“colorful examples”: Robin Hanson, The Policy Analysis Market (and FutureMAP) Archive, mason.gmu.edu.
“The idea of a federal betting parlor”: “Amid Furor, Pentagon Kills Terrorism Futures Market,” CNN.com, July 30, 2003.
“The congressmen and senators”: Poindexter, interview with author.
“Congress claimed they had closed”: If there is some irony to Poindexter’s pursuit of Total Information Awareness, it is that he was actually one of the first people to be convicted of a crime based on evidence gathered from an early version of electronic communications. When the investigation into Iran-contra started in November 1986, Poindexter wiped out more than five thousand electronic messages. The messages were recovered from a two-week backup system and became key evidence against him at trial. See Lawrence E. Walsh, Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, vol. 1, Investigations and Prosecutions (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1993).
“would take too long”: Poindexter, correspondence with author.
The Advanced Research and Development Activity: Poindexter, interview with author. The transfer to the NSA is also detailed in Harris, Watchers, 246.
“ring-knocking master of deceit”: Safire, “You Are a Suspect.”
Poindexter envisioned Cherry Vanilla World: Poindexter, interview with author.
Total Information Awareness, Poindexter insisted: Quantifying the impact of Poindexter is difficult. The most apt description comes from Harris, who credits him as “a source of philosophical gravity” for those who pioneered today’s data collection systems. Harris, Watchers, 363.
“Some government officials”: Aftergood, correspondence with author.
“They thought we were making”: Goldblatt, interview with author.
“We got rid of that crazy”: Garreau, Radical Evolution, 270.
“I came over to tell you”: Tether, interview with Williams/Gerard. In his interview, Tether says that Rumsfeld communicated with him through intermediaries, like Gingrich. In general, Rumsfeld’s lack of interest in DARPA is reflected in the dearth of material in his online archive of documents from his government career. That view is similarly confirmed by George Heilmeier, whose time at DARPA spanned part of Rumsfeld’s first term as defense secretary.
“greatest strategic thrust”: Tether, interview with Williams/Gerard.
Futuristic aircraft were fine: In the years following September 11, DARPA funded a series of quick-reaction projects to assist with deployed forces, but most involved specific tactical technologies, like a sniper detection system.
CHAPTER 18: FANTASY WORLD
“I believe strongly”: Tether, correspondence with the author, via DARPA public affairs, 2007.
“Imagine 25 years from now”: Tether, DARPATech 2002.
“Welcome to our world!”: Tony Tether, opening speech, DARPATech 2004.
“polymer ice”: “We drew a picture of an adversary slipping down the stairs in a building,” said Mitchell Zakin, the DARPA program manager who came up with the idea. Tether approved it immediately. Zakin, interview with author.
“hafnium bomb”: Sharon Weinberger, “Scary Things Come in Small Packages,” Washington Post Magazine, March 26, 2004.
“Gee, probably all the people”: Tether, interview with Williams/Gerard.
His favorite phrase: Ibid. In the interview, Tether used the expression “holy cow” twelve times.
“People, especially people”: Ibid. Considering that a New York Times op-ed kicked off the debate, it is hard to countenance Tether’s view that privacy concerns over Total Information Awareness were solely a product of West Coast liberals out of touch with the realities of war.
Shortly before Dunn retired: Prizes for scientific or technical achievements were not new; the British government in the nineteenth century had offered rewards for ways to calculate geographic longitude, to help ships navigate. Among the winners was John Harrison, who developed the chronometer. But there was no precedent for a U.S. government prize.
Robotics was one of the early suggestions: Dunn, interview with author.
He envisioned a 250-mile: Tether, interview with Williams/Gerard.
In the end, however: Ibid.
“belly straddling the outer edge”: Joseph Hooper, “From DARPA Grand Challenge 2004: DARPA’s Debacle in the Desert,” Popular Science, April 6, 2004.
“I know you guys”: Tether, interview with Williams/Gerard.
by 2004, it had dropped: John Markoff, “Pentagon Redirects Its Research Dollars,” New York Times, April 2, 2005.
