What's Up With DARPA?

do you want to read it for sure? Well? Our listener, Nate wrote in via our email address, w thinking at how stuff works dot Com? Say it again, f W thinking at how stuff works dot Com. Wait are you sure it wasn't f X thinking. No, it's f W thinking at how stuff works dot Com. That sounds it's just music to my years. Okay, Nate wrote in, saying

good show on the five G topic. Thank you, Nate, uh, he said, thanks for making podcasts that are technical nature but not so full of techno jargon that I can't understand it possible. Show topic DARPA, the future of the world's most advanced military in the world speculated about the future, or review some of the groundbreaking ideas inventions that have come out of DARPA. Thanks much, Well, thank you, Nate, because we do talk about DARPA an awful lot on

this show. DARPA is responsible for so many technicals. Well, it's not because we love DARPA. It's just because you trace the money back when you're talking about the technology, and somewhere along the line you'll find DARPA. Yequently a couple of guys in dark suits and sunglasses with a briefcase and saying just keep going. But it all sounds so silly slash sinister and a lot of sists. But anyway,

what is DARPA. Let's go back and look at DARPA as an organization and figure out why so many technological historical roads lead to this strange military shadow organizations or have led out from there. Well, let's start by saying, because we love saying it the even though no one ever calls DARPA by its full name, it is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Yes, and uh, well, let's also say that as shadowy government organizations go, this is

a really forward facing one. Yeah. Yeah, they put their like their press releases and their call for proposals on the Internet. Yeah, they've worked with a lot of people who went on to work for other massive companies like Google. But we're getting hut of ourselves. So this is the research and development arm of the US military, specifically part of the Department of Defense. Well that sounds scary, Well

it's it's not. Kind of is it can be. I mean some of the because a lot of the technology they're looking into our specifically for military applications, it makes sense. It's a it's part of the Department of Defense. It's very important that uh technology play a role in military applications. Sure, but so much of the technology that we're talking about that where those roads lead back to DARPA has nothing

to do with weapons in the end. Yeah, it may be that it's in lots of other ways, um supporting military roles and ends up in filtering down into civilian technology that we all stand to benefit from. So it's not like this is all uh super secret ray guns and stuff like that and that that's the only thing

they work in. This is all sorts of technology that could support the military in multiple ways and often ends up becoming part of other types of tech right, because I would argue that the that the really key word in the DARPA acronym is not defense, it's rather advanced.

Part part of the agency's mission statement is to go after these high risk, high reward research and development projects as often they're pushing four main areas of strategy, and those are rethinking complex military systems to being not just reactive but proactive about the speed with which information technology is changing these days. Uh three, harnessing biotechnology, oh boy, and four is missing, and I forgot to write the fourth one down and the Know such a good podcast.

And the fourth one is on a need to know basic three, which is putting backpacks on beatles and getting them fly around the room where you want. That's what let's hold for a second to find the fourth one and four. I'm going to quote this one because it's a little bit less uh fourth, right, than than the rest of them. Expanding the technological frontier. And also we should point out that DARPA is not dark as nine organization that has an enormous secret underground scientific laboratory. No.

In a lot of ways, DARPA is money. Yeah, DARPA is I think of it kind of like um Like they're almost like a consulting firm for the government in a way, Like they put out a request for proposal saying,

here's the thing that we want done. We have this is our goal, we need to have this thing happen, and then they put that request for a proposal out and they wait for the various organizations, usually things like universities and research centers to respond to that and say we're going to attempt to do this thing that you have put a request out for, and then it goes from there and it all depends upon the actual technology. You know. Sometimes we're talking about massive companies like Boeing

being involved. Sometimes we're talking about labs. Yeah, there, there's um plenty. Like Stanford has had a long association with doing some DARPA projects, particularly in the robotics field. So uh, don't think of DARPA as those secret labs. These are the guys who fund the secret labs. Were not the agents of Shield. No there there, that's that's fair. That's fair. So yeah, like we said before, it is part of

the Department of Defense, huh. And the current director is a woman named dr Addati Propaka who came up through DARPA's offices from being a program manager in six to leading a whole bunch of semi conductor programs to being the founding director of their Microelectronics Technology Office. So I'm not saying that she oversaw nano box, but she probably

oversaw some nano box. And to be fair, you could be overseeing nano bots and never even know it because that's how small they are, right, you can kind of only oversee them. Yeah, you can't really undersee. No, you can't really. I mean have you ever tried to get under a nano bot? It is like impossible. So as DARPA had a two point nine billion dollar budget, they employ only two hundred nineteen like official full time government employees.

