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  • [APPLAUSE]

  • ANNIE JACOBSEN: Thank you so much.

  • Can everyone hear me all right?

  • And thank you so much to Google for having me

  • and the tech guys for trying to make this work.

  • We'll do a little test here.

  • I'll [INAUDIBLE] work.

  • OK.

  • So I am Annie Jacobsen.

  • Thank you for the intro.

  • And this book is about the Pentagon's Brain,

  • which is sometimes how DARPA is referred to at the Pentagon.

  • One of the most frequent questions that I am asked

  • is how do I get these guys to talk to me?

  • So I just wanted to begin for a moment

  • with that, because I do write about these seemingly

  • impenetrable areas, whether it's Area

  • 51 or the old Nazi scientists program,

  • which was still very classified up until recently, to DARPA.

  • And what I would like to mention is that one of my Area 51

  • sources, a physicist who invented

  • stealth technology for the government going back to when

  • Eisenhower was president told me, he said, Annie,

  • there's two things to always remember.

  • One, "fortune favors the prepared mind,"

  • and he was quoting Pasteur, but the idea is that we should just

  • be as knowledgeable as we can and be prepared

  • for amazing things to happen.

  • And the other thing that he told me was look up, not down,

  • and he said that because physicists, as I have learned,

  • are always looking up to understand

  • the mysteries of whatever it is they have in front of them.

  • And the physicists that I work with

  • are dealing with weapons related issues, but looking up,

  • whether it's at bees, birds, bats, the moon, or the cosmos,

  • that is where so many of the answers

  • lie to this kind of a scientist's mind.

  • But he also meant look up, meaning go up.

  • If you get a no, [? Lavik ?] told me,

  • then go to that guy's boss, and if that guy gives you a no,

  • then go to his boss.

  • Because, he told me-- and I have found this to be true--

  • that the most knowledgeable people among us

  • often want to share their information.

  • They do not want to hoard the information.

  • Particularly as they get older, they

  • find that it's important for this country that they love.

  • All of the national security scientists I work with

  • are real patriots, and they talk about how

  • even if they worked on classified programs,

  • they stay abreast of what is unclassified

  • as they get older so that they can then

  • share that information.

  • And so that is how I approach these things, and three

  • of the scientists that I was most happy to work

  • with on this book-- Charles Townes invented the laser,

  • and he recently passed at the age of 99.

  • And the way that I got to Townes was

  • I was at the Pentagon trying to learn about laser beam weapons.

  • They're called directed energy weapons, DEW weapons.

  • They're among the most classified systems

  • in the government and no one would tell me anything.

  • They wouldn't even tell me basic technology about how it worked.

  • I followed [? Lavik's ?] lead.

  • I looked up and not down, and ultimately I

  • found my way to Charles Townes, still giving interviews at age

  • 98 when we spoke at the University of California,

  • Berkeley.

  • And he told me some amazing stories about the laser

  • and about early laser development, which

  • I write about in the book, which give you

  • a real clear idea of why these weapons are so important, why

  • they're so secret, and it has to do with accuracy and precision.

  • In the middle there is Murph Goldberger,

  • and he worked in the Manhattan Project.

  • He too passed this last year.

  • He was the co-founder of the Jason scientists.

  • So if anyone has heard of the Jason scientists,

  • they are perhaps the most elite, most secretive defense

  • scientists in the nation, and have

  • been since they created their organization in 1960,

  • specifically to work for DARPA, which was then called ARPA.

  • It did not yet have the D.

  • And Joseph Zasloff also died recently,

  • but I was able to interview him.

  • And he was a social scientist, and he ran the program

  • during the Vietnam War, specifically

  • for ARPA, which was called the Viet Cong Motivation and Morale

  • Program.

  • You could do a whole linguistic study on that title.

  • But it was interesting to see how social science played

  • a role in the Vietnam War, and then again played

  • a role in the Iraq war, and even more

  • interesting for a reporter like me

  • to realize that DARPA, who is an organization that

  • is so involved in the highest technology

  • weapons of the present and of the future,

  • is also in the business of social science.

  • I also say that-- I like to say that the truth has

  • many points of view, and the reason

  • why is this document, which is this is one of my sources,

  • and it says at the top Francis Murray.

  • It says he's at headquarters, US Air Force.

  • That's at the Pentagon.

  • And it gives the dates and everything,

  • and it gives them grade marks and whatnot.

  • But Frank Murray was also one of my Area 51 sources,

  • and he was in fact out at Area 51 during this entire time

  • that he was allegedly at the Pentagon,

  • even though this documentation says he was there.

  • So I like to say that as a point that the truth has

  • many parts to it.

  • It has many points of view, and whenever

  • you're dealing with government secrecy

  • there's always the sense that more will be revealed.

