA and its influence and its Mission but really ultimately who is making these decisions about our future and our destiny I mean in terms of that military
Industrial complex well that’s that was a very interesting part of researching the book to learn that um one of the you know DARPA is very quickly into the game realized that there were these major national security problems that needed solving and so they looked to what DARPA called the Supermen
Of Science and these were the Jason scientists and anyone here this doesn’t look like a much of a conspiracy theory crowd but anyone who follows conspiracy theories probably knows that the Jason scientists are often considered right up there with the Illuminati in terms of you know people
See them as these Wizards behind the curtain doing all these kind kind of bad things when in fact I interviewed the co-founder of the Jason scientists a physicist named Marvin goldberger and he created the Jason’s with a couple uh fellow physicist colleagues in 1960 and advised the
Pentagon for decades and what I found was that the Jason scientists were remarkably levelheaded and and detached in their assessments they wrote a number of reports many of which goldberger shared with me Declassified reports many still or classified but what was interesting is to get
The perspective of goldberger that went like this which is that the Jason scientists were all physicists who were academics so they taught most of the time at America’s great universities and then in the summer they would gather for what they called Summer studies and they would address
These great problems of National Defense and you see over the decades that Jason’s advising the DARPA this way and I and I write about their role in all the different Wars the Cold War the Vietnam
War the Gulf War but when you come full circle to where we are now I learned a very important thing and it has to do with the fact that the the Pentagon is really moving toward autonomous weapons and people surprisingly aren’t really familiar with this I mean there’s a a lot of
Talk about wow what if when in fact this is Dogma at the Pentagon and you can read about it in their unclassified reports that talk about dark plans and the pentagon’s plans for drones and autonomous Warfare also called hunter killer drones through 2038 and when I was having a discussion with one
Of the program managers at DARPA about some of these hunter killer drones the science of which is being pursued in these very sort of spooky areas that involve brain implants and mapping the brain and charting you know neurological behavior in brain Wounded Warriors and I was
Saying well I read a report where the Jason scientists do not think this is a good idea in fact they specifically advise the Pentagon against moving in this direction and the program manager Michael goldblat said to me well Jason’s hardly relevant anymore and I said what do you mean
This is this is news to me and he said well it’s kind of news at the Pentagon and it just started happening during the war on terror where the Jason scientists are being moved out and in their place
Of power has come a group called the defense science board who has been at the Pentagon for a while but their position in terms of advising the Pentagon and Advising how DARPA will move forward has changed and here’s the rub that concerned me is that the defense science board is made up of
Individuals who are full-time defense contractors they are not part-time defense contractors and full-time academics they sit on the boards of of these major uh whether it’s Boeing locky General Dynamics uh Etc and they are the ones who are now really advising DARPA how the government should
Move toward autonomous Warfare which brings up a very important question and it brings up what you asked about which was Eisenhower’s concept of the military industrial complex so if those who are advising the Pentagon how to proceed and which vast weapon systems of the future to create
Are the very individuals who are responsible for creating and selling those vast weapon systems of the future then you have that closed loop that Eisenhower warned against because over the history of DARPA and with the involvement of the Jason scientists there has been time and again where
They have given warning saying this is not an appropriate use of say this technology whether that was utilizing nuclear warfare on the hoian trail during Vietnam and perhaps other examples and with that it’s it’s almost a a conscience and yet and it seems as if there has been this
Tension or there is still some tension within the Pentagon but beyond that there is the the greater need for an informed citizenry can you describe a little bit of of that tension is that
Tension yes it ex is it getting greater or are we seeing the scales tip in in one way or the other well the tension is really arising from this idea that what the Pentagon believes the best way forward in Warfare is and again these are unclassified documents I write about them in the
Book I mean they’re available to be read some of them are quite long but it talks about how the Pentagon is moving toward robotic Warfare these are weapons that people know as hunter killer drones so whereas now you have a drone that’s under remote control there’s an operator
Somewhere whether it’s Cree Air Force Base or uh in Washington DC deploying you know flying this drone over the war theater there is a movement that will go toward drones that are self-governing and that can that you can essentially let’s say and this is a bad version but you show the Drone
A photograph and say go assassinate this guy and report back to me um that’s an autonomous drone the intelligence the the capabilities are not there yet but the Pentagon is very insistent on the pursuit of these Technologies and so you ask about the push back well I was surprised
