
War by any means: The story of DARPA - jonbaer
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2125337-war-by-any-means-the-story-of-darpa/
======
mtgx
I've always hated the argument that said "but look at how much technology has
come out of the military [with all of those tens of trillions of dollars
invested in it over the span of a few decades]!"

Yeah, and imagine how many orders of magnitude more it would've come out if
say NASA had gotten that money, or some other government agency with specific
goals of doing R&D for the consumer market, like say investing $200-$300
billion a year to create better batteries, LCDs, processors, VR tech, and so
on.

The military has spent much of that money on _buying weapons_ , then a large
chunk of it on _researching weapons_ , and whatever consumer technology came
out of _that_ was incidental. It only seems we've gotten "so much", because
the investments were so huge, so even if only 0.1% of the military tech rubbed
off on the consumer market, it still seems like a lot.

A good example of this is how the U.S. government has largely refused to
invest in anything other than radioactive nuclear reactors, preferring nuclear
reactors based on uranium over say thorium, because it could also use the
uranium to build weapons. Perhaps people wouldn't be so against nuclear
reactors now if most of them were using thorium. And maybe we'd even have
nuclear-powered rockets by now, making those Mars trips much shorter.

~~~
zeveb
> I've always hated the argument that said "but look at how much technology
> has come out of the military [with all of those tens of trillions of dollars
> invested in it over the span of a few decades]!"

> Yeah, and imagine how many orders of magnitude more it would've come out if
> say NASA had gotten that money

That _exact_ same argument applies to giving money to NASA. Sure, it has spun
off some useful technology (no, not just Tang, space pens & freeze-dried ice
cream), but while we see that technology, we _don 't_ see the innovations
which _could_ have been developed with that money elsewhere. There's no reason
to think that the state can pick innovative winners any better than it can
pick economic winners.

The reason to spend money on the military is national defense, period — not
some amorphous 'oh, we'll get some cool tech out of it too!' The same applies
to NASA or any other government agency.

~~~
Retric
NASA has developed a _lot_ of technology, but I somewhat agree. Silicon Valley
get's a great reputation, but has fewer real successes than you might think.
The basic problem is your 1000th rocket is not any more innovative than your
1000th dating app.

Which is the core issue, private industry hates investing in long term
research and it has a small problem space. The government funding got self
driving cars close enough to production ready that companies are willing to
finish the process. But, no company was trying to build a freeway capable self
driving car 30 years ago and then publish their results.

------
mirimir
> And there is an eye-popping account of the only underground nuclear test
> ever done in Mississippi.

Wow. Never know that.

[http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/293/nuclear-
bl...](http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/293/nuclear-blasts-in-
mississippi)

~~~
tyingq
I did not know that either. I can't imagine the rationale for testing in a
populated area. Even if the perceived risk was low, the additional cost of
testing in a desolate area can't have been that substantial.

~~~
mirimir
Peaceful uses of nuclear devices was a thing in the 60s.

------
unexistance
I can only wonder what DARPA are doing currently behind all the secrecy,
assuming whatever disclosed in the book is, let say, 20 years back technology.

p/s: there doesn't seems to be a lot of red-tape in approving whatever the
'researchers' wants to do, at least in the past

~~~
fapjacks
You can actually see what DARPA wants to do by looking at their business
solicitations. The US government makes a giant wishlist available as a website
for businesses to browse and submit proposals for. The last few years, the big
ticket item for most organizations is some kind of artificial intelligence
that can intelligently process mountains of data. DARPA wants one, too. But
they're also into some kinkier stuff.

~~~
3131s
As one related example, DARPA is interested in "explainable artificial
intelligence". Essentially machine learning where the decision making process
and intermediary steps are less opaque to humans.

[http://www.darpa.mil/program/explainable-artificial-
intellig...](http://www.darpa.mil/program/explainable-artificial-intelligence)

~~~
killjoywashere
What's funny is Google's actually doing a fair bit of this already with the
TensorFlow playground, flow-based programming, Distill, etc. DoD will shower
money on researchers, but those same researchers will do the work for Google
for stock, a decent salary, and access to interesting problems that don't
involve killing people.

~~~
nl
That's not what "explainable ML is".

That project is about explaining how (say) a given classifier came to a
decision on a given set of data. This is fairly easy on a tree-based
classifier, but on a deep neural network is extremely difficult.