Salaries must be on though and world two point nine billion, right, and they but they oversee two hundred and fifty programs and they have some two thousand collaborations with universities, private companies, and other governmental entities. Right. Yeah, So this is uh, I mean, this is a big deal where we're having a lot of fun discussing this. But you know, it's kind of because it has a little bit of the cloak and dagger kind of reputation and also mad science reputation,

So those lend themselves to that. But when I'm sure the stuff they don't want you to know, kids could come in here and talk a big game about various DARPA alternatives. Sure, I'm sure we could bring them in for that. But the cool thing to me is that this is also an organization that has been responsible in a very direct way for incredible leaps in technological capabilities in various fields. Jonathan, Yeah, tell me the story of DARPA. Well, it wasn't always DARPA, for one thing, that's true. It

was ARFA ARCA so close of course. Yeah, they only dropped the letter. Actually they gained a letter afterward. But yeah, it was originally ARPA, just the Advanced Research Projects Agency. And yeah, there was a specific event in history that that prodded the United States and de forming this organization. Right, Well, it was formed in oh less than a year after

the uss are launched Sputnik. Yeah, the thing what beeped, as my my old colleague Chris Palette would say, yeah, well, of course, put Nick was the first artificial satellite ever put into orbit by humans. Right, It wasn't the fact that it was beeping that really disturbed anyone. It was the fact that it was beeping and anyone in the world contune and in here it and further that they

had launched it into space. Yeah. So if you are the United States and the Soviet Union has just put something into space, and you are part of the Department of Defense, you're going to be thinking some pretty serious thoughts. One is that if the Soviet Union can put something into space, it can potentially put something here in the US, all the way from the Soviet Union. Yes, not into space over the US, but just into the US. Yes,

so essentially intercontinental ballistic missile kind of thing. Secondly, if they can put something into space, sure, right now, all it's doing is sending out a signal that you could pick up if you're a you have a ham radio or something, which is you know, kind of interesting in neat but potentially further down the line, yeah, it might be able to do other stuff than just beep. It might be able to take pictures, it might be able

to take video or stream video. I mean, obviously this is talking further years in advance, but the potential was there, and so clearly there was a need for the United States to get on the ball as far as technology is concerned. And so that's where the government said, all right, we're going to we're going to found an organization whose purpose is to develop science and technology specifically for defense. Yeah. Yeah, so that was the that was the reason for ARPA

to come into being. And in fact, in the earliest days of the United States Space Program, ARPA oversaw a lot of those operations that would eventually transfer over to NASA, but originally it was ARPA that was overseeing those early uh space programs. Yeah, a lot of the projects that they were that they were working on during their early days would wind up being really important to the state of technology as we know it today. For for example, ARPA hired on J. C. R. Lick Lighter as their

director of the Information Processing Techniques Office. And if you haven't heard about this dude before, his vision of computers as communication asian devices, not not just information information processing devices, which they were generally thought of back in that time.

His vision is a big part of why we have computers right now, right, I mean the kind of computers that we talk into and you know, can play but jeweled on and all of that kind of right, because before that you're talking about massive machines that were self contained, right. They were. Often they were purposed for specific applications and couldn't do very much outside of those. So computers were useful, but they were also very limited, and it was his

vision that really helped push that beyond those early limitations. Yeah, so they hired him on in the nineteen sixties and that led to a whole bunch of developments, including well, first the Arbannett so Arbet. Often people will call that like the predecessor to the Internet, which that's that's fair.

It was the first computer network that was a wide scale computer network nected uh initially just three computers, although more would join on later, and they were separated by vast regions of geography, so it wasn't like three computers that were saying next to each other that then we're

wired together there. This was a true accomplishment, and it's hard to explain to someone who now can plug into the Internet wirelessly pretty much wherever they happened to be how hard this was at the time because they had to build the infrastructure, as in the actual physical infrastructure,

the things that would plug into the various machines. They also had to create a means for these machines to communicate with each other, because the other issue about computers back in those days is that if you had two different computers, they essentially spoke two different languages. So you had to create a common form of communication for these computers to be able to work together in any meaningful way.

And that became the purpose of several of the researchers there to develop the protocols that would allow information to be passed across this network and to be accepted and interpreted properly on either side. So this would end up leading into the technologies that we now use in the Internet. A lot of them have evolved into that role. So, uh, while the ARPA net you might argue, was just a computer network, the Internet was a network of networks which

incorporate lots of stuff you need. You need some networks first in order to really get off the ground, exactly. So, so we can thank DARPA for the fact that the Internet is a thing. I mean, it's again, a lot of the technologies will talk about you could argue would eventually come to being eventually anyway, but the keyword there's eventually. The reason they happened when they happened is largely because

DARPA was funding the research that made it possible. Sort of side question, has anybody ever put a date on the time that the Internet became the Internet? Yeah, I don't have the date in front of me, but essentially, yes, there is a record. There is a record of that thing. Yeah, because if you're talking about the Internet. One other things to remember, of course, and I mean, I'm sure our listeners are really aware of this, that the Internet and

the Worldwide Web are two different things. Right. The World Wide Web exists on top of the Internet, So you're talking about the Internet probably wasn't really the Internet until there was an x files fan site, so so in other words, you had to wait for the x files. So the Web had been around for a little bit,

but no one cared, right, it didn't have any x files. Really, I would argue that it didn't really become the Internet until because that's when cats were invented, and that would be when when the Internet really tell I think so, and finally made all those hieroglyphs make sense. That was retroactively. It was rhet conning is what we call that. Anyway, It's not the only technology that DARPA had a hand

in developing. It also was largely responsible for the funding of research that led to the Global Positioning System or GPS, another technology that got a big boost from spotne going into space absolutely so. The Navy first tested a system called Transit back in nineteen sixty They used five orbiting satellites that would allow ships to fix their exact position UH. A successor to that was called Timation in nineteen sixty seven.