  • This here, which is the DARPA Cheetah robot runs.

  • It starts at zero miles an hour, and it begins to gain momentum

  • through like 10, 11, 12, and suddenly it's going so fast you

  • can barely see its legs moving, and then you cannot see its

  • legs moving anymore.

  • It's going 28 miles an hour, and then

  • suddenly it crashes by sort of falling back on itself,

  • and it's tethered to a rope, so it doesn't really crash.

  • The reason why this is so astonishing

  • is this is, you know, this incredible thing to look at

  • to watch, and you realize this is

  • where our weapons are heading.

  • Our weapons are heading toward autonomous robotics.

  • And I write about this at the end of the book,

  • but I wanted to give you an idea of what they look like now.

  • So we'll jump way back in time, when--

  • Because computers and computing are so much of a part of where

  • we are today and where the Pentagon is with its weapons

  • systems, it's important to realize--

  • or at least it was for me-- to realize that back in this day--

  • this is around 1946.

  • That's John von Neumann and Robert Oppenheimer,

  • and they're at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study,

  • and they're down in the basement,

  • and that's the MANIAC computer.

  • And at the time, a little before this, during the war,

  • John von Neumann was what I call the first Pentagon's brain.

  • He was the smartest man in Washington, DC,

  • and the Pentagon looked to him to solve solutions.

  • For example, when the decision was

  • made to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima,

  • scientists wondered whether or not

  • they should have it explode when it hit the ground.

  • Well, von Neumann, in his ability

  • to do math calculations in his head at an extraordinary speed

  • said no, and with a little bit of pen to paper

  • he determined that actually the bomb

  • should be dropped at 1,800 feet above Hiroshima

  • for the largest kill rate.

  • So that's how von Neumann's mind worked.

  • He was what was called a human computer.

  • That's what computers were then.

  • He built this computer, a machine computer,

  • and he was one of the first people in the United States

  • who had this idea that one day computers could think.

  • And he actually called what we now call software,

  • he called it the computer's organs,

  • just like a human being.

  • von Neumann died of cancer the year before DARPA was started,

  • most likely from a speck of plutonium

  • that he inhaled while he was working on the Manhattan

  • Project.

  • But he is the first Pentagon's brain that I write about.

  • So why did I begin the book here where I did,

  • which this is the thermonuclear bomb going off

  • in the Marshall Islands.

  • It's a 15 megaton bomb, and what I

  • found astounding was for a while when I first

  • used to look at this photograph, I

  • thought that those images there at the bottom

  • were the waves in the sea, because I interviewed many

  • of the scientists who worked on this bomb program

  • and they would talk to me about being on boats

  • and whatnot watching it, and then

  • I realized those are actually clouds.

  • That's how high up that mushroom cloud is,

  • and it's 70 miles across.

  • It was a 15 megaton explosion.

  • It was supposed to be six megatons,

  • and the science got away with itself, so to speak.

  • But this is why DARPA was created.

  • Scientists had created a weapon against which

  • there is no defense, and there still is no defense today,

  • by the way.

  • One of the first jobs that DARPA did

  • was-- and this was a very classified program.

  • I don't think it's ever been revealed before.

  • I certainly couldn't find it in the public domain,

  • but I did find in an archive.

  • One of the first things that the DARPA scientists did

  • was calculate down to the second how many seconds it takes

  • for a nuclear weapon like this to leave the Soviet Union

  • and travel to Washington, DC.

  • Does anyone have a guess?

  • How many seconds?

  • I'll tell you.

  • It's 1,600.

  • 1,600 seconds.

  • So that's not very much time.

  • That is still a fact today, by the way, and something

  • that the nuclear agency of the day

  • will neither confirm nor deny.

  • But it is a fact.

  • So this is why DARPA was created.

  • How do we defend against these weapons

  • that there is no defense against?

  • And then the idea was, well, we'll just

  • go into the offensive.

  • So we'll create more and bigger weapons.

  • This little slide I like to show,

  • just because it's so astonishing to me.

  • I was able to interview one of the men who was in this bunker.

  • There were 10 scientists and engineers

  • 19 miles from ground zero where that thermonuclear weapon

  • went off.

  • And the idea was the Defense Department

  • wanted to see, well, since we can't defend against it,

  • maybe we can create these bunkers

  • and we can all live underground for a while.

  • If we have enough time, 1,600 seconds, if we

  • can all get in a bunker before then.

  • So they built this-- I mean, I have all the specs in the book.

  • It's just a crazy bunker.

  • The men lived.

  • They barely lived.

  • But they had to be airlifted out of it hours

  • later because the radiation was so intense no one could go in.

  • So unless you had one of these built

  • to these wild specifications, there's

  • no way to survive a nuclear bomb.

