The Imagineers of War
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“Can you do this mission?”: Tony duPont, interview with author.
“I’ll study it”: Ibid.
That was the beginning of Copper Canyon: Ibid.
The secret mission would require two pilots: Ibid.
“globe-girdling reconnaissance system”: U.S. House, Department of Defense Authorization of Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1986, 661.
“Over the past year”: Ibid.
“Let’s do it”: Heppenheimer, Facing the Heat Barrier, 217.
“Interesting”: Ibid., 218.
“You can’t say that”: Colladay, interview with Williams/Gerard.
“going forward with research”: Ronald Reagan, State of the Union address, Feb. 4, 1986.
“It’s better to have them pissing”: Carol duPont, interview with author.
“There’s where Bob and I”: Atkins, interview with author.
Williams did almost the exact opposite: Tony duPont, interview with author. This version of events is also backed up by several histories of the National Aerospace Plane.
In the meantime, the costs: U.S. General Accounting Office, National Aero-space Plane: Restructuring Future Research and Development Efforts (Washington, D.C.: USGAO, 1992).
“If we stuck with”: Tony duPont, interview with author.
In fact, it could not maneuver: Heppenheimer, Facing the Heat Barrier, 219.
Furious, Robert Duncan: Larry Schweikart, “The Quest for the Orbital Jet: The National Aero-Space Plane Program (1983–1995),” The Hypersonic Revolution: Case Studies in the History of Hypersonic Technology, Vol. 3 (Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1998), 155.
“When I saw that happen”: Cooper, interview with Alex Roland.
Almost $2 billion was spent: U.S. General Accounting Office, National Aero-space Plane: Restructuring Future Research and Development Efforts.
It would spend $30 billion: James A. Abrahamson and Henry F. Cooper, “What Did We Get for Our $30-Billion Investment in SDI/BMD?” (Washington, D.C.: National Institute for Public Policy, 1999).
American Cold War defense spending: Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), National Defense Budget Estimates FY1986, March 1985.
never even took flight: Atkins says the Space Shuttle disaster of January 28, 1986, which killed all seven crew members, spelled the end of DARPA’s X-Wing stealth helicopter. He argues that in the aftermath of Challenger, the space agency did not want to embark on any risky flight tests, let alone a project that was really a cover for a secret military aircraft. Atkins, interview with author. Ray Colladay, on the other hand, says the aircraft’s aerodynamics were flawed. Colladay, correspondence with the author.
CHAPTER 16: SYNTHETIC WAR
In the mid-1980s: Counting tanks was a Cold War obsession of military analysts, and those figures were contested. However, no one disputed that the Warsaw Pact had a quantitative advantage. Jack Mendelsohn and Thomas Halverson, “The Conventional Balance: A TKO for NATO?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 45, no. 2 (1989): 31.
DARPA sent four new simulators: Thorpe, interview with author.
“Significant breakthroughs”: Captain Jack Thorpe, “Future Views: Aircraft Training, 1980–2000,” Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Sept. 15, 1978), Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.
“Well, that’s kind of a neat idea”: Thorpe, interview with author.
That year, DARPA: John Rhea, “Planet SIMNET,” Air Force Magazine, Aug. 1989.
That same year, the first networked: U.S. Cong., Office of Technology Assessment, Distributed Interactive Simulation of Combat (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1995).
In July 1989, Craig Fields: Fields’s lengthy tenure was not without critics. “That is a crime,” Allan Blue, a scientist who had headed DARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office in the 1970s, remarked on Fields’s lengthy tenure. Blue, interview with William Aspray, Charles Babbage Institute.
“Abrasive” was typically the second: Michael Schrage, “Will Craig Fields Take Technology to the Marketplace via Washington?,” Washington Post, Dec. 11, 1992, D3.
“Moving out of the Pentagon”: Fields, interview with Williams/Gerard.
“We trundled out”: Cooper, interview with Roland.
Strategic Computing Initiative: The head of the program was Robert Kahn, a cousin of the famed futurist Herman Kahn, who with Vint Cerf had co-developed the communication protocols that would become the underpinnings of the modern Internet. He returned to DARPA in 1979 to head up the Information Processing Techniques Office, hoping to revive Licklider’s vision of basic research that could revolutionize computer science.