The interesting thing was that the military used the satellites for a very long time and civilians only got partial access to this data. It was specifically degraded on purpose so that you would not get an accurate reading of your position because it was considered too valuable for military use to allow civilians to really get that information, right. That's why that's why some of the first GPS systems were so crappy in comparison to the ones that we

have today. It wasn't because there was something lacking in the technolo pology. It was because it had been purposefully restricted. It was called selective availability. And you if you look at the there were forums that were dedicated to GPS, Like the people who are really into this kind of stuff less like any other technology. There were people who really thought it was super cool, like the early adopters

radio enthusiasts. They might talk about, oh, this one has a precision of up to five hundred feet, so you'd be somewhere within five hundred feet of like you knew your position was within five feet of what you were

being told. It made geo cashing a lot trickier. Yeah, and in fact, geo cashing really took off because Bill Clinton got rid of the policy of selected availability, and once that was eliminated and these GPS receivers could suddenly get much more accurate readings, people were more interested in buying them and using them, And the the enthusiasts were the ones who were saying, hey, why don't we use this to have a game? And you you know, I did a whole article on how geo cashing works where

I talked about the history of it. It actually is really fascinating. It became this this means of hunting treasure using these online forums. And again DARPA is largely responsible for the research and development of that technology. Yeah. Then, of course there are all kinds of DARPER projects that we've talked about on the podcast before. We've talked about the ones where they where they were trying to control the flight of beatles and stuff with little backpacks that

they put on them. We've talked about of course they're the DARPA contracted Boston Dynamics robots there, we'll legged walking. We we've talked about autonomous cars. Yeah, yeah, the Grand Challenges those were those are a really big deal with DARPA's past, where DARPA had created these challenges for teams to create autonomous vehicles that would have to complete a course within a certain amount of time. Uh. And um, the very first one, there were no winners. None of

the cars were able to complete the course successfully. The second year they had I think five or six teams successfully complete the course and the one that had the lowest time one. And then they decided to make it harder. So the original course was like a desert course, right. It was pretty wide open space, and it was you had to go from point A to point B, and it did require turns and stuff. It wasn't like a

straight shot, but it wasn't having to navigate through like traffic. Uh. They they made it tougher by setting it in a simulated urban environment I think. I think they used essentially in an old army base, and they set it up as if it were a town, and they included actual traffic in the streets, and I think even pedestrian traffic, and the vehicles had to be able to autonomously plot

a path from a starting position to a destination. They were not told what it was going to be beforehand, and then the cars had to navigate through that, obeying all traffic laws as well. So a much more difficult task than just going from point A to point B. And we've seen that continue to the most recent robotics challenge, the one that's going on right now and will conclude.

We're recording this in April. In the summer, there's going to be the Robotics challenge that requires teams to create a robot that can get into a vehicle, drive the vehicle to a location, get out of the vehicle, go into said location, navigate a set upstairs, go over possibly some rubble, breakthrough a wall, connects some wires together, operate some control systems, and do something secret that has yet

to be revealed to the teams. And the purpose of this is to create a robot that can respond to emergency situations. It was specifically inspired by the Fukushima disaster. I'm really sorry, guys, but the second that you got to breaking through a wall, I could think of in my head was like a like slim Ninja version of the kool Aid Man. See, that's interesting. My first thought was that it's it's a robot that turns into the Incredible Hulk. That was my version of smashing through the wall.

But Cooley man, is that's good too. It would be hilarious if it actually did get shout out oh yeah when it does that. Um yeah. And I'm sure at least one team is going to have to do it

that way. I really hope that someone does. Yeah. So anyway, that's that one is going on right now, and I look forward to following the the progress of the various teams and kind of also, I'm very curious to find out what the secret objective is that has yet to be revealed, And the idea is it's supposed to test the robot's ability to deal with um changing situations that are difficult, if not impossible, to predict. Yeah, but of course there are lots of new DARPA proposals going on

all the time. Yeah, and we should preface this. We're going to be talking and some of these we will not be covering in depth. And the reason for that is that the proposals are in various state ages right now. Some of them are so early and so vague as to be impossible to go into depth about because there's nothing to talk about yet. Yeah, there's no science to talk about because no one has done the science yet. Yeah, but that's where science comes from from, no one having