  • Sputnik came along.

  • This is a replica of that 23 inch diameter sphere

  • that made the American public go wild in October of 1957,

  • thinking my god, the Soviets are coming.

  • "Time" magazine had this on its cover.

  • And the idea-- You know, Sputnik.

  • Just a satellite.

  • How bad could it be?

  • But of course, this ICBM would be the launch vehicle

  • for that satellite, and you can see

  • this interesting anthropomorphization

  • of that nuclear weapon.

  • It's got a brain, and it has a finger

  • pointed at the East Coast.

  • So competition creates excellence,

  • and this is how DARPA began.

  • Here you have the weapons directors at the big two

  • laboratories which were created specifically

  • to compete with one another so that America

  • could maintain technological superiority over the Soviet

  • Union and never again be beaten by the Soviets after Sputnik.

  • And here's what's interesting.

  • DARPA is a double edged sword.

  • On the one hand, there are very serious concerns

  • that I raise in the book about where

  • weapons technology is going.

  • On the other hand, one must keep on balance

  • this idea that the United States has never

  • been taken by technological surprise,

  • and that is owing to DARPA.

  • That's Murph Goldberger, and it was-- he was the Jason founder,

  • and there he is at his home looking--

  • he's also served as a presidential science adviser--

  • looking at one of the photographs of when he was

  • in his heyday, and talking with me about what it was

  • like working on nuclear-- what it was like working

  • on these major DARPA programs in the very beginning of DARPA.

  • But of course, it all changed.

  • These big nuclear ballistic missile

  • related defense technologies that DARPA

  • was pursuing-- By the way, it was called ARPA up until 1972.

  • For ease, I'm just going to always call it DARPA.

  • Along came Kennedy.

  • He had a very different attitude than Eisenhower.

  • And you see LBJ in the background there.

  • Both of these men would authorize

  • some of the most controversial DARPA weapons ever to exist.

  • We had a problem in Vietnam.

  • That is how it was seen.

  • And ARPA was sent in to take care of this.

  • In President Diem there in the front,

  • we had a person who was very interested in technology,

  • and Johnson was sent by Kennedy to make a deal with Diem

  • that we would create some weapons facilities in Saigon

  • and begin manufacturing the most state of the art weaponry

  • to give them to the Vietnamese soldiers.

  • Diem thought this was a fabulous idea,

  • and that's where it all began.

  • Now what's fascinating is these are in the early years

  • of the Kennedy presidency.

  • Here's an example.

  • So the small in stature Vietnamese

  • were having trouble handling these semiautomatic weapons,

  • and so DARPA pushed through the AR-15 rifle.

  • And what was interesting, when you

  • can see how swift and agile DARPA is-- And by the way,

  • the whole entire Vietnam program was called Project Agile.

  • It was like, we're going to get things done,

  • and we're going to get them done fast.

  • There had been a debate going on at the Pentagon ever

  • since the end of World War II about what rifle

  • would be the standard rifle.

  • DARPA made it happen.

  • They ordered 1,000 AR-15s.

  • They sent them to Saigon.

  • They gave them to the soldiers.

  • And today that has become the M16,

  • and that is the standard bearer of what all our soldiers carry.

  • This is another example of what DARPA got into.

  • Because they had their hands now in so many different pieces

  • of the pie, chemical warfare became a DARPA program,

  • and this is of course Agent Orange

  • being sprayed over the jungles.

  • It was perceived to be the magic bullet that might end the war,

  • and that's not what happened.

  • So where was technology in 1960?

  • I mean, stop for a moment.

  • There is Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara

  • with a pointer and a slideshow.

  • Even more astonishing, this is where technology was.

  • This was a bright red telephone that

  • was installed in the Secretary of Defense's house

  • and also in the President's house.

  • And that analog idea-- So if-- In the event

  • of a nuclear decision needing to be made,

  • that dreaded go/no go decision, Khrushchev or Kennedy,

  • this is what they had.

  • First it had to go through a White House

  • operator on our end, then it had to go like this,

  • and then imagine dialing.

  • And the Pentagon said, this is-- Actually,

  • Congress said this is unacceptable,

  • assigned DARPA to the job, which meant the arrival

  • of this fellow at ARPA in 1962.

  • This is JCR Licklider.

  • Many people consider him the father of the internet.

  • When he arrived at ARPA, his job was

  • to deal with command and control,

  • also called C2, this idea that we

  • must be better in command and control of our technology

  • than a red phone.

  • And he had this crazy idea of creating something called

  • an intergalactic network, and that is what we now

  • know as the internet.

  • It started out first as the ARPANET at ARPA.

