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The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World
The definitive history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon agency that has quietly shaped war and technology for nearly sixty years.
Founded in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik, the agency’s original mission was to create “the unimagined weapons of the future.” Over the decades, DARPA has been responsible for countless inventions and technologies that extend well beyond military technology. Sharon Weinberger gives us a riveting account of DARPA’s successes and failures, its remarkable innovations, and its wild-eyed schemes. We see how the threat of nuclear Armageddon sparked investment in computer networking, leading to the Internet, as well as to a proposal to power a missile-destroying particle beam by draining the Great Lakes. We learn how DARPA was responsible during the Vietnam War for both Agent Orange and the development of the world’s first armed drones, and how after 9/11 the agency sparked a national controversy over surveillance with its data-mining research. And we see how DARPA’s success with self-driving cars was followed by disappointing contributions to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Weinberger has interviewed more than one hundred former Pentagon officials and scientists involved in DARPA’s projects—many of whom have never spoken publicly about their work with the agency—and pored over countless declassified records from archives around the country, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and exclusive materials provided by sources. The Imagineers of War is a compelling and groundbreaking history in which science, technology, and politics collide.
Founded in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik, the agency’s original mission was to create “the unimagined weapons of the future.” Over the decades, DARPA has been responsible for countless inventions and technologies that extend well beyond military technology. Sharon Weinberger gives us a riveting account of DARPA’s successes and failures, its remarkable innovations, and its wild-eyed schemes. We see how the threat of nuclear Armageddon sparked investment in computer networking, leading to the Internet, as well as to a proposal to power a missile-destroying particle beam by draining the Great Lakes. We learn how DARPA was responsible during the Vietnam War for both Agent Orange and the development of the world’s first armed drones, and how after 9/11 the agency sparked a national controversy over surveillance with its data-mining research. And we see how DARPA’s success with self-driving cars was followed by disappointing contributions to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Weinberger has interviewed more than one hundred former Pentagon officials and scientists involved in DARPA’s projects—many of whom have never spoken publicly about their work with the agency—and pored over countless declassified records from archives around the country, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and exclusive materials provided by sources. The Imagineers of War is a compelling and groundbreaking history in which science, technology, and politics collide.
496 pages, Paperback
Published February 20, 2018
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April 4, 2017
Its hard to imagine that an agency like DARPA actually existed. Granted a massive Cold War budget and latitude to pursue the wildest scientific ideas of the time, in the 1950s DARPA was literally setting off nuclear weapons in the earth's magnetosphere in order to create an electron anti-missile shield to defend America against the Soviet Union. While technically a military agency, in many ways its scientists had broad autonomy to come up with solutions to whatever problem they deemed relevant. Over time DARPA engineers tasked themselves with developing complex weapons systems but also with creepy missions of social engineering, including mind-control experiments and psychoanalysis intended to help the United States wage counterinsurgency campaigns in Vietnam.
The outcome of all these experiments was mixed. DARPA's work on nuclear command and control ended up giving birth to the internet, a consequential development that most would argue is a net benefit to humanity. Self-driving cars and other fruits of the modern world are also the inadvertent result of freewheeling DARPA military projects. But the harm caused to ordinary people who were treated in huge numbers like laboratory animals for Strangelovian scientists was real as well. The notorious air force defoliation program in Vietnam was a product of DARPA, as were many other ill-conceived approaches to anti-American political violence that have given birth to full blown modern pseudosciences like "radicalization studies". Drone warfare and guided missiles too are the children of DARPA, though one could perhaps coldly argue these still offer improvements over the "dumb" munitions of previous conflicts.
The actual people involved in DARPA themselves were themsleves a mixed bag and were often quite eccentric. Many DARPA scientists and bureaucrats were scientifically or politically brilliant, and all were certainly ambitious at dreaming up and attempting grand plans. But in retrospect many of their ideas and actions seemed fanatically irresponsible. Setting off nuclear bombs above and below the earth, building giant floating anti-missile stations and draining the Great Lakes to create enough energy to power a particle beam laser might have seemed more sensible during the Cold War, but they seem a bit callous today. Perhaps this is simply a bias that comes from looking at events from a different time. People are generally more conservative today and the frenzy of productive energy created by the Cold War has largely subsided, or otherwise diverted itself into less spectacular endeavors. DARPA itself still exists but has also changed, becoming much less of the serial world-changer it was in its past.
The grand history of DARPA here is critically written and full of novel information about the agency's frankly incredible activities. While its obvious to say that it is vital reading for national security nerds, it also contains enough cultural content to make it interesting to a layperson. Anyone who cares about the Hiroshima bombings, how the internet was created, or the Vietnam War can find some answers here. Its a slice of history that I can't believe was never fully documented before, but am glad it is now. The author is also a brilliant editor whom I had the privilege of working with for a number of years, so it was especially novel for me to be able to read her writing on a subject of expertise at length. The end result is a cultural artifact that tells the full story of one of the most remarkable periods of American history.
The outcome of all these experiments was mixed. DARPA's work on nuclear command and control ended up giving birth to the internet, a consequential development that most would argue is a net benefit to humanity. Self-driving cars and other fruits of the modern world are also the inadvertent result of freewheeling DARPA military projects. But the harm caused to ordinary people who were treated in huge numbers like laboratory animals for Strangelovian scientists was real as well. The notorious air force defoliation program in Vietnam was a product of DARPA, as were many other ill-conceived approaches to anti-American political violence that have given birth to full blown modern pseudosciences like "radicalization studies". Drone warfare and guided missiles too are the children of DARPA, though one could perhaps coldly argue these still offer improvements over the "dumb" munitions of previous conflicts.
The actual people involved in DARPA themselves were themsleves a mixed bag and were often quite eccentric. Many DARPA scientists and bureaucrats were scientifically or politically brilliant, and all were certainly ambitious at dreaming up and attempting grand plans. But in retrospect many of their ideas and actions seemed fanatically irresponsible. Setting off nuclear bombs above and below the earth, building giant floating anti-missile stations and draining the Great Lakes to create enough energy to power a particle beam laser might have seemed more sensible during the Cold War, but they seem a bit callous today. Perhaps this is simply a bias that comes from looking at events from a different time. People are generally more conservative today and the frenzy of productive energy created by the Cold War has largely subsided, or otherwise diverted itself into less spectacular endeavors. DARPA itself still exists but has also changed, becoming much less of the serial world-changer it was in its past.
The grand history of DARPA here is critically written and full of novel information about the agency's frankly incredible activities. While its obvious to say that it is vital reading for national security nerds, it also contains enough cultural content to make it interesting to a layperson. Anyone who cares about the Hiroshima bombings, how the internet was created, or the Vietnam War can find some answers here. Its a slice of history that I can't believe was never fully documented before, but am glad it is now. The author is also a brilliant editor whom I had the privilege of working with for a number of years, so it was especially novel for me to be able to read her writing on a subject of expertise at length. The end result is a cultural artifact that tells the full story of one of the most remarkable periods of American history.