To learn that much of the push back is actually coming from inside the Pentagon so the Pentagon um you know gave out sort of questionnaires to many people from the commanding officers to the Drone operators asking what the general feel was about this movement toward um autonomous drones
And the general consensus was not a good idea so instead instead of taking that into consideration and maybe shifting policy then under Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter who’s now the Secretary of Defense sent out this memo which said let’s create a program where we work on Robotics and ethics and
So then that was disseminated among the commanding generals the Drone operators and everybody in in between to sort of learn that robots could have ethics and the idea came back well no not at all because robots don’t have morals and then this is where it got really tricky so that trail kind of
Stops and I was unable to find out what happened next what the next movement was from the Pentagon but separately I noticed that right around this time DARPA started a new program and it has to do with trust and it’s called Uh narrative networks it’s one of those really innocuous names the N2
Program and on face value it’s like darpa’s working with storytellers and anthropologists to try to figure out how people you know are influenced by narratives but another element of the narrative networks program works very specifically and I interviewed the scientist
On this program deals with a chemical in the brain called oxytocin and that is sometimes called the brain’s moral molecule and it is this idea that this is what humans use as a trust mechanism in their brain so if you trust someone you emit oxytocin a breastfeeding mother
For example this is in DARPA documentation emits o oxytocin and so DARPA is now having this program looking into the use of oxytocin and how you can manipulate trust and again this is speculation but one can’t help but Wonder okay the guys at the Pentagon don’t like the idea taton movement
Toward autonomous drones they don’t trust drones that have self-government and let’s have a program program that manipulates trust and that’s where we get into some of those ideas about well what is Dara really doing what are their goals and how are they achieving them I mean it’s interesting to
See again from the evolution of DARPA and its M original Focus looking at a deterring or at least being able to defeat a nuclear attack and something that is on a on a global in a
Large scale and over the years how that has come down it’s it’s really kind of been filtered down and focused down more and more almost on the individual and the idea of um weapon systems
Going all the way down into a single Warf fighter and how do you augment uh cognition how do you make that person who is injured in in Warfare continue to fight how do you deal with fatigue
It’s it’s beyond just the the the larger weapon system it takes us into the evolution in some ways of of humans uh DARPA calls it transhumanism military transhumanism but in an interesting way this is actually part and parcel of the whole movement towards robotics it’s not only making
Individual Warf Fighters comfortable with robots it’s this idea of coupling man and machine and merging humans and machine and DARPA is doing that with programs Now with uh what they call biohybrids which people might call cyborgs you know they are able to actually control a rats
Through a labyrinth remotely because they’ve implanted electrodes in its brain they can do the same with a moth DARPA in 2014 created a steerable moth by inserting electrodes in the poopa stage of the moth which then transformed the wings came out and the this part of the Machinery
Is now part of the animal system DARPA is able to steer a moth and when you ask about transhumanism and and as I write in the book it All Began in this very interesting moment decades ago this is
Actually not new it was when the Berlin Wall came down uh many Soviet bioweapons Engineers defected to the United States and DARPA hired them a quote from a Dara director at the time was we had no biologists in the Pentagon they were busy having those people like the Jason scientists Supermen
Of scientists men dealing with machines Engineers um physicist looking at these big Space Systems but suddenly the idea that biology is important became what was called a Thrust at DARPA and there began this movement to look inside the body to work with what they call the dismounted soldier
The guy that’s walking on the ground and this led to a whole new umbrella of programs which is called augmented cognition which is called in short the super soldier program and it’s how to make war Fighters smarter than other War Fighters stronger than other Warf Fighters and again these
You know are double-edged swords many people who are proponents of transhumanism say why not control Evolution the clear implant the pacemaker being great examples of you know benefiting Man by augmenting the physical body people who are very against transhumanism say there’s something
Really wrong with this I think the reason that I like writing narrative stories as I as I do in my book is that I tell it from the perspective of the people involved and maybe you get to decide
What you think of transhumanism so there are other elements that that DARPA has very much been on the Forefront of and so it is getting down to in some cases how are we changing or how can we
Change humans but then it’s also mapping humans and whether that is is with the global war on terror and the evolution of kind of the scientists involved in more of a a social science approach to fighting terrorism to also literally humans becoming data points and some of the programs
Born out of out of darpa’s um out of darpa’s own Visions can you talk a little bit about that in one of the programs total information awareness and how that’s evolved to what has become a lot