  • The Jason scientist-- Another interesting way

  • in which I write about the Pentagon's brain

  • and how it works is that these different programs are

  • kind of falling into the background

  • and then coming back into the fore again,

  • and that is what happened with nuclear weapons in Vietnam.

  • The Secretary-- This was a very, very little known fact until

  • recently that Secretary McNamara,

  • Secretary of Defense McNamara, really considered using nuclear

  • weapons on this, the Ho Chi Minh trail,

  • which was the trail in the jungle that all the jungle

  • fighters travelled from the north to the south.

  • And he gathered the Jason scientists together and said,

  • is this possible?

  • And they conducted a report as they always did.

  • They would meet in the summers.

  • They were full time academics and part time defense

  • contractors.

  • They met and they said dropping a nuclear weapon on the Ho Chi

  • Minh trail is a bad idea, because the Viet Cong are

  • so crafty, they will just figure out

  • a way to create a trail that goes around it.

  • And so instead the idea that the Jason scientists came up with

  • was something called McNamara's electronic fence.

  • And pause for a moment and consider this, if you will.

  • This is really where all sensor technology began.

  • All the programs of the present day, the prison programs,

  • et cetera, et cetera, the NSA, that people

  • worry about and wonder about and are curious about,

  • they all began right here in Vietnam,

  • and they began with this idea of McNamara's electronic fence.

  • That large, weird, dart looking thing

  • with the antennas coming out of that, that's

  • what's called an ADSID, and it's actually an audio detection

  • device.

  • And the guys who I interviewed for this book, the VO-67 Navy

  • crew, would get into that aircraft

  • and they would fly low and slow over some

  • of the most dangerous parts of the Ho Chi Minh trail,

  • and they would drop those sensors out in a string.

  • And they would come hurtling out of the aircraft

  • and they would sort of land in the ground, hopefully.

  • A lot of them fell on the side.

  • And the idea was to create this string of sensors

  • with audio technology.

  • The information would be sent up to an aircraft that's

  • flying around in a racetrack formation.

  • Then it goes back to an information center

  • at an airbase, a US airbase, in Thailand.

  • And then everyone's using these new things called computers

  • to try to make sense of this information,

  • basically to hear some fighters say, yes,

  • there are some trucks coming down the trail tomorrow.

  • They're bringing lots of X, Y, and Z weapons.

  • At which point, a targeting strip would be made,

  • and the aircraft would go out and strike those targets.

  • It was an idea that was ridiculed at the Pentagon

  • by the generals.

  • No one liked this idea.

  • There you see another.

  • That's a different version of things being thrown out

  • of a helicopter.

  • There were also seismic sensors that were going out,

  • magnetic sensors.

  • This was early sensor technology.

  • You can see how big it is.

  • I mean, now these sensors are so small.

  • DARPA even has some new technology I've been told

  • about, but I could not verify, because it might still be

  • in the classified department, sensors that actually cannot be

  • seen, but they go on people's fingertips unwittingly.

  • So when they're typing everything is going back.

  • And when you think about that concept,

  • that this all began on the Ho Chi Minh trail,

  • it's pretty remarkable.

  • No amount of technology could go up

  • against this, which was student protesters,

  • and it had a great impact on the Vietnam War,

  • and ultimately we did get the hell out of Vietnam.

  • But it was a fascinating time at DARPA.

  • And there was the Mansfield Amendment, and suddenly

  • weapons, any kind of new weapons technology

  • was seen as thumbs down, and Congress jumped and screamed

  • and said we don't want any of these pre-requirement research

  • projects.

  • We just want good old military projects.

  • But it was interesting, because this fellow came in,

  • Harold Brown, and he came up with a new strategy, which

  • was making science and technology

  • an industry at the Pentagon.

  • And he put into play long term research projects

  • with all of that sensor technology

  • I was just talking about, and it would build all the way

  • to the Gulf War.

  • I'll stop for a minute and tell you quickly about this guy.

  • This is Allen Macy Dulles.

  • He was an infantry lieutenant in the Korean War.

  • And the reason he was important to me--

  • his father was the director of the CIA, Allen Dulles.

  • And Allen Macy Dulles was a young soldier in Korea,

  • and he went out in November of 1952

  • to check a perimeter fence, as soldiers

  • have been doing forever.

  • And he was hit by a mortar, and he suffered a traumatic brain

  • injury that made him have something

  • called retrograde amnesia.

  • He can't remember any-- He can speak eloquently,

  • but he could not remember anything that happened

  • to him 10 minutes before.

  • So this idea of a perimeter fence

  • was something that existed.

  • In Vietnam we were creating an electronic fence,

  • and then now with Harold Brown in the Pentagon,

  • this movement came toward creating a system where

  • it wasn't a fence.

  • It's an area network, and we can watch and survey that.