done it yet exactly. So. Yeah, and this, this first one that I'm going to mention, is one of those things. The press release for this was only put out on April, I believe. And uh, this is for Project the Darpest, calling and zero. They love acronyms, you guys. Oh yeah, a whole bunch. They are metal gear solid. I've got

a feeling, hey, call back. I've got a feeling that uh uh, that we're going to see like there's a there's gotta be a department in DARPA that's just like, all right, you gotta come up with a really awesome project name that could be a cool acronyms. Just keep on tweaking it until the acronym makes sense. Yeah, So so end zero that's near zero power r F and

sensor operations. And this project is currently seeking proposals and it's it's looking to develop low energy, wireless sensors that can wake up and take action when a particular event triggers them, like, for example, infrastructure damage. If a crack appears in a dam, for example, then these these sleeping sensors could could wake up and phone home, or if

there's a forest fire or etcetera, an earthquake or an earthquake. Yeah, that makes sense to me actually, because one thing we've talked about before is imagine we're going into the world of the Internet of things, and one of the primary components of the Internet of things as we've imagined it

at least, is sensors, right, you know, ubiquitous sensors. Sensors on everything that let you know when something's going on that needs attention, or they give you data that you can use somehow to to decisions or have your environment changed for you, or whatever it may be. You're going to have sensors everywhere, yeah, Yeah, so that you don't have to be in a place watching a thing personally,

your your place can monitor that for you. Sure, but you don't want those sensors to be a big power drain, of course, and you don't want them to have just sort of like little batteries that you'd have to replace or recharge all the time. So this makes a lot of sense to me if you can come up with ways of of having sensors that are basically not draining power or somehow inactive when they're not in use, so essentially they can go into some form of sleep mode

and thus prolong the life of their power source. Also, uh, it's attractive or another reason, that reason being that I think most of us would prefer a world where the sensors are active when they need to be and not always monitoring everything we do all the time always, or the sort of compliment that is that the sensors are largely invisible. Yeah, you know, you don't want them like activating all the time when they're not doing anything, Like a smoke alarm that goes off every time you you

fry a piece of chicken in a pan. Sure, that's why you out so frequently. So I mean the smoke alarm that does that, I must point out is operating correctly. It's your cooking, that's what we're saying. No, that's fair, really terrible cook This podcast has actually been an elaborate intervention, and it's led up to this point. I congratulations, guys. I would slow clap, but I don't want to set off the audio. But I guess it doesn't matter since

we're not really making an audio podcast. Well, you know, I've always tried to stick with baking more than cooking, but now this is we are just kidding, Lauren. I must say I've seen you bring leftovers before that look delicious. Oh well, thank you, thank you, Joe. I appreciate that most of them are from takeout. So what else has DARPA been up to besides making these low inner or sending out a proposal for these low energy sensors. Well here's another call for proposals I was reading about that

I am fascinated by because of the vagueness. Yeah, this was one that the proposal and and it leads your your brain down a bunch of strange directions. When you when you told me about this one, I was so perplexed, and honestly I still am because I haven't had a chance to dive into it to a point where I feel like I really have a grasp on it. So

why don't you walk me through what this is? Okay, So this is known as BRASS and BRASS stands for building resource adaptive software systems, And so they are currently seeking proposals um and the idea behind this is that they want to or at least as we understand it, is that they want to create software or frameworks for creating software that sort of eliminate the need for updates, right, the costernal updates, right, that can dynamically adapt to all

the software and hardware around them. Right. So, so we're all familiar with the need for software to update. You know, computers are incredibly powerful, but they interface with us through software that has very little resilience. Just think about how easy it is to just completely break and ruin the

operational software profile of your amazing piece of hardware computer. Well, or just the fact that, uh, let's say that you get anyone who's ever done an operating system upgrade where they've upgraded from one version to another and then realize that some other programs no longer work properly. That's a problem, and it's a problem that DARBA has identified as being a serious issue, particularly in military applications where downtime could

put people's lives at risk. Yeah. Another side of this is if you hear the stories about like, you know, the missile command systems that are still running on like Cobal all operated, you know, just these ancient software systems. But anyway, so DARPA announced this was also this month, so April, that it would launch a four year research project to find out what it would take to create software that remains robust for a hundred years without updates.

So I think they're not necessarily saying like time to create that software. They're saying, let's do research to figure out what it would take to create software like that. Yeah, let's let's identify the requirements and then start to identify

how those requirements could be met. Yeah. So this is a quote from their call for proposals, so brass quote seeks to realize foundational advances in the design and implementation of long lived software systems that can dynamically adapt to changes in the resources they depend upon and environments in

which they operate. So that's really interesting. And and again this is something where it's just a call for proposals UM, so we don't know everything about what they mean yet, but there have been different interpretations of what this means. One of them is sort of that, Okay, so all software lives on what this uh, this release called an ecosystem, and that sort of makes sense. There's an ecosystem of other software out there. There's other software in the world

that has to share and trade information with UM. There's the hardware that it runs on, you know, the physical stuff that allows the software to execute. There are protocols, and you know, that's like the language the software uses to communicate with other pieces of software. One example would

be HTTP, the protocol of Web traffic. UM. Of course, the users that operate it could be considered part of the ecosystem, possibly the libraries that supported the data that goes into it, right, yeah, yeah, So libraries you can think of as like imported tools that are used in software. So you might have like the Windows Control library, which would include like Windows buttons and stuff like that, or subroutines.