Of news in recent years so here we’re in the realm of what DARPA the Pentagon calls ISR it’s intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance and it’s an idea that actually goes back to the Vietnam War when DARPA had its first shift going from these big sort of anti-ballistic
Missile defense programs to suddenly being sent into the jungles of Vietnam and being asked to create different weapon systems to fight the insurgents particularly on the hoian trail and this idea sprang forth of sensor technology and at the time it was so rudiment M it was like guys and
I interview these guys in in the book you know that are flying in low and slow over the hoochi Min Trail incredibly dangerous in one situation these guys are shot down um and they’re rescued in this very dramatic way because what they were doing is they’re dropping out of the aircraft and
Helicopters these giant sensors that are like this big they’re kind of shaped like a dart and they’re supposed to literally fly out of the aircraft land on the ground in a string and then the El ronic information gets relayed up to a helicopter that’s flying in a racetrack formation overhead and then
That information gets relayed back to what was called an information center in Thailand where soldiers are using these new technologies this is back in 1965 66 called computers to try and create algorithms to figure out what these hoochi men Fighters are doing on the trail where they’re
Headed what they’re going to attack next I mean this technology was laughed at at the Pentagon by the way but of course this is now exactly what we know as surveillance as the big surveillance Network that you referred to and we saw this program again in the war on terror when DARPA
Ran into a lot of trouble publicly when it created a system called the total information awareness uh program and that was this idea to use sensor technology to monitor American citizens to look at their credit card transactions to look at the library books they take out to monitor who they’re
Talking to to try and create with computers which are now very sophisticated and algorithms which have gotten much more sophisticated with help from NSA Etc to then use this system of systems to find not the hoochi men fighter on the trail but rather the terrorist among us and so you
Can see how one technology decades later becomes this other incredible DARPA technology and that is very much what we have now in the surveillance systems that are going on so over the course of darpa’s history there has been with some of its uh inventions with some of its programs
There has been pushed back one was this was this total information awareness that eventually got splintered off into the NSA and prism and a variety of of other programs can you recount some of of the other um experiences or the other um incidents in the past that have that DARPA has
Really had to um well has had to either sweep under the under the carpet or in some ways fix its its Public Image its image yes I mean after the Vietnam War an interesting thing happened um you know there was there’s this perception that there was a well it wasn’t a perception it
Was a reality that there was a downsizing of the military per se which there was DARPA got in big trouble for doing what was called pre-requirement research for doing creating weapon systems that were ahead of the time when in fact we needed to be you know fighting this war in Vietnam that we
Lost and so DARPA was punished it got kicked out of the Pentagon that sort of coveted place to be and sent several miles away uh where it is now in Arlington Virginia where they had a couple moves
But um so DARPA kind of got its wrist slapped and there was a a moment with many of the people who were there at the time talking about how you know they thought maybe the agency would be folded but
That’s not what happened in fact the opposite happened which is that suddenly DARPA got an influx of money thanks to the Secretary of Defense Harold Brown who was the first scientist in the Pentagon to be Secretary of Defense Brown had been in charge of all the DARPA technology during the
Vietnam war specifically the sensor technology and brown created an entire industry behind this idea of in information technology behind the idea of nanotechnology which is the art of making things small that all of these sensor systems could be shrunken down and so even though the
Public perception was that DARPA was in trouble DARPA had created agent orange during the war so there was a real idea of banishment and yet in fact the agency flourished and it didn’t really become evident until the Gulf War when we had a secretary of defense then Dick Cheney who was
A real proponent of using technology to win and the Gulf War was that incredible show of power um Network Centric Warfare that displayed what DARPA was capable of and what you could do to an enemy Force if you had technological superiority but that only worked in that very specific
Environment and it certainly didn’t work uh the next war on the horizon the war on ter Terror which dealt with Urban Warfare so with with these directions that that DARPA has taken and some there’s been trajectories over over decades again going back to another example out of the Vietnam
War was the idea of of trying to apply Behavioral Science or some social science to understand to or seemingly to try to understand the Viet Kong and what was motivating what was driving them but in some cases it’s taken the Pentagon years to appreciate what DARPA has has concluded or
What they suggested what happened in in that case with with the VA Kong well I was really surprised um like you’re referring to to learn that there were anthropologists hired by DARPA in the war and that came um and again there’s a parallel here with the Iraq War so I think it’s