  • So they began-- they being the Pentagon,

  • DARPA-- began looking at some of the technology

  • from the Vietnam War and rebundling it and working

  • with the fact that all technology was

  • becoming nanotechnology.

  • Not quite yet.

  • But in other words, things were getting smaller.

  • And as things got smaller, they could be more

  • effective in the war theater.

  • And these are two of the earliest

  • drones from the Vietnam War.

  • This is like a reconfigured helicopter that

  • used to fly off of a submarine.

  • And then the guy in the Jeep is driving around

  • with all that technology, gathering the information,

  • video and audio.

  • And they really had very little effect

  • on winning the Vietnam War, but it's certainly

  • a different story now.

  • So the Pentagon spent all the way until the late '80s

  • pushing technology, pushing sensor technology,

  • pushing drone technology, building entire industries.

  • The ARPANET became the internet, and there

  • was a movement toward what is now

  • called network-centric warfare.

  • And in the Gulf War with Secretary

  • of Defense Cheney in charge, the idea

  • that technology could win a war like that

  • became evident instantly, and you can see that.

  • This was called the highway of death,

  • and this is just the results of that kind of technology.

  • That stealth fighter back there, the F-117,

  • which was another DARPA project-- Again,

  • stealth, early workings in Vietnam.

  • 20 years secretly in the making.

  • 10,000 Lockheed employees, by the way,

  • were cleared for the Skunk Works program.

  • Not one single leak ever in that 18, 19 years,

  • until it made its debut in the Gulf War.

  • But that took a lot of the limelight, when in fact there

  • was so much other DARPA technology going on

  • in that Gulf War.

  • I write about it in the book.

  • And most importantly, something called JSTARS.

  • So that old idea from Vietnam of having an aircraft flying

  • around in circles trying to gather

  • the technology from those giant sensors had gotten shrunk down.

  • So you had this computer in the sky--

  • it had 600,000 lines of code-- gathering up

  • the technology during the Gulf War and relaying information,

  • early drone technology.

  • The Pentagon had a big problem in urban warfare,

  • and they knew it.

  • But this was what their idea of what urban warfare would look

  • like, which is really laughable.

  • They had, like, a little drawing here,

  • what looks to me like a German village.

  • So DARPA again got pulled away when this happened,

  • Mogadishu, Somalia, 1992.

  • And there was lots of activity at DARPA talking

  • about how America was going to deal

  • with the possibility of having to fight wars

  • in urban environments.

  • They would quote Sun Tzu a lot, from 2,500 years ago.

  • Sun Tzu said the worst idea is to attack cities.

  • And there was a lot of debate at DARPA.

  • Like, the worst idea is to attack cities,

  • but what are we going to do about it?

  • Another interesting thing happened at DARPA

  • right around this same time, which is the Berlin Wall fell.

  • And when the Berlin Wall fell, a number

  • of very serious Soviet scientists who

  • had been working on biological weapons programs

  • defected to the United States and they

  • began working for DARPA.

  • And this is Ken Alibek, whom I interviewed.

  • He's back in Uzbekistan now.

  • But he was a major player in the biological weapons program,

  • and was very controversial, because some

  • say that he created the problem that then needed to be solved.

  • So again, you see that conundrum,

  • which is a bit like the nuclear weapon issue, the thermonuclear

  • weapon issue, that you create a weapon that then you

  • must defend against.

  • But Alibek worked for us for a long time

  • before he left the country.

  • And what was interesting about these Soviet scientists

  • is-- in terms of the big picture of DARPA--

  • was that before then there were no biologists at the Pentagon.

  • And that's kind of a term that scientists will throw around

  • loosely, but it's pretty accurate.

  • DARPA was interested in what I call the Superman of science,

  • the Murph Goldbergers, the Jason scientists, the physicists,

  • the engineers.

  • Biology was considered soft science.

  • That all changed, and that has taken us

  • in a very different direction, because we are now

  • looking inside the body.

  • And again, things took a very big change after 9/11,

  • because suddenly we had to deal with urban warfare

  • and we had to deal with this biological weapons threat.

  • But you cannot prepare for everything,

  • and what happened to DARPA in the early days of the Gulf War

  • was that a $25 homemade bomb called a IED was very quickly

  • became responsible for 63% of coalition deaths.

  • And suddenly we were spending-- We spent $6 billion

  • trying to create technology called Defeat the IED

  • technology, and this involved computers.

  • We created jammers to try to jam the IEDs,

  • and then the terrorists would create anti-jamming devices,

  • and this went on and on, and many, many people died.

  • I write about different technologies

  • that were looked at during the war on terror

  • by DARPA in this process.

  • So then the-- Finally one of the solutions was the robots.

