I can vouch for the "fund people, not projects" aspect of ARPA funding in the early 70's. I was a lowly undergrad but working with Tom Cheatham (who ran the gr

I can vouch for the "fund people, not projects" aspect of ARPA funding in the early 70's. I was a lowly undergrad but working with Tom Cheatham (who ran the grad Harvard Center for Research in Computing Technology) and others, and helping in minor ways with their annual ARPA proposal. ARPA pretty much was sending money our way, and we just had to cast the annual work in terms of what was "hot" at the time (mostly "program understanding" at Harvard) to get the funds.