Very interesting to consider because the Secretary of Defense Robert mcnamer at the time was stuck on this question he actually had a like the equiv the 1960s version of a Post-It note in his office that
Said what made the Vietnam tick he wanted to know why these Viet Kong Fighters were siding with the Communists and not siding with the Americans and so DARPA set about this sprawling program where it hired anthropologists and social scientists to go into the field to conduct interviews to
Try and find out what made the Viet Kong tick and um you know I write at length and I interviewed the the lead on that a man named Joseph zasloff and part of why he felt what he told me was so
Important because this was a colossal failure I mean the hearts and Minds campaign failed and zasloff said that he felt that you know when he saw this same thing going on in the Iraq War because again DARPA got this idea almost like it had Amnesia that that DARPA had done this during
The Vietnam war Got This brilliant idea during the war on terror hey let’s start a hearts and Minds campaign and figure out what makes the Iraqis tick and it was the same story over again and
That same failure um so the idea is is darpa’s investing all this time in Treasure and one would hope that one would at least get experience and be able to say well this doesn’t work how do we
Need to adjust and instead it’s astonishing to see that same you know instead of Amnesia instead of experience you get amnesia and it was no louder spoken to me when I read uh the Army issued a
Statement when it kicked this program into effect in Iraq it was it was called the human terrain program and on their website the Army wrote this is the first time in history that anthropologists and social scientists are being sent into the war theater on a large scale but no it
Wasn’t Canen with the shift in influence and it’s interesting talking about trying to find the the trust molecule with the evolution of the influence of DARPA and who or who is influencing DARPA is this an agency that the American public can trust on one hand we we’ve gotten this narrative um from
Dar again and again about what it has essentially given the world again the example of the internet or GPS to make sure that we’re not getting lost on our way to tonight’s talk is with those those
Beneficial uh those benefits aside is this an agency you feel like that we can trust um you know the journalist’s job is to inform the public so I try to tell the story straight down and let people conclude but I’m also mindful of the fact that Eisenhower warned the public against
The military-industrial complex and also said that the way to balance that out was the alert and knowledgeable citizenry and that’s why I think it’s important your question which asks about influence as a whole I found that all of these scientists that work for DARPA are really
Amazing scientists working super hard on pushing technology and science in a way and grateful that DARPA is there to fund them I found that the problem and this is my opinion and not my um presentation as much but I found that the problem seemed to lie in that idea of influence and that’s
Where my own position as a citizen kicks in as opposed to a journalist which is you know that that Eisenhower did warn against this idea of unwarranted influence and it seems that you know when he spoke those words in 1961 the military industrial complex the defense contractors were
Just getting started and now of course they are am omnipen and I think that the alert and knowledgeable citizenry has a responsibility to pay attention to this people always say well isn’t Congress doing anything about this no they’re not but you know you can just simply by being aware
By knowing that the people that are advising the Pentagon which weapon systems to procure are the people who are creating them because there’s certain elements that you cover in your book where there’s ideas of of how to to treat the the injured Warf fighter whether it is with elements
Of um brain injury traumatic brain injury um to even limb regeneration which again seems to be going away from the idea of of creating new weapon systems quite the opposite but so what’s really happening there well the limb regeneration lab I mean that’s super interesting it’s this idea
That humans can one day um you know regenerate their own Limbs and when I was interviewing the scientists down at UC Irvine who are working on this program um and I said because I what I try
To do is make science simple you know really make it understandable and I said but just help me out like make it really simple I mean salamanders can regenerate their limbs humans can’t how does that work work and um Dr Gardner said to me well actually humans can regenerate we all
Did and I kind of looked at him and he said we all began as one cell and then we were two and then we were more that’s regeneration so we have the capacity to regenerate and when you look at
Big science in that way that these take guys are taking big science and going small I mean that’s big those are Big Ideas darp is funding that is that a weapon system no that is you know helping War fighters who lose limbs or individuals who lose limbs in accidents but the brain programs
Are very different because my understanding from interviewing DARPA scientists the brain programs are presented by DARPA and many of them are very classified they’re in the clinical trial stage it’s this idea of implanting neural Prosthetics into the brain of brain Wounded Warriors so guys
Who back from Iraq and Afghanistan with brain injuries who have cognitive impairment and this idea that these neural neural implants will help restore their brain functions and so that is a noble idea and DARPA has teamed up with the White House on the brain initiative to do this but