  • And that is a Talon robot, and it's

  • an example of-- at least to the EOD techs

  • that I spoke with-- of how robots

  • are saving lives in warfare.

  • These robots can go in and do a lot with looking at the IEDs

  • and sending back information to operators

  • and even remotely dismantling some of them.

  • But another idea that sprang forth

  • was this idea-- from the electronic fence.

  • DARPA pumped an enormous amount of money

  • into its urban operation programs,

  • and it created a system called Combat Zones That See.

  • And that little WASP drone there being

  • shot off the arm of an operator is--

  • it weighs just a few pounds, and it

  • has some of the most incredible technology.

  • All the specs are in the book.

  • It flies in a swarm.

  • If one of them is lost, the others will reconfigure.

  • And what they're doing is taking an audio of an area.

  • So for example, if the unit goes into the war theater

  • and they understand that there's a terrorist hideout over there,

  • they'll send the WASPs in, and they

  • will be taking video and audio in real time

  • and painting the picture for the operators on the ground.

  • The robots have moved so quickly into a kind

  • of advanced technology world where

  • it's really impossible to even consider

  • how fast things are moving.

  • This is called the Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System.

  • It can kill a human target two miles away.

  • It has everything that was ever designed

  • in Vietnam shrunken down to the size of my fingernail,

  • and more.

  • It also has encryption software, so that no one

  • can get a hold of it.

  • But this is where our defense systems are going.

  • And there we have the Atlas robot.

  • Same thing.

  • Looking more and more like people

  • for a very important reason.

  • These are actually the L3 robots.

  • They carry the load.

  • But what's also fascinating about the L3

  • is that it works on an operator's voice command.

  • So the commanding officer talks to the robot

  • through a headpiece and it follows.

  • And if you've ever seen these in video,

  • it's astonishing what they can do.

  • I mean, they can fall over and get back up.

  • They can climb terrain.

  • But again, these are just the DARPA robots

  • that we know about.

  • I went to Los Alamos to look at the synthetic brain

  • that DARPA is creating out there.

  • This was the only picture I could get.

  • It just shows the force protection outside.

  • Inside, DARPA's using what's left of this IBM Roadrunner

  • supercomputer, which in 2008 was the fastest

  • computer in the world.

  • It has since become obsolete.

  • It was $100 million to build.

  • But of course, Los Alamos needs the best computer

  • that there is, so-- And they can't reuse it,

  • because it has the nuclear codes on it.

  • So they're incinerating it.

  • But in the meantime, little pieces of it

  • are being used to help power this synthetic brain, which

  • really begged the question for me-- I was, like,

  • is that a good idea?

  • But you know, what I really think,

  • and what I write about in the end of the book--

  • And I'm going to leave you with this thought, which

  • is that the idea of dual use.

  • All technology has dual use.

  • And you often hear-- You know, the Iranians

  • are always getting in trouble for dual use technologies.

  • But DARPA does this too, and here's an example.

  • This is this incredible prosthetic that DARPA makes.

  • But from the guys I spoke to who actually use this limb,

  • it's really not as incredible as it's often cracked up to be.

  • There are problems with it.

  • And so most of the guys who use this,

  • or who appear on "60 Minutes" or whatnot

  • showing how great the prosthetic is, they go home

  • and they put back on their Dorrance hook, which is

  • that hook from 1922 technology.

  • So this looks good.

  • But is it really working?

  • And what I believe is going on at DARPA

  • is that this dual use technology,

  • the synthetic brain, the robots, we're

  • moving-- I found a document at the Defense Department that

  • talks about human-robot interaction,

  • and that that is the movement that the Pentagon is taking us

  • toward, which is where robots and humans learn

  • to sort of love each other.

  • And the idea that we are creating

  • cyborg drones, which we are.

  • We now have rats that we can control.

  • We have moths that we can steer at DARPA.

  • Getting, you know, humans to be ultimately turning

  • over the reins to autonomous weapons.

  • And one of the ways in which-- that

  • I find difficulty in wrapping my head around this-- and DARPA

  • was one of the few places they absolutely would not let me go,

  • which was interviewing soldiers who now have come back

  • from that war in Iraq, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,

  • with traumatic brain injuries.

  • There are 300,000 of these soldiers.

  • And the programs that DARPA has put brain chips in the brain

  • and are working with sending electronic signals.

  • In some cases, if the soldiers have PTSD,

  • it's a kind of electroshock therapy on the go.

  • In other cases, they're trying to repair

  • cognitive functioning.

  • But it really does beg the question, what is the dual use?

  • And from the scientists that I have interviewed,

  • it appears that DARPA now believes

  • that that brain-computer interface technology there

  • will push us toward that artificial intelligence which

  • has long been sought and coveted and has not yet

  • been attainable.