The most impressive piece of work I'm aware of in this area is LIME, from
_“Why Should I Trust You?” Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier_ [1]

The acknowledgement section of that paper read, in part:

 _This work was supported in part by ONR awards #W911NF-13-1-0246 and
#N00014-13-1-0023, and in part by TerraSwarm, one of six centers of STARnet, a
Semiconductor Research Corporation program sponsored by MARCO and DARPA._

Today I saw ELI5[2], which encapsulates LIME and a number of other similar
tools.

[1]
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.04938.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1602.04938.pdf)

[2]
[http://eli5.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](http://eli5.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

------
bane
DARPA exists because the military wants wizards working for it. The military
often describes what units do as various parts of the spear, "tip of the
spear" etc. Science is capable of not only producing a better spear, but
changing the paradigm entirely.

In not even the most rabid fever dreams of generals would an army without
science be capable of even a fraction of the capabilities of an army with.

\- Armies fight on their stomachs - so science produced stay good food that
lasts under any condition for _years_ with special storage, comes in a variety
of menus and even provides for hot menus without the use of fire [1]

\- Soldiers need better tactical capabilities - so science let them see in the
dark [2], become stronger [3], gave them perfect aim [4], gave them god-like
ability to peel back the fog of war [5] and made them nearly indestructible
[6][7]

\- Generals needed more powerful options - so science created nuclear weapons
[8], the ability to see from atop Mount Olympus[9][10], physics bending
intelligence collection capabilities[11], ships that stay beneath the sea for
months [12], combat aircraft that don't put the pilots at risk[13], and tanks
that can survive in any condition [14], and soon the ability to harness energy
to knock enemy munitions from the sky[15] or to through matter at many times
the speed of sound using invisible forces[16]

This combat magnification extends to logistics, information processing,
chemical warfare (and defense), biological warfare (and defense), intelligence
collection and so on.

An equivalent force from the 19th century would be turned into pulp by a force
from today. And our forces probably wouldn't even be in harms way during the
major exchange.

Significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and
scientists and engineers who develop it are the wizards of modern times. DARPA
merely tries to give wizards a place to hone their craft. Sometimes their work
leaks out in the public and we're touched by this magic to make the internet,
or use GPS, safer food, make medicine more life saving and so on. Sometimes
we're on the receiving end of dark magic and our cities get turned to dust.

1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meal,_Ready-to-
Eat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meal,_Ready-to-Eat)

2 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_vision_device](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_vision_device)

3 -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViL4bAUGuGY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViL4bAUGuGY)

4 -
[http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/05/15/184...](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/05/15/184223110/new-
rifle-on-sale)

5 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_Reconnaissance_Squadron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11th_Reconnaissance_Squadron)

6 -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQi7iknSKy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQi7iknSKy0)

7 -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC2pnjN4qT8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC2pnjN4qT8)

8 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon)

9 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle)

10 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconnaissance_satellite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconnaissance_satellite)

11 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON)

12 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_submarine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_submarine)

13 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_combat_aerial_vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_combat_aerial_vehicle)

14 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams)

15 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-
energy_weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon)

16 -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4ZqfEJTGzw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4ZqfEJTGzw)

~~~
arca_vorago
As a USMC OIF combat vet, it's interesting to see the scientific benefits
holistically, but then to realize that unless your enemy wears a uniform and
ammasses against you, you are bound to be able to use almost none of these
technologies, which is why me and my fellow Marines ended up doing the dirty
old style grunt work which was actually closer to policing than it was to
warfighting (most of the time).

The point is, generals tend to; A) fight the last war, and B) over-value
scientifice/technology solutions.

That's not to negate their importance even for knuckle-draggers, for example,
the ability to call in a helo for supporting fire has saved more infantrymen
on the ground than you could imagine. I just think it's important to keep
technological advances in perspective, (especially in an age where
overdependence could create a massive shift in a battlespace if say large
radius EMP's were deployed).

~~~
ryanchants
OEF here. We used our advanced scientific resources to create mine rollers
that cost incredible amounts of money. They were defeated by 30 cent worth of
wire that allowed the pressure plates to moved 12 feet in front of the
explosives.

------
killjoywashere
If you want something more like what you thought DARPA should be, check out
DIUx: [https://www.diux.mil/workwithus/](https://www.diux.mil/workwithus/)

~~~
3131s
And there is also IARPA and HSARPA:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Advanced_Research...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Advanced_Research_Projects_Activity)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSARPA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSARPA)