What many scientists said to me is there is also something else going on which is DARPA mapping the brain and DARPA using this information with from the electrodes in the brain to learn about how the neural networks work so that and this is the idea um that long coveted barrier to break artificial
Intelligence can happen because DARPA has been at the Forefront of artificial intelligence since its Inception and no one has been able to figure out how to make machines think and the idea is that these brain one idea is that these brain chip programs are actually will lead lead the way
Toward true artificial intelligence which sinks right up in line with the idea of self-governance in autonomous weapons so on one hand sitting here in the San Francisco Bay area in the United States it’s I don’t know exactly comforting but the idea that we do have some of the the best and brightest
Working on these problems these questions um how does DARPA then compare to and and for our benefit or for the National Security how does that compare with what other countries are doing what do you have a sense of of the the level of competition and kind of where DARPA is in
Making sure that we are not caught surprised I mean Russia recently said we have a better DARPA than DARPA so you can see the competition however on balance no one has ever been able to take the United States by military surprise and a lot of DARPA scientists asked me you know look
Before you um you know point out the bad in DARPA don’t forget to mention the good which is that and they they a couple different scientists would present this scenario imagine you know if Russia or China or a dark horse like Saudi Arabia were to suddenly announce that they had created the first
Human clone which many people are researching or broken this barrier of artificial intelligence and produced an autonomous we weapon um how would you feel as an American then and wouldn’t you say DARPA has failed so DARPA has done its job it’s just that one must also ask on balance
What is the job of DARPA for the future um well that’s a great uh point to launch off to some of the questions that we have gotten from the the audience um let’s start with this one um and going
Back to the trust question what uh um what’s the best way for DARPA to build a trust narrative with the US public is this desirable um especially if they are ultimately working in the in the public
Interest and and for public service I think for the most part America does have a trust narrative with DARPA because darpa’s press office is so good at putting information out there about some of the major programs that dar does that are um for the benefit of the civilian population um you know one
Example that comes to mind is vaccine technology so the wh estimates that when an emerging um infection arises um or a disease it takes nine months to get that vaccine to Market well DARPA challenged itself in 2013 to break that model and it creat ated 10 million H1N1 influenza viruses in
One month so you can see what DARPA is capable of and I think you know the the DARPA press office does a great job of getting that those kinds of stories out so that c the citizenry is
Aware of you know what the agency is capable of so maybe you can pull back the curtain a little bit and talking about how you went about some of the reporting of this how did did you get your access
To DARPA besides obviously them wanting to put out their own narrative um no one had ever done as a comprehensive history of of DARPA before how did you negotiate that and why did they give you
Access I mean DARPA said no to the majority of my requests um and that’s just not the way you report a book I mean you have to go to the scientists that worked on the programs um in all of my books
Area 51 Operation Paperclip now the pentagon’s brain I interview roughly 70 individuals scientists engineers spies military folks who have unique um experience in those places and programs and this book was the same way so you begin to seek out the Superman of science so to speak to
Ask them questions and then they are become very helpful in my experience putting you in touch with others who worked on those programs which you then vet through documentation through Foy of requests Etc but I think you know one of the most hopeful Parts about being a journalist and about reporting
About these secret military institutions is I find that the Supermen of science the real smart ones the ones who have spent their lives dedicated toward you know National Security issues um as they get older they become very willing to share information and they stay on top of the programs
That they worked on as they become Declassified so maybe the public loses interest in a program that was going on in 1960 but the scientist doesn’t because he was responsible for it and so when someone like myself shows up and says tell me about the Viet Kong motivation and morale program
That scientist is quick to pull out his documents now Declassified um share them with me and in essence educate the public about the history of your country so with the Jason scientists and many other others there’s definitely uh a a bit of a revolving door or a lot of collaboration with
With universities and and academics how do you see the the role of Academia in this and at the same time the dependence of Academia on DARPA it’s relationship Dara grants Dara funding it’s always been interwoven I mean some people will call it the military industrial academic complex um
I was surprised to learn that UC San Diego was in essence created to fulfill military needs and its president uh herb York was the first director of DARPA before that he was the director of Livermore um the science director and so many of these uh institutions academic institutions are there to
Help Foster military science on balance think about DARPA you know or rather maybe I should say explain that DARPA as an agency doesn’t actually make things nor does the Pentagon by the way but DARPA specifically is known for being this very flexible very agile organization free