And of course for any program, this ecosystem is constantly changing all around and around it, and this is why we have to have software updates. I mean, sometimes you'll realize there's a vulnerability or something like that they need to patch. Other times it needs a compatibility update, it needs to be updated to work with something else, or well, well, because I was going to say, uh when like Firefox updates and all of a sudden, Adobe Flash is like, oh,

I don't work with this version of Firefox anymore. Let's get on writing some new code to patch that up, right. Or you might be saying, well, I want to port this piece of software to a totally different environment. So it used to run on my web browser, now I want to make it an Android app that does exactly the same thing. Uh okay, well that's usually not so easy. You've got to like actually have some developers go in

there and make some changes. If I'm interpreting this correctly, what it sounds like they want to get into is the idea of self adapting code for software programs like the like, how can you create software that is itself sort of uh, mainly just driven by its goal, Like it has a function that it performs and it adapts when its conditions change. Sure so so kind of rather than having software updates that have to be written by a team and installed either manually or automatically when the

team sends them out. You would have software that's essentially updating all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I that might be the case, or it may be something that could potentially be I hesitate to use the words simpler, because this would still be incredibly difficult. But the development of a new form of software platform that could perpetually do what it's supposed to do no matter what kind of

equipment it's running on. You know, let's say that the because I mean, obviously, if you if you assume that Moore's law holds true at least for a while, then the computers of ten years from now are going to be so much faster than what we're using today that running today's software on them would seem ridiculous. It certainly

wouldn't be optimized for that equipment. This sounds like it's a proposal to try and create a type of software that would consistently be able to adapt so that it is running at the appropriate efficiency for whatever conditions happened to be there. In other words, if you're using it in the future, it should be just as efficient on that future equipment as it is on today's equipment. Which is an incredibly difficult thing to do. Yeah, yeah, it's

sort of. That would be like if you took a copy of I don't know, we were is talking about Silent Hill, a Silent Hill one for the PlayStation and being able to plug it right into a PS three and have it look like a PS three game or

at least run we can see. That's the other thing about That's the other thing about legacy systems, right, is thatwards compatibility isn't always considered and built in exactly if we look if we just look at the brief history of computers already, which have not been around that long. In the grand scheme of things, there there's a host of different forms of media that we no longer have access to that you know, we don't have the devices that read that media, or there are very few of

them in existence these days. So, uh, this is also supposed to be a system that's going to have a centuries worth of longevity to it, meaning that the stuff that's created at the beginning should still be just as accessible in a hundred years. That's not even true for the stuff we build right now. That is in itself is a huge task, right, I mean, the stuff that the stuff that was made back on punch cards. You're not gonna I doubt any of our listeners have access

to that. Yeah, So, I mean it sounds like you're talking about the same kind of thing I am, from

what I can tell, more or less. I mean, the only thing I because I've seen interpretations that suggest that that every implementation of this would adapt on its own to a point where like some people have in some of the stories I've read, have have equated this to artificial intelligence and the potential rise of sentience sentience from sentience sentience from from artificial intelligence, which is a totally

different thing, right, It's not. It's not that the software is intelligently adapting itself so that it will be the better, faster, and stronger on that hardware. It's just saying, oh, I have, uh this much more memory, now let's use it. Or you know this, this other program has changed and so I need to change in order to use it. Something

along those lines. I mean, that's again, the vague descriptions make it difficult for us to really come down on this, and also the responses to this request for proposal could end up having a limited response or it could end up being a response that that the response says, yes, we're gonna meet all of these requirements, but the reality may shape out totally differently. It's it's impossible to say this is the very dawn of this research for this

particular project. So it'll be really interesting to see what happens for years from now when this this kind of research project comes to an end and see where we're at and what has actually taken place, because right now it's very hard for me to envision what the end product is going to be. Like. Another project that is in those early beginning stages is called four Is it Mighty?

