Personally, I think that if your adversaries are doing just that, a grant with a title related to that makes sense, both to understand the problem domain and to defend against it. Yes, I would want the department of defense to be funding research in this area.
Maybe more importantly, I would not expect anyone to glean anything useful about said research from a title entry in a grants database, or maybe from anything in the grant description. I especially think it's absurd to expect an individual coming from outside government, who is unfamiliar with the details of what is going on at DARPA to pull up the title of such projects and immediately have any idea what the hell is happening. I know this from a bit of personal experience with DARPA projects.
There's a part of me that finds Musk's behavior in all of this to be a massive security breach. You can put aside any of the questions about the constitutionality of funding, this is an absurd breach of national security, both in terms of the INFSEC/IT aspect but also in terms of him casually shining spotlights on projects he knows nothing about and knows nothing of the consequences of disclosure.
It's ridiculous how much attention and handwringing there was about Wikileaks and Snowden, and yet we just let a random ignorant (in the sense of having no idea what's going on in the government — otherwise his exercise would have been unnecessary) billionaire with ties to white supremacist groups tap into the federal government and start blasting it on his personal social media platform. If this was anyone else doing these exact same actions during a different administration, they would be arrested and charged with espionage and treason immediately.
To me it's performative empty arrogance with real security consequences, both for the people whose personal information was accessed but also for national intelligence and military strategies and methods.
The government works for the people. In a republic, we have a right to know how our money is being spent.
Calling attention to how the government is spending our national treasury, is a service, not a national security threat. I don't need to know the positions of the Navy Seal teams before they hit a target. I do need to know if DARPA or USAID or the CIA or the FBI is spending money and human resources in a wasteful or corrupt fashion. I do need to know if they are violating the constitution and censoring speech with OUR money. I do expect people who violate American rights to be fired at a minimum and barred from public service. We cannot be free if we cannot hold our government accountable.
Assange and Snowden should be pardoned. However, the President of the United States has unlimited authority to declassify information on whatever terms they wish.
You already had the right to know how the money is spent, you just never bothered to dig through any of the available public databases to look. That stuff has all been online for years. You are also confusing Reuters, the news organization, with Thomson Reuters, its parent company and a major vendor of information technology services.
Consider doing some more information gathering and analysis before letting your feels post.
<< It's ridiculous how much attention and handwringing there was about Wikileaks and Snowden
The two situations are very, very different for reasons that should be relatively obvious. Musk ( via Trump ) has actual mandate to do that.
<< You can put aside any of the questions about the constitutionality of funding, this is an absurd breach of national security, both in terms of the INFSEC/IT aspect but also in terms of him casually shining spotlights on projects he knows nothing about and knows nothing of the consequences of disclosure.
This may be one point I am kinda agreeing with you on.
<< To me it's performative empty arrogance with real security consequences, both for the people whose personal information was accessed but also for national intelligence and military strategies and methods.
Maybe.. just maybe.. some of those methods should be revised in light of day.
<< Yes, I would want the department of defense to be funding research in this area.
I am genuinely of two minds about it so the question is why you think it is a good idea especially given that you also stated the following:
<< I would not expect anyone to glean anything useful about said research from a title entry in a grants database, or maybe from anything in the grant description.
Either it is ok to fund it, because you think it is a good idea or you don't know what it is and still think it is a good idea. I can accept one of those propositions.
Maybe more importantly, I would not expect anyone to glean anything useful about said research from a title entry in a grants database, or maybe from anything in the grant description. I especially think it's absurd to expect an individual coming from outside government, who is unfamiliar with the details of what is going on at DARPA to pull up the title of such projects and immediately have any idea what the hell is happening. I know this from a bit of personal experience with DARPA projects.
There's a part of me that finds Musk's behavior in all of this to be a massive security breach. You can put aside any of the questions about the constitutionality of funding, this is an absurd breach of national security, both in terms of the INFSEC/IT aspect but also in terms of him casually shining spotlights on projects he knows nothing about and knows nothing of the consequences of disclosure.
It's ridiculous how much attention and handwringing there was about Wikileaks and Snowden, and yet we just let a random ignorant (in the sense of having no idea what's going on in the government — otherwise his exercise would have been unnecessary) billionaire with ties to white supremacist groups tap into the federal government and start blasting it on his personal social media platform. If this was anyone else doing these exact same actions during a different administration, they would be arrested and charged with espionage and treason immediately.
To me it's performative empty arrogance with real security consequences, both for the people whose personal information was accessed but also for national intelligence and military strategies and methods.