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The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency
The definitive history of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, from the author of the New York Times bestseller Area 51
No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department's most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history about the organization, New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private documents, and declassified memos to paint a picture of DARPA, or "the Pentagon's brain," from its Cold War inception in 1958 to the present.
This is the book on DARPA--a compelling narrative about this clandestine intersection of science and the American military and the often frightening results.
No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department's most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history about the organization, New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private documents, and declassified memos to paint a picture of DARPA, or "the Pentagon's brain," from its Cold War inception in 1958 to the present.
This is the book on DARPA--a compelling narrative about this clandestine intersection of science and the American military and the often frightening results.
560 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2015
About the author
Annie Jacobsen
25 books4,748 followersANNIE JACOBSEN is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author. Her books include: AREA 51; OPERATION PAPERCLIP; THE PENTAGON’S BRAIN; PHENOMENA; SURPRISE, KILL VANISH; and FIRST PLATOON.
Her last book, NUCLEAR WAR: A SCENARIO, is an international bestseller. Her newest book, BIOLOGICAL WAR: A SCENARIO, hits bookstores everywhere on July 28.
Jacobsen’s books have been named Best of the Year and Most Anticipated by outlets including The Washington Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe, Vanity Fair, Apple, and Amazon. She has appeared on countless TV programs and media platforms—from PBS Newshour to Joe Rogan—discussing war, weapons, government secrecy, and national security.
She also writes and produces TV, including Tom Clancy’s JACK RYAN.
Jacobsen graduated from Princeton University where she was Captain of the Women’s Ice Hockey Team. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband Kevin and their two sons.
Her last book, NUCLEAR WAR: A SCENARIO, is an international bestseller. Her newest book, BIOLOGICAL WAR: A SCENARIO, hits bookstores everywhere on July 28.
Jacobsen’s books have been named Best of the Year and Most Anticipated by outlets including The Washington Post, USA Today, The Boston Globe, Vanity Fair, Apple, and Amazon. She has appeared on countless TV programs and media platforms—from PBS Newshour to Joe Rogan—discussing war, weapons, government secrecy, and national security.
She also writes and produces TV, including Tom Clancy’s JACK RYAN.
Jacobsen graduated from Princeton University where she was Captain of the Women’s Ice Hockey Team. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband Kevin and their two sons.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 495 reviews
September 24, 2015
What a ridiculous book. For the first 150 pages, I was completely hooked. The material was interesting and seemed well researched. The author had some opinions or drew some conclusions that I was slightly skeptical of, but they were fairly clearly labeled as opinions, so that was fine with me. Unfortunately, as I got deeper into the book, I started to see some errors with concepts I was quite familiar with already. First of all, she refers to a bombsight as a "bombsite." Bombsite doesn't even appear to be a word, and was my first clue that this book may not have been properly edited or fact-checked. I am generous, however, and understand that misspellings can make it through even the best of editorial processes. After that, though, my skeptic senses were perked for more inconsistencies. When I got to the part where the author completely mangles Moore's Law (instead of saying computing power doubles every 18 months, she was saying it squares), I was done. The problem with a book like this is that the subject matter is difficult for a layperson to fact-check, and when fairly simple concepts aren't correct, it doesn't bode well for the recently declassified material. I'm super disappointed, because this book was extremely interesting before I lost faith in its accuracy.
October 29, 2015
I know that Mark Twain said, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." However, I cannot find who first said, "Never let the details ruin a good story." There is not a word in the English language to describe how overly verbose this lady is. The DARPA technology really started getting interesting post 9/11 but she absolutely ruined it with unnecessary details about uninteresting people, places and things. Reading this book was like writing a paper in college. I would find housework to do or I'd space off and start planning my own funeral while reading this boring drivel. She could easily have said twice as much and I would have retained thrice as much with a good editor. And come on, even Forrest Gump knows that two planes can't cause three buildings to collapse at free fall speed. I saw it on a meme and Lord knows you can't argue with meme science.
February 21, 2023
Far away from anything the general public understands, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) lurks. These are the technological inventions the US Department of Defence use to further their abilities on the world scene. As author Annie Jacobsen posits, some of the technology is used by the US military two decades before it becomes public knowledge, leaving me to wonder what’s being worked on now. Jacobsen uses her exceptional research and writing abilities to provide the reader with a sensational look well behind the curtain and into the secrets the US Government has been using to further its stronghold around the world. Readers who enjoy this type of analysis will surely want to take detailed notes as they make their way through this book.
The need to be technologically advanced became essential for the US Government with the onset of the Cold War. As Jacobsen explains in the opening chapter of the book, secret tests for a new hydrogen bomb took place soon after the Second World War and the results were astronomical. From there, exploration into what other types of military and defence advancements could be done became the task of the day. As Jacobsen explores further, the bomb testing had some fallout no one could have expected, when cancers and other radiation-based diseases emerged in many of the scientists involved in the testing.
With the onset of wars in Asia, US Defence began looking at new strategies to defend against the enemy and scare Soviet-backed countries into submission before things got out of hand. While this might look good on the surface, as soon as technology is released, it can (and is) copied by others, meaning that US strategies to use bombs or chemicals would soon be met with an equally potent weapon by the opposition, making technological advancement essential. Jacobsen cites the emergence of napalm and other chemical weapons key to US success, though there was a need to be careful not to come across as violating war treaties and killing tons of innocent civilians.
This was also the era of new weaponry, which could be utilised and leave no outward scarring. Psychological warfare was becoming a key to successfully learning about the enemy and how to break them down. Jacobsen explores this and how the US military tried to find ways of extracting intel without leaving any permanent damage, though it would not be met without resistance and a form of retaliation by the North Vietnamese. Torture of the physical variety was effective and the North Vietnamese were happy to work with it, as it yielded the same results while offering a more permanent reminder to victims.
Moving through some of the new tech put in place to create stronger battlefield readiness, Jacobsen moves into the 21st century with discussions about the new enemy the Americans had to battle, the stateless terrorists. Using the over-flogged September 11, 2001 narrative, Jacobsen discusses DARPA’s reaction and how it needed to tighten the monitoring abilities to be hyper-aware of what was going on around the country (and the globe) to ensure that no one would be plotting anything of this magnitude again. While it remains somewhat murky in the book’s disc cushion as to whether DARPA or other agencies were fully aware of September11, the significant amount of egg left on America’s face was one that no one wanted to see again. Overriding the rights of the individual for the protection of the masses became a major issue and is still prevalent today,. Jacobsen does a masterful job at addressing it and keeps the reader’s plate full with all sorts of information.
In the latter portion of the book, as Jacobsen continues to reveal some of the stunning technologies, she touches on robotic advancements, used not only to spy on enemies, but also potentially to neutralise them when something is being done. Constructed to look like hummingbirds, dragonflies, or even beetles, DARPA is able to control these miniature drones to gather intel or serve as tiny bombs to kill those who are causing harm. It is so inventive and yet eerie to learn about this, leaving me to wonder what sort of detailed analysis I will undertake when next out on a picnic or talking a walk in the community.
While intelligence and military history is not of particular interest to me, I am always keen to see what going on ‘behind the curtain’. Knowing that the Americans are always on guard to be five steps ahead, I was keen to see what Annie Jacobsen could reveal from the many interviews she undertook for the book. The flow the the narrative and topics discussed proved to be the perfect fit for this book, keeping me well informed and always hungering for a little more. Chapters flowed well, one topic into another, and I could see how military intelligence and battlefield readiness would be important to Americans and likely some of their allies. With the world scene changing on a daily basis, it is interesting to see what’s available, even if what the public sees is usually two decades old. I have enjoyed other tomes by Annie Jacobsen and will likely return to see what else she has penned before too long. This was an eye opening experience and I am eager to see what others think of it as well!
Kudos, Madam Jacobsen, for another great book that taught me so much.
Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
The need to be technologically advanced became essential for the US Government with the onset of the Cold War. As Jacobsen explains in the opening chapter of the book, secret tests for a new hydrogen bomb took place soon after the Second World War and the results were astronomical. From there, exploration into what other types of military and defence advancements could be done became the task of the day. As Jacobsen explores further, the bomb testing had some fallout no one could have expected, when cancers and other radiation-based diseases emerged in many of the scientists involved in the testing.
With the onset of wars in Asia, US Defence began looking at new strategies to defend against the enemy and scare Soviet-backed countries into submission before things got out of hand. While this might look good on the surface, as soon as technology is released, it can (and is) copied by others, meaning that US strategies to use bombs or chemicals would soon be met with an equally potent weapon by the opposition, making technological advancement essential. Jacobsen cites the emergence of napalm and other chemical weapons key to US success, though there was a need to be careful not to come across as violating war treaties and killing tons of innocent civilians.
This was also the era of new weaponry, which could be utilised and leave no outward scarring. Psychological warfare was becoming a key to successfully learning about the enemy and how to break them down. Jacobsen explores this and how the US military tried to find ways of extracting intel without leaving any permanent damage, though it would not be met without resistance and a form of retaliation by the North Vietnamese. Torture of the physical variety was effective and the North Vietnamese were happy to work with it, as it yielded the same results while offering a more permanent reminder to victims.
Moving through some of the new tech put in place to create stronger battlefield readiness, Jacobsen moves into the 21st century with discussions about the new enemy the Americans had to battle, the stateless terrorists. Using the over-flogged September 11, 2001 narrative, Jacobsen discusses DARPA’s reaction and how it needed to tighten the monitoring abilities to be hyper-aware of what was going on around the country (and the globe) to ensure that no one would be plotting anything of this magnitude again. While it remains somewhat murky in the book’s disc cushion as to whether DARPA or other agencies were fully aware of September11, the significant amount of egg left on America’s face was one that no one wanted to see again. Overriding the rights of the individual for the protection of the masses became a major issue and is still prevalent today,. Jacobsen does a masterful job at addressing it and keeps the reader’s plate full with all sorts of information.
In the latter portion of the book, as Jacobsen continues to reveal some of the stunning technologies, she touches on robotic advancements, used not only to spy on enemies, but also potentially to neutralise them when something is being done. Constructed to look like hummingbirds, dragonflies, or even beetles, DARPA is able to control these miniature drones to gather intel or serve as tiny bombs to kill those who are causing harm. It is so inventive and yet eerie to learn about this, leaving me to wonder what sort of detailed analysis I will undertake when next out on a picnic or talking a walk in the community.