“The message of the complaints”: U.S. House, The Future of Computer Science Research in the U.S., 41.
In 2002, he suddenly ended: The JASONs, who had started out as mostly physicists, had diversified over the years, adding members from the disciplines of biology, chemistry, and computer science, among others. But the younger members were often busier—and less visible—than the older members, and the perception was that the JASONs were an aging group of physicists out of touch with disciplines of interest to the Defense Department. Their reputation was still for brilliance, but also arrogance.
The JASONs, who had long prided themselves: Fernandez, interview with author.
“We actually thought it was interesting”: Horvitz, interview with author.
Horvitz and Schmorrow did not realize: Lawrence recalled running into Tether at a retirement party, and when Lawrence brought up biocybernetics, Tether was surprised to hear about it. Lawrence said Tether invited him to DARPA to talk about the program. “Later on, I called,” Lawrence said. “I was met by a very patronizing response as though I was a prospective contractor trying to sneak in the side door. ‘What exactly did Dr. Tether say to you? What do you mean? How long ago was this? He’s busy.’ ” Lawrence, interview with author.
“When I came to see Dylan”: Donchin, interview with author.
scientists still disagreed: Mary Cummings, interview with author.
To illustrate its vision: During the Cold War, the military had often created informational films about ambitious projects, featuring real footage of military tests, narrated by stiff military officers. In more recent years, DARPA, and the military, have hired professional PR firms to craft slick marketing videos featuring real actors, animation, and special effects.
“I’m a data guy”: Gevins, interview with author.
“It clearly was fake”: Ibid.
In a published critique: M. L. Cummings, “Technology Impedances to Augmented Cognition,” Ergonomics in Design 18, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 25.
“What didn’t I see?”: Cummings, interview with author.
“When I asked them”: Ibid.
“There would be a dozen guys”: Hughes, interview with author.
“Where DARPA started to fall”: Cummings, interview with author.
The allure of science fiction: Perhaps the strangest part of DARPA’s Augmented Cognition program was that in the very same building, Michael Goldblatt’s Defense Science Office was sponsoring research on an entirely different approach to brain-computer interface, this time working with actual sensors implanted in the brain. When asked about whether there was any connection or cooperation between the two seemingly related programs, Goldblatt said simply, “No. I’ll leave it at that.” Goldblatt, interview with author.
Instead of a windshield: Roland, Strategic Computing, 226.
The smart truck did this badly: Pollack, “Pentagon Wanted a Smart Truck.”
When Carnegie Mellon researchers: Roland, Strategic Computing, 230.
One of the first things he did: Jackel, interview with author.
Even Congress was possessed: Section 220 of the Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (H.R. 4205/P.L. 106-398), Oct. 30, 2000.
“It was meant to be able”: Jackel, interview with author.
“I never said anything”: Tether, interview with Williams/Gerard.
Thrun, along with several other competitors: Jackel, interv
iew with author. Thrun dropped out of LAGR after the first phase to focus on the Grand Challenge.
“It was our secret weapon”: Burkhard Bilger, “Auto Correct: Has the Self-Driving Car at Last Arrived?,” New Yorker, Nov. 25, 2013.
A dark horse candidate: Lee Gomes, “Team of Amateurs Cuts Ahead of Experts in Computer-Car Race,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 19, 2005.
“Holy cow, we did it”: Tether, interview with Williams/Gerard.
But it is impossible to ignore: Carnegie Mellon built the LAGR vehicles, and Stanford’s Thrun had been one of the funded research teams.
“At some place”: Jackel, interview with author.
At one point, competing vehicles: Michael Belfiore, “Slow-Motion Train Wreck at Auto-Bot Race,” Wired News, March 3, 2007.
“Imagine if we had convoys”: Gerry J. Gilmore, “Research Agency Showcases Robot-Driven Vehicles at Pentagon,” American Forces Press Service, April 11, 2008.
“Total Information Awareness got to the point”: Tether, interview with Williams/Gerard.
“George Orwell America”: Cynthia L. Webb, “Someone to Watch Over Us,” Washington Post, Nov. 21, 2002.
