Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the gaithersburg book festival. My name is mark corpsman, im ab state legislator from district 16. Gaithersburg proudly supports the arts and humanities. Were pleased to bring you thiss fabulous event thanks in part to the generous support of our sponsors and volunteers. A few announcements. First, please silence your devices. If youre on social media today, and we sure hope you are, pleasc use the hashtag gbf. Your feedback is also really valuable to us. Surveys are available here at the tent and on our web site. Youll be entered into a drawing for a 100 visa gift card. Our author will be signing books immediately after this presentation, and copies are on sale in the politics prose week tent just to your right book tent just to your right. This is a free event, but itbo does help the book festival if you buy a book, and the more books you buy, the more books the festival sells, the more publishers will want to send their authors here to speak with us, and purchasing books from politics prose benefits our local economy and supports local jobs. I have a bag full over there myself, so i hope youll enjoy me. If you enjoy this program and youre in a position to do so, please buy some books today. Our author this afternoon is sharon weinbergering, and the book is the imagineers of war. This is sharons third book and also her third what ill call long form exploration of the research, weapons and practices of the department of defense. Sharon began her career as a defense analyst and then became a journalist and author, shifting her searching eye inward at the defensive establishment. And shes now actually the executive editor of foreign policy. They actually do a great morning briefing email if you want to know everything thats happening in the world and dont have time to find it all yourself. The Defense Advanced Research products agency, darpa, has a solid reputation, especially for denizens of the d. C. Area and contributing to things like the birth of the internet and gps. But sharons book explores darpa from its birth as americas first space agency to the present and some of its lessen successful work including an atmospheric belt of radiation to deter Nuclear Weapons, counterinsurgency practice in vietnam and superhuman soldiers. Its a multifaceted story of colorful personalities, a few major successes, a lot of fanciful failures and an agency ever in search of a mission. If you get to the back of the book and look at the sources and i know you all flip right to the sources when reading the book youll see when sharon wrote this history, she did it without is access to any of darpas classified materials. Which, frankly, you might wonder why some of the stuff isnt classified. Youll wonder how she was able to figure all out without that access. I look forward to hearing more about this book with sharon and how she was able to write it with such success. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome sharon weinberger. [applause] thank you, mark. Finish i wanted to tart off by thanking the gaithersburg book festival and politics and prose, both of which are great venues for writers. And when you spend so many years, in my case over four years, working on a book and people actually want to hear yot talk about it, not just read the book, but hear about what motivated you to work on it and your passions and interest, thats wonderful. And for me, the opportunity to meet readers who want to share in my interests and passions, thats also a special opportunity, so thank you. S, im here today to talk about darpa, something that is more associated today with sort of Science Fiction technology. People who have heard about it,e and for a lot of people have but for some people its still a rather esoteric agency, they think of it in connection with things like stealth aircraft, with drones that are responsible for the targeted killings in places like afghanistan, iraq, yemen and elsewhere. El they associate it most notably, perhaps, with the internet which, indeed, traces back to darpa lineage. Ck or perhaps Driverless Cars which are now coming into their own or to sirri, the app on your iphone which is tied directly back to darpa funding. But im not here to talk about so much the technology as the origins of how darpa became what it was and what i think made it at times successful and at times unsuccessful. And it goes back to my career writing on pentagonfunded science and technology, something that has fascinated me for over a decade. One of the questions i ask is how is science conducted in the National Security skate or how state, or how is itse funded than that by civil institutions or in academia or in industry . And why should we care about the difference . Well, i think that question is even more relevant today. Ive given several versions of this talk over the past two month since the book came out, and each time i give the talk, ive been thinking more and more about whats going on today in the country and the relevancy of the themes i examine. I initially chose the selection, the chapter im talking aboute today, because it upends our notion of darpa as a Technology Agency because it looks at a period of darpa history in the vietnam war when the agency was moving beyond technology and into the social sciences and Behavioral Sciences and the role of the pentagon in the social sciences. But i think especially its relevant today as were seeing debates in the country about proposed cuts to science in sort of the civilian institutions, meaning the National Institutes of health, cuts for climate research. At the same time, were seeing a proposal to increase funding for the military and Defense Department. Well, traditionally when funding for the Defense Department is increased, funding for darpa has increased. So what i would pose here today is what were seeing is not necessarily a cut in science, but similar to what happened in the cold war, a shift of funding from