While intelligence and military history is not of particular interest to me, I am always keen to see what going on ‘behind the curtain’. Knowing that the Americans are always on guard to be five steps ahead, I was keen to see what Annie Jacobsen could reveal from the many interviews she undertook for the book. The flow the the narrative and topics discussed proved to be the perfect fit for this book, keeping me well informed and always hungering for a little more. Chapters flowed well, one topic into another, and I could see how military intelligence and battlefield readiness would be important to Americans and likely some of their allies. With the world scene changing on a daily basis, it is interesting to see what’s available, even if what the public sees is usually two decades old. I have enjoyed other tomes by Annie Jacobsen and will likely return to see what else she has penned before too long. This was an eye opening experience and I am eager to see what others think of it as well!
Kudos, Madam Jacobsen, for another great book that taught me so much.
Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
December 8, 2015
If you’re familiar with the history of the computer industry, you’re no doubt aware that the Internet was conceived and developed by a U.S. Government agency called DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).
You may also know that the same agency invented GPS, the Global Positioning System. Chances are, though, that you don’t know that DARPA also invented drones both big and tiny, Agent Orange, the M16 Assault Rifle, sophisticated sensor technology, the F117A stealth fighter jet, MIRVs (Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles) that carry nuclear weapons, the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, robotic soldiers — and a slew of other military weapons systems, most of them still top secret.
Remember Total Information Awareness, the predecessor to the massive data collection programs of the NSA that Edward Snowden revealed? DARPA was responsible for that one, too. The agency’s work also gave birth to less lethal technologies, including “real-time video processing, noise reduction, image enhancement, and data compression.” It’s difficult to exaggerate the impact of this little-known agency.
All this comes to light in the pages of journalist Annie Jacobsen’s The Pentagon’s Brain, the first full-length study of America’s secretive military research agency.
DARPA’s mission
DARPA was created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower over the strenuous objections of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and just about everyone else in the military establishment. “Its mission is to create revolutions in military science and to maintain technological dominance over the rest of the world.” No doubt there are many in the military and in conservative circles who are thrilled at how successful the agency has been in fulfilling its mission, their original unhappiness notwithstanding. The rest of us should be scared. Very scared.
With its origins in the debates over the use of the hydrogen bomb and the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction in the 1950s, DARPA’s R&D programs have consistently been found on the far frontiers of military science. Among its least savory efforts (among a great many) were a project in 1958 to shield the United States from Soviet attack by exploding nuclear weapons in the upper atmosphere and the use of the herbicide Agent Orange to defoliate the South Vietnamese forests sheltering Vietcong troops. DARPA scientists actually did detonate nuclear weapons in the atmosphere — and you know the story of Agent Orange.
Unpleasant surprises
The Pentagon’s Brain was the product of exhaustive research. Much of the book is based on formerly classified materials that have only lately come to light. Author Annie Jacobsen turned up startling new information in the course of her research. For example, she learned that the world came even closer to Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis than anyone outside top government and military circles was aware: “four nuclear weapons were detonated in space” during those tense days, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union stood on the brink of total nuclear war. (Two of those were the aforementioned bombs sired by DARPA.)
Though born in the grimmest days of the Cold War, DARPA’s work for more than a decade focused on the war in Vietnam. (The agency was originally called just ARPA until Congress got into the act.) That conflict led to the development of the M16 rifle and many other, less celebrated weapons of war. But much of the work involved the social sciences, subcontracted to the RAND Corporation, a name that will be familiar to anyone who lived through those times. ARPA contractors working for RAND helped to justify the notorious Strategic Hamlets program in which South Vietnamese peasants were forcibly removed from their villages and their lands and moved into heavily guarded new settlements. In fairness, the first round of ARPA social scientists found that the Strategic Hamlets were alienating peasants, but their findings were simply rejected by Pentagon leaders and more amenable researchers hired. Similarly, “the agency did not want to hear that the Vietcong could not be defeated. [Administrators] took the position that [the social scientists] had gone off the rails.”
The electronic battlefield
The high profile of many DARPA inventions notwithstanding, what may be its most significant creation was a “system of systems” that is known today as the electronic battlefield. Jacobsen calls it “the most revolutionary piece of military technology of the twentieth century, after the hydrogen bomb.” This concept encompasses the use of remotely piloted attack drones and technology that enhances the ability of individual soldiers. Ultimately, DARPA research is expected to extend the concept into “transhumanism — the notion that man can and will alter the human condition fundamentally by augmenting humans with machines and other means.” One such effort is the DARPA exoskeleton, which bears an uncanny resemblance to The Terminator and Robocop. Another is an effort to “allow future ‘soldiers [to] communicate by thought alone.”
The Pentagon’s Brain is crammed with chilling examples of the brave new world envisioned by DARPA scientists. I would like to think that every member of Congress would read this book — and then take a much more careful look at funding for the Pentagon. Fat chance, eh?
About the author
Annie Jacobsen is the author of three previous nonfiction books about the Pentagon. One relates the story of Operation Paperclip that brought Werner von Braun and other Nazi scientists to the U.S. following World War II. Another is a history of Area 51, which may be the best known and most notorious American military base in existence.
You may also know that the same agency invented GPS, the Global Positioning System. Chances are, though, that you don’t know that DARPA also invented drones both big and tiny, Agent Orange, the M16 Assault Rifle, sophisticated sensor technology, the F117A stealth fighter jet, MIRVs (Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles) that carry nuclear weapons, the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, robotic soldiers — and a slew of other military weapons systems, most of them still top secret.
Remember Total Information Awareness, the predecessor to the massive data collection programs of the NSA that Edward Snowden revealed? DARPA was responsible for that one, too. The agency’s work also gave birth to less lethal technologies, including “real-time video processing, noise reduction, image enhancement, and data compression.” It’s difficult to exaggerate the impact of this little-known agency.
All this comes to light in the pages of journalist Annie Jacobsen’s The Pentagon’s Brain, the first full-length study of America’s secretive military research agency.
DARPA’s mission
DARPA was created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower over the strenuous objections of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and just about everyone else in the military establishment. “Its mission is to create revolutions in military science and to maintain technological dominance over the rest of the world.” No doubt there are many in the military and in conservative circles who are thrilled at how successful the agency has been in fulfilling its mission, their original unhappiness notwithstanding. The rest of us should be scared. Very scared.
With its origins in the debates over the use of the hydrogen bomb and the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction in the 1950s, DARPA’s R&D programs have consistently been found on the far frontiers of military science. Among its least savory efforts (among a great many) were a project in 1958 to shield the United States from Soviet attack by exploding nuclear weapons in the upper atmosphere and the use of the herbicide Agent Orange to defoliate the South Vietnamese forests sheltering Vietcong troops. DARPA scientists actually did detonate nuclear weapons in the atmosphere — and you know the story of Agent Orange.
Unpleasant surprises
The Pentagon’s Brain was the product of exhaustive research. Much of the book is based on formerly classified materials that have only lately come to light. Author Annie Jacobsen turned up startling new information in the course of her research. For example, she learned that the world came even closer to Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis than anyone outside top government and military circles was aware: “four nuclear weapons were detonated in space” during those tense days, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union stood on the brink of total nuclear war. (Two of those were the aforementioned bombs sired by DARPA.)
Though born in the grimmest days of the Cold War, DARPA’s work for more than a decade focused on the war in Vietnam. (The agency was originally called just ARPA until Congress got into the act.) That conflict led to the development of the M16 rifle and many other, less celebrated weapons of war. But much of the work involved the social sciences, subcontracted to the RAND Corporation, a name that will be familiar to anyone who lived through those times. ARPA contractors working for RAND helped to justify the notorious Strategic Hamlets program in which South Vietnamese peasants were forcibly removed from their villages and their lands and moved into heavily guarded new settlements. In fairness, the first round of ARPA social scientists found that the Strategic Hamlets were alienating peasants, but their findings were simply rejected by Pentagon leaders and more amenable researchers hired. Similarly, “the agency did not want to hear that the Vietcong could not be defeated. [Administrators] took the position that [the social scientists] had gone off the rails.”
The electronic battlefield
The high profile of many DARPA inventions notwithstanding, what may be its most significant creation was a “system of systems” that is known today as the electronic battlefield. Jacobsen calls it “the most revolutionary piece of military technology of the twentieth century, after the hydrogen bomb.” This concept encompasses the use of remotely piloted attack drones and technology that enhances the ability of individual soldiers. Ultimately, DARPA research is expected to extend the concept into “transhumanism — the notion that man can and will alter the human condition fundamentally by augmenting humans with machines and other means.” One such effort is the DARPA exoskeleton, which bears an uncanny resemblance to The Terminator and Robocop. Another is an effort to “allow future ‘soldiers [to] communicate by thought alone.”
The Pentagon’s Brain is crammed with chilling examples of the brave new world envisioned by DARPA scientists. I would like to think that every member of Congress would read this book — and then take a much more careful look at funding for the Pentagon. Fat chance, eh?
About the author
Annie Jacobsen is the author of three previous nonfiction books about the Pentagon. One relates the story of Operation Paperclip that brought Werner von Braun and other Nazi scientists to the U.S. following World War II. Another is a history of Area 51, which may be the best known and most notorious American military base in existence.
December 28, 2016
I listened to the audiobook while traveling 32 hours (door-to-door) from Africa to the U.S. The audio, narrated by the author, was over 18 hours and never failed to put me to sleep. Bulging with fascinating details, it lulled me to sleep with all its names and acronyms at times, but kept me awake other times. The beginning is an amazing account of the hydrogen bomb that made me wonder about the after-effects in the islands decades later.
I recommend the book over an audiobook unless you have a good memory for details. I don't. I am going to get the book and skim it again. An ambitious look at a little-known, yet powerful agency, started in the 1950's to win wars. Annie Jacobsen does a good job dramatizing historical events and remaining objective letting the reader decide whether DARPA crosses the line or defends the country in its mission. I can see why this was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize nominee for history.
The arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States meant the belief in "mutually assured destruction" - nations attacking each other with nuclear weapons would destroy themselves in the process. The U.S. decided to develop DARPA in 1958 to stay ahead of the Soviets in new arms and technology, and prevent a nuclear strike. The department developed cutting-edge technological, biological, psychological and scientific warfare. They developed ARPANET, the pre-cursor to today's Intenet, and Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant used in the Vietnam War. Sophisticated rifles, drones, and global positioning systems (GPS) make this read like a spy novel at times.