It is the Mighty Thore? Yes, it is Technologies for Host Resilience, and it is currently it is currently reviewing proposals. So they so they had a proposal acceptance round, They've received a bunch and they are presumably looking at them um and and this this project is trying to discover how disease tolerance works in various creatures and various systems of creatures and to then identify ways to make organisms,

uh presumably mostly humans stronger against infection. That makes so much more sense than what I thought Technologies for Host Resilience was going to be. I thought it was going to be about how you know, when you have a party, and like you've invited different people to come to your party, and you know that one of those people really hates the other ones, You've got to figure out how you can position them at the party so that you don't

have any of those awkward social situations. I thought that's what this was about. And then fortunately none of them arrive. Anyway, that's my party to a t Joe, You've just described every party I've ever tried to throw. Um the you know what? Getting back into this the proposal here. I love this idea because to me, this this sounds like a proposal. Let's look into alternatives for things like antibiotics, right exactly. Yeah, And so it's flipping the common system

on its head. Of of figuring out how to attack better, this is learning how to defend better, which is so cool medically speaking. And yeah, especially with all the problems that we've talked about having with the overuse of antibiotics. And did we do did we do? Yeah? I thought

we had. Yeah, So yeah, we we talked about that at length, about the various issues which I mean, this would be a really cool kind of technology that could stand to benefit millions of people, well beyond military applications. So here's hoping that that pans out. Well, they're also darpest looking at alternatives to GPS. Yeah, after creating this amazing satellite global UH positioning satellite system, they they're like, you know, this isn't working so great? Yeah, or rather

there are there are there are some limitations. Like one of the limitations is that, well, if you don't have satellite coverage, then you don't get them the data needed to tell you where you are. And sometimes you don't have satellite coverage because it can be blocked. Yeah, and it might be blocked by a physical structure. So example, you might be in a city that has laws of tall buildings and you're not getting a clear signal, and that might be it. Sometimes you might be in a

really deeply wooded area that might be it. Sometimes you might have UH an opponent of some sort jamming signals, so you cannot get a clear signal from a satellite, and thus your device cannot determine what your position is. Um. So there are a lot of reasons why you might want to look into this, or you know, it may be that the environment you're in, Like if you are in an underground facility, you're not going to get a strong signal, you know. So what what are some alternatives? Uh?

And there are a lot of different proposed was on this. One of them is called the All Source Positioning and Navigation Project or ASPEN, and UH, this one is interesting. It it's supposed to make use of all available signals in an area, everything that is being transmitted, including things

that are not being transmitted by humans. And by that I mean it will pick up radio signals, television signals, cell tower signals, all to try and position itself, but also naturally occurring phenomenon like lightning, because if you know where the lightning strike is and your your system detects the lightning strike as well, it can coordinate that information to help locate your fixed position. UM. And because this would be a passive system, you wouldn't without shutting down everything,

you wouldn't be able to jam it. Uh. So that's the you know, one of the ideas, and it's not the only alternative GPS that DARP is looking into, but it's the one that I can find the most information on. UM. Also there looking at maybe looking backward at computer models. Right, the computers we have today are digital computers. The computers of the past were analog, and they're like, hey, you know those analog computers were actually pretty cool. Yeah, this is ah, this is going to make a lot of

sense to all the musicians out there. The difference between digital and analog. So digital deals with discrete measurements. You know, essentially, when you get down to it, a bit is either a zero or a one. It can't be any other value, right, unless you're talking about quantum bits, which are technically zero, one and everything in between. Um, So your classic bit is either a zero or a one, and that leads to the ability to make discreete measurements with incredible precision.

But as far as dynamic, changing complicated systems go, it's not ideal. So something like a really complex fluid system would be difficult to simulate with classical computers without using a huge amount of of computational power. That's why when we talk about things like these really dynamic systems like climates and weather, it's difficult to simulate. It's why it

needs so much processor power. But what DARPA says is that if we look at more of an analog method computation, we could potentially make these sort of simulations using much less computational power comparatively speaking, make it more efficient, so we're not constantly having to build the next great supercomputer in order to to simulate these systems. Uh. And when we talk about analog, they're not talking about like mechanical

switches or anything like that. They're talking about some pretty high tech stuff like DNA computing models or photonic systems that you're using optical uh, you know, fiber optic wires instead of instead of electricity. So it would be still kind of a sci fi high tech computer, and it would be really really good at dealing with certain computational problems, not necessarily faster than classical supercomputer for other types of problems, however,

very much like quantum computers. We talked about that in the past two how quantum computers could be amazing at particular applications. But it doesn't mean you're going to be able to run the next version of Skyrim, like the next Elder Scrolls game at the highest frame rate. That's not what a quantum computer, but it probably would make

those mods even more interesting. Now there's a particular office within DARPA called the Technical Technology Office, which looks at quote, military capabilities that create an asymmetric technological advantage and provide US forces with decisive superiority and the ability to overwhelm our opponents end quote. So that's your moral fashioned just straight up military technology. Yeah, this is the stuff that would give our side technical advantage over anyone else's side.