July 11, 2017
There are two recent, large, and engrossing works on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), this work from Sharon Weinberger being the latest. Its predecessor, "The Pentagon's Brain," by Annie Jacobsen is the one I would recommend you read, or, if you plan on reading both, I would recommend hers be read first.
One thing that this particular tome from Weinberger does quite well is to show the struggle for a genuine identity in this organization's founding and work during several administrations and wars, most notably Vietnam. The lack of a clear, consistent mission with stable leadership and support from the Pentagon is quite well-documented as are the organization's conceptual blunders for improving the battlefields of Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
However, in her focus to cast a critical eye on DARPA, Weinberger doesn't manage to actually report on much of what they achieved. You are left, after 400 pages, thinking this well-funded conglomerate of scientists and strategists accomplished maybe a half-dozen things since their founding. This is not an accurate picture and one that is born of an eagerness to display the organization's shortcomings to the detriment of objectivity. The subtitle of the book is, "The untold story of DARPA, the Pentagon agency that changed the world," you are left with little info as to how and why they did so.
I agree that there are some problems in Jacobsen's work too (a certain amount of technical information that was bungled) but the approach she takes is much less polemical and delivers more accurately on the promise of the work itself.
If this agency interests you at all I would recommend both books, however don't expect the full picture from this latest work.
One thing that this particular tome from Weinberger does quite well is to show the struggle for a genuine identity in this organization's founding and work during several administrations and wars, most notably Vietnam. The lack of a clear, consistent mission with stable leadership and support from the Pentagon is quite well-documented as are the organization's conceptual blunders for improving the battlefields of Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
However, in her focus to cast a critical eye on DARPA, Weinberger doesn't manage to actually report on much of what they achieved. You are left, after 400 pages, thinking this well-funded conglomerate of scientists and strategists accomplished maybe a half-dozen things since their founding. This is not an accurate picture and one that is born of an eagerness to display the organization's shortcomings to the detriment of objectivity. The subtitle of the book is, "The untold story of DARPA, the Pentagon agency that changed the world," you are left with little info as to how and why they did so.
I agree that there are some problems in Jacobsen's work too (a certain amount of technical information that was bungled) but the approach she takes is much less polemical and delivers more accurately on the promise of the work itself.
If this agency interests you at all I would recommend both books, however don't expect the full picture from this latest work.
August 23, 2017
The book seems to focus more on the political/bureaucratic history of the agency than on the details of the various projects that DARPA has undertaken. It is a well-researched history of the agency (especially one that is so secretive and filled with classified projects) but if you are expecting a deep dive into crazy tech and science experiments for the whole book then you might be somewhat underwhelmed.
June 6, 2018
Unfortunately kind of uneven. Weinberger seemed to be pushing a particular perspective — DARPA is better off following its original mandate of broad research related to America's current war — that seems more personal belief than fact-based. It seems like Weinberger is willing to dismiss newer failures and admire past ones on this basis alone.
The Imagineers of War is also long, but somehow I don't feel like I learned much about what DARPA actually did.
The Imagineers of War is also long, but somehow I don't feel like I learned much about what DARPA actually did.
July 18, 2017
Many of the products of the Pentagon's in-house research facility, DARPA, are widely known. The Internet. GPS. The M16 rifle. Agent Orange. Stealth aircraft. What is less widely known and understood is the story of the scores of scientists, engineers, and bureaucrats who sired these and many other innovations over the nearly 60-year history of the agency. Now, journalist Sharon Weinberger has brought that history to light in a captivating account, The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World, her third book about America's defense establishment.
What is most distinctive about Weinberger's study of DARPA is the wealth of information and insight she gained from interviews with dozens of current and former employees of the agency as well as with those who observed it in action over the years. Prominent among her interviewees were many of the men (and a couple of women) who served as DARPA's directors. In the process, and in extensive archival research, Weinberger turned up a great deal of information about the agency in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s that has been ignored or even suppressed for many years.
DARPA's shifting mission
DARPA's mission has shifted sharply over the years. At its inception in 1958 and for a short while afterward, DARPA was the nation's first space agency. DARPA's focus quickly shifted to missile defense. "By 1961," Weinberger writes, "ARPA was spending about $100 million per year, or half of its entire budget, on missile defense." The Cuban Missile Crisis and President Kennedy's subsequent emphasis on achieving a nuclear test ban accelerated the process. Along the way, this research "modernized the field of seismology" in the agency's effort to detect underground nuclear tests. Around the same time, the agency became involved in counterinsurgency in Vietnam (and later in many other countries). The counterinsurgency work involved social science research as well as the development of new weapons such as the M16. DARPA's most famous product, the Internet (originally ARPANET), was an easily ignored, low-priority project in the face of the billions spent on the war. During the 1970s, the agency turned its attention to what the Pentagon and the White House deemed the country's gravest threat: the potential of a Soviet invasion of West Germany with a massive tank attack that could not be stopped with nuclear weapons alone. Within less than two decades, that threat evaporated. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union shocked DARPA's leadership, as it did everyone else in the US government. The agency only gradually found its way forward with a primary focus on precision weaponry and the electronic battlefield. In Weinberger's opinion, DARPA's work today is aimed at much lesser problems than it has tackled in the past. It's much more focused on solving specific problems posed by Pentagon brass rather than delving into genuine scientific research, which had been the case in earlier decades.
"Today," Weinberger writes in her conclusion, "the agency's past investments populate the battlefield: The Predator . . . Stealth aircraft . . . Networked computers . . . precision weapons . . ." But it's unlikely anything as disruptive as the Internet is ever likely to come again from DARPA.
Revealing DARPA's many huge failures
The history of DARPA in its early years in The Imagineers of War is especially strong. By burrowing into obscure declassified documents and interviewing many of those who were active in the agency's first years, Weinberger uncovered the seminal role of William Godel. It was Godel who "managed to use the power vacuum at ARPA [following the loss of space programs to NASA] to carve out a new role for the agency in Vietnam." Following the lead of the British in Malaya, where many of the tools of counterinsurgency were first developed, Godel built what ultimately became a multi-billion-dollar program in Vietnam. His aim was to make it unnecessary for the US to commit troops to the war, and in that he obviously failed miserably. It was Godel who promoted the notorious strategic hamlets and introduced Agent Orange and other defoliants as well as the combat rifle that came to be known as the M16. Because much of his work was clandestine and involved cash payments to undercover agents, Godel became enmeshed in an investigation into his program's financial reporting and later spent several years in prison as a result of a colleague's misappropriation of funds. Probably because of this intensely embarrassing chapter in DARPA's history, and his later turn to gunrunning in Southeast Asia, Godel's role has been deeply buried. There is not even a Wikipedia page for him.