One reviewer, Richard Easton, claims that the information on GPS is incorrect. He's quite detailed in what he considers egregious errors. I would have to do more research in this area to see if I agree or not. I do not agree that the entire book is a wasted effort if that is true as he implies. The GPS is a small portion as the author is covering the entire DARPA history. However, if Jacobsen is wrong, I hope it is corrected in new printings. I hope her book leads to more work on the topic. She wrote it by interviewing 71 former DARPA scientists and reading newly declassified documents from 1958 to the present. It is quite fascinating and original.
I recommend the book over an audiobook unless you have a good memory for details. I don't. I am going to get the book and skim it again. An ambitious look at a little-known, yet powerful agency, started in the 1950's to win wars. Annie Jacobsen does a good job dramatizing historical events and remaining objective letting the reader decide whether DARPA crosses the line or defends the country in its mission. I can see why this was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize nominee for history.
The arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States meant the belief in "mutually assured destruction" - nations attacking each other with nuclear weapons would destroy themselves in the process. The U.S. decided to develop DARPA in 1958 to stay ahead of the Soviets in new arms and technology, and prevent a nuclear strike. The department developed cutting-edge technological, biological, psychological and scientific warfare. They developed ARPANET, the pre-cursor to today's Intenet, and Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant used in the Vietnam War. Sophisticated rifles, drones, and global positioning systems (GPS) make this read like a spy novel at times.
One reviewer, Richard Easton, claims that the information on GPS is incorrect. He's quite detailed in what he considers egregious errors. I would have to do more research in this area to see if I agree or not. I do not agree that the entire book is a wasted effort if that is true as he implies. The GPS is a small portion as the author is covering the entire DARPA history. However, if Jacobsen is wrong, I hope it is corrected in new printings. I hope her book leads to more work on the topic. She wrote it by interviewing 71 former DARPA scientists and reading newly declassified documents from 1958 to the present. It is quite fascinating and original.
November 17, 2015
This is a terribly biased (Hollywood/LA Times)version of the amazing stories of ARPA/DARPA achievements and their influences on our world. Most of the stuff in here is well known. I was even involved in some of them. But the whole book is laced with the author's storytelling speculation and extreme liberal bias. Page after page of "ain't it awful". When scientists and engineers push the bounds of knowledge as DARPA still does, there are mistakes. It's always a brave new world. But thank God they are on our side.
This book would be better titles. "Hindsight Analysis of DARPA and our Dumb-ass Government by an Ignorant Author".
This book would be better titles. "Hindsight Analysis of DARPA and our Dumb-ass Government by an Ignorant Author".
October 19, 2026
The Pentagon's Brain
By Annie Jacobsen
This, like all her books, is meticulously researched and then written in a way that is understandable and precise. Many things she writes about are terrifying, and this book has some of these things. The fact that we the people have no idea what is really going on and would be truly appalled if we did. This is an eye-opener book, as is all of her books. I enjoyed her though research and no nonsense approach. I highly recommend all of her books.
By Annie Jacobsen
This, like all her books, is meticulously researched and then written in a way that is understandable and precise. Many things she writes about are terrifying, and this book has some of these things. The fact that we the people have no idea what is really going on and would be truly appalled if we did. This is an eye-opener book, as is all of her books. I enjoyed her though research and no nonsense approach. I highly recommend all of her books.
February 3, 2016
Repetitive. Lackadaisically edited. Could have been 200-300 pages shorter. Could have been interesting. Reads like it was written for a dozen or more magazine articles...in different magazines.
Admittedly though, it does speak about some projects in AI and bioengineering that are pretty darn disturbing to think about in a moral, ethical and humanitarian sense.
Admittedly though, it does speak about some projects in AI and bioengineering that are pretty darn disturbing to think about in a moral, ethical and humanitarian sense.
June 25, 2015
I got this free is a drawing from Goodreads First Reads.
I've always said that I'm more afraid of what the government doesn't tell us than what they do. This book just reiterates that. I found myself saying what are you kidding me many times while reading this. The crowd control ideas was one of those times. Lasers and drones are examined to an extent with some of that information being still classified so then of course the whole story can't be given. The polio vaccine problem I had never heard of before. That is scary. There are many other items covered in this book which is a very interesting read if you are interested at all in what our government is doing.
I've always said that I'm more afraid of what the government doesn't tell us than what they do. This book just reiterates that. I found myself saying what are you kidding me many times while reading this. The crowd control ideas was one of those times. Lasers and drones are examined to an extent with some of that information being still classified so then of course the whole story can't be given. The polio vaccine problem I had never heard of before. That is scary. There are many other items covered in this book which is a very interesting read if you are interested at all in what our government is doing.
May 28, 2015
very well researched and written. the flow was great and it didn't get dry and boring. Annie did an amazing job of telling a story while educating you on a fascinating subject. superbly done. I highly recommend this book.
June 11, 2021
Pretty interesting book. The title kind of had sinister intentions to it but it really was just an explanation of what DARPA is, what they did for better or for worse, and how it is adapting to the 21st century. Very informed and detailed, but a bit heavy. Had to read it in bits and pieces.
June 4, 2024
I learned quite a bit but I thought there wasn't enough science and there was too much politics.
January 14, 2023
Just finished reading, 'The Pentagon's Brain' by Annie Jocobsen. Decided to read it because there was something curious about a book that declares itself the first 'uncensored history of DARPA, America's top secret military research agency'. This tome finding its way on the national bestseller list. What was curious...? Why would a book discussing this 'top secret' agency be given such a prominent place in the controlled world of mass media?
The answer wasn't long in coming: it's simply a several hundred pages long fluff piece of US propaganda...intended to intimidate the mass as it expounds the implied virtues of the numerous technological gifts born from the military/industrial complex. These gifts include the high-tech surveillance state. This meant to keep the people secure from evil-minded goons that exist around every corner. It's an expose that attempts to 'reveal' the implied virtues of war...period.
Still, astute readers will recognize something quite telling underneath this bit of mass marketed propaganda: since the assault upon Viet Nam - to the invasions of Iraq & Afghanistan - these DARPA 'scientists' have put the people's money on technologic advances designed to rule conflict above the human capacity to respond. Yet, no matter how 'developed' these advances have become, the author has to constantly reveal how the HUMAN element always outsmarts the technology due to its ability to adapt...and adapt faster than the tech.
The history of DARPA is an history of catch-up to human adaptability on the ground. And while this ridiculous author reveals this fact as a way to argue for more billions in this catch-up research, she fails to recognize an essential point.
In this history of DARPA one significant point is how the powers that be - after the initial first strike - are lost on how to 'win the peace'. They hire social scientists that present their findings meant to 'understand the culture' & win the 'hearts & minds' of the 'conquered'. Billions of dollars are spent on this 'research' - computer programs are utilized in order to aggregate, and 'interpret', 'information'.
This is laughable. The obvious point that any first year grad student with any natural thought capacity would recognize: you can't win the hearts & minds of a people whose entire way of life is blasted away by an enemy force with no business of being there in the first place. Technology will never out pace the adaptable nature of humans who have nothing to lose but their place on Earth.
The resistance in Viet Nam, Iraq, & Afghanistan have all shown the big brains in Washington that very point.
This - perhaps well paid - propagandist disingenuously presents a kind of faux moral argument along the way. On the last page of the final chapter the author reveals the entire book's intent. The questions: 'Can military technology be stopped? Should it be?' In the second to last paragraph she declares: 'Today that control is omnipotent.'
The message: The people can whine & moan about moral & ethical questions, but whether you like it or not, your enslavement & control is here to stay. Be afraid.
The peoples in the West have surrendered themselves to the techno-programming that has left them nothing but fodder for their master's tricks - others less impressed have not. It's only a question of when or if they too will begin to adapt & begin their own resistance to this limp-wristed 'elite' who can only imagine their greatness in terms of technologic dominance.
The fact is, they're terrified of the HUMAN element - because they know that can never be defeated.
The answer wasn't long in coming: it's simply a several hundred pages long fluff piece of US propaganda...intended to intimidate the mass as it expounds the implied virtues of the numerous technological gifts born from the military/industrial complex. These gifts include the high-tech surveillance state. This meant to keep the people secure from evil-minded goons that exist around every corner. It's an expose that attempts to 'reveal' the implied virtues of war...period.
Still, astute readers will recognize something quite telling underneath this bit of mass marketed propaganda: since the assault upon Viet Nam - to the invasions of Iraq & Afghanistan - these DARPA 'scientists' have put the people's money on technologic advances designed to rule conflict above the human capacity to respond. Yet, no matter how 'developed' these advances have become, the author has to constantly reveal how the HUMAN element always outsmarts the technology due to its ability to adapt...and adapt faster than the tech.
The history of DARPA is an history of catch-up to human adaptability on the ground. And while this ridiculous author reveals this fact as a way to argue for more billions in this catch-up research, she fails to recognize an essential point.
In this history of DARPA one significant point is how the powers that be - after the initial first strike - are lost on how to 'win the peace'. They hire social scientists that present their findings meant to 'understand the culture' & win the 'hearts & minds' of the 'conquered'. Billions of dollars are spent on this 'research' - computer programs are utilized in order to aggregate, and 'interpret', 'information'.
This is laughable. The obvious point that any first year grad student with any natural thought capacity would recognize: you can't win the hearts & minds of a people whose entire way of life is blasted away by an enemy force with no business of being there in the first place. Technology will never out pace the adaptable nature of humans who have nothing to lose but their place on Earth.
The resistance in Viet Nam, Iraq, & Afghanistan have all shown the big brains in Washington that very point.
This - perhaps well paid - propagandist disingenuously presents a kind of faux moral argument along the way. On the last page of the final chapter the author reveals the entire book's intent. The questions: 'Can military technology be stopped? Should it be?' In the second to last paragraph she declares: 'Today that control is omnipotent.'
The message: The people can whine & moan about moral & ethical questions, but whether you like it or not, your enslavement & control is here to stay. Be afraid.
The peoples in the West have surrendered themselves to the techno-programming that has left them nothing but fodder for their master's tricks - others less impressed have not. It's only a question of when or if they too will begin to adapt & begin their own resistance to this limp-wristed 'elite' who can only imagine their greatness in terms of technologic dominance.