Of bureaucracy at any given time since it started it has 120 program managers those program managers are in charge of individual budgets darpa’s budget this year is 3 billion to give you an idea divide
3 billion by 120 and then you can see the kind of money that an individual program manager has that program manager goes out into the field and hires a team at a at a university laboratory a team at
A military laboratory some group in industry and puts together his program that way and actually maintains this extraordinary control and ability to St and stop and start programs as the program manager sees fit this is absolutely unique to DARPA and anyone who studies military science
Knows this is absolutely not the way military science programs work so is DARPA with its certainly with its recent efforts to reach out in the with DOD certainly with Ash Carter and talking about having more of a collaboration or more of a partnership with Valley for instance is DARPA
Having difficulties remaining competitive in terms of attracting some of those best and brightest I would say quite the opposite I mean everyone I know wants to work with DARPA and let’s go back to the scientist at the limb regeneration lab I mean these guys and I and because they were
Close to me you know I would would see them and and talk at length and had sort of interesting um lunch conversations about what DARPA meant to this kind of technology and and they would say that no
One else is willing to fund limb regeneration technology that may pay off in 25 years DARPA was and not only that DARPA uh would push them so they the these particular scientists had a 5-year contract 5 million and they um said that they did better more challenging work than they had
Ever done in their whole careers almost you know on on balance in that short time because of what DARPA asked for them that the standards that DARPA asks for and demands of its scientists are extraordinary they’re willing to pay for it but the match is in excellence um in other kind
Of recent news or in kind of global issues do you have sense of a sense of how involved DARPA is again with the idea of social science being an integral part of the global war on terror
How involved is is DARPA in thinking about how to address the threat of Isis um I mean having read darpa’s most recent budget which happens to be 500 pages of just kind of like line items so you just
Get one line of what the program is but if you read through it and you’re familiar enough with the history of programs as I am you can start to get a sense of you know what is becoming a
Much bigger Arena and it is exactly what you’re talking about there were a few programs I was particularly interested in classified but they look at exactly that I mean one and they seem to be specifically addressing Isis um one of them is called Nexus 7 and it’s looking at Twitter and
Looking at text messaging to try and determine um you know to try and kind of preempt attacks with this idea of learning using these algorithms what you know Isis followers and Isis soldiers who use Twitter say in their message the subtext of all of that I mean this is where you get
Into incredible incredibly complex and sometimes questionable ideas about how much can you really know about what is because the the the Baseline is normal versus non-normal um how much can you really interpret what is normal for an Isis fighter and that of course we can never know
Because those parts of the program are classified so overall describe just kind of how Nimble DARPA is I mean it is obviously constantly looking on to be on The Cutting Edge or to set what is The Cutting Edge but with these emerging threats do they have uh the a bureaucratic structure that
Causes them to to not be able to move quickly or are they are they a pretty Nimble organization I think the latter I think they’re extraordinarily Nimble and they move like that and I I say that
From looking at the way um the war on terror you know played out for DARPA how they had to they had to sort of fragment and they had to look at Urban Warfare and they had to look at surveillance
Capabilities and drone Technologies all at the same time while dealing with these big threats from China and Russia so DARPA you know seems to be entering into Arenas way before the public even knows about them we learn about something and then we learn oh DARPA already been there and been
Looking at that so with that not having a lot of um bureaucracy involved what kind of oversight I mean who has oversight over Dara who else besides and and other influences Beyond to make sure that
DARPA is always on the right course or on on a proper course well I think that’s the question uh you know that we were talking about earlier which is who’s advising the advisers because people sort of have this knee-jerk reaction that Congress must know what DARPA is doing
But if you look at a 500 page document um and you flip through it specifically you realize Congress you know that’s one of hundreds of documents that different congressional committees have to look at and there’s only so much information that can be taken in which is where I think the
Real issue is who’s advising the scientists I mean which scientists are advising the Pentagon about which way to go if there’s any such thing as oversight I would say that is the moment of of the critical thinking um going back to to some of the benefits that DARPA has has given Society
Uh again specifically arpanet the evolution into into the internet um are there other examples or are there examples of say commercial spin-offs um and how those those technologies have come into the public domain I think a great one is GPS technology because everyone knows about it
You know we all use GPS that is a DARPA technology it was a military targeting technology and it it’s amazing how old GPS actually is I mean we all think of it as sort of being you know 10 years