When Tether took over in 2001: Department of Defense Fiscal Year (FY) 2005 Budget Estimates February 2004, Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation, Defense-Wide, vol. 1, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA’s budget was linked to the overall Pentagon budget, so as the military’s budget started to grow with the war on terror, DARPA rode on its coattails.
No one in the Pentagon: The Rumsfeld library, Donald Rumsfeld’s online repository of correspondence from his government career, rarely mentions DARPA.
If during the Vietnam War: The Pentagon’s post-9/11 program to send anthropologists to Iraq and Afghanistan, called the Human Terrain System, was reminiscent of DARPA’s Vietnam-era work but had nothing to do with the modern agency. “DARPA, as you know, has a particular organizational culture, which under Tony Tether was very anti–social science,” wrote Montgomery McFate, the creator of the program, when asked why DARPA was never involved in the work. “DARPA, under program manager Bob Popp, was running a social science program called [Pre-conflict Anticipation and Shaping], which was involved in developing models to predict political instability. Tony Tether was not exactly supportive of it.” McFate, correspondence with author.
public face of DARPA’s war effort: Tony Tether, DARPATech 2004 speech.
A DARPA program manager working: “Transforming the Defense Industrial Base: A Roadmap,” Office of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, Industrial Policy, 2003, B-125.
“It sucked”: Zemach, interview with author.
The Afghan smiled: Ibid.
Even in the rarefied atmosphere: Kevin Geib and Laurie Marshall, “Voice Recognition Evaluation Report” (prepared for Office of Science and Technology National Institute of Justice, Washington, D.C., Oct. 7, 2003), 44.
“Took too long to translate”: James D. Walrath, “Phraselator Questionnaire Responses, Army Research Laboratory,” ARL-TN-0350, May 2009.
When it came to modern threats: When the war in Iraq turned into a full-blown insurgency, and roadside bombs became the number one killer of U.S. forces, DARPA “could have, but did not have a major role” in solving the IED problem, argued Robert Moore, a former deputy director of DARPA. Instead, the army formed its own team, the Rapid Equipping Force, and then the Office of the Secretary of Defense created the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, a dedicated bomb-fighting agency. Moore, e-mail correspondence with author.
Luke Skywalker–inspired prosthetic: Michael Chorost, “A True Bionic Limb Remains Far Out of Reach,” Wired, March 20, 2012.
In his final year of congressional testimony: Statement by Tony Tether, director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Submitted to the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats, and Capabilities, House Armed Services Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, March 13, 2008.
CHAPTER 19: RETURN OF VOLDEMORT
“If you supply data”: Anonymous scientist, interview with author.
“greatest influence on Petraeus’s thinking”: Kaplan, Insurgents, 17.
the French officer: The book that Petraeus read, according to Kaplan, was Galula’s Counterinsurgency: Theory and Practice, which was not part of Project AGILE. However, Counterinsurgency was preceded by Galula’s more substantial work, the DARPA-supported Pacification in Algeria, 1956–1958. Galula’s writing was also heavily influenced by his attendance at a 1962 ARPA-sponsored counterinsurgency conference. Ann Marlow, David Galula: His Life and Intellectual Context (Carlisle, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, 2010), 7–9, 48.
“By 2009 [counterinsurgency] was”: Greg Jaffe, review of The Insurgents, by Fred Kaplan, and My Share of the Task, by Stanley A. McChrystal, Washington Post, Jan. 6, 2013.
When she started making: Dugan was described as “swaggering and stylish, with a helmet of thick, dark hair, piercing eyes, and a penchant for jeans, leather jackets, and scarves.” Miguel Helft, “Google Goes DARPA,” Fortune, Aug. 14, 2014.
Dugan’s financial ties: Noah Shachtman and Spencer Ackerman, “DARPA Chief Owns Stock in DARPA Contractor,” Wired News, March 7, 2011.
“There is a time and a place”: Statement by Dr. Regina E. Dugan, director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Submitted to the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, U.S. House of Representatives, March 1, 2011. Ironically, however, Dugan did support a whimsical DARPA contract for a “100 Year Starship” designed to travel to the stars.