“I came back”: Cooper, interview with Roland.
The Pilot’s Associate: Roland, Strategic Computing Initiative, 283–84.
“giving up its work”: Ray Colladay, the next DARPA director, had almost no interactions with the Strategic Computing Initiative, which was already petering out when he arrived. Yet he called it a “great success.” It was unclear why. Andrew Pollack, “Pentagon Wanted a Smart Truck; What It Got Was Something Else,” New York Times, May 30, 1989.
“It’s over in my mind”: Ibid. Not surprisingly, the Japanese threat that Cooper had hyped back in 1983 in order to get congressional support also turned out to be nothing more than a mirage.
nearly $50 billion: Figures from U.S. Census Bureau, trade in goods with Japan, 1989, www.census.gov.
“There is a basic conflict”: James Fallows, “Containing Japan,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1989.
The agency was funding: Sematech, which was funded by member dues and eventually about half a billion dollars from DARPA, was credited with helping save the U.S. chip-manufacturing base.
“At a time when”: Andrew Pollack, “America’s Answer to Japan’s MITI,” New York Times, March 5, 1989.
Consumer electronics: The critics, however, pointed out the numbers did not back him up. The electronics market was a small fraction of U.S. semiconductor output—about 5 percent by some reports—and HDTV was only 1 percent. Even using more optimistic projections, it was difficult to see how having the Pentagon subsidize the consumer market was really going to help the semiconductor industry. Marc Busch, Trade Warriors: States, Firms, and Strategic-Trade Policy in High-Technology Competition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 104.
“had never run”: Colladay, interview with author.
Gallium arsenide chips: George Whitesides, “Gallium Arsenide: Key to Faster, Better Computing,” Scientist, Oct. 31, 1988.
“other transactions”: NASA had used “other transaction authority” in the past, but the Pentagon had not. Dunn, interview with author.
But Fields wanted to make Gazelle: Ibid.
“She operated in a completely different manner”: Ibid.
On April 9, 1990, DARPA issued a press release: Department of Defense press release.
“Gazelle is typical”: Andrew Pollack, “Pentagon Investment Made in Chip Company,” New York Times, April 10, 1990, D1.
“The Defense Department”: Ibid.
“Bring me the agreement quick”: Dunn, interview with author.
“was somewhat displeased”: Richard Dunn, “A History of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,” 2000, unpublished history. Courtesy of Richard Dunn.
Pentagon officials initially claimed: Defense Daily, April 26, 1990, 150.
“Well, I think you should check”: Fields, interview with Williams/Gerard.
Donald Hicks, who held the position: John Ronald Fox, Defense Acquisition Reform, 1960–2009: An Elusive Goal (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2012), 140.
“Did you hear Craig got fired?”: Herzfeld, Life at Full Speed, 231.
Eight AH-64 army Apache helicopters: There are a number of good accounts of this mission. Richard Mackenzie, “Apache Attack,” Air Force Magazine, Oct. 1991.
“There is no way”: McBride, interview with author.
“We were instantiating”: Ibid.
The F-117’s first bomb: James P. Coyne, “A Strike by Stealth,” Air Force Magazine, March 1992.
“highway of death”: Paul Eng, “High-Tech Radar Plane for Gulf Ground War,” ABC News, March 20, 2003.
“one of the more unlikely heroes”: Peter Grier, “Joint STARS Does Its Stuff,” Air Force Magazine, June 1991.
“Look, we don’t need”: Reis, interview with author.
When DARPA was told: McBride, interview with author.
“He had sort of been put there”: Reis, interview with author.
“It would be like a living history”: Thorpe, interview with author.
“There were still the tread marks”: Ibid.
“You would be able”: Ibid.
Reis, the director, showed the video: Reis, interview with author.
“Gee, if we had this earlier”: Ibid.
Thorpe’s SIMNET: The extent of SIMNET’s contribution to online gaming is open to debate, because the technologies were being developed in parallel. For example, Rtime, a Seattle-based software company, patented its technology for distributed gaming based on its SIMNET work. Teresa Riordan, “Patents: A Dangerous Monopoly?,” New York Times, Feb. 1, 1999.