The fact is, they're terrified of the HUMAN element - because they know that can never be defeated.
May 8, 2021
Holy crap, the author can't read very well. The audio book really was not good at all. The pronunciations of certain words just made me cringe and the pauses between words where there shouldn't be is ridiculous.
April 3, 2023
Annie Jacobsen’s The Pentagon’s Brain (2015) is a meticulously researched and ambitious investigation into the history, ethos, and global impact of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Department of Defense’s most secretive and influential research institution. Spanning nearly six decades—from DARPA’s origins in the Cold War to its contemporary involvement in robotics, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience—Jacobsen’s book offers both a narrative of technological innovation and a critical reflection on the moral and political implications of scientific militarization.
Jacobsen, an investigative journalist known for her previous studies of the U.S. national security apparatus (Area 51, Operation Paperclip), brings to The Pentagon’s Brain a combination of journalistic rigor and narrative flair. Her central thesis is that DARPA represents not merely a research agency but the institutional embodiment of America’s technological imagination in warfare—a “brain” directing the continual fusion of science, strategy, and state power. Through extensive interviews, declassified documents, and archival research, she reconstructs the agency’s evolution from its founding in 1958 in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik to its contemporary role as a driver of innovation across multiple domains: nuclear deterrence, digital computing, surveillance, and autonomous weapons systems.
The book’s structure is broadly chronological. The opening chapters situate DARPA’s creation within the anxieties of the early Cold War, when fears of Soviet scientific superiority motivated U.S. policymakers to institutionalize a permanent mechanism for technological surprise. Jacobsen traces how the agency’s first projects—such as early missile defense systems and the development of ARPANET, the precursor to the modern internet—embodied its dual character as both a source of scientific progress and a catalyst for the militarization of innovation. As the narrative proceeds through the Vietnam War, the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative, and the post-9/11 “War on Terror,” Jacobsen reveals how DARPA repeatedly reinvented itself to meet the shifting frontiers of conflict, from nuclear confrontation to information warfare and cognitive manipulation.
One of the book’s major strengths lies in its portrayal of DARPA as an institution defined by paradox. Jacobsen depicts it as both visionary and amoral: a space where the boundaries between science and warfare blur, and where the pursuit of technological superiority often proceeds without clear ethical or democratic oversight. She explores the psychological warfare experiments, human enhancement programs, and artificial intelligence initiatives that illustrate DARPA’s ambition to extend control over both nature and mind. The agency’s work on “cognitive computing” and “autonomous killing machines,” in particular, raises profound questions about the relationship between human judgment and algorithmic decision-making in war.
Jacobsen’s narrative style—clear, dramatic, and richly detailed—serves to render complex scientific and bureaucratic processes accessible to a general readership. Yet beneath its journalistic accessibility lies a deeply political argument: that DARPA’s activities, while justified in the name of national security, have increasingly detached military innovation from democratic deliberation. The agency’s culture of secrecy, combined with its extensive partnerships with private industry and academia, has created what she terms an “unaccountable empire of science.” In this respect, The Pentagon’s Brain echoes earlier critiques of the “military-industrial complex,” extending Eisenhower’s warning into the realm of cognitive and digital warfare.
From a scholarly perspective, Jacobsen’s work contributes to an emerging interdisciplinary literature that examines the entanglement of science, technology, and power in modern warfare. Her historical reconstruction complements academic studies such as Sharon Weinberger’s Imaginary Weapons (2006) and Alex Roland’s War and Technology (2016), though Jacobsen’s tone is more journalistic and moralistic than analytical. Her method privileges narrative revelation over theoretical framing, but this approach effectively conveys the institutional secrecy and moral ambiguity surrounding DARPA’s projects. At its best, The Pentagon’s Brain exposes the continuities linking Cold War rationality with contemporary technological determinism—the belief that security and progress are functions of perpetual innovation, regardless of ethical cost.
The book’s limitations stem partly from its ambition. While Jacobsen excels in storytelling and documentation, her interpretive framework occasionally leans toward sensationalism. The boundaries between verifiable fact, informed speculation, and anecdote are not always clearly marked, particularly in chapters dealing with classified or controversial programs. Moreover, her moral critique, though compelling, sometimes lacks engagement with the broader historiography of science policy, strategic studies, or institutional sociology. Readers seeking a systematic theoretical analysis of DARPA’s role in the American state may therefore find the book more evocative than explanatory.
Nevertheless, The Pentagon’s Brain succeeds as both an exposé and a moral inquiry. Jacobsen’s account compels readers to confront the ethical dilemmas inherent in the marriage of scientific creativity and military ambition. She raises enduring questions: Can technological superiority ensure security in a world of proliferating innovation? What are the moral responsibilities of scientists working within military institutions? And, perhaps most importantly, who controls the “brain” that increasingly governs the means and methods of war?
The Pentagon’s Brain is a vital contribution to public understanding of the American security state and its technological infrastructure. It combines the urgency of investigative journalism with the narrative sweep of history, offering a comprehensive and unsettling portrait of the institution that has shaped much of the modern world’s technological landscape—from the internet to drone warfare. For scholars of political science, security studies, and the history of science, Jacobsen’s book serves as both a resource and a provocation—a reminder that the boundaries between innovation and domination, progress and peril, remain as porous as ever.
GPT
Jacobsen, an investigative journalist known for her previous studies of the U.S. national security apparatus (Area 51, Operation Paperclip), brings to The Pentagon’s Brain a combination of journalistic rigor and narrative flair. Her central thesis is that DARPA represents not merely a research agency but the institutional embodiment of America’s technological imagination in warfare—a “brain” directing the continual fusion of science, strategy, and state power. Through extensive interviews, declassified documents, and archival research, she reconstructs the agency’s evolution from its founding in 1958 in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik to its contemporary role as a driver of innovation across multiple domains: nuclear deterrence, digital computing, surveillance, and autonomous weapons systems.
The book’s structure is broadly chronological. The opening chapters situate DARPA’s creation within the anxieties of the early Cold War, when fears of Soviet scientific superiority motivated U.S. policymakers to institutionalize a permanent mechanism for technological surprise. Jacobsen traces how the agency’s first projects—such as early missile defense systems and the development of ARPANET, the precursor to the modern internet—embodied its dual character as both a source of scientific progress and a catalyst for the militarization of innovation. As the narrative proceeds through the Vietnam War, the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative, and the post-9/11 “War on Terror,” Jacobsen reveals how DARPA repeatedly reinvented itself to meet the shifting frontiers of conflict, from nuclear confrontation to information warfare and cognitive manipulation.
One of the book’s major strengths lies in its portrayal of DARPA as an institution defined by paradox. Jacobsen depicts it as both visionary and amoral: a space where the boundaries between science and warfare blur, and where the pursuit of technological superiority often proceeds without clear ethical or democratic oversight. She explores the psychological warfare experiments, human enhancement programs, and artificial intelligence initiatives that illustrate DARPA’s ambition to extend control over both nature and mind. The agency’s work on “cognitive computing” and “autonomous killing machines,” in particular, raises profound questions about the relationship between human judgment and algorithmic decision-making in war.
Jacobsen’s narrative style—clear, dramatic, and richly detailed—serves to render complex scientific and bureaucratic processes accessible to a general readership. Yet beneath its journalistic accessibility lies a deeply political argument: that DARPA’s activities, while justified in the name of national security, have increasingly detached military innovation from democratic deliberation. The agency’s culture of secrecy, combined with its extensive partnerships with private industry and academia, has created what she terms an “unaccountable empire of science.” In this respect, The Pentagon’s Brain echoes earlier critiques of the “military-industrial complex,” extending Eisenhower’s warning into the realm of cognitive and digital warfare.
From a scholarly perspective, Jacobsen’s work contributes to an emerging interdisciplinary literature that examines the entanglement of science, technology, and power in modern warfare. Her historical reconstruction complements academic studies such as Sharon Weinberger’s Imaginary Weapons (2006) and Alex Roland’s War and Technology (2016), though Jacobsen’s tone is more journalistic and moralistic than analytical. Her method privileges narrative revelation over theoretical framing, but this approach effectively conveys the institutional secrecy and moral ambiguity surrounding DARPA’s projects. At its best, The Pentagon’s Brain exposes the continuities linking Cold War rationality with contemporary technological determinism—the belief that security and progress are functions of perpetual innovation, regardless of ethical cost.
The book’s limitations stem partly from its ambition. While Jacobsen excels in storytelling and documentation, her interpretive framework occasionally leans toward sensationalism. The boundaries between verifiable fact, informed speculation, and anecdote are not always clearly marked, particularly in chapters dealing with classified or controversial programs. Moreover, her moral critique, though compelling, sometimes lacks engagement with the broader historiography of science policy, strategic studies, or institutional sociology. Readers seeking a systematic theoretical analysis of DARPA’s role in the American state may therefore find the book more evocative than explanatory.
Nevertheless, The Pentagon’s Brain succeeds as both an exposé and a moral inquiry. Jacobsen’s account compels readers to confront the ethical dilemmas inherent in the marriage of scientific creativity and military ambition. She raises enduring questions: Can technological superiority ensure security in a world of proliferating innovation? What are the moral responsibilities of scientists working within military institutions? And, perhaps most importantly, who controls the “brain” that increasingly governs the means and methods of war?
The Pentagon’s Brain is a vital contribution to public understanding of the American security state and its technological infrastructure. It combines the urgency of investigative journalism with the narrative sweep of history, offering a comprehensive and unsettling portrait of the institution that has shaped much of the modern world’s technological landscape—from the internet to drone warfare. For scholars of political science, security studies, and the history of science, Jacobsen’s book serves as both a resource and a provocation—a reminder that the boundaries between innovation and domination, progress and peril, remain as porous as ever.
GPT
May 18, 2023
Jacobsen delivers another utterly engrossing work of nonfiction. Fascinating and at times deeply disturbing - as one would expect from a book on this subject matter.
August 1, 2017
Didn't finish it. The concept was interesting, but the writing killed it. The interesting topics are spaced out with a lot of irrelevant, lengthy and tediously detailed stories between them that don't help the subject at hand.
I wanted to read about the history of DARPA, not the history of each person that was related to DARPA. The interesting parts were how DARPA affected world history. On the other hand how the "unknown" and "irrelevant" scientist experienced the first hydrogen bomb is a narrative that could've been avoided. I want to hear how the term "brainwashing" got popular, but I don't wanna hear a lengthy detailed story about how the CIA's Head's son got injured.