That's essentially what it comes down to. And what what I love is that says an asymmetric technical advantage, Like technical advantage isn't good enough, it has to be asymmetrical. What they're saying is we're investigating how to make war more unfair. Yeah. Yeah, and uh and so here are some of them. And the first one I can't believe they took this name. I mean, I really can't they They have a project called Hydra hale Hydra hale Hydra. So that's like a y'all have to help me here,

because as we've established, I'm sort of a casual comics fan. Alright, So two of the three members of four thinking now know that the third one is not one of us. Hydra is is that some sort of like weird Nazi thing in Captain America. It's an evil organization that's set up in the Marvel universe that uh, yeah, it's an offshoot of the well because you know the Captain Mark Captain America rather comics started during World War Two, and

so the Hydra originally was an offshoot of the Nazis. Yeah, and now now exists as its own totalitarian secret organization that is attempting to bring the world under one world order. So hopefully that's not what this Defense initiative is trying to evoke. Yeah, as far as I know, they don't use the Marvel Hydra symbol as their logo or anything. Now, this is a project that is specifically dedicated to adding unmanned support in naval operations as in the Navy, not

as in belly buttons. Uh So, manned ships can't be everywhere, right like you if you if there's a conflict and the Navy has to be involved, uh, you know, you have to just like with any military resource, you have to be very strategic about where you're you are locating your resources and how they can respond in any given situation, and they can't be everywhere at once. So this would actually be a program that would UH augment the Navy's

operations by creating unmanned platforms. And platforms in this sense mean a method of uh attaching whatever tools you need to accomplish your mission. So if it's surveillance, it might be various sensors, cameras, that kind of thing, microphones, etcetera. And you would deploy these with Navy ships and ideally they would be able to remain operational for months at a time without the need of having to be recharged

or maintained in any way. Uh So, really, in a way, it's it's like saying, let's let's have lots of ways of listening in and paying attention, so that it's almost as if we can be everywhere. But in reality, it's because we have these unmanned um platforms in order to gain that that or to gather that information underwater drones. Yeah, it could be, I mean that could certainly be part of it. Because again, this is sort of the definition

of what their goal is. It's not the explanation of how they achieve that goal, right, So they use lots of vague terms like platform and payload because it's better to go had to be vague and not predefined. What it is, because you may come up with a solution that didn't meet that predefinition but still is totally applicable. UM, then you got vulture. Okay, I like that. They're picking lots of commonly feared, mythological and real animals. The Armies

of Hell burst forth under Defense Department funding. It's not not the case in this one either. But the next one is called Cerberus. All right, so let's Chiron here we get No, it's a This is a project to develop an unmanned aerial vehicle you a v that would be capable of remaining in flight for up to five years without the need for maintenance or refueling. So we're talking about like using solar cells and fuel cells that

kind of stuff. Uh. The idea being that you could put this up in the air, it could have a surveillance role UM or reconnaissance role, and you wouldn't need to have it come down after because most most drones that are used to have a very limited flying time. This would be something that would be used for long term UM. And that project, actually I believe is now concluded and they've they're they kind of transitioned into looking into ways of UM accelerating the advancement of solar cell

technology because it's a very important component of this. Next, you have the extreme accuracy tasked ordinance or exact to which I have to feel like they're going to get into copyright anyway. Yeah, if you're if you're exact. Oh, I'm not sure that you go after the Department's defense, but maybe. Um so, this is technology for military snipers

that could also be a deterrent. Sure. Uh. And this one's been in the news a lot over the past couple of days since we've been we we are recording this podcast episode Look Behind the curtainet on the April, and I've been seeing this pop up a whole bunch. Yeah. So, so exact though, this would be guided small caliber bullets. And by small caliber, I mean fifty caliber, so small for a given definition. And by guided, what do you mean guided? So they're developing bullets that would be capable

of changing pathways in midflight. So let's say that you are a sniper and you've lined up a shot on a target. You've identified the target, so there'd have to be some way for this targeting system to communicate with the bullet, essentially saying this is where we're shooting. You fire, but let's say the wind changes direction. If you're a truly gifted sniper and you're firing from a very far distance, a change in wind could be all that it takes

for a hit to turn into a miss. And if you miss, you've also given away potentially your position and endangered your mission. So this would be a means of having a system that could allow for corrections in bullet flight so that the bullet actually hits the intended target. Now you'll notice I'm using a lot of terminology that

dehumanizes the purpose of snipers. That's not by accident. That's the way DARPA defines these things too, because once you start talking about this is a way for you to kill people more efficiently, it gets super grim, super fast. This is kind of a strange reminder and wake up call on this because while DARPA is coming up with lots of wonderful technologies that do filter down to the the everyday level, and if we partially have them to thank for the Internet, you can see them as a

very positive organization in a lot of ways. But their funding technology technology, But we also have to remember, yeah, they're they're gonna make bullets and stuff too write and you know, you could even argue that, you know, the responsible use of that technology can still be positive in the overall scheme of things, But should you get down to particulars, it's it's it's hard to talk about, Okay, Yeah, I mean, I mean, and you just you just can't

forget that when they say engage targets faster, what they genuinely mean is is kill a bunch of people, yeah, more efficiently. Yeah. Yeah, So, I mean, that's that's just the reality of the situation. Now that technology may end up affecting other things that end up being in civilian technology down the road that we can't necessarily anticipate right now.