  • And the Jason scientists who I spoke to-- these

  • are old men who passed on some words of wisdom,

  • said that they-- and showed me this report.

  • They had written a report saying DARPA should not be doing this.

  • This is a dangerous area to get into, because it is leading us

  • toward brain control.

  • And so DARPA has just in the past few years

  • pushed the Jason scientists aside,

  • and now takes their advice from an in-house Pentagon

  • organization called the Defense Science Board.

  • My final image I'm going to leave you with is this.

  • This is actually Allen Macy Dulles,

  • the CIA director's only son.

  • He's 84 years old.

  • There he is.

  • He was the brain-- He had a brain injury in Korea.

  • He disappeared.

  • No one knew he was alive.

  • I tracked him down.

  • That's his sister, a delightful woman, Joan Dulles.

  • She's been taking care of him all this time.

  • She was a Jungian analyst.

  • But he cannot remember anything from 10 minutes before.

  • His entire life he only remembers up to November 1952.

  • And because he was this brilliant man when

  • he was young, or boy when he was young-- He went to Princeton

  • and he studied warfare, and then he went to Oxford

  • and got a PhD.

  • And I sat with him in his home and talked

  • about the most incredible historical ideas about warfare.

  • I mean, it was like speaking to the most erudite person

  • you could imagine.

  • But then I said to him, Allen, will you

  • remember this conversation in 10 minutes?

  • And he said no, and he wouldn't.

  • And I asked him what he had for breakfast,

  • and he doesn't remember.

  • And he won't remember having been with me after I left.

  • And the reason why I bring him up

  • is because it was astonishing to me, because this--

  • And by the way, he lost hearing in one ear.

  • So he talks through this device that's like 1980s technology.

  • He's got an earpiece, and Joan holds this little thing out

  • and I talk into it.

  • And he was amazed at this high technology,

  • right, because all of the technology he knows

  • is from before 1952.

  • And he can apparently remember a little bit

  • about this technology because it's with him every day.

  • But what I would like to remind you of is this,

  • is that Carl Sagan once said, if you're

  • going to create a world-- and I'm

  • paraphrasing-- where science and technology is beyond anyone's

  • understanding, that's suicide.

  • And Allen Dulles gets a pass on that,

  • because he doesn't remember and he can't remember.

  • But I believe the rest of us, what President Eisenhower

  • called an alert and knowledgeable citizenry,

  • we have a responsibility to remain alert and knowledgeable,

  • and to know what's going on, and to be aware of it.

  • And that is where, in the words of Eisenhower,

  • the military-industrial complex and democracy

  • can live together and flourish.

  • Thank you so much.

  • I'll now take some questions.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • AUDIENCE: What proportion of ARPA's work is public

  • and what proportion is not?

  • If I were to [INAUDIBLE]?

  • ANNIE JACOBSEN: You mean in the present day?

  • AUDIENCE: No.

  • Let's say when we worked-- well, when I worked on

  • it was a long time ago.

  • But over time, how many projects have been secret

  • and how maybe have been public?

  • ANNIE JACOBSEN: Well, for starters, DARPA's working

  • on 100 of projects at any given time,

  • and thousands of scientists, probably tens of thousands

  • of scientists.

  • So I look at it from a reverse point

  • of view, which is looking back at history

  • and looking at documents.

  • I'm only seeing declassified documents that

  • are stamped in a certain manner-- Top Secret, Secret,

  • or No Dissemination.

  • So I don't know that it's possible to be able to know,

  • you know, on a pie chart of how much of its work is classified.

  • But my guess is it would be more like a Titanic structure.

  • You know, that the tip is what we know about at any given

  • time, and the real research is going on down here.

  • Because scientists that I interview often

  • work-- the ones that work on declassified programs--

  • For example, I read about a limb regeneration lab

  • in Irvine, California, which is fascinating.

  • And their project is all unclassified,

  • but they give the technology to DARPA,

  • and then DARPA takes that technology

  • and puts it into classified programs.

  • Yes.

  • AUDIENCE: So I know that an area of concern for a lot of people

  • in military technology is whether we

  • should take human beings out of the fire control loop.

  • I worked in the 1990s on training

  • for the Aegis-class cruisers, and in the training

  • we told people basically that the computer is

  • much smarter than you are, it understands the combat

  • theater better than you, and when

  • the computer says shoot, just shoot,

  • which was troubling to me.

  • You talk about the notion that a responsible citizenry

  • needs to sort of apply checks and balances.

  • But given the history of DARPA and other organizations--

  • so perhaps your Manhattan's another good example--

  • to do very large scale things over non-trivial timeframes

  • with near-absolute secrecy, how does a responsible citizenry

  • stop something like weapons that are in a combat theater that

  • have autonomous fire control and have serious fire control

  • bugs, which is, I think, one of the major concerns

  • about the autonomy of the fire control.