The Information Processing Techniques Office: Lee, interview with author. This view was also expressed in other author interviews.
“You know, Peter”: Ibid.
“pure expression of what DARPA”: Ibid.
“Oh my God”: Ibid.
“program that shall not be named”: Dugan, interview with author.
“very top secret”: “Transcript: Bob Woodward Talks to ABC’s Diane Sawyer About ‘Obama’s Wars,’ ” ABC News, Sept. 27, 2010.
It was designed: Siobhan Gorman, Adam Entous, and Andrew Dowell, “Technology Emboldened the NSA: Advances in Computer, Software Paved Way for Government’s Data Dragnet,” Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2013.
“If you’re smart enough”: Rustan, interview with Ben Iannotta, “Change Agent,” Defense News, Oct. 8, 2010.
“a steady stream”: Lee, interview with author.
“That idea might be stupid”: Ibid.
“trivial”: Andy Greenberg, “Mining Human Behavior at MIT,” Forbes, Aug. 12, 2010.
“social physics”: Pentland, interview with author.
“If you look at the models”: Ibid.
At the NSA, Garrett had been a key official: J. Nicholas Hoover, “NSA Using Cloud Model for Intelligence Sharing,” Information Week, July 20, 2009.
“essentially every kind of data”: Gorman, Entous, and Dowell, “Technology Emboldened the NSA.”
Afghanistan, after ten years: In 2014, it was revealed, as a result of documents leaked by Edward Snowden, that the NSA was intercepting, recording, and storing almost every cell phone call made in Afghanistan. “WikiLeaks Statement on the Mass Recording of Afghan Telephone Calls by the NSA,” May 23, 2014, wikileaks.org.
“Someone made the observation”: Lee, interview with author.
“For example, we were trying”: Ibid.
“You’re from DARPA”: Dugan, interview with author.
“BIG BREAKTHROUGH”: Department of Defense Inspector General, “Report of the Investigation: Doctor Regina E. Dugan, Former Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,” April 9, 2013.
One, called More Noses: More Noses, for reasons not publicly explained, never got beyond the drawing board. Richard Weiss (DARPA public affairs officer), conversation with author, Nov. 14, 2014. “It didn’t get past the idea stage,” Weiss said.
More Eyes, together with More Noses: Department of Defense Inspector General, “Report of the In
vestigation: Doctor Regina E. Dugan, Former Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”
“When Nexus 7 started up”: Pentland, interview with author.
“actually build this big data”: Anonymous social scientist, interview with author.
The program was a direct carryover: Ibid.
“For the military, social networks”: Department of Defense Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 President’s Budget Submission, DARPA, Justification Book, vol. 1, April 2013.
“how can we take all that data”: Cosby, interview with author.
Dugan believed she could avoid: Dugan also set up a privacy panel. Dugan, interview with author.
“We had to have cover stories”: Lee, interview with author.
price of exotic vegetables: Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency, 60.
“Go and go faster”: Dugan, interview with author.
“I should have been with them”: Lee, interview with author.
“It was the first operational deployment”: Dugan, interview with author.
“a 90-day Skunk Works activity”: Statement by Regina E. Dugan, director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Submitted to the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, U.S. House of Representatives, March 1, 2011.
But much of the data: Noah Shachtman, “Inside DARPA’s Secret Afghan Spy Machine,” Wired News, July 21, 2011.
DARPA was touting Nexus 7’s successes: Ibid.
The Synergy Strike Force was always: Sean Gorman, interview with author.
There were a few “burners”: Brian Calvert, “The Merry Pranksters Who Hacked the Afghan War,” Pacific Standard, July 1, 2013.
“the tiki bar at the edge of the universe”: McCarthy, interview with Vinay Gupta on Taj Beer for Data, youtube.com.
“super-powered geeks”: Matthew Borgatti, “The Synergy Strike Force at STAR-TIDES,” Oct. 10, 2011, GWOB.org.
In 2010, around the time: Huffman, interview with author.
Ushahidi: Anand Giridharadas, “Africa’s Gift to Silicon Valley: How to Track a Crisis,” New York Times, March 13, 2010.
The Imagineers of War Page 52