Old but it’s not at all it goes back to the very early days of of DARPA when it was called arpa and when satellites went up and this initial GPS um targeting came into play then there was some
Interservice rivalries the Air Force decided well we’re going to have our own GPS the Navy said the same Congress the Pentagon said we want one system this is all very much in secret in the 80s um as laser guided Weaponry came into play this GPS targeting technology became super important um and
DARPA took over and really created the true real GPS system uh six satellites that were looking at all this but the thing is is the GPS is almost too easy to hack into and the military knew this so
They created a feature within GPS called selective availability so there was an offset by several hundred feet so if anyone and and no one but the military knew what that offset was so if anyone hacked into the GPS technology to hit a Target they would miss the target by several hundred feet
Well in the ’90s um industry in Europe learned about GPS technology and thought we got to get in on this business and make it public because they don’t care about the US military let’s make our own system without a select availability feature without that offset and have a huge industry at
Which point President Clinton said oh boy this is too to answer your question this is too important of an industry and America should have that industry and prosper from it he Declassified the program got rid of the sa feature and bingo we all had GPS like that so just kind of over
The the the whole kind of R&D Enterprise across federal government DARPA isn’t the one and only there’s uh the intelligence Community has its own agency the Department of Homeland Security has an agency as well and of course there’s the the the cia’s are back in qow um how do those different
Entities collaborate how do they talk are they in competition how does that Enterprise function I mean they most definitely work together I think the most interesting one and the one that I know about um to the to the greatest degree is the cia’s DARPA it’s called I arpa and it was created
A few years ago and for the book I interviewed one of the individuals who worked on that program from the ground up to set up that and it was remarkable given that sort of rivalry between the Pentagon and the agency that the agency really had nothing but great things to say about DARPA
How this agency functioned exactly as it was supposed to and how little waste there was at least that was from the individuals that I spoke to about setting up IPA and now iarpa has really taken off and you know they have a website which is super interesting anyone who wants to go there
Can learn you know you see the front the veil of the programs and of course the real story will probably know about in 40 years um so with that again there’s this this question that keeps coming
Up about does does DARPA have a conscience um and that is are there other examples of research that that DARPA has engaged in where they ultimately pulled the plug on and said we don’t want to
Go down this path for ethical or moral reasons certainly not any that I came across but I don’t think it would be in the agency’s best interest to report its failures that hadn’t become public so I think it’s impossible to know that but you know I mean it’s interesting when that question comes
Up does DARPA have a conscience I mean individual people have consciences I mean that that’s how it works and that’s why I think it’s so important to bring out the stories of the individuals because you can see how humans have this interplay between what is right and what is wrong and that really
Brings to the central organizing question of my book if there’s one question I ask people to think about it’s this you know I begin the book with the story of the thermonuclear weapon created uh the scientists actually called it an evil thing um the creation of this weapon against
Which there is no defense and throughout the book I write of a number of experiences where there was almost a launch but wasn’t and in every single one of those cases the launch the error is found
By a human so there’s this idea of how important that human with a conscience is which is why when we come to the end of the book and you learn about artificial intelligence um you really have to stop
And say wait a minute a thermonuclear weapon may be indefensible against but it can’t launch itself an artificially intelligent robot could launch itself and against which there would truly be no defense um going back to the the question of of that conscience individuals one that of course has
Come up again and again in the last few years is is Edward Snowden and certainly his Revelations U or the leaks that that led to those Revelations of programs like prism which is born out of that
Total information awareness um and Snowden again being in the news today as he just popped up on Twitter for the first time um do you how have his Revelations affected your research at all and do
You think um and this is a little bit um kind of a broader question that maybe doesn’t speak directly to the book but um do you think that his actions have have served or harmed America everybody has a different role and everybody decides for themselves with their own conscience
You know what best suits them and what action they should take and I think what is inspiring and what is hopeful to someone like myself is that you can have the Edward snowdens out there
Who do what they feel they need to do but you can also have you know a very different approach which is just to read to uh maintain a knowledge base about these programs and to have an opinion you