William Godel was by no means the only DARPA executive to darken the agency's history with outsize failures. Others squandered billions of dollars in sometimes lunatic schemes, such as a plan to explode nuclear weapons in the Van Allen belt in the upper atmosphere in hopes of destroying intercontinental missiles launched from Russia. The agency spent almost $2 billion in a failed effort to develop a prototype of a "space plane" that would travel at Mach 25 ("one of DARPA's costliest failures"). Another embarrassing episode involved extensive research into mind control. An even bigger embarrassment loomed as a possibility in 1983 when Ronald Reagan announced his plan for the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars"). Luckily for the agency, the work was shifted to a new Pentagon department that eventually blew a total of $30 billion on an effort that scientists had almost universally said was impossible with contemporary or foreseeable technology.
An earlier history of DARPA
In December 2015, I reviewed a then-new book, The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency, by Annie Jacobsen. Jacobsen is the author of three other studies of the Pentagon: Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base, and, most recently, Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. All four books were published by prestigious mainstream firms. I've cited all these titles to convey a clear sense that Annie Jacobsen is an accomplished and trustworthy source of information about the Pentagon. She has spent years researching the American military, with a focus on its activities in research and development. But it's clear to me that Sharon Weinberger's more recent study, The Imagineers of War, does an even better job of laying bare the truth about DARPA's checkered history.
What is most distinctive about Weinberger's study of DARPA is the wealth of information and insight she gained from interviews with dozens of current and former employees of the agency as well as with those who observed it in action over the years. Prominent among her interviewees were many of the men (and a couple of women) who served as DARPA's directors. In the process, and in extensive archival research, Weinberger turned up a great deal of information about the agency in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s that has been ignored or even suppressed for many years.
DARPA's shifting mission
DARPA's mission has shifted sharply over the years. At its inception in 1958 and for a short while afterward, DARPA was the nation's first space agency. DARPA's focus quickly shifted to missile defense. "By 1961," Weinberger writes, "ARPA was spending about $100 million per year, or half of its entire budget, on missile defense." The Cuban Missile Crisis and President Kennedy's subsequent emphasis on achieving a nuclear test ban accelerated the process. Along the way, this research "modernized the field of seismology" in the agency's effort to detect underground nuclear tests. Around the same time, the agency became involved in counterinsurgency in Vietnam (and later in many other countries). The counterinsurgency work involved social science research as well as the development of new weapons such as the M16. DARPA's most famous product, the Internet (originally ARPANET), was an easily ignored, low-priority project in the face of the billions spent on the war. During the 1970s, the agency turned its attention to what the Pentagon and the White House deemed the country's gravest threat: the potential of a Soviet invasion of West Germany with a massive tank attack that could not be stopped with nuclear weapons alone. Within less than two decades, that threat evaporated. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union shocked DARPA's leadership, as it did everyone else in the US government. The agency only gradually found its way forward with a primary focus on precision weaponry and the electronic battlefield. In Weinberger's opinion, DARPA's work today is aimed at much lesser problems than it has tackled in the past. It's much more focused on solving specific problems posed by Pentagon brass rather than delving into genuine scientific research, which had been the case in earlier decades.
"Today," Weinberger writes in her conclusion, "the agency's past investments populate the battlefield: The Predator . . . Stealth aircraft . . . Networked computers . . . precision weapons . . ." But it's unlikely anything as disruptive as the Internet is ever likely to come again from DARPA.
Revealing DARPA's many huge failures
The history of DARPA in its early years in The Imagineers of War is especially strong. By burrowing into obscure declassified documents and interviewing many of those who were active in the agency's first years, Weinberger uncovered the seminal role of William Godel. It was Godel who "managed to use the power vacuum at ARPA [following the loss of space programs to NASA] to carve out a new role for the agency in Vietnam." Following the lead of the British in Malaya, where many of the tools of counterinsurgency were first developed, Godel built what ultimately became a multi-billion-dollar program in Vietnam. His aim was to make it unnecessary for the US to commit troops to the war, and in that he obviously failed miserably. It was Godel who promoted the notorious strategic hamlets and introduced Agent Orange and other defoliants as well as the combat rifle that came to be known as the M16. Because much of his work was clandestine and involved cash payments to undercover agents, Godel became enmeshed in an investigation into his program's financial reporting and later spent several years in prison as a result of a colleague's misappropriation of funds. Probably because of this intensely embarrassing chapter in DARPA's history, and his later turn to gunrunning in Southeast Asia, Godel's role has been deeply buried. There is not even a Wikipedia page for him.
William Godel was by no means the only DARPA executive to darken the agency's history with outsize failures. Others squandered billions of dollars in sometimes lunatic schemes, such as a plan to explode nuclear weapons in the Van Allen belt in the upper atmosphere in hopes of destroying intercontinental missiles launched from Russia. The agency spent almost $2 billion in a failed effort to develop a prototype of a "space plane" that would travel at Mach 25 ("one of DARPA's costliest failures"). Another embarrassing episode involved extensive research into mind control. An even bigger embarrassment loomed as a possibility in 1983 when Ronald Reagan announced his plan for the Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars"). Luckily for the agency, the work was shifted to a new Pentagon department that eventually blew a total of $30 billion on an effort that scientists had almost universally said was impossible with contemporary or foreseeable technology.
An earlier history of DARPA
In December 2015, I reviewed a then-new book, The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency, by Annie Jacobsen. Jacobsen is the author of three other studies of the Pentagon: Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base, and, most recently, Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis. All four books were published by prestigious mainstream firms. I've cited all these titles to convey a clear sense that Annie Jacobsen is an accomplished and trustworthy source of information about the Pentagon. She has spent years researching the American military, with a focus on its activities in research and development. But it's clear to me that Sharon Weinberger's more recent study, The Imagineers of War, does an even better job of laying bare the truth about DARPA's checkered history.
July 29, 2021
For as much strife as there is in the world, and for as many challenges we face, including saving the planet’s environment so it remains habitable for human and non-human life, I wonder if, through the lens of history, there is something I’m taking for granted: the loose, general absence of war and the threat of it.
Yes, there are military conflicts still taking place, as well as political ones that often bleed and escalate into militaristic violence. There are millions of people on the globe today whose lives have been deleteriously and permanently impacted by war.
Yet I live my life, as most Americans, and even most of humanity, free from the worry of war. In my lifetime, I witnessed–from my living room–the Iraq Gulf War, which lasted approximately a week. Then also the military conflicts that were the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. I experienced those as well through newspapers and broadcast news. But America, and the majority of Americans except for those in the military and their families, are free not just from experiencing war, but being concerned it could intrude into our daily existence and disrupt our lives.