This book feels like your grandma starts to tell an interesting story about the war and then forgets what she was saying and half an hour later she's explaining with great detail how to make chocolate chip cookies...
I wanted to read about the history of DARPA, not the history of each person that was related to DARPA. The interesting parts were how DARPA affected world history. On the other hand how the "unknown" and "irrelevant" scientist experienced the first hydrogen bomb is a narrative that could've been avoided. I want to hear how the term "brainwashing" got popular, but I don't wanna hear a lengthy detailed story about how the CIA's Head's son got injured.
This book feels like your grandma starts to tell an interesting story about the war and then forgets what she was saying and half an hour later she's explaining with great detail how to make chocolate chip cookies...
July 27, 2019
Damn. It’s the usual ‘if this is what’s unclassified, they’re doing orders of magnitude worse.’ And we punish the whistleblowers instead of those involved.
That’s where the book fell short, though; it could have delved harder on the privacy and, y’know, war crimes stuff. But that’s a different book, I suppose.
Also I learned the Pentagon has an initiative where they consult with popular science fiction writers, so the last chapter was Jacobsen tagging along with Chris Carter (The X-Files) and Gale Anne Hurd (The Terminator) to the Pentagon, and frankly that’s terrifying.
September 16, 2023
A fascinating subject. The internet, lasers, agent orange, AR15, brainwashing etc.all started here or were brought to fruition.
The future of DARPA is speculated on and some of it is down right scary. Cyborgs, melding computers and brains, AI etc. The implications of hunter killer robots may seem like science fiction but so did many of their previous programs back in the day.
The writing is tight and solid. Narrative flows well and the work grabs you along for a ride. Warmly recommended.
The future of DARPA is speculated on and some of it is down right scary. Cyborgs, melding computers and brains, AI etc. The implications of hunter killer robots may seem like science fiction but so did many of their previous programs back in the day.
The writing is tight and solid. Narrative flows well and the work grabs you along for a ride. Warmly recommended.
May 31, 2019
Good, in a magazine-ish overview kind of way, which is what I was looking for.
But after calmly explaining at length how DARPA is perfectly capable of plowing billions into programs that never work, she goes full Kevin McCarthy in her last few chapters about out-of-control, self-determining, hunter-killer robots. Which don't exist! Yet!! But-- they COULD!!!
But after calmly explaining at length how DARPA is perfectly capable of plowing billions into programs that never work, she goes full Kevin McCarthy in her last few chapters about out-of-control, self-determining, hunter-killer robots. Which don't exist! Yet!! But-- they COULD!!!
Read
October 2, 2023I was 19% of the way through, and got distracted by fictional worlds in other books. I was enjoying this historical account of DARPA’s lineage, but it simply wasn’t what my soul was craving. I used an audible credit for this book, so I’m sure I’ll come back to it eventually! To be fair, I’m not rating this book until I’ve finished it.
December 4, 2019
I'm not sure whether to be comforted or terrified that we have a team like DARPA in the Pentagon dreaming up all kinds of wild things for the industrial military complex.
It's incredibly fascinating history and we'll only learn more about it as time goes on and more stuff gets declassified.
It's incredibly fascinating history and we'll only learn more about it as time goes on and more stuff gets declassified.
December 13, 2017
4/5 stars
'Pentagon's Brain' is a 2016 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. I found it to be an enjoyable read. The part that I enjoyed most about this book was the 'factoids'. It seemed like I was highlighting some interesting tidbit on every few pages. If anything, those are worth checking out (see below). DARPA has been the driving force behind some of the most revolutionary concepts in civilian life and the battlefield. There's no telling what they are working on presently...
COMPETITION SPURS INNOVATION
- "The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy decided that a second national nuclear weapons laboratory was needed now, in order to foster competition with Los Alamos. This idea—that rivalry fosters excellence and is imperative for supremacy—would become a hallmark of U.S. defense science in the decades ahead."
-
- "To get the most out of an American scientist was to get him to compete against equally brilliant men."
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- "In the mid-1950s, P&G had four major soap brands—Ivory, Joy, Tide, and Oxydol. Sales were lagging until (Sec'y of Defense and former P&G exec) McElroy came up with the concept of promoting competition among in-house brands and targeting specific audiences to advertise to."
-
- "President Eisenhower made a bold and brilliant move with his choice. Instead of sending one of his science advisors who wanted nuclear weapons tests to stop, he chose a scientist who did not: Ernest Lawrence."
SPUTNIK LAUNCH LEADS TO DEVELOPMENT OF DARPA
- Real significance of Sputnik: "Sputnik weighed only 184 pounds, but it had been launched into space by a Soviet ICBM. Soon the Soviet ICBM would be able to carry a much heavier payload—such as a nuclear bomb—halfway across the world to any target in the United States."
-
- (In the months prior to Sputnik launch, Eisenhower wanted to know how to protect Americans for Soviet nukes in case of war. The result was the 'Gaither Report) "
-
- "...top secret Gaither Report, officially titled “Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age,” the defense contractors, industrialists, and defense scientists concluded that there was no way to protect U.S. citizens in the event of a nuclear war."
- "It was York and Wiesner’s findings about the missile threat that the public focused on, which was what caused the Sputnik panic to escalate into hysteria."
START OF 'ARPA'
- "(Sec'y of Defense McElroy) took office with a clear vision. “I conceive the role of the Secretary of Defense to be that of captain of President Eisenhower’s defense team,” he said. His first job as captain was to counter the threat of any future Soviet scientific surprise."
-
- "On November 20, 1957, just five weeks after assuming office, Secretary McElroy went to Capitol Hill with a bold idea. He proposed the creation of a new agency inside the Pentagon, called the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA."
-
- "Congress liked the idea, and McElroy was encouraged to proceed. The military services, however, were adamantly opposed. The Army, Air Force, and Navy were unwilling to give up control of the research and development that was going on inside their individual services, most notably in the vast new frontier that was space."
-
- "But the attack against ARPA by the military services was bound to fail. “The fact that they didn’t want an ARPA is one reason [Eisenhower] did,”
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- "ARPA was a “pre-requirement” organization in that it conducted research in advance of specific needs."
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- "The agency’s dilemma, said Rechtin, was this: if you can’t do the research before a need arises, by the time the need is there, it’s clear that the research should already have been done."
'JASON' GROUP (OF ACADEMICS) THAT ADVISED ARPA/DARPA IN EARLY DAYS
- "They were asked to think about new programs to be researched and developed, and also to imagine the programs that Russian scientists might be working on."
-
- "...the Jasons had displayed a “pattern of arrogance.” That they were a self-congratulating group. “They picked their members. And so they had in 1969 the same members they had in 1959.” Lukasik wanted new blood."
CONFIRMATION BIAS
- The strategic hamlet effort was a failure, despite follow-on reports to portray it as a success: "In one interview after another, Hickey and Donnell found widespread dissatisfaction with the Strategic Hamlet Program."...(later) "News footage seen around the world showed farmers smashing the fortifications’ bamboo walls with sledgehammers, shovels, and sticks, as the strategic hamlets disappeared."
-
- "According to other RAND officers, Deitchman perceived the (enemy) POW report as unhelpful. RAND needed to send researchers into the field whose reports were better aligned with the conviction of the Pentagon that the Vietcong could and would be defeated."
-
- RAND picked an ardent anti-communist writer to do a report that said the opposite of Zasloff.: "Frank Collbohm tapped Leon Gouré to replace Joseph Zasloff as the lead social scientist on the ARPA Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Project in Saigon. Zasloff saw this appointment as a disaster waiting to unfold."
ARPA MOVES OUT OF THE PENTAGON
- "in February 1970 came another devastating blow for ARPA. The secretary of defense authorized a decision that the entire agency was to be removed from its coveted office space inside the Pentagon to a lackluster office building in the Rosslyn district of Arlington, Virginia"
ARPA BECOMES DARPA
- 'Defense' added to the front of 'ARPA' in order to demonstrate that funding for its efforts had direct military application, as required by Congress: "And in keeping with the Mansfield Amendment, which required the Pentagon to research and develop programs only with a “specific military function,” the word “defense” was added to ARPA’s name. From now on it would be called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA."
DARPA 'PHASES'
- "The agency already had shifted from the 1950s space and ballistic missile defense agency..."
-
- "...to the 1960s agency responsible for some of the most controversial programs of the Vietnam War. And now, a number of events occurred that eased the agency’s transition as it began to change course again...."
-
- "Under the direction of the physicist Stephen Lukasik, in the mid-1970s the agency would take a new turn—a new “thrust,” as Lukasik grew fond of saying. In this mid-1970s period of acceleration and innovation, DARPA would plant certain seeds that would allow it to grow into one of the most powerful and most respected agencies inside the Department of Defense."
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- After several Vietnam projects left a bad taste in its mouth, DARPA re-focused itself on doing only revolutionary, 'pre-requirement' research: "Testifying before Congress in 1973, director Stephen Lukasik said that DARPA’s goal was to refocus itself as a neutral, non–military service organization, emphasizing what he called “high-risk projects of revolutionary impact.” Only innovative, groundbreaking programs would be taken on, he said, programs that should be viewed as “pre-mission assignments” or “pre-requirement” research. The agency needed to apply itself to its original mandate, which was to keep the nation from being embarrassed by another Sputnik-like surprise. At DARPA, the emphasis was on hard science and hardware."
FACTOIDS
- "The presence of x-rays (while near a hydrogen bomb) made the unseen visible. In the flash of Teller light, Freedman—who was watching the scientists for their reactions—could see their facial bones. “In front of me… they were skeletons,” Freedman recalls. Their faces no longer appeared to be human faces. Just “jawbones and eye sockets. Rows of teeth. Skulls.”
-
- "RAND, an acronym for “research and development,” was the Pentagon’s first postwar think tank, the brains behind U.S. Air Force brawn."
-
- "(Brilliant physicist) Von Neumann was to write down his thoughts each morning while shaving, and for those ideas he would be paid $ 200 a month—the average salary of a full-time RAND analyst at the time."
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- Origin of the name of 'Sputnik': "...Iskusstvennyy Sputnik Zemli, or “artificial satellite of the earth.”