Know I always say you vote with your eyeballs so being a journalist and just having that love of of newspapers and news stories um people really do their eyeballs matter what you read what you send to your mother or your child you know there’s a registry of that and newspap organizations are
Aware of what people are interested in reading and then they hire more journalists to write about those stories so you have Edward Snowden you have the desk journalist and you have all kinds of people in in between that I would hope make up that alert and knowledgeable citizenry that’s
So important um so someone who who’s actually by the sound of it U Been on um had some experience with at least some of the the Technologies or how they have been deployed to to uh War theater um an
Audience member who is from Iraq um who remembers the golf War 91 um was there any sense that that Saddam Hussein um um had much awareness at all of the advanced military power that was coming
At that time I mean again it was it as as this person says the they were all shocked by what happened during the Gulf War absolutely and I write about this specifically in the book because I mean the biggest DARPA or perhaps the most showy DARPA weapon of the Gulf War was the
Stealth fighter jet that technology was you know performed in secret and because I wrote about stealth technology in Area 51 because so much of it was tested out at Area 51 um I attended the
Actual the final banquet when the stealth fighter jet was retired 2009 or 10 I think it was and the president of locked was speaking about the Gulf War and about the unveiling of the F-117 and how
It caught Everybody by surprise and he said this amazing thing which was he said we had 10,000 civilian and Military um individuals cleared on the stealth program and no one leaked it and so it did take Saddam Hussein by surprise and that had a major role in knocking out you know so much
Of any kind of systems information systems that the Iraqi military would have used to respond to that kind of power and so from there it was kind of a downhill slope to the end and that’s why the
Gulf War you know ended so quickly um I mean again so much of warfare now is about information and that being um the weapon that gives that that that total awareness to kind of an allseeing uh theater
For us um fighter um but that’s also getting to the point of of addressing counterinsurgency once we have been in the theater we’ve gone through shock and awe let’s say we’ve shown our military dominance how do we move to winning the hearts and minds and I’m wondering if you can talk a little
Bit more about um the darp influence in creating that a narrative strategy um for counterinsurgency and how that is how that may be may be utilized well it’s certainly a big problem I mean I came across a DARPA document uh that was produced shortly after the battle of Mogadishu Blackhawk
Down When DARPA suddenly realized that it had to address this idea of urban Warfare and in one of these Declassified documents the scientists were talking they were actually quoting sunzu the Chinese military General from 2,500 years ago and it says right there in the opening sentence
Of this DARPA document on Urban Warfare the worst policy is to attack cities and yet that is exactly what DARPA faces what the entire military faces when it’s looking at so much of the future conflicts in these Urban environments which are you know counterinsurgency environments which are
Almost impossible to defend against and this is I think the biggest problem that DARPA won’t talk about because so much techn techology was set up in Iraq this is one of the great Mysteries that I
Kind of leave the reader with having to do with the war on terror which is that we created Dara created an entire system with an enormous amount of money called combat zones that see and it was this idea that we would take all that sensor technology that was originally ridiculed in
Vietnam you know the big things being thrown out of the planes to monitor the ground and visuals and audios they’re now shrunken down to the size of my fingernail they’re set up by military contractors across all the major cities in Iraq this is during the war on terror so that DARPA
Can see the combat zone um drones flying overhead everything feeding to those Information Systems the idea that you could see where the terrorists are and go after them but of course it failed and now so many of those cities that we wired and that we planted this technology and are in control of
Isis and every time I try to ask anyone affiliated with DARPA and these programs what happened to all this technology the answer is no comment so we have time for one more question and that is I
Guess a a um a crystal ball question what is the what is the future of of DARPA and what do you see as kind of the next potential big breakthrough I mean you know there’s many different things
To speculate on and I write about all of them in the book but I think one thing that is clear that is that is that is non-speculative is this idea of moving toward autonomy and weapons and the
Real question is will DARPA be able to break that barrier of artificial intelligence will it be able to create Hunter Killer Robots that think but on that idea keep this in mind the very first dark a hunter killer robot program was actually way back in 1983 and it was actually called Killer Robots
And the motto of the program was the battlefield is no place for human beings so I think really the big question is and I don’t have the answer is if there are no humans on the battlefield where are
They um and that is all that we have for tonight on behalf of the world affairs Council I ask you to join me in thanking Annie Jacobson for this excellent discussion many thanks as well to you the audience for your terrific questions um as a reminder
Annie’s latest book the pentagon’s brain is on sale courtesy of Books Inc and she will be available to sign copies on stage good night and thank you very much you so much