So reading “The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the Word” by journalist Sharon Weinberger was jarring because I had unknowingly entered into a world of constant paranoia and fear. I had to remember that this is what the Cold War was about: not necessarily war itself, but the persistent, buzzing, looming threat of war–and global destruction. After the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States didn’t just fear war itself, but the annihilation of the planet.
DARPA has its origins in the space program. After the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite in the late 1950s, there was not consensus in the United States on how much of a threat it was, or even if America needed to respond. As news got out that the Soviets were getting closer to sending a human into space, however, the military and political establishments began taking it much more seriously. Several of the military branches had already begun tinkering with satellite technology; the Advanced Research Projects Agency was created to help organize and manage these efforts.
While ARPA’s roots were in Washington, its first work was in Huntsville, Alabama, where the Saturn V rocket was being developed. But ARPA, which later became DARPA when it was formally moved into the Defense Department, lost its connection to the space race when President Eisenhower, not wanting America’s space agency to be under full control of the Pentagon, created the civilian agency NASA.
Just like that, DARPA lost its primary mission–and reason for existing. What stepped in to fill that role? The Vietnam War, and harebrained, esoteric, futile, ultimately unsuccessful ideas to both avoid the war and the participation of American soldiers in it.
But within those ideas, perhaps tinged with good intentions of avoiding war, was a hubris that in retrospect–and to a very real degree, even at the time–seemed misplaced, misguided, far-fetched, counterproductive and absurd.
The concept of counterinsurgency stemmed out of DARPA’s research into and applications of psychological warfare; scientists thought that by controlling the minds of the population they could persuade populations to avoid military conflict. Decades later, many of these same ideas were brought back from the dusty shelves of history and repeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, much to the same pointless, dangerous effect.
DARPA was also mostly responsible for developing most of the chemical agents that came to define the cruelty of the Vietnam War, Agent Orange in particular. The idea was not to kill people with poison, but to defoliate the countryside and starve the population. Hardly any better.
Everything involving the agency’s involvement in Vietnam captures the identity problems DARPA has lived with through its entire existence. What is its purpose, and who does it serve?
Is it helping the Defense Department and the country prevent war, or make war more efficient? Is it trying to use science to make war more obsolete, or less costly of human (read: American) lives? Most importantly, to what ends should scientific and technological development be employed in the furtherance of military objectives?
That last question makes any analysis of DARPA far more complicated. DARPA is most well-known for its part in developing the infrastructure of the internet; it wanted ways to share computer power and maintain communication across the vast geographical space of the United States. It was hardly alone in inventing the internet, as the book points out. Several other computer science engineers at universities across the country had already been working on a similar project with the same underlying theory or principles. DARPA was just able to actually build that kind of interconnected network and put it to use.
And from its work trying to better understand or detect nuclear testing by the Soviets, DARPA wound up advancing the field of seismology in unintentional ways. Or was it intentional? Being unable to answer that question definitively is exactly what makes DARPA so confounding. It is essentially a government-funded research agency, and while its ideas and test subjects and goals are often wacky and absurd, occasionally its results yield incredible and unexpected results.
Of course, such is the nature of research. Which brings back the larger question of the purpose of DARPA, and where it lives. To what end should humans be advancing the technologies of war? Is it naïve to think we don’t need to pursue that knowledge anymore, and that focusing on the threats already in front of us, like climate change, is much more important?
Finally, where is the line between ambition, hubris and curiosity? What makes humans think we can understand each other and our natural world to the point of domination? As Americans, what do we expect out of our military, when so much of our daily lives is lived in fear and insecurity in so many aspects of our lives that have nothing to do with threats from enemies and other countries?
The internal political and personal squabbles Weinberger relates about the inner workings of DARPA are interesting, to a degree. Ultimately they represent a dynamic between military officials, academics, politicians and scientists all trying to grapple with the difficult questions asked above.
The search for knowledge continues. I think most everyone can agree with that.
But can we agree on what we want to do with that knowledge?
What, is it, after all, that we still need to learn? I doubt it’s how to get more efficient at war.
Yes, there are military conflicts still taking place, as well as political ones that often bleed and escalate into militaristic violence. There are millions of people on the globe today whose lives have been deleteriously and permanently impacted by war.
Yet I live my life, as most Americans, and even most of humanity, free from the worry of war. In my lifetime, I witnessed–from my living room–the Iraq Gulf War, which lasted approximately a week. Then also the military conflicts that were the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. I experienced those as well through newspapers and broadcast news. But America, and the majority of Americans except for those in the military and their families, are free not just from experiencing war, but being concerned it could intrude into our daily existence and disrupt our lives.
So reading “The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the Word” by journalist Sharon Weinberger was jarring because I had unknowingly entered into a world of constant paranoia and fear. I had to remember that this is what the Cold War was about: not necessarily war itself, but the persistent, buzzing, looming threat of war–and global destruction. After the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States didn’t just fear war itself, but the annihilation of the planet.
DARPA has its origins in the space program. After the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite in the late 1950s, there was not consensus in the United States on how much of a threat it was, or even if America needed to respond. As news got out that the Soviets were getting closer to sending a human into space, however, the military and political establishments began taking it much more seriously. Several of the military branches had already begun tinkering with satellite technology; the Advanced Research Projects Agency was created to help organize and manage these efforts.
While ARPA’s roots were in Washington, its first work was in Huntsville, Alabama, where the Saturn V rocket was being developed. But ARPA, which later became DARPA when it was formally moved into the Defense Department, lost its connection to the space race when President Eisenhower, not wanting America’s space agency to be under full control of the Pentagon, created the civilian agency NASA.
Just like that, DARPA lost its primary mission–and reason for existing. What stepped in to fill that role? The Vietnam War, and harebrained, esoteric, futile, ultimately unsuccessful ideas to both avoid the war and the participation of American soldiers in it.
But within those ideas, perhaps tinged with good intentions of avoiding war, was a hubris that in retrospect–and to a very real degree, even at the time–seemed misplaced, misguided, far-fetched, counterproductive and absurd.
The concept of counterinsurgency stemmed out of DARPA’s research into and applications of psychological warfare; scientists thought that by controlling the minds of the population they could persuade populations to avoid military conflict. Decades later, many of these same ideas were brought back from the dusty shelves of history and repeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, much to the same pointless, dangerous effect.
DARPA was also mostly responsible for developing most of the chemical agents that came to define the cruelty of the Vietnam War, Agent Orange in particular. The idea was not to kill people with poison, but to defoliate the countryside and starve the population. Hardly any better.
Everything involving the agency’s involvement in Vietnam captures the identity problems DARPA has lived with through its entire existence. What is its purpose, and who does it serve?
Is it helping the Defense Department and the country prevent war, or make war more efficient? Is it trying to use science to make war more obsolete, or less costly of human (read: American) lives? Most importantly, to what ends should scientific and technological development be employed in the furtherance of military objectives?
