If you’re reading this right now, you have one federal agency to thank: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
But DARPA (ARPA before 1972) not only invented the Internet and GPS decades ago, it’s also heavily involved in research into everything, for better or worse. This includes killer robots, maneuverable bullets that can fly six miles (or more), fully automated unmanned combat ships, and self-repairing aircraft. Biological Homesa plant-eating robot (Eatle), self-driving cars (which existed in 1984), light-bending invisibility technology, gene editing, and smart-powered exosuits to create super soldiers. DARPA is funding many projects that go right onto the battlefield itself.
DARPA is generally understood to be at least several decades ahead of the pack when it comes to the technologies and discoveries it keeps secret. The true limits of what DARPA is currently testing are a matter of speculation, but there’s no doubt that the agency would make the most dystopian episodes of “Black Mirror” seem trivial.
Sharon Weinberger wrote in her 2018 book “The imagineers of war“Today, the agency’s past investments spill over onto the battlefield. Amber’s successor, Predator, has enabled America to wage push-button warfare from afar and kill enemies from the comfort of an air-conditioned trailer here at home.”
Among DARPA’s greatest achievements is its first-ever study to expand the reach of America’s vast surveillance state. AI-related projects Launched in the 1960s, the Organization has tested a wide range of lethal biological weapons and bioengineering projects, from Agent Orange to the Brain Initiative program, and explored the possibility of humans controlling devices and technology with their minds.
Then there’s HI-MEMS and Project Dragonfly, miniature flying cyborgs with spy capabilities and solar-powered guidance systems. Remote-controlled rats, mine-sniffing bees, and programmable, shape-shifting claytronics are just some of the things we know about from unclassified, on-the-record projects DARPA has released, some of which are now in civilian and commercial use. How much is going on off the books?
Shadow History
DARPA was founded in 1958 to counter the Soviet Union after the launch of Sputnik, but quickly shifted its focus to space a year later when NASA was founded in 1959. DARPA has become a remarkably unconstrained agency with a vast fund and body of research to invest in enhancing military readiness and technological superiority. Its mission is to stay ahead of the curve and innovate technologies that exceed the knowledge and capabilities of our adversaries.
The Heilmeier Catechism, named after former DARPA director George Heilmeier, accepts or rejects new projects, and research flows through DARPA funds to industry and universities. DARPA is surprisingly small. According to its official website: NoteThe agency has “approximately 220 government employees across six technical offices, including nearly 100 program managers, who collectively oversee approximately 250 research and development programs.”
First, it’s obvious: many of DARPA’s innovations have improved people’s lives in many ways, even though they were originally designed to respond to situations that would result in immediate loss of life or mass loss of life.
Some of the negative effects are also becoming well known. Looking at past efforts such as Operation Ranch Hand, DARPA developed Agent Orange to deforest the jungles where the North Vietnamese enemy was hiding and operating. Millions of gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed a day, devastating enemy and civilian farms alike, causing cancer, health problems and birth defects for generations, including military veterans. Agent Orange was first used in 1962, and by 1965 the presence of dioxin was fully known, and by 1967 the harm to unborn children had been discovered. Use of Agent Orange was discontinued by 1971.
When DARPA and its ally Monsanto were sued by veterans who had become ill from exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, DARPA I just denied it.They are arbitrarily singling out scientists and casting doubt on hundreds of thousands of suffering veterans. In Monsanto’s case, they are quietly The case was resolved. Domestic producers developed cancer and disease from producing and being around the substance in the United States, but no official responsibility was laid.
Killer Technology
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A major problem for DARPA is how much of its work is secret, and its close ties to the intelligence community and the tech industry. Because much of its work is protected as national security secrets, we don’t know the full extent of what DARPA is working on. We do know that DARPA is very interested in tracking people’s thoughts, feelings, and words.
By 1994, a little-known think tank called the Highland Forum had begun to work more closely with the Pentagon and provide an informal link between the technology industry, the defense industry, and the government. Its informal, informal meetings, run by Chatham House rules, meet regularly and without fanfare. The organization is crucial to understanding how the military-industrial complex favored by the president works. Eisenhower warned Information operations is about building bridges between the public and private, the civilian and the military, and it is increasingly defined in terms of shaping beliefs and tracking people’s beliefs as they filter themselves into demographic and ideological categories shaped by the information they get from the vast amounts of information on the Internet.