-
- "Monsanto Chemical Company, a nuclear defense contractor that would be vilified during the Vietnam War for producing the herbicide Agent Orange,"
-
- "With no formal training, and in a matter of a few years, (physicist) Christofilos transformed himself from an elevator technician into one of the most ingenious scientists in the modern world.
-
- (The Defender radar was so powerful that it had detected the moon coming up and thought it was an inbound missile): "There, coming up over the horizon, over Norway, was a huge rising moon. The BMEWS had not malfunctioned. It was “simply more powerful than anyone had dreamed,”
-
- (Factoid- Time it takes for an ICBM from Russia to hit DC.): "a mere 1,600 seconds. It seemed impossibly fast. Just twenty-six minutes and forty seconds from launch to annihilation."
-
- "Discoverer III was a highly classified spying mission, a cover for America’s first space-based satellite reconnaissance program, called Corona."
-
- "The most significant weapon to emerge from the early days of Project Agile was the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. In the summer of 1961, Diem’s small-in-stature army was having difficulty handling the large semiautomatic weapons carried by U.S. military advisors. In the AR-15 Godel saw promise, “something the short, small Vietnamese can fire without bowling themselves over,”
-
- ARPA responsible for 'strategic hamlet' initiative: "But there was also a far more ambitious plan in place whereby ARPA would collect enough information on strategic hamlets to be able to “monitor” their activity in the future."
- "The man, J. C. R. Licklider, invented the concept of the Internet, which was originally called the ARPANET. Licklider did not arrive at the Pentagon with the intent of creating the Internet. He was hired to research and develop command and control systems, most of which were related to nuclear weapons at the time."
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- "Licklider was a trained psychologist with a rare specialization in psychoacoustics, the scientific study of sound perception. Psychoacoustics concerns itself with questions such as, when a person across a room claps his hands, how does the brain know where that sound is coming from?"
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- During Cuban Missile Crisis: "The president raised the defense condition to DEFCON 2 for the first and only time in history."
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- Nukes detonated during the Cuban Missile Crisis: "Twice during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, on October 20 and October 26, 1962, the United States detonated two nuclear weapons—code-named Checkmate and Bluegill Triple Prime—in space. These tests, which sought to advance knowledge in ARPA’s pursuit of the Christofilos effect, are on the record and are known. What is not known outside Defense Department circles is that in response, on October 22 and October 28, 1962, the Soviets also detonated two nuclear weapons in space, also in pursuit of the Christofilos effect."
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- "The Soviet nuclear weapon detonated on October 28, 1962, over Zhezqazghan in Kazakhstan at an altitude of ninety-three miles had a consequential effect. According to Russian scientists, “the nuclear detonation caused an electromagnetic pulse [EMP] that covered all of Kazakhstan,” including “electrical cables buried underground.”
-
- "With terrible irony, the place where Fall (author) was killed was the same stretch of road that had given his book its title, Street Without Joy."
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- "Harvard’s legendary Society of Fellows, making him one of twenty-four scholars from around the world who were given complete freedom to do what they wanted to do, all expenses paid, for three years."
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- "Project Agile defoliant campaign. The herbicides, varied in composition, were now being called Agent Orange, Agent Purple, Agent Pink, and other colors of the rainbow."
-
- "the Jasons were asked to determine “whether it made sense to think about using nuclear weapons to close off the supply routes [along] the Ho Chi Minh trail"
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- "the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 as a turning point. The act established the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Justice designed to assist state police forces...The act also provided $ 12 billion in funding over a period of ten years. Police forces across America began upgrading their military-style equipment to include riot control systems, helicopters, grenade launchers, and machine guns. The LEAA famously gave birth to the special weapons and tactics concept, or SWAT, with the first units created in Los Angeles in the late 1960s.“
-
- "the Pentagon Papers appeared on the front page of the New York Times. The classified documents had been leaked to the newspaper by former Pentagon employee and RAND Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg."
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- "...in May 2000 President Clinton discontinued the selective availability (coordinate offset) feature on GPS, giving billions of people access to precise GPS technology, developed by DARPA."
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- "At RAND, (Andrew) Marshall had secured his reputation as a master game theorist, and at the Pentagon, his wizardry in prognosis and prediction earned him the nom de guerre Yoda, or the Jedi Master."
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- Regarding reflectors left on moon by Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin: "The interval between launch of the pulse of light and its return permitted calculation of the distance to the moon within an inch, a measurement of unprecedented precision,”
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- "Directed-energy weapons have many advantages, none so great as speed. Traveling at the speed of light means a DEW could hit a target on the moon in less than two seconds."
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- "It is often said that the Clinton administration canceled the SDI ("Star Wars") program, when in fact it canceled only certain elements of the Strategic Defense Initiative. SDI never really went away."
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- "And then to everyone’s surprise, on the last day of the simulated war game exercises (INTERNAL LOOK exercise that featured a scenario in which Iraq invaded Saudi Arabia) , on August 4, 1990, Iraq invaded its small, oil-rich neighbor Kuwait—for real."
-
- "In the first twenty-four hours of the (first Gulf) war, a total of forty-two stealth fighters, which accounted for only 2.5 percent of the U.S. airpower used in the campaign, destroyed 31 percent of Iraqi targets."
-
- "...a U.S. Patriot missile shot down an Iraqi Scud missile, making the Patriot the first antimissile ballistic missile fired in combat."
- "each battery was shooting nearly ten missiles at each incoming Iraqi Scud."
-
- "...the Iraqi Scuds were breaking apart in their terminal phase, shattering into multiple pieces as they headed back down to earth. These multiple fragments were confusing Patriot missiles into thinking that each piece was an additional warhead."
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- "In one instance, a group of Iraqi soldiers stepped out from a hiding place and waved the white flag of surrender at the eye of a television camera attached to a drone that was hovering nearby. This became the first time in history that a group of enemy soldiers was recorded surrendering to a machine."
-
- megadeath - (noun) "a unit used in quantifying the casualties of nuclear war, equal to the deaths of one million people."
-
- "As part of the animal sentinel program, going back to 1999, scientists had been making great progress training honeybees to locate bombs. Bees have sensing capabilities that outperform the dog’s nose by a trillion parts per second."
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- "Within the thirty-six-square-mile Los Alamos campus, there are 1,280 buildings, eleven of which are nuclear facilities. Even the cooks who work in some of the kitchens have top secret Q clearances."
'Pentagon's Brain' is a 2016 Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. I found it to be an enjoyable read. The part that I enjoyed most about this book was the 'factoids'. It seemed like I was highlighting some interesting tidbit on every few pages. If anything, those are worth checking out (see below). DARPA has been the driving force behind some of the most revolutionary concepts in civilian life and the battlefield. There's no telling what they are working on presently...
COMPETITION SPURS INNOVATION
- "The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy decided that a second national nuclear weapons laboratory was needed now, in order to foster competition with Los Alamos. This idea—that rivalry fosters excellence and is imperative for supremacy—would become a hallmark of U.S. defense science in the decades ahead."
-
- "To get the most out of an American scientist was to get him to compete against equally brilliant men."
-
- "In the mid-1950s, P&G had four major soap brands—Ivory, Joy, Tide, and Oxydol. Sales were lagging until (Sec'y of Defense and former P&G exec) McElroy came up with the concept of promoting competition among in-house brands and targeting specific audiences to advertise to."
-
- "President Eisenhower made a bold and brilliant move with his choice. Instead of sending one of his science advisors who wanted nuclear weapons tests to stop, he chose a scientist who did not: Ernest Lawrence."
SPUTNIK LAUNCH LEADS TO DEVELOPMENT OF DARPA
- Real significance of Sputnik: "Sputnik weighed only 184 pounds, but it had been launched into space by a Soviet ICBM. Soon the Soviet ICBM would be able to carry a much heavier payload—such as a nuclear bomb—halfway across the world to any target in the United States."
-
- (In the months prior to Sputnik launch, Eisenhower wanted to know how to protect Americans for Soviet nukes in case of war. The result was the 'Gaither Report) "
-
- "...top secret Gaither Report, officially titled “Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age,” the defense contractors, industrialists, and defense scientists concluded that there was no way to protect U.S. citizens in the event of a nuclear war."
- "It was York and Wiesner’s findings about the missile threat that the public focused on, which was what caused the Sputnik panic to escalate into hysteria."
START OF 'ARPA'
- "(Sec'y of Defense McElroy) took office with a clear vision. “I conceive the role of the Secretary of Defense to be that of captain of President Eisenhower’s defense team,” he said. His first job as captain was to counter the threat of any future Soviet scientific surprise."
-
- "On November 20, 1957, just five weeks after assuming office, Secretary McElroy went to Capitol Hill with a bold idea. He proposed the creation of a new agency inside the Pentagon, called the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA."
-
- "Congress liked the idea, and McElroy was encouraged to proceed. The military services, however, were adamantly opposed. The Army, Air Force, and Navy were unwilling to give up control of the research and development that was going on inside their individual services, most notably in the vast new frontier that was space."
-
- "But the attack against ARPA by the military services was bound to fail. “The fact that they didn’t want an ARPA is one reason [Eisenhower] did,”
-
- "ARPA was a “pre-requirement” organization in that it conducted research in advance of specific needs."
-
- "The agency’s dilemma, said Rechtin, was this: if you can’t do the research before a need arises, by the time the need is there, it’s clear that the research should already have been done."
'JASON' GROUP (OF ACADEMICS) THAT ADVISED ARPA/DARPA IN EARLY DAYS
- "They were asked to think about new programs to be researched and developed, and also to imagine the programs that Russian scientists might be working on."
-
- "...the Jasons had displayed a “pattern of arrogance.” That they were a self-congratulating group. “They picked their members. And so they had in 1969 the same members they had in 1959.” Lukasik wanted new blood."
CONFIRMATION BIAS
- The strategic hamlet effort was a failure, despite follow-on reports to portray it as a success: "In one interview after another, Hickey and Donnell found widespread dissatisfaction with the Strategic Hamlet Program."...(later) "News footage seen around the world showed farmers smashing the fortifications’ bamboo walls with sledgehammers, shovels, and sticks, as the strategic hamlets disappeared."
-
- "According to other RAND officers, Deitchman perceived the (enemy) POW report as unhelpful. RAND needed to send researchers into the field whose reports were better aligned with the conviction of the Pentagon that the Vietcong could and would be defeated."