In technology circles: Wired magazine featured SIMNET and Jack Thorpe in two articles, including its second issue of the magazine. Bruce Sterling, “War Is Virtual Hell,” Wired, March/April 1993; Frank Hapgood, “SIMNET,” Wired, April 1997.
“SIMNET was irrelevant”: Macgregor says the victory at 73 Easting was the result of investments made in people, not technology. He specifically cited live-fire practice with real ammunition in Germany and seven weeks of intensive training in Saudi Arabia. Macgregor, correspondence with author.
“Elegant effort”: Gorman, interview with author.
“I don’t know if we’re”: McBride, interview with author.
difficult to find: “DARPA chief spells out new initiatives,” Defense Daily, March 20, 1992, 475.
DARPA contracted to have a simulation facility: Neyland, Virtual Combat, 58–59. See also Denise Okuda, quoted in “High Tech Comes to Life,” Science Friday, NPR, Aug. 27, 2010.
“You could figure everything”: Murphy, interview with author.
Almost all mention of it: “Warbreaker Tabbed for About $600 Million in FY ’94–99,” Defense Daily, Oct. 6, 1992, 28.
“It’s easy to simulate”: Cosby, interview with author.
In 2000, the same year: Harris, Watchers, 179.
“asymmetric threat is physically small”: Tom Armour, “Asymmetric Threat Initiative” (presentation at DARPATech 2000, Sept. 8, 2000).
The DARPA director that year: Frank Fernandez, interview with author.
CHAPTER 17: VANILLA WORLD
The vice president wanted: Tether, interview with Williams/Gerard.
In the summer of 2001: Ibid.
DarkStar, a stealthy drone: It would take two years before it would fly again, and at that point DARPA was getting ready to turn it over to the air force. In 1999, the Pentagon canceled DarkStar. “It was not a successful design, let’s put it that way,” DARPA’s former director Gary Denman said. Denman, interview with author.
“DARPA had become a backwater”: Tether, interview with Williams/Gerard.
“was a person who liked”: Ibid.
The headlining act: Goldblatt, interview with author.
At DARPA, however, Goldblatt: Ibid. Goldblatt’s interest in the subject was personal. His daughter suffered from cerebral palsy, caused by damage to the developing brain, and he was frustrated after a friend at Harvard Medical School told him it would never be cured.
Goldblatt was inspired by: DARPA’s brain-computer interface might have thought it was inspired by science fiction like Firefox, but more likely Firefox was actually inspired by the DARPA program of the 1970s (the book was published in 1977, not long after reports of the Pentagon’s secret stealth aircraft were leaking to the press and when George Lawrence’s biocybernetics program and the concept of “thought controlled weapons” were making the rounds).
The electrodes would read: See Nicolelis, Beyond Boundaries. Goldblatt’s office was funding Miguel Nicolelis, a neurobiologist at Duke University, who implanted electrodes in a video-game-loving monkey named Aurora. In 2003, Nicolelis’s team announced it had succeeded in getting Aurora to move a robot arm just by thinking about moving it, as if it were her own appendage (and rewarding her with juice). Aurora was taught to use a joystick that manipulated a cursor on a computer screen, as well as a robot arm in another room. After a while, the joystick was removed, but Aurora, who had come to associate the joystick with moving the cursor, continued to manipulate the cursor—and the robot arm—just by thinking about the movement.
Goldblatt’s other ongoing research: Noah Shachtman, “Be More Than You Can Be,” Wired, March 2007.
“It was fantastic”: Ibid. Tether, interview with Williams/Gerard.
Even as threat reports on al-Qaeda surged: 9/11 Commission Report, 266–73.
“to keep someone from taking a plane”: Ibid., 396.
“Hey, looks like another plane”: Tether, interview with Williams/Gerard.
starting to watch television coverage: Based on author’s personal observation inside the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
DARPA had already begun exploring: John Poindexter, interview with author. Some details are also drawn from Harris, Watchers, 93.
The “laboratory” was all smoke: Poindexter, interview with author.