civil science to militaryfund science x. Rather than say its a good or bad thing, what i would challenge everyone today is to think about the implications of it, whether good, whether bad and what that means for science and for our country. And i also chose this election today, which is from a chapter called blame it on the sourcer isers, because it is about the manipulation of fact and most importantly war, and as a country thats been at war for 16 years, i think the questions this chapter raises are more important than ever. Is so this chapter takes us back to the vietnam war period which i actually argue is the most important period for darpas development and is the origin after almost all of the technologies today that we think about when we think about darpa, meaning stealth aircraft, to some extent even the internet all traces back to that very the tumultuous period for the country and for darpa. And the story sort of starts in 966 in vietnam 1966 in vietnam with a new york psychotherapist who is sent to interview a viet cong fighter imprisoned. He hasnted him an handed him an inkblot, and he asked the imprisoned fighter do you seee anything on this card that reminds you of a penis . No,no, sir. He continued, do you seeee anything here that reminds you of a womans vagina . No, the fighter replied. This interview went on for several hours, and neither man was in a particularly good moo. D he had been fruit he isly going through part of the classic rorschach test, and viet cong fighter was unhappy because he was staring at ink blots rather than planting bombs and culling americans which is killingfi americans. Based in cambridge, massachusetts. The company set him to vietnam in 1966 under darpa to help the pentagon understand the growing insurgency, so lets calibrate where we are 1966. At that time theres over 180,000 american troops in vietnam which is as many as were in iraq and afghanistan at the height of our wars they are. The vietcong insurgency had grown tremendously. The pentagon papers estimated about an estimated 280,000 vietcong communist fighters. This was up from what their estimates were of about 10000 in 1962, so 10000 to 280,000 in the insurgency was rapidly growing. There was an active uprising in South Vietnam which included three months of setting themselves on fire, images which were broadcast into americas living room in the us understood and officials understood American Intervention in opposition to it was rising, but they did not understand why there was opposition and why there was opposition into the us backed South Vietnamese South Vietnamese regime, but they thought scientists could up them understand, so slope was one of the people that was sent to vietnam. He was using the warsaw test which was a time to help understand psychotherapist. So far at least in this happy with the vietcong fighter that ink blocks veiled to release any insights into the fighter. He asked the viacom fighter to go through the parts and identify something sexual. Nothing. Than he has the fighter to find anything that reminded him of a person. Nothing again. Slope seemed puzzled that an imprisoned vietcong fighter being interviewed by a man interviewed interviewing him about his life the man was elected to even touch the card. Speaking of archives i found out verbatim interview of this backandforth in the archives at mit which goes to the question of how do you write its history and theres actually a lot declassified and also have a collection run a country, so this is what the fighter replied acquainted the interview i dont understand these pictures, so i dont know which ones i like or dislike. Slope spent seven weeks in vietnam in which time he collected data on for vietnamese, a french educated writer, a student activist, a senior buddhist month mark and that vietcong prisoner. Slope found the viacom vietcong fighter frustrating. The monk was even more cooperative. Quote you know ive never seen one in the monk replied in astonishment when the monk was asked about an ink blot that resembled a vagina. His conclusions based on the interview quote the vietcong member was less directly addressed he stared into space and his expression was flat and he never reached out where he spotted. The only time he came alive when was telling of his exploits. As soon as this past he would lapse back into lethargic apathy with the pattern im convinced was lifelong and not precipitated by imprisonment. Just remind you this interview is going on in prison. Slope was not interested in vietnamese politics any quiz to be spent about the parents, dreams and sex lives or lack thereof. He decided after the interviews that the problem with the vietnamese people was not the thousand years of foreign domination including french colonialism and contemporary American Intervention, but the root of the problem was there troubled family structure. But its back up a bit. Theres a basic question here that i asked myself when i was going through these darpa files which is why the hell with the psychotherapist in vietnam and more importantly and relevance to the book what does this have to do with darpa and why did darpa send this person there . This goes back to the broader question i asked before what is the role of science in the pentagon as opposed to other parts whether acting or industry and most importantly what are the implications of science conducting National Security and should we care and i think we do. Lets back up and talk about what darpa is. It was created in 1958 in response to spot next, the soviet unions launch the first artificial satellite that created the political panic somewhat akin to the 911 attacks in 2001 meaning that represented two things at the time in 1957 when the launch took place, first that the soviet union was ahead in the space race. Second and perhaps most importantly the technology to launch a satellite was linked to launching ballistic missiles, so the idea of the soviet union could launch a suit