  • So what do we do so we avoid that happening?

  • ANNIE JACOBSEN: So that's a great question.

  • And I'm going to add one little detail which

  • you might find interesting, which

  • is that when the Pentagon came out

  • with its roadmap for weapons through 2038, autonomous

  • weapons, drones, unmanned technologies,

  • it created kind of a problem inside the Pentagon,

  • in that many of the generals, and also

  • drone operators on down, did not want to move in that direction.

  • There was a lot of what Ashton Carter, who was then

  • the Undersecretary of Defense, called

  • unfortunate negative feedback.

  • And so they created a program called robot ethics,

  • and this was taught at the Pentagon.

  • And the result of that was exactly the problem that you're

  • indicating, even more dissent from generals

  • down to drone operators saying we

  • don't trust this, and the reason why

  • had to do with what was called robot ethics, that robots don't

  • have ethics, that they don't have morality.

  • So then the Pentagon created a program called the robot ethics

  • program to educate people about it, and the problem persisted.

  • So I found out that DARPA is now working on the answer

  • to that, in my estimation.

  • DARPA's working on a new program called Narrative Networks.

  • It's a very innocuous sounding program title.

  • But what it is working with a chemical in the brain

  • called oxytocin, which manipulates a person's trust

  • and loses their sense of fear.

  • And so when you look at that that might be the answer,

  • then an alert and knowledgeable citizenry

  • can draw their own conclusions.

  • Both of those subject matters are unclassified.

  • But by being knowledgeable, you can put A and B together,

  • and in that example, I had never seen A and B together.

  • I had read some things about what the heck is DARPA

  • doing with a narrative program.

  • Well, let's find out what the narrative program really is.

  • Questions?

  • All these smart people in the room.

  • There have to be some questions.

  • Or you know everything.

  • Everything I said was already known.

  • AUDIENCE: So tell us a little bit about the management style.

  • When I worked on ARPA projects, it

  • was typically called a program director or program manager.

  • I forget what the title was.

  • We seemed to have a lot of autonomy,

  • and we seemed to have-- seemed to count

  • a lot on his personal relationships

  • with principal investigators, PIs.

  • Is that the style of management everywhere?

  • Is that only in the academia-facing side of ARPA?

  • ANNIE JACOBSEN: From what I've heard,

  • that is exactly the same.

  • There are about 120 program managers at DARPA today,

  • as there have been through its history.

  • And you're absolutely right.

  • Those program managers have serious autonomy.

  • I mean, they have $50 or $150 million budgets

  • at their discretion.

  • They hire university labs.

  • They hire military labs.

  • And then they begin to put their programs in effect,

  • and they can really start and stop

  • just about anything they want.

  • So it is one of-- The organization

  • is almost entirely free from red tape in that regard.

  • And I was actually interviewing one of the CIA fellows

  • who set up the early design for IARPA, which

  • is the CIA's DARPA, in essence.

  • And you know, the two organizations

  • don't always compliment one another, to put it politely.

  • But in this situation, the Agency

  • was very complementary about how flexible

  • and how financially swift DARPA was,

  • how they were able to do that.

  • AUDIENCE: All right.

  • I guess, to sort of follow up here.

  • That's part of the answer.

  • The other issue was the ones I saw,

  • they weren't bureaucrats, these program managers.

  • They would say, I want this done,

  • and they would have an idea of is this going well.

  • Well, you know, no.

  • I don't like the way it's going.

  • Change it around.

  • It wasn't at all what you see in a more formal contract

  • structure, where you say, OK, you have a year to do this,

  • here are the milestones, again, we'll review it.

  • It was, we're three months in.

  • I'm not seeing what I want to see.

  • I'm going to pull the plug and go to someone else.

  • ANNIE JACOBSEN: You're absolutely right.

  • And the program managers themselves are often--

  • or most of the time are-- very gifted scientists

  • and engineers.

  • That's who they put in charge.

  • In the book, I write about someone

  • who I can think of no better example,

  • Doctor Jack Thorpe, who created the first training program

  • for DARPA using internet technology, called SIMNET,

  • and "Wired" magazine called Thorpe

  • the father of cyberspace.

  • And you see his own talents applied in exactly that

  • manner you're talking about.

  • He's having a problem with this technology,

  • so he bends and moves and brings other people

  • on board that can solve it, which

  • is unusual for government.

  • You normally have these long tags

  • of things that get pushed through a system.

  • So to have these people-- most of them men-- who

  • are able to just make decisions happen

  • like that is astonishing.

  • I think that'll do it for us.

  • Thank you all so much for coming,

  • and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

  • [APPLAUSE]

[APPLAUSE]

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