That last question makes any analysis of DARPA far more complicated. DARPA is most well-known for its part in developing the infrastructure of the internet; it wanted ways to share computer power and maintain communication across the vast geographical space of the United States. It was hardly alone in inventing the internet, as the book points out. Several other computer science engineers at universities across the country had already been working on a similar project with the same underlying theory or principles. DARPA was just able to actually build that kind of interconnected network and put it to use.
And from its work trying to better understand or detect nuclear testing by the Soviets, DARPA wound up advancing the field of seismology in unintentional ways. Or was it intentional? Being unable to answer that question definitively is exactly what makes DARPA so confounding. It is essentially a government-funded research agency, and while its ideas and test subjects and goals are often wacky and absurd, occasionally its results yield incredible and unexpected results.
Of course, such is the nature of research. Which brings back the larger question of the purpose of DARPA, and where it lives. To what end should humans be advancing the technologies of war? Is it naïve to think we don’t need to pursue that knowledge anymore, and that focusing on the threats already in front of us, like climate change, is much more important?
Finally, where is the line between ambition, hubris and curiosity? What makes humans think we can understand each other and our natural world to the point of domination? As Americans, what do we expect out of our military, when so much of our daily lives is lived in fear and insecurity in so many aspects of our lives that have nothing to do with threats from enemies and other countries?
The internal political and personal squabbles Weinberger relates about the inner workings of DARPA are interesting, to a degree. Ultimately they represent a dynamic between military officials, academics, politicians and scientists all trying to grapple with the difficult questions asked above.
The search for knowledge continues. I think most everyone can agree with that.
But can we agree on what we want to do with that knowledge?
What, is it, after all, that we still need to learn? I doubt it’s how to get more efficient at war.
July 30, 2021
Audiobook.
The narrator’s droll, dry voice would have better served a book with some acerbic humour. Sadly, this one was as arid as a desert. I’m trying to imagine what Bill Bryson might have done with this topic.
Not enough technical insights, and although this book is ostensibly about the personalities that made DARPA, it’s really about the bureaucracies that made DARPA.
Say you work for a big company, an industrial and engineering giant with a long history of invention. Eventually the company changes the organic inventiveness that made it successful in the first place to a highly structured, centralized “corporate R&D” model. This separate R&D division becomes a glitzy showpiece, run like a separate business. They hire a bunch of brainiacs, theoretical eggheads who know nothing about operations. R&D is headed up by three or four smooth talkers and is handed a lot of internal funding, adding overhead to the operations that actually make the product (and all the profits) and are compelled to foot the bill, meanwhile themselves receiving less and less funding and very little benefit from the brainiac ideas, which are seldom practical (because practical isn’t sexy). The R&D brainiacs make lots of PowerPoints full of post-it note ideas and cartoons from their brainstorming sessions and try to convince the operations people to buy these ideas as The Next Big Thing. Every now and then they score a hit, but most of their initiatives end up in the classified dustheap. Meanwhile decades of revolving door top brass with only a superficial understanding of science and technology think their pet eggheads at Corporate R&D are the greatest thing going. This goes on for years and years, endlessly. That’s what DARPA is, except the industry is the military.
The narrator’s droll, dry voice would have better served a book with some acerbic humour. Sadly, this one was as arid as a desert. I’m trying to imagine what Bill Bryson might have done with this topic.
Not enough technical insights, and although this book is ostensibly about the personalities that made DARPA, it’s really about the bureaucracies that made DARPA.
Say you work for a big company, an industrial and engineering giant with a long history of invention. Eventually the company changes the organic inventiveness that made it successful in the first place to a highly structured, centralized “corporate R&D” model. This separate R&D division becomes a glitzy showpiece, run like a separate business. They hire a bunch of brainiacs, theoretical eggheads who know nothing about operations. R&D is headed up by three or four smooth talkers and is handed a lot of internal funding, adding overhead to the operations that actually make the product (and all the profits) and are compelled to foot the bill, meanwhile themselves receiving less and less funding and very little benefit from the brainiac ideas, which are seldom practical (because practical isn’t sexy). The R&D brainiacs make lots of PowerPoints full of post-it note ideas and cartoons from their brainstorming sessions and try to convince the operations people to buy these ideas as The Next Big Thing. Every now and then they score a hit, but most of their initiatives end up in the classified dustheap. Meanwhile decades of revolving door top brass with only a superficial understanding of science and technology think their pet eggheads at Corporate R&D are the greatest thing going. This goes on for years and years, endlessly. That’s what DARPA is, except the industry is the military.
April 16, 2017
Interesting read, DARPA from a bird's eye view, right and wrong.
Having been funded by DARPA for the ALV (Autonomous Land Vehicle) in the 80's, I found the account of DARPA's early history very interesting. Although Sharon Weinberg's reference of our work was superficial and glib, on the whole she points to the good and bad results of DARPA in mostly fair terms. Despite being prone to hyperbolic rhetoric, questioning the past and future role of DARPA is a good start on the debate.
Having been funded by DARPA for the ALV (Autonomous Land Vehicle) in the 80's, I found the account of DARPA's early history very interesting. Although Sharon Weinberg's reference of our work was superficial and glib, on the whole she points to the good and bad results of DARPA in mostly fair terms. Despite being prone to hyperbolic rhetoric, questioning the past and future role of DARPA is a good start on the debate.
February 11, 2018
Interesting material, though without a specified direction in overall narrative. The book needs a run-through with a good copy editor, as well. The same people are re-introduced several times throughout this book, to the point that it is painfully obvious that the author wrote this book in several stages, quite possibly forgetting that she already introduced people in another section.
April 7, 2019
Nice view of DARPA, especially the political and institutional history. I would have appreciated a bit more detail on exactly how DARPA funded various groups over time and more scientific-technical detail. The parts on the Vietnam War (Project Agile) and parapsychology were fascinating.
August 23, 2026
Very textbook like. Overly lengthy.
April 5, 2021
Finished the book like 2 weeks ago probably write a review later
May 7, 2019
How does an organization, flush with cash, tasked with creating technological marvels, succeed at its mandate? DARPA seems like a good case study, having created the foundations of the internet, the Predator drone, the stealth bomber and chopper, a global seismology network that allowed Kennedy to sign the limted test ban treaty, and GPS. It reads like a public sector Bell Labs or Xerox PARC.
This book actually turns out to be more of a history of the ARPA / DARPA, with a long inventory of the hits and strikes over the years, and the personalities that brought them about.
I would have liked more detail on the positive outcomes, and found too much attention on the horrible (Agent Orange / Project AGILE during Vietnam) and embarrassing projects (which included parapsychology (e.g., kiling rabbits a means of communicating with nuclear subs), Operation Argus (explode H-bombs in the sky to disable in-flight Soviet ICBMs), Simulmatics (sociological testing in Vietnam)).
I kept wondering, how do successful projects come about, in particular when they sometimes require enormously long gestations? Freedom from oversight or budgetary constraints will lead to huge innovations, but at the cost of much waste.