Nuclear Weapon attack really shatter the post world war ii area are. If you month later and 58 president Dwight D Eisenhower authorized the birth of our bed that advanced Research Project agency and it was at a time this predates the creation of nafta. On the satellite in Space Program would go into this agency this agency would do everything possible, throw bureaucracy to the wind. Darpa did this quite successfully and under a year acre eventually to what it is today, which is a 3 billiondollar a year agency. It still bears summing the traits in its early days with a lack of druckers inability to move quickly to find new projects. Unlike the National Science foundation it doesnt need peerreviewed. It can move quickly. It doesnt have permanent employees. It has the ability unlike other parts of government to fail and hopefully to succeed as well. If the originator of sony technologies that have changed that a build of our daily lives including drones, weapons, Driverless Cars and you could argue and i think i agree that its the most Successful Research agency ever created at least the most successful military research agency. It doesnt mean it doesnt have flaws and in writing a book about darpa i wasnt trying to count out how me projects succeed or fail, but have the agency got to where was and i think the presumption in a lot of darpas history is that it goes back to the space race, but the truth is darpa was only a space agency for about a year and a half before nasa was created and then the military put that took back its other Space Program. What i look at is what i think is the seminal period of darpas experience and what made it what it is today which his involvement in vietnam and i came to the conclusion everything important we associate with darpa comes out of vietnam and more critically to the extent that how we prosecute our wars today with drones, self, computers is cosgrove and specifically darpas experience in vietnam, our most failed war effort, so if you think about the way we wage our wars it should give us pause, but also goes the title of this book the the imagineers of war because thats what the imagineers of war was at its height. Thinking about how do we fight our wars today, how will we fight them tomorrow and how do we come up with solutions. It did not always work, but sometimes it did, so lets return for a minute to our psychotherapist in the vietnam. What was going on. His presence may sound ludicrous today, but its part of a broader effort at the time to study the roots of insurgency from a scientific vantage point. Pentagon officials were not all stupid and realized the war in vietnam was not going well they also realized that bombs alone could not solve that. They turn to researchers rather than physicists or engineer they thought maybe scientists can help us understand. Darpa got involved in this because it was about to be shut down. In 1959, 1960 it had lost its space work. But, they had a rather creative individual, a legendary intelligence operative and go dell was the original dimension are of war and said i think a Nuclear Confrontation with the soviet union however terrible is unlikely and whats more likely is the type of wars we will fight will be in places like southeast asia, so in 1961 bill good dell the Deputy Director got permission from president kennedy for a test senator in vietnam. They did everything from silent aircraft to chemical the affiliation and started sending anthropologists and social scientists. In 1961 darpa was assigned by a pentagon and to run this program they hired a man named jc are lip wider. Linklater went on to be that god father of the modern internet. In the queue or behavioral scientists what was going on which was the 1960s dharma was being flooded by independent researchers at suggesting ways to help scientist understand why creasing number of the enemies and which were siding with viet cong rather than us forces. My favorite solution that i found in archives was dated august, 1965 from General Electric writing to darpa suggesting their company be given a continuing openended contract to apply its experience and technology to counterinsurgency of vietnam. Its first proposal was from what it called the mass polygraph and that concept was like modern witch dunking. The letter said consider the following scenario a highsecurity Central GovernmentAnti Terror Police contingent arrived by helicopter at a village. The villagers are assembled by their local chief so each village can see each other. It measures the heartbeat of all villagers simultaneously. Imagine you are all hooked up to this mass polygraph lie detector so then the suspected member of the vietcong would be called up before the assembled villagers and the machine would record a response. In alleviating the fear any villager was the informant. The process can be repeated as much as possible this gives you a sense that by early 1966 these programs and Behavioral Sciences were a mess and the vietnam work was a strange mix of technology with a smattering of social sciences in the pelvic the pentagon realize this, so they bring in a problem solver, a really smart guy, young Aeronautical Engineer. He was emerging member of the technocratic elite, very interested in Operation Research or the idea of applying mathematical principles to decide largescale organizational challenges. He was an Aeronautical Engineer and fascinated by the social science. More importantly, he believed he could harbor the social sciences meaning apply engineering to it and he believed people could be studied in their actions predicted the way engineers he came in and looked at the program and said there are no numbers here, no science. Darpa had a prostitute on staff because she spoke five languages in vietnam. They had the portly nuclear war theorist and one report for darpa proposed building a moat around saigon. His anti infiltration moat became so widely derided by the press that someone jokingly suggested they did