Within months of 9/11: Ibid. Poindexter’s recollection was that the office’s budget for 2002 was $75 million, and $150 million in 2003.
“We really were armor-proofed”: Tether, interview with Williams/Gerard.
He then pursued a doctorate: Poindexter, interview with author.
Poindexter also brought PROFS: Ibid.
Poindexter was later indicted: David Johnston, “Poindexter Is Found Guilty of All 5 Criminal Charges for Iran-Contra Cover-Up,” New York Times, April 8, 1990.
It was an interest dating back: Harris, Watchers, 20–24.
Soon, Poindexter was working: Scientific Engineering Technical Assistance workers, whose numbers had exploded in the Pentagon in recent years, provide everything from low-level administrative assistance to high-level technical advice, as was the case for Poindexter.
“The idea with the technology”: Poindexter, interview with author.
“where we would run exercises”: Ibid.
“Admittedly, we were looking”: Ibid.
“A Manhattan Project for Combating Terrorism”: Ibid.
Poindexter’s idea was to create: In an interview with the author, Poindexter insisted that what he was proposing was pattern analysis, not data mining, which has become a pejorative term. Nonetheless, contemporaneous briefing materials from this period, including Poindexter’s, refer to the DARPA-sponsored work as data mining, so it appears appropriate to use in this case.
“in a compound with barbed wire”: Poindexter, interview with author.
Manhattan Project Terrorism: From Poindexter’s slide presentation, “A Manhattan Project for Combating Terrorism,” Oct. 2001. A copy of the presentation was provided to the author by Poindexter.
Sharkey was earning good money: Poindexter, interview with author. Sharkey’s reluctance to reenter DARPA is also described in O’Harrow, No Place to Hide, 183.
“never really was convicted”: Belfiore, Department of Mad Scientists, 192.
At first, Tether’s belief: John Markoff, “Chief Takes Over New Agency to Thwart Attacks on U.S.,” New York Times, Feb. 13, 2002.
Even though the idea: Poindexter, interview with author.
Poindexter had the Latin phrase: Harris, Watchers, 197.
“I know six good ways”: Lukasik, interview with author.
Vanilla World: Poindexter and Lukasik, interviews with author.
“What this technology means”: Quoted in Surveillance Techn
ology: Joint Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary and the Special Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Commerce of the Committee on Commerce, 5.
“I don’t want to affect”: Eric Horvitz, interview with author.
Unlike the JASONs: Until 2002, DARPA provided the bulk of JASONs funding; the group existed independently and could pursue work with other agencies. ISAT, on the other hand, is run by DARPA and works only for DARPA.
“The idea basically was”: Horvitz, interview with the author.
Horvitz described his concept: What Horvitz was describing is actually more like a panopticon, and yet a “hall of mirrors,” which is about confusion and distortion of images, is somehow appropriate given the misunderstandings about privacy concerns.
“If your search for that pattern”: Poindexter, interview with author.
“It was a Big Brother”: Ibid.
Rotenberg said he understood: Ibid.
“Perfect surveillance”: Rotenberg, correspondence with author.
Over the first half of 2002: Harris, Watchers, 176.
The NSA, not surprisingly: Ibid., 217.
“We have had a lot of fun”: Tony Tether, welcoming speech at DARPATech 2002.
“One of the significant new data sources”: Poindexter, speech at DARPATech 2002. DARPA has removed it from its website, but it is archived on several locations on the Web, including on the Federation of American Scientists website.
“robot race”: Scott Burnell, “DARPA to Fund All-Terrain Robot Race,” UPI, Aug. 2, 2002.
“a vast electronic dragnet”: John Markoff, “Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans,” New York Times, Nov. 9, 2002.
“Every purchase you make”: William Safire, “You Are a Suspect,” New York Times, Nov. 14, 2002.
“I am reading these things”: Tether, interview with the Defense Writers Group, Oct. 22, 2003.
“Tony didn’t understand”: Poindexter, interview with author.
DARPA had awarded contracts: Poindexter pointed out that another aspect of the program was to find some reward other than money to be used by government employees (because it was believed that it would not be acceptable for government employees to use real money). Poindexter, correspondence with author.