One lesson seems to be that ARPA/DARPA succeeded thanks to timing and the law of large numbers. The ARPANET program seemed to be mostly forgotten about by ARPA leadership for a decade while they focused on their disasterous Vietnam projects. The stealth bomber project was contracted out to Lockheed, who had already been working on the problem for the Navy for close to a decade. Incredibly, at one point after the Vietnam war, DARPA tried to shunt off all of it's loser projects into a subsidiary called the "Tactical Technology Office", which through some buerocratic twist of fate, ended up inventing stealth.
This book actually turns out to be more of a history of the ARPA / DARPA, with a long inventory of the hits and strikes over the years, and the personalities that brought them about.
I would have liked more detail on the positive outcomes, and found too much attention on the horrible (Agent Orange / Project AGILE during Vietnam) and embarrassing projects (which included parapsychology (e.g., kiling rabbits a means of communicating with nuclear subs), Operation Argus (explode H-bombs in the sky to disable in-flight Soviet ICBMs), Simulmatics (sociological testing in Vietnam)).
I kept wondering, how do successful projects come about, in particular when they sometimes require enormously long gestations? Freedom from oversight or budgetary constraints will lead to huge innovations, but at the cost of much waste.
One lesson seems to be that ARPA/DARPA succeeded thanks to timing and the law of large numbers. The ARPANET program seemed to be mostly forgotten about by ARPA leadership for a decade while they focused on their disasterous Vietnam projects. The stealth bomber project was contracted out to Lockheed, who had already been working on the problem for the Navy for close to a decade. Incredibly, at one point after the Vietnam war, DARPA tried to shunt off all of it's loser projects into a subsidiary called the "Tactical Technology Office", which through some buerocratic twist of fate, ended up inventing stealth.
November 6, 2018
If you are interested in the long backstory of ARPA/DARPA, then you'll like this book. I learned quite a bit about all the various areas DARPA has contributed to over the years. I already knew about ARPA-NET and the Grand Challenge for robot cars, but I had no idea ARPA was so involved in Vietnam. I learned ARPA was really the US's first space agency. I learned how ARPA had huge contributions to seismic science by funding a way to track nuclear tests. The Siri that I don't really like on my iphone also had its roots in DARPA.
There was more I learned, but the book really seemed too long and drawn out and I found myself wishing it would end. I would have preferred an overview book maybe 30-40% shorter.
There was more I learned, but the book really seemed too long and drawn out and I found myself wishing it would end. I would have preferred an overview book maybe 30-40% shorter.
July 29, 2019
A fasinating insight into the history of DARPA, an agency that is sometimes portrayed as a den on mad scientists or Hollywood's go to source of 'magic' technology. Weinberger gives us a look at the agency and the people behind it from the founding of the agency in 1958 until around 2016 and shows how the agency has evolved over the years and the pressures that made it evolve. It's somewhat light on the various projects funded by DARPA as it's focus is on the agency's history and people but there are plenty of mentions of some of it's better known projects. I recommend it for people interested in the history of DARPA although this book does provide some interesting insights into an aspect of the Vietnam war that few people know about.
February 24, 2022
I seem to be a sucker for these kinds of books. Have run across some interesting and hidden gems in the genre, outlining some obscure part of military history. On this one, I think I expected more than I got. Part of the problem was the reader, who was flat and emotionless throughout. Part of it was either the subject matter or how it was treated.
DARPA has a long history and has had some world-changing accomplishments (including the internet, not invented by Al Gore after all). However, it seems to have had many spectacular failures, and that seemed to be the focus of the book. If the agency was as bad (and as corrupt) as the book portrays it, why has it lasted so long?
So, all in all, interesting, but a disappointing read.
DARPA has a long history and has had some world-changing accomplishments (including the internet, not invented by Al Gore after all). However, it seems to have had many spectacular failures, and that seemed to be the focus of the book. If the agency was as bad (and as corrupt) as the book portrays it, why has it lasted so long?
So, all in all, interesting, but a disappointing read.
April 27, 2017
Impressively researched account, with voluminous footnotes on sources. The early years were more interesting to me than the latter years, which didn't seem to be covered in as much detail. The author's focus on William Godel was an unusual approach and allowed her to create a cohesive narrative out of what could've been a unconnected discussion of different research projects. I also liked that the author drew conclusions on DARPA's past and current research focus, rather than simply covering the agency's areas of research. A recommended read for those interested in the history of DARPA or defense technology development.
September 21, 2018
It was ok. A good bit of the book seemed to say, here's an organization of bright people with more money than they know what to do with, very little supervision or guidance, and lets see what we can come up with.
Oh, sure, they developed the basics of the internet, stealth technology and a lot of other stuff, but they wasted money and effort like it was water.
My constant thought throughout the book was, shut this thing down. It wouldn't be missed. Everything they developed would have eventually been developed.
I guess the thing that bothered me the most is lack of direction and accountability.
Oh, sure, they developed the basics of the internet, stealth technology and a lot of other stuff, but they wasted money and effort like it was water.
My constant thought throughout the book was, shut this thing down. It wouldn't be missed. Everything they developed would have eventually been developed.
I guess the thing that bothered me the most is lack of direction and accountability.
October 31, 2018
Interesting history, but one that bounces around a lot in an attempt to weave a narrative. The book is largely successful in pulling from the history of DARPA, a story on how an agency can both create real-world solutions and foster innovation with far-reaching implications. While classified material likely makes any other ending impossible, it leaves much to be desired in the way that the post 9-11 agency story plays out. I personally wanted more connections drawn from the Total Information Awareness program to the programs that have subsequently been revealed by Edward Snowden as taking place in secret at the NSA.
July 18, 2017
DARPA, the research wing of the military is famous for the Stealth bomber and the internet, but the history is a little more checkered. Weinberger digs into the projects and personalities that made this agency the legend that it is, the gambles and the misses that are also part of its history.
Why I started this book: I put the title on hold as soon as I saw the title. And I started the audio as soon it was my turn.
Why I finished it: This is a great audio, that kept the pace up and the facts flowing.
Why I started this book: I put the title on hold as soon as I saw the title. And I started the audio as soon it was my turn.
Why I finished it: This is a great audio, that kept the pace up and the facts flowing.
September 23, 2017
I have read "The Department of Mad Science", which portrays DARPA as a dazzling success of Government sponsored innovation machine, producing the GPS, the Internet, robots, brain-controlled prosthesis, etc. "The Imagineers of War" depicts DARPA history in a completely different light. According to this book, in DARPA, failure is the norm and success are accidental. It also puts DARPA into the big picture, recounting how the needs of wars and national politics drove DARPA's mission, focus, and modes of operation. This is a very thought provoking book.