Oh sure, I can imagine, for for example, going back to autonomous vehicles, guiding systems being useful for for that kind of right or even for some forms of autonomous flight. It could be important, and you know, lots of different other robotics. Really clearly, if if you're if your room book can target the pile of of escaped kitty litterle better sure, just not thinking about being in fear of my room, but my room is able to pick me

off from across the house. Um So, the next one is one that we've already kind of referenced earlier in this episode, the Legged Squad Support System or l S three. This is the one that includes the technology that was developed by Boston Dynamics, the big dog technology, the legged

robotic units. And the purpose for these isn't to fulfill the enemy with fear when they see this for legged monstrosity marching towards them at a style change their hearts and make them collapse into a puddle of Oh it's so cute. Yeah, it's not neither of those things. It's specifically to serve as like a mule. It's it's designed to carry cargo because soldiers can carry a lot of stuff. Some of them might be carrying upwards of a hundred pounds of gear. That's like forty five kilos of gear.

That's that's heavy, and to think that, you know, you often will end up also having to walk a very great distance while carrying that. You know, you're you're already talking about a huge physical demand on a soldier, and that's before there's any sort of combat that might take a point. Yeah, and that kind of physical strain can

absolutely affect your performance in the field. Sure. So this this project is about finding means of creating a robotic uh systems that could carry gear on behalf of soldiers. It could keep pace with soldiers, So it has to be able to go across different types of terrain, including

difficult terrain, and to remain safe around those soldiers. So, in other words, you have to create a robot that not only keeps pace and can travel the same sort of ground that the soldiers do, but doesn't tread on their feet or bump into them or you know other things that we've talked about with robots, things that you have to consider anytime you have a robot and human potentially interacting with one another. So that's what that system

is all about. Uh So yeah, I mean those are just that's just a kind of an overview of some of the projects that DARPA has in various stages of development right now. There are tons of other ones that we didn't even touch upon. Oh of course. Yeah, there are many, many, many things that they're always working on. If you guys have heard about one that you would like us to take a deeper look at, we would

love to hear from you. Yeah, you should send us an email and say, hey, there's the specific DARPA initiative that we would love to hear more about. We will happily take a look at least as far as DARPA will allow us to and and report back on that. You can contact us by just sending an email to FW thinking at how Stuff Works dot com. I think I may have mentioned that email address before, uh but FW thinking at how stuff Works dot com in case

you missed it the first five times. Um So, this is one of those things where you know, I am overall happy that DARPA exists. Actually, I'm really happy that DARPA exists, because as as flippant as I can be about this, national defense is incredibly important. And you know, we would not be here if it weren't for nash Old events, like our lives would be if they were, in fact, our lives would be significantly different. Um So,

it's it's one of those things. But I'm also thankful for the technology that has come out of it that has benefited us in a consumer fashion. Again, the three of us would not be in this room right now if it weren't for the Internet. We wouldn't have jobs, not here anyway. Well, I mean, in that parallel universe, we might all wind up sitting in a small room talking together. Anyway, to be in this room trying to

create a fire, I think. I think two out of the three of us would be trying to induct the third one into hydra. Joe, I have an interesting business opportunity for you. Well, I have a rat on a skewer to cook. I want to get this fire going. That's fair, all right? So at any rate, Uh, As far as what the future holds for DARPA, it's really going to be a continuation of developing technologies that will benefit military operations in some way, whether it's directly for

combat roles or support roles. That's its purpose. It's going to continue doing that, and as a result those technologies, many of them will filter down to benefit our lives in ways that are very difficult for us to anticipate

right now. I'm sure when when DARPA was first formed, back when it was ARPA, no one had really thought about the possibility of something as incredible as the Internet, right, and so it's when you think about that there, it's impossible for us to predict what's going to come out next, and There are plenty of research and development UH departments in in UM companies and in universities that depends very heavily upon DARPA's investment in order for them to do

the work they do, so it'll be interesting to see what comes next. Any predictions, Joe, I think that the the controlling of large flying beetles is really going to be key to the next stage of of how stuff works, in particular because we're going to be moving away from like web video podcasting and into disseminating leaflets that are carried out by beatles controlled by computers. I think that the beatles could actually be carrying our microphones and video cameras,

like like swarms of microphones and video cameras. I think they already do now. There are only two remaining beatles, but I think they're fully capable of carrying cameras and microphones. My prediction is that the next big thing coming out of DARPA will be a pun generating computer. And then you can post exactly that. We can sit in Jonathan's chair and it will just take whatever the last word we said was and turn it into something horrific. I think the important thing for us to remember is that

all you need is love. So if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes a Forward Thinking again, write us. I'm not going to repeat the email address again. That joke is long since dead, but please get in touch with us. You can also touch based with us on Twitter, Google Plus or Facebook. At Twitter and Google Plus, we are f W Thinking. Search f W Thinking and Facebook will pop right up. Leave us a message, tell us what you think, give us you know your requests for

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