-
- RAND picked an ardent anti-communist writer to do a report that said the opposite of Zasloff.: "Frank Collbohm tapped Leon Gouré to replace Joseph Zasloff as the lead social scientist on the ARPA Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Project in Saigon. Zasloff saw this appointment as a disaster waiting to unfold."
ARPA MOVES OUT OF THE PENTAGON
- "in February 1970 came another devastating blow for ARPA. The secretary of defense authorized a decision that the entire agency was to be removed from its coveted office space inside the Pentagon to a lackluster office building in the Rosslyn district of Arlington, Virginia"
ARPA BECOMES DARPA
- 'Defense' added to the front of 'ARPA' in order to demonstrate that funding for its efforts had direct military application, as required by Congress: "And in keeping with the Mansfield Amendment, which required the Pentagon to research and develop programs only with a “specific military function,” the word “defense” was added to ARPA’s name. From now on it would be called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA."
DARPA 'PHASES'
- "The agency already had shifted from the 1950s space and ballistic missile defense agency..."
-
- "...to the 1960s agency responsible for some of the most controversial programs of the Vietnam War. And now, a number of events occurred that eased the agency’s transition as it began to change course again...."
-
- "Under the direction of the physicist Stephen Lukasik, in the mid-1970s the agency would take a new turn—a new “thrust,” as Lukasik grew fond of saying. In this mid-1970s period of acceleration and innovation, DARPA would plant certain seeds that would allow it to grow into one of the most powerful and most respected agencies inside the Department of Defense."
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- After several Vietnam projects left a bad taste in its mouth, DARPA re-focused itself on doing only revolutionary, 'pre-requirement' research: "Testifying before Congress in 1973, director Stephen Lukasik said that DARPA’s goal was to refocus itself as a neutral, non–military service organization, emphasizing what he called “high-risk projects of revolutionary impact.” Only innovative, groundbreaking programs would be taken on, he said, programs that should be viewed as “pre-mission assignments” or “pre-requirement” research. The agency needed to apply itself to its original mandate, which was to keep the nation from being embarrassed by another Sputnik-like surprise. At DARPA, the emphasis was on hard science and hardware."
FACTOIDS
- "The presence of x-rays (while near a hydrogen bomb) made the unseen visible. In the flash of Teller light, Freedman—who was watching the scientists for their reactions—could see their facial bones. “In front of me… they were skeletons,” Freedman recalls. Their faces no longer appeared to be human faces. Just “jawbones and eye sockets. Rows of teeth. Skulls.”
-
- "RAND, an acronym for “research and development,” was the Pentagon’s first postwar think tank, the brains behind U.S. Air Force brawn."
-
- "(Brilliant physicist) Von Neumann was to write down his thoughts each morning while shaving, and for those ideas he would be paid $ 200 a month—the average salary of a full-time RAND analyst at the time."
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- Origin of the name of 'Sputnik': "...Iskusstvennyy Sputnik Zemli, or “artificial satellite of the earth.”
-
- "Monsanto Chemical Company, a nuclear defense contractor that would be vilified during the Vietnam War for producing the herbicide Agent Orange,"
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- "With no formal training, and in a matter of a few years, (physicist) Christofilos transformed himself from an elevator technician into one of the most ingenious scientists in the modern world.
-
- (The Defender radar was so powerful that it had detected the moon coming up and thought it was an inbound missile): "There, coming up over the horizon, over Norway, was a huge rising moon. The BMEWS had not malfunctioned. It was “simply more powerful than anyone had dreamed,”
-
- (Factoid- Time it takes for an ICBM from Russia to hit DC.): "a mere 1,600 seconds. It seemed impossibly fast. Just twenty-six minutes and forty seconds from launch to annihilation."
-
- "Discoverer III was a highly classified spying mission, a cover for America’s first space-based satellite reconnaissance program, called Corona."
-
- "The most significant weapon to emerge from the early days of Project Agile was the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. In the summer of 1961, Diem’s small-in-stature army was having difficulty handling the large semiautomatic weapons carried by U.S. military advisors. In the AR-15 Godel saw promise, “something the short, small Vietnamese can fire without bowling themselves over,”
-
- ARPA responsible for 'strategic hamlet' initiative: "But there was also a far more ambitious plan in place whereby ARPA would collect enough information on strategic hamlets to be able to “monitor” their activity in the future."
- "The man, J. C. R. Licklider, invented the concept of the Internet, which was originally called the ARPANET. Licklider did not arrive at the Pentagon with the intent of creating the Internet. He was hired to research and develop command and control systems, most of which were related to nuclear weapons at the time."
-
- "Licklider was a trained psychologist with a rare specialization in psychoacoustics, the scientific study of sound perception. Psychoacoustics concerns itself with questions such as, when a person across a room claps his hands, how does the brain know where that sound is coming from?"
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- During Cuban Missile Crisis: "The president raised the defense condition to DEFCON 2 for the first and only time in history."
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- Nukes detonated during the Cuban Missile Crisis: "Twice during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, on October 20 and October 26, 1962, the United States detonated two nuclear weapons—code-named Checkmate and Bluegill Triple Prime—in space. These tests, which sought to advance knowledge in ARPA’s pursuit of the Christofilos effect, are on the record and are known. What is not known outside Defense Department circles is that in response, on October 22 and October 28, 1962, the Soviets also detonated two nuclear weapons in space, also in pursuit of the Christofilos effect."
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- "The Soviet nuclear weapon detonated on October 28, 1962, over Zhezqazghan in Kazakhstan at an altitude of ninety-three miles had a consequential effect. According to Russian scientists, “the nuclear detonation caused an electromagnetic pulse [EMP] that covered all of Kazakhstan,” including “electrical cables buried underground.”
-
- "With terrible irony, the place where Fall (author) was killed was the same stretch of road that had given his book its title, Street Without Joy."
-
- "Harvard’s legendary Society of Fellows, making him one of twenty-four scholars from around the world who were given complete freedom to do what they wanted to do, all expenses paid, for three years."
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- "Project Agile defoliant campaign. The herbicides, varied in composition, were now being called Agent Orange, Agent Purple, Agent Pink, and other colors of the rainbow."
-
- "the Jasons were asked to determine “whether it made sense to think about using nuclear weapons to close off the supply routes [along] the Ho Chi Minh trail"
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- "the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 as a turning point. The act established the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Justice designed to assist state police forces...The act also provided $ 12 billion in funding over a period of ten years. Police forces across America began upgrading their military-style equipment to include riot control systems, helicopters, grenade launchers, and machine guns. The LEAA famously gave birth to the special weapons and tactics concept, or SWAT, with the first units created in Los Angeles in the late 1960s.“
-
- "the Pentagon Papers appeared on the front page of the New York Times. The classified documents had been leaked to the newspaper by former Pentagon employee and RAND Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg."
-
- "...in May 2000 President Clinton discontinued the selective availability (coordinate offset) feature on GPS, giving billions of people access to precise GPS technology, developed by DARPA."
-
- "At RAND, (Andrew) Marshall had secured his reputation as a master game theorist, and at the Pentagon, his wizardry in prognosis and prediction earned him the nom de guerre Yoda, or the Jedi Master."
-
- Regarding reflectors left on moon by Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin: "The interval between launch of the pulse of light and its return permitted calculation of the distance to the moon within an inch, a measurement of unprecedented precision,”
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- "Directed-energy weapons have many advantages, none so great as speed. Traveling at the speed of light means a DEW could hit a target on the moon in less than two seconds."
-
- "It is often said that the Clinton administration canceled the SDI ("Star Wars") program, when in fact it canceled only certain elements of the Strategic Defense Initiative. SDI never really went away."
-
- "And then to everyone’s surprise, on the last day of the simulated war game exercises (INTERNAL LOOK exercise that featured a scenario in which Iraq invaded Saudi Arabia) , on August 4, 1990, Iraq invaded its small, oil-rich neighbor Kuwait—for real."
-
- "In the first twenty-four hours of the (first Gulf) war, a total of forty-two stealth fighters, which accounted for only 2.5 percent of the U.S. airpower used in the campaign, destroyed 31 percent of Iraqi targets."
-
- "...a U.S. Patriot missile shot down an Iraqi Scud missile, making the Patriot the first antimissile ballistic missile fired in combat."
- "each battery was shooting nearly ten missiles at each incoming Iraqi Scud."
-
- "...the Iraqi Scuds were breaking apart in their terminal phase, shattering into multiple pieces as they headed back down to earth. These multiple fragments were confusing Patriot missiles into thinking that each piece was an additional warhead."
-
- "In one instance, a group of Iraqi soldiers stepped out from a hiding place and waved the white flag of surrender at the eye of a television camera attached to a drone that was hovering nearby. This became the first time in history that a group of enemy soldiers was recorded surrendering to a machine."
-
- megadeath - (noun) "a unit used in quantifying the casualties of nuclear war, equal to the deaths of one million people."
-
- "As part of the animal sentinel program, going back to 1999, scientists had been making great progress training honeybees to locate bombs. Bees have sensing capabilities that outperform the dog’s nose by a trillion parts per second."
-
- "Within the thirty-six-square-mile Los Alamos campus, there are 1,280 buildings, eleven of which are nuclear facilities. Even the cooks who work in some of the kitchens have top secret Q clearances."
July 24, 2022
The Pentagon's Brain is a history of the Defense Department's organisation called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It is the second book written by Annie Jacobsen that I have read and it is a bit weaker than Surprise, Kill, Vanish. Even though both books rely quite a lot on oral histories and declassified documents I found sections of this book a bit slow or filled with too much fluff. Since there are is still quite a lot of classified information which is not available to the public it's only natural that the author has to make do only with the current publicly available information.
Nevertheless the book is a very interesting insight into the the organisation which was responsible for the creation of the AR15 assault rifle, the internet, UAVs, stealth planes, weather satellites, GPS and many other military technical advancements.
The book starts off with the creation of DARPA in 1958 and goes chornologically through all of the major innovations from DARPA and their applications in various conflicts such as the Vietnam war, the First Gulf war, the Afghanistan and the Iraq war. It also deals with some of DARPA's failures such as Agent Orange or their social science and mass surveillance projects. The last chapters deal with modern day projects such as trans-humanism, cyborgs, artificial intelligence and the like which are a bit more in the realm of potential science fiction rather than actual facts.