July 18, 2019
A book on DARPA could chronicle the most influential people in the organization’s history or it could cover the different innovations/products. This book tries to do both and is clumsy and mediocre in the attempt. Also a distractor is the sheer number of individuals that the book incorporates. It is far too many individuals and would have benefitted from some triage. The internet and stealth bombers are the major success stories. There are a couple of middle tier successful innovations, and there are a whole lot of failures—which is about right for an innovation cell.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 1, 2021
What I expected: A look inside an institutional culture that sustained innovation almost miraculously for decades.
The impression I got: Multiple agencies over time, each evolving into the next and taking on the personality of the leadership and the obsessions of the day.
The view from the inside was a lot more mundane than the view from the outside of all the innovations it's been involved with. More about the bureaucracy behind the technology than the technology itself. Absolutely worthy of documentation, but not like a Neal Stephenson novel brought to life.
The impression I got: Multiple agencies over time, each evolving into the next and taking on the personality of the leadership and the obsessions of the day.
The view from the inside was a lot more mundane than the view from the outside of all the innovations it's been involved with. More about the bureaucracy behind the technology than the technology itself. Absolutely worthy of documentation, but not like a Neal Stephenson novel brought to life.
November 13, 2019
Based on the incredible history of (D)ARPA you could write a gripping story of amazing technology instead of this sprawling review of people working for the agency. Every time a project was mentioned I would get excited only to be disappointed by the focus on office gossip, dinners, backstabbing, personal successes and failures and peoples' opinions on... other people. What a waste of extensive research.
September 15, 2023
Just a history of DARPA. Not bad but not super exciting. Was hoping to hear more about ARPAnet but it spent way more time talking about failed projects like AGILE and how it did Agent Orange in Vietnam. It touched on Grand Challenge at the end but the history ends around 2012 so doesn't touch on any newer or cyber projects.
September 21, 2018
I found portions of the history interesting. Perhaps portions of DARPA have been a success and others not so. Most of their contributions were not realized initially. So much of it is about counter insurgence. Nothing wrong with the writing, but the book could have been shorter.
January 14, 2019
This book is for people who are fascinated with the history of DARPA, whereas I discovered I'm only mildly interested in the agency. Well written, and very detailed. The book tells colorful stories of bureaucracy and secrecy.
November 18, 2020
An important book if you’re interested in the history of modern innovation. Not sure it would be that interesting to a general audience. Certainly some of the anecdotes would be though! The writing was OK.
November 3, 2025
Weinberger’s all-things-considered review of DARPA is roughly, “The details are sometimes very compelling, but sometimes disappointing or worse, and it’s not clear that the whole enterprise has a clear sense of its own purpose.” This is slightly more negative than I would be about Weinberger’s book, but otherwise dead on: details are excellent, overall theory is lacking.
The depths of interviews here, mostly with past directors and program managers at the agency, and of the archival and FOIA work that Weinberger did is incredible. There’s a nice little detail toward the end where we learn she FOIAed an internal history the agency made for itself, including interviews with all its living past directors. She clearly knows this place inside and out and can track the evolution of, say, its work on brain-computer interfaces from the 1970s through the present. She can connect the counterinsurgency work Walter Godel was doing in Vietnam and Thailand to its revival in Afghanistan a half-century later.
The choices of what to emphasize and focus on within that vast history are not, usually, the ones I would’ve made. Weinberger’s background is as a defense/national security reporter and she is clearly much more compelled by zany schemes to electrify the atmosphere to fry ICBMs and counterinsurgency initiatives and stealth bombers than she is by what most of us would consider DARPA’s lasting legacies. GPS, for instance, is barely touched on. ARPANet gets its due, but I would argue not nearly enough relative to things like stealth and a bad portable Pashto translator.
The book is from 2017, so DARPA having made a crucial investment in Moderna in 2013 does not get mentioned, but the point is that there are many examples like that and Weinberger touches on only a few. Onion routing, as used by Tor and essential to encrypted/privacy-protecting internet usage today, derives from a DARPA project. It’s not in here.
One of her main thematic points is that for all its celebrated successes, DARPA also had many failures. The obvious rejoinder to this is, “well yeah, that’s the whole point.” It’s supposed to operate like a venture capital firm, making high-risk, high-reward bets, most of which will fail, in hope that a meaningful minority produce benefits vast enough to swamp the costs of the failures. Weinberger does not try to do an accounting of that ledger, nor should she; it’s not the place for a qualitative history like this. But the whole reason people, including people with no normal interest in defense matters, care about DARPA is that the minority of projects that succeeded included, like, the whole fucking internet.
The best case against this perspective Weinberger offers is that some of the failures produced direct harm, rather than producing nothing. The chapters on Vietnam offer many illustrations here, as does the chapter on John Poindexter and Total Information Awareness, which she persuasively links to the broader surveillance efforts Snowden uncovered. When Kleiner Perkins invests in Juicero, the worst thing that happens is everyone realizes the product is dumb and the company goes bankrupt and John Doerr loses some money. No one gets killed. Sometimes DARPA’s failures cost lives.
Fair enough, and a good counterpoint to uncritical DARPA boosterism. But you don’t have to be a hagiographer to think the agency has had a much bigger impact, given its budget, than almost any other in the Pentagon or the federal government, and that its structure and culture account for a lot of that. At times Weinberger offers some detail about why, say, it had so much less red tape than other Pentagon components, but these moments are too infrequent and scattered.
In the conclusion she dismisses the very idea that the agency might have useful lessons for other sectors or organizations. “Politicians, economists, and techies regularly exalt the ‘DARPA model,’ even though it is unclear what the model is … Should organizations get rid of all their employees every three to five years, as DARPA does? Should science agencies do away with peer review, as DARPA often does, in order to pursue revolutionary ideas?” I don’t know, should they? The point that DARPA’s structure changed a lot over time is well-taken, but by Weinberger’s own account some of essentials (frequent PM turnover, rapid grant approval, willingness to work with industry as well as academics, huge freedom given to individual staffers) persist over time. It feels like a copout to throw up your hands at say “well it’s too complicated to learn from.” It’s the job of a book like this to simplify it.
The depths of interviews here, mostly with past directors and program managers at the agency, and of the archival and FOIA work that Weinberger did is incredible. There’s a nice little detail toward the end where we learn she FOIAed an internal history the agency made for itself, including interviews with all its living past directors. She clearly knows this place inside and out and can track the evolution of, say, its work on brain-computer interfaces from the 1970s through the present. She can connect the counterinsurgency work Walter Godel was doing in Vietnam and Thailand to its revival in Afghanistan a half-century later.
The choices of what to emphasize and focus on within that vast history are not, usually, the ones I would’ve made. Weinberger’s background is as a defense/national security reporter and she is clearly much more compelled by zany schemes to electrify the atmosphere to fry ICBMs and counterinsurgency initiatives and stealth bombers than she is by what most of us would consider DARPA’s lasting legacies. GPS, for instance, is barely touched on. ARPANet gets its due, but I would argue not nearly enough relative to things like stealth and a bad portable Pashto translator.
