Interview: Steven Aftergood discusses DARPA 31 July 2003 NPR: Talk of the Nation NEAL CONAN, host: And now we turn to a story that has been developing over this past week. On Monday, the Pentagon announced that it was looking to set up a commodities market style trading system for investors who would wager on political or even terrorist events. By Tuesday, the idea was dead, brought down by a barrage of criticism on Capitol Hill and a barrage of criticism from the public as well. The agency behind this plan is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as DARPA. Former Admiral John Poindexter, who is a consultant for DARPA, has come under pressure to resign his position. He heads DARPA's Information Awareness Office, and that's been another public relations debacle that DARPA has been involved with. Joining us now to talk about the agency itself is Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst for the Federation of American Scientists. He's with us by phone from his office here in Washington, DC. Thanks for joining us. Mr. STEVEN AFTERGOOD (Federation of American Scientists): Thank you. CONAN: First of all, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. What is it? Mr. AFTERGOOD: Well, it's a component of the Department of Defense. It has been around for decades. It actually was established in 1958 in response to the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite. And its mission generally is to preserve and increase the Defense Department's technological margin of advantage and to advance the state of the art in technologies that are of interest or potential interest to the military. CONAN: And what are some of the technological innovations it has sponsored? Mr. AFTERGOOD: Well, most famously is, of course, the Internet. The Internet originated from an earlier incarnation, the ARPANET, that was generated by DARPA. And the whole concept and field of network communications has been a subject of great investment and great productivity, thanks to DARPA. CONAN: Well, we've had a couple of examples in recent weeks, in fact. The Total Information Awareness program and now this terrorist futures market. I assume that DARPA has been involved in other controversial projects in its past. Mr. AFTERGOOD: There are actually a surprising number of projects that have become controversial or at least drawn public questioning. There's another program recently publicized called LifeLog, which is an attempt to record all kinds of personal experience from physical position, to emotional state, to all kinds of personal activities in digital form and to create a digital diary. Another is a kind of widespread surveillance system called Combat Zones That See, which is intended to create a visual record of a particular area of current or impending conflict. All of these and many others have drawn questions about what their purpose is and what their consequences, intended or unintended, might be. CONAN: We're speaking with Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst for the Federation of American Scientists, about DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. And it seems logical that if you're asking a group of people to push the envelope, if you will, that some of the ideas they're going to come up with are a little wacky. Mr. AFTERGOOD: I think so. And more than that, I think whenever you're concerned about advancing the state of the art and doing something that has not been done before, most of your initiatives are going to fail. So if you're going to be in that business, you have to have a tolerance for failure, and even an expectation of failure. That's just the way progress is achieved. CONAN: You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. If that's the case, the Pentagon is not known to be a failure-happy organization. Is the culture of DARPA a little bit different from that of the other people around the Pentagon? Mr. AFTERGOOD: It is. I mean, it does have an orientation towards innovation, which means it is--where as much of the rest of the Pentagon is technologically conservative and tends to invest and reinvest in the same sorts of technologies, DARPA, by its charter and by the temperament of its leadership, is always looking to do something new and different. CONAN: DARPA, as you mentioned, is an agency within the Defense Department and, obviously, outside of the, you know, Army, Air Force, Marines and the Navy. Who do they report to, the Office of the Secretary of Defense? Mr. AFTERGOOD: Yes. And, I mean, they also are closely interlinked with the other branches of the Defense Department because they are DARPA's ultimate customers. To the extent that its projects are successful, they would be intended to meet a need that has been expressed by one of the military services and to be adopted by them. So they work closely with the other services, but they do answer to the secretary of Defense ultimately. CONAN: Do they come up with ideas and then suggest them to the other services, or do sometimes the services say, you know, `We could really use a submarine that could, you know, travel at twice the speed that we've got now. Is there anything you can do to help us?' Mr. AFTERGOOD: I think there's some of both of that, and also, there's a fair amount of unsolicited proposals coming in from the private sector. It's a somewhat flexible and somewhat informal process. CONAN: So it's--are these people with military rank, as a rule, or are they civilians? Mr. AFTERGOOD: I think they are primarily civilians. And DARPA itself does not actually do this research. DARPA does not have laboratories of its own, and it has, you know, no more than several hundred people on its staff. What it does is to look for and fund promising technology innovations, projects, that could ultimately be applied to military missions. CONAN: So enterprising inventors or developers of technology would write them and say, `We have an interesting idea for, you know, an advanced simulator of some sort,' and they would say yes or no? Mr. AFTERGOOD: Yes. CONAN: OK. So this is the enterprising end of the Pentagon in some respects. Obviously, they're under a lot of political pressure at the moment. As we mentioned, it might be that Admiral Poindexter is going to be asked to step down or might voluntarily resign, at least under pressure. But the agency itself, it seems--is there a need for this that surpasses, you know, these kerfuffles in public controversy? Mr. AFTERGOOD: Certainly. I mean, we are a technologically dependent country. Our military is more heavily reliant on advanced technology than any other in the world. And it is a full-time job, to say the least, to keep the state of the art moving forward and to meet the challenges of increased communication, increased data collection, increased performance in all areas of military activity. And that's what DARPA is for. Now, of course, although they're a technology agency, they are not immune to Washington politics, as they should not be. But one of the things that surprised me most about this latest episode was just how quickly this program of a futures market in terrorism, how quickly it was scuttled following its announcement. And that tells you, I think, that people were poised to go after DARPA. They have acquired an air of suspicion and they have lost a degree of public trust partly because of some of the more peculiar programs they have presented--Total Information Awareness, later Terrorism Information Awareness--and also, with due respect, Admiral Poindexter continues to bear some stigma from his history in the Iran Contra affair. CONAN: President Reagan's national security adviser who was actually convicted, but that was later thrown out on appeal. Mr. AFTERGOOD: Yeah, that's right. And a lot of people have not forgiven him. To my knowledge, he has not publicly apologized. And he remains a figure of suspicion to whom many people are reluctant to entrust too much power or too much authority. CONAN: Steven Aftergood, thanks very much. Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. It's NPR News.