The book sometimes feels a bit disjointed and like it jumps around form topic to topic. There are also some issues with some of the author's background knowledge, for example she confuses the Vietcong with the Viet Minh and seems to not understand what the difference is between doubling and squaring. The author is a journalist so she can be forgiven for some of the errors but it still a bit disappointing and casts a shadow on the rest of the book's research.
Despite it's shortcomings this is still a fun book to read in order to learn about the history of the various projects in which DARPA was involved. It really puts into perspective a lot of the technologies which we take for granted today.
Nevertheless the book is a very interesting insight into the the organisation which was responsible for the creation of the AR15 assault rifle, the internet, UAVs, stealth planes, weather satellites, GPS and many other military technical advancements.
The book starts off with the creation of DARPA in 1958 and goes chornologically through all of the major innovations from DARPA and their applications in various conflicts such as the Vietnam war, the First Gulf war, the Afghanistan and the Iraq war. It also deals with some of DARPA's failures such as Agent Orange or their social science and mass surveillance projects. The last chapters deal with modern day projects such as trans-humanism, cyborgs, artificial intelligence and the like which are a bit more in the realm of potential science fiction rather than actual facts.
The book sometimes feels a bit disjointed and like it jumps around form topic to topic. There are also some issues with some of the author's background knowledge, for example she confuses the Vietcong with the Viet Minh and seems to not understand what the difference is between doubling and squaring. The author is a journalist so she can be forgiven for some of the errors but it still a bit disappointing and casts a shadow on the rest of the book's research.
Despite it's shortcomings this is still a fun book to read in order to learn about the history of the various projects in which DARPA was involved. It really puts into perspective a lot of the technologies which we take for granted today.
November 25, 2015
It's highly biased to IPTO (Info. Proc. Techniques Off.). She does not provide or even consider an Org chart. In this respect James Bamford's Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency from the Cold War Through the Dawn of a New Century (she uses as a reference however flawed) is a better organized book (even if of a different agency). It's not the first attempt of a DARPA history. Alex Rolland was commissioned to try that (at least cited in the references).
Not one word on Stanley (Stanford) and the DARPA autonomous vehicle challenge (it was done to reduce the number of supply trucks being blown up by IEDs (a whole chapter), remember?). Their head programmer had to explain what DARPA was to the people in the Pentagon, most of whom (the uniformed), never heard of DARPA.
Most annoying is a poor index. No pointers to Islamic State (one occurrence). A whole slew of topics I wanted to refer back to the text. The means probably that this book is best read as an electronic version. You could certainly search and go back easier.
Many references attempt to relate to the successful Manhattan Project (which started with only a request for $50K (so they misjudged)). Most successor projects started many times more expensive and she does 2015 inflation price comparisons.
Many interviews (a plus, fine selection of people) mark the references. One answers the question: What happened to John Poindexter?
What's amusing to a technologist is her attempt to explain what a maser is requires the use of laser, which came after the maser (they were first called optical masers). So she calls them microwave lasers then has to explain lasers (to introduce Charles Townes). Next, I feel sorry for the non-technologist for the number of Newspeak (1984) like acronyms (this is the military).
I'm certain that with the publication of The Gun (about the AK-47) and its section on the M-16 makes her section on the introduction of the M-16 tick off a lot of vets from that period (for the AR-15s and M-16s problems (true we still have the M-4 carbine version to this day)). I think this problem was way more than ARPA.
The text wanders between vilifying DARPA and the DOD versus citing them as the solutions to the world's problems. The book cites SRI working for them but leaves out the work of Doug Engelbart who was why SRI was the 2nd ARPAnet node. Doug was doing intellect augmentation (covered in John Markoff's book What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry) in contrast to the artificial intelligence being attempted by DARPA currently (in fact augmentation comes into the text late in the book).
Was DARPA (and were the Jasons) part of the problem with Vietnam? No mention of Panama (the first use of the F-117 Stealth fighter).
Anthropologists, and their professional society, and social sciences join the biologists as the new kids on the scientific block started by physicists. Some not flattering views of social sciences in the Human Terrain.
I told a friend (Gio) who was an DARPA Program Manager at one time to glance this book. Alas, my friend Barry Leiner passed away, and I do recall a little discussion on TIA (Total Information Awareness). It was far less evil sounding (it was overblown). (Hell, I was working next to NSF and DARPA program managers at the time (I was not a program manager, just our agency's technical reviewer). That a friend (Markoff) was called a cause of its demise was interesting.
She overall does not vilify DARPA only cites Eisenhower's admonishment to beware the military-industrial (-academic) complex. So this is a book about being aware of one's government. They book is slightly annoying to the knowledgeable. It might be a little eye opening to those for home this is a new topic.
Not one word on Stanley (Stanford) and the DARPA autonomous vehicle challenge (it was done to reduce the number of supply trucks being blown up by IEDs (a whole chapter), remember?). Their head programmer had to explain what DARPA was to the people in the Pentagon, most of whom (the uniformed), never heard of DARPA.
Most annoying is a poor index. No pointers to Islamic State (one occurrence). A whole slew of topics I wanted to refer back to the text. The means probably that this book is best read as an electronic version. You could certainly search and go back easier.
Many references attempt to relate to the successful Manhattan Project (which started with only a request for $50K (so they misjudged)). Most successor projects started many times more expensive and she does 2015 inflation price comparisons.
Many interviews (a plus, fine selection of people) mark the references. One answers the question: What happened to John Poindexter?
What's amusing to a technologist is her attempt to explain what a maser is requires the use of laser, which came after the maser (they were first called optical masers). So she calls them microwave lasers then has to explain lasers (to introduce Charles Townes). Next, I feel sorry for the non-technologist for the number of Newspeak (1984) like acronyms (this is the military).
I'm certain that with the publication of The Gun (about the AK-47) and its section on the M-16 makes her section on the introduction of the M-16 tick off a lot of vets from that period (for the AR-15s and M-16s problems (true we still have the M-4 carbine version to this day)). I think this problem was way more than ARPA.
The text wanders between vilifying DARPA and the DOD versus citing them as the solutions to the world's problems. The book cites SRI working for them but leaves out the work of Doug Engelbart who was why SRI was the 2nd ARPAnet node. Doug was doing intellect augmentation (covered in John Markoff's book What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry) in contrast to the artificial intelligence being attempted by DARPA currently (in fact augmentation comes into the text late in the book).
Was DARPA (and were the Jasons) part of the problem with Vietnam? No mention of Panama (the first use of the F-117 Stealth fighter).
Anthropologists, and their professional society, and social sciences join the biologists as the new kids on the scientific block started by physicists. Some not flattering views of social sciences in the Human Terrain.
I told a friend (Gio) who was an DARPA Program Manager at one time to glance this book. Alas, my friend Barry Leiner passed away, and I do recall a little discussion on TIA (Total Information Awareness). It was far less evil sounding (it was overblown). (Hell, I was working next to NSF and DARPA program managers at the time (I was not a program manager, just our agency's technical reviewer). That a friend (Markoff) was called a cause of its demise was interesting.
She overall does not vilify DARPA only cites Eisenhower's admonishment to beware the military-industrial (-academic) complex. So this is a book about being aware of one's government. They book is slightly annoying to the knowledgeable. It might be a little eye opening to those for home this is a new topic.
April 6, 2024
Excellent read that sadly took me since the beginning of February to get through. Packed full of information that paints a great picture of some of the numerous, unsung advancements in tech pioneered by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Looking forward to the next book by this author, Annie Jacobsen.
September 29, 2025
While the topics in this book are incredibly fascinating it seemed to be a bit shallow. The second half of the book seemed to be written by someone else. There is so much history involved in this book that it would be nearly impossible to get a deeper knowledge from it without writing 20 volumes. Still, it didn’t quite jump out at me as completely groundbreaking. Despite this, I don’t regret reading it and will read more of Annie Jacobsen.
The most fascinating parts of this book:
•The ties to weapon and technology breakthroughs that stemmed from the Vietnam War.
•Nanotechnology is absolutely mind blowing.
•All of the drones that have been reported coming out of the ocean in recent news breaks? That’s discussed in this book that was written over 10 years ago. And no, it’s not some alien invention civilization buried under the ocean.
The most fascinating parts of this book:
•The ties to weapon and technology breakthroughs that stemmed from the Vietnam War.
•Nanotechnology is absolutely mind blowing.
•All of the drones that have been reported coming out of the ocean in recent news breaks? That’s discussed in this book that was written over 10 years ago. And no, it’s not some alien invention civilization buried under the ocean.
December 30, 2024
Yet another amazing book by Jacobsen.
September 18, 2016
Good overview of various DARPA initiatives, starting with the pre-DARPA Manhattan Project, the gadgets and social science employed in Vietnam, modern network centric warfare, etc. The discussion of artificial intelligence towards the end of the book was particularly enjoyable.
Suffers from some discontinuity, but I suppose that's to be expected when trying to tell the history of an ultra secret government organization.
Suffers from some discontinuity, but I suppose that's to be expected when trying to tell the history of an ultra secret government organization.
July 22, 2015
This is a history book?!? I gave five stars to a history book?!? I have only ever been really impressed with one other history book before but this one beats them all. While providing the detailed history of DARPA, this tome brings the various events to life while capturing the reader's interest with amazing details that are almost unbelievable. Each section held amazing information such as the hydrogen bomb information in the first section and the three foot cement walls that warbled like jello. Section two had an amazing human interest story about a soldier who parachuted out of burning plane in Vietnam and landed in a tree and was saved hours later by one of the Jolly Green Giants rescuers and then the added tale of how these two men reconnected years later is told in the acknowledgments section in the back of the book. There is something in every section and before I finished the book, I found myself going back and forth to reread points and happenings. I fully intend to continue to do so as the because the information is all so interesting.
I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway contest as a first-reads volume and I actually thought it was going to be something different than it was, but I couldn't be more pleased that it is exactly what the whole title says it is and is such an in-depth, fantastically expressed tales of amazing happenings in our history. I can only imagine at this time how much better the final copy will have improved with the addition of photographs and an index to aide in the search for particular sections that the reader will want to review again and again.
I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway contest as a first-reads volume and I actually thought it was going to be something different than it was, but I couldn't be more pleased that it is exactly what the whole title says it is and is such an in-depth, fantastically expressed tales of amazing happenings in our history. I can only imagine at this time how much better the final copy will have improved with the addition of photographs and an index to aide in the search for particular sections that the reader will want to review again and again.
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