While the early Internet (ARPANET) grew out of military interests in maintaining radio communication when phone lines and power grids went down, subsequent research into data mining, pattern recognition, and profiling has focused on predicting, understanding, influencing, and even building the choice architectures that shape the behavior of individuals and groups.
Researchers who can direct their research and labs around topics and areas that DARPA may be interested in may hit the jackpot and gain access to a large U.S. government funding system worth billions of dollars per year. By tapping into and supporting unfinished technology, DARPA can engage in cutting-edge research.
The funding mechanisms of big digital data systems have successfully mobilized huge amounts of money through the National Science Foundation, academia, and other entities to devise ways to monitor people more effectively. This was ultimately widely borne out in the Google search engine query crowding and association rule mining developed by Sergey Brin and Larry Page and funded by DARPA. The information people voluntarily provided (or withheld) can now be fed into large AI systems that assign reliable and meaningful digital fingerprints that can predict and influence behavior at scale. The CIA, NSA, and DARPA helped found Google It evolved into what it is today through the Intelligence Community’s Large-Scale Digital Data System Initiative, which operated from 1993 to 1999.
US intelligence agencies have funded numerous start-ups to dominate the information age, while the Highlands Group, DARPA, and secrecy rules have managed to avoid any real accountability for what is being tested and implemented. What we do know is that America’s ongoing involvement in global conflicts, mass surveillance, and increasingly heated rhetoric and profiling of its own population have all become palpable realities over the past few decades.
When former CIA Director and Obama White House National Security Advisor John Brennan announced on January 6, 2021 that government security agencies would pursue all participants who violated the law, “Like a laser.” Brennan was not lying, despite the president’s lack of focus. Incidents then began to occur across the country of people being jailed for merely taking photos, mocking police, or breaking into the Capitol. As Brennan warned at the time, “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, and even liberals” were all on the government’s radar. In some cases, family members had tipped off each other for attending the January 6 protests, in a manner reminiscent of socialist East Germany’s legions of citizen informants in tracking the government’s domestic enemies.
The Age of AI
As I wrote Previous Review Shoshana Zuboff’s book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” Zuboff argues that power structures are “steadily seeking to take away people’s rights, freedoms, and even conscious thought by forcing a new collectivist order on humanity based on the certainty of AI systems, restricting the structures of choice around us, and conceptually steering people onto increasingly tightly controlled paths of thought, decision, and action.”
There are always official-sounding, and perhaps legitimate, reasons for the domestic need for surveillance, advanced military technology, and acceleration. But as Brennan’s threat above shows, the power to define Who Defining exactly whether it is “religious extremist” or “nationalist” and why it is “evil” or “illegal” is beyond the control of anyone other than the administrators. The goalposts can be shifted at any time, and powerful AI systems will click into place and follow suit.
Military advantage and technological development are inextricably linked. The danger, especially in the second half of this century, is that as technology advances rapidly and accountability fades, it becomes increasingly likely that bad actors within governments and bureaucracies could use it to exert undue control over citizens or achieve nefarious ends. Not to mention the risk that hostile foreign powers could copy or infiltrate such projects.
American universities Chinese Communist Party spies infiltrate Other nations opposed to U.S. interests are accelerating DARPA’s investments in surveillance technology and AI unstoppable. Even if it is not publicly announced, it is clear that it is only a matter of time before the tools that can be used against foreign adversaries will also be used against domestic ones, even for purely political or cynical purposes. There is no guarantee as to who will deploy these technologies and why. In the harshest terms, you cannot put the genie back in the bottle.
DARPA is generally considered at least decades ahead of the pack when it comes to the technologies and discoveries it keeps secret. The true limits of what DARPA is currently testing are open to speculation, but there’s no doubt that its tests would make even the most dystopian episodes of “Black Mirror” look tame. Groups like Highlands need more oversight. Regardless of their merits, the truth is clear: out-of-control technocracy is a real threat to American freedom and vitality.