The book is from 2017, so DARPA having made a crucial investment in Moderna in 2013 does not get mentioned, but the point is that there are many examples like that and Weinberger touches on only a few. Onion routing, as used by Tor and essential to encrypted/privacy-protecting internet usage today, derives from a DARPA project. It’s not in here.
One of her main thematic points is that for all its celebrated successes, DARPA also had many failures. The obvious rejoinder to this is, “well yeah, that’s the whole point.” It’s supposed to operate like a venture capital firm, making high-risk, high-reward bets, most of which will fail, in hope that a meaningful minority produce benefits vast enough to swamp the costs of the failures. Weinberger does not try to do an accounting of that ledger, nor should she; it’s not the place for a qualitative history like this. But the whole reason people, including people with no normal interest in defense matters, care about DARPA is that the minority of projects that succeeded included, like, the whole fucking internet.
The best case against this perspective Weinberger offers is that some of the failures produced direct harm, rather than producing nothing. The chapters on Vietnam offer many illustrations here, as does the chapter on John Poindexter and Total Information Awareness, which she persuasively links to the broader surveillance efforts Snowden uncovered. When Kleiner Perkins invests in Juicero, the worst thing that happens is everyone realizes the product is dumb and the company goes bankrupt and John Doerr loses some money. No one gets killed. Sometimes DARPA’s failures cost lives.
Fair enough, and a good counterpoint to uncritical DARPA boosterism. But you don’t have to be a hagiographer to think the agency has had a much bigger impact, given its budget, than almost any other in the Pentagon or the federal government, and that its structure and culture account for a lot of that. At times Weinberger offers some detail about why, say, it had so much less red tape than other Pentagon components, but these moments are too infrequent and scattered.
In the conclusion she dismisses the very idea that the agency might have useful lessons for other sectors or organizations. “Politicians, economists, and techies regularly exalt the ‘DARPA model,’ even though it is unclear what the model is … Should organizations get rid of all their employees every three to five years, as DARPA does? Should science agencies do away with peer review, as DARPA often does, in order to pursue revolutionary ideas?” I don’t know, should they? The point that DARPA’s structure changed a lot over time is well-taken, but by Weinberger’s own account some of essentials (frequent PM turnover, rapid grant approval, willingness to work with industry as well as academics, huge freedom given to individual staffers) persist over time. It feels like a copout to throw up your hands at say “well it’s too complicated to learn from.” It’s the job of a book like this to simplify it.
July 29, 2018
Here is a comprehensive, outsider history of DARPA, an organization that few truly understand. It is also a government lab that has always been on the edge of science (however weird) and the edge of being closed down by small minded individuals.
I learned a lot about DARPA's early history and that our military is always trying to fight the last war. I didn't know that DARPA was the original holder of the US space program after the launch of Sputnik. I also didn't know that after that the organization was spending a lot of effort to explore counterinsurgency methods in Vietnam. Godel wanted to find ways to empower the local population in order to not have the US military intervene. But that didn't work out in the end.
The history of DARPA, as it winds its way through 50+ years of the Cold War and the War on Terror, is a place where amazing things happen in spite of those outside the organization. It knows how to take risks, to try new things when no one else will. The researchers really want to help the US, but they can get lost in their own work. It is an idea factory that leads to more advancement overall because of their desire to risk. Then try something else. True inovation can only occur in such environments, where the thinkers are left alone by management.
There is a lot of amazing technology within these pages. Though some is amazing in the context of the time they were developed. Nowadays some of the technology is common place. The Internet is one. Man-Machine interfacing is another. This is before SRI got the contract to develop future computer interface ideas, such as GUI's & mice. But also DARPA pushed for time sharing computers, which would then connected together. I knew about aerial drones getting support in their early development by DARPA. That effort eventually became the Predator. But I didn't know DARPA was trying to deploy drones in Vietnam.
Many other places in the US government have tried to replicate the success of DARPA, but all have failed. Just like many parts of the world have tried to recreate Silicon Valley but never really get it right. The mix of culture and freedom have a lot to do with it. DARPA doesn't need endless committee meetings to fund an idea. Lockheed's Skunk Works is one example that works, as is Bell Labs. But those are rare. At a previous high tech big company where I was employed, the high level executives didn't look to the various product teams to develop cutting edge technology. They had built their own Skunk Works within the company, at a building far from the main campus. There they could focus without distractions to come up with really neat stuff, which would then be handed to the product teams to incorporate. This is the DARPA model in high tech. But it is also a sad commentary that the majority of such companies are not innovating the next big thing. For humans to innovate they need support, but also a quiet space to dream the big ideas that will carry us forward. Without DARPA, the world would have been a much different place.
I learned a lot about DARPA's early history and that our military is always trying to fight the last war. I didn't know that DARPA was the original holder of the US space program after the launch of Sputnik. I also didn't know that after that the organization was spending a lot of effort to explore counterinsurgency methods in Vietnam. Godel wanted to find ways to empower the local population in order to not have the US military intervene. But that didn't work out in the end.
The history of DARPA, as it winds its way through 50+ years of the Cold War and the War on Terror, is a place where amazing things happen in spite of those outside the organization. It knows how to take risks, to try new things when no one else will. The researchers really want to help the US, but they can get lost in their own work. It is an idea factory that leads to more advancement overall because of their desire to risk. Then try something else. True inovation can only occur in such environments, where the thinkers are left alone by management.
There is a lot of amazing technology within these pages. Though some is amazing in the context of the time they were developed. Nowadays some of the technology is common place. The Internet is one. Man-Machine interfacing is another. This is before SRI got the contract to develop future computer interface ideas, such as GUI's & mice. But also DARPA pushed for time sharing computers, which would then connected together. I knew about aerial drones getting support in their early development by DARPA. That effort eventually became the Predator. But I didn't know DARPA was trying to deploy drones in Vietnam.
Many other places in the US government have tried to replicate the success of DARPA, but all have failed. Just like many parts of the world have tried to recreate Silicon Valley but never really get it right. The mix of culture and freedom have a lot to do with it. DARPA doesn't need endless committee meetings to fund an idea. Lockheed's Skunk Works is one example that works, as is Bell Labs. But those are rare. At a previous high tech big company where I was employed, the high level executives didn't look to the various product teams to develop cutting edge technology. They had built their own Skunk Works within the company, at a building far from the main campus. There they could focus without distractions to come up with really neat stuff, which would then be handed to the product teams to incorporate. This is the DARPA model in high tech. But it is also a sad commentary that the majority of such companies are not innovating the next big thing. For humans to innovate they need support, but also a quiet space to dream the big ideas that will carry us forward. Without DARPA, the world would have been a much different place.
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