DARPA Is the Disney of the Defense Department

Angry Planet

Matthew Gault

War, Politics, Conflict, Government, History, News

4.3 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2018

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Without America’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency there would be no internet, no GPS, no M16, and no Agent Orange. The mysterious group of scientists and soldiers created much of today’s military and civilian technology, but the average citizen doesn’t know much about them. That’s by design.

This week on War College, Sharon Weinberger—the executive editor Foreign Policy—reveals the hidden world of the Pentagon’s mad scientists.The agency is the subject of her book Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World, which comes out in Paperback on February 20.

Weinberger walks us through DARPA’s strangest and most savage projects—from it’s early days helping out the space program to its current foray into artificial intelligence and robotics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Love this podcast.
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0:05.0	It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment.
0:09.0	Just click the link in the show description to support now.
0:19.0	In the 2000s, they started holding Darp Attack, the sort of biannual conference at Disneyland in California and you know having office directors
0:25.5	dress up in Disney suits and it was very what I call the Disney-Fauba. But.
0:35.0	You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories
0:40.0	a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines.
0:45.0	Here are your hosts, Matthew Gault.
1:05.0	Better weapons don't always mean victory in a fight.
1:07.8	But if you're fighting with bronze and the other guys got steel, you're likely to lose.
1:12.7	In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and the US freaked out.
1:18.0	Suddenly, our military might look like stone knives and bearskins.
1:22.4	What's a superpower to do? Enter the Defense Advanced Research Projects
1:26.8	Agency.
1:27.8	DARPA Sharon Weinberger is a journalist who covers national security and the author of The Imagineers of War, the untold story of
1:36.3	DARPA, the Pentagon Agency that changed the world. She joins us to talk about the secretive agency
1:42.4	today.
1:43.1	So thanks for joining us, Sharon.
1:44.8	Thanks for having me.
1:46.1	Can we just start off with what exactly is Darpa?
1:50.2	Is it a bunch of government scientists and lab coats in some secret underground bunker or how does it work?
	...

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