6 ms·

After Pentagon Ends Contract, Top-Secret Scientists Group Vows To Carry On

161 points by Meerax 7y ago

ARandomerDude 7y ago
Headline should read "after funding cut, scientists look for new funding". Not quite as clickbaity though... ETA: I used to work at a government lab. I've never heard a contractor say "they made the right choice. My work is obsolete/irrelevant/a waste of money." At the end of the day, people have livelihoods to maintain. Their work is always "needed now more than ever". Some of it actually is. Some of it isn't.
- microwavecamera 7y ago
  The article doesn't cover much of the history and mystery behind the Jason group. They were the stuff of conspiracy theory lore when I was younger.
  - starpilot 7y ago
    MJ12, Bilderberg group. Think tanks. Anyone can join.
- notthegov 7y ago
  Perhaps but the JASON Group is the most famous group of top secret scientists. Half of their studies are classified but here's some that aren't- https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason JASON was founded as Project 137 by John Archibald Wheeler and others. It was only publicly confirmed to exist after the Pentagon Papers mentioned them.
  - pontifier 7y ago
    Thanks, I'm particularly interested in their evaluation of low cost Fusion concepts. I really wish I could get some funding to build my prototype reactor.
- notbob 7y ago
  > I used to work at a government lab. Most JASON scientists haven't worked at a government lab for decades. How is this relevant? > ...I've never heard a contractor... These aren't contractors, they are scientists. And not just any scientists. In most cases, they aren't even the scientists employed by a national lab. They're scientists employed by all manner of institutions, including universities who will pay their paychecks regardless of whether this funding comes in. Usually senior and well-respected. Many of those scientists have, if not "fuck you money", at least "fuck you reputations" that translate into "fuck you money". E.g., the current chairperson is fucking Russell Hemley... he's not putting up with federal background checks because he needs the extra pennies... JASON members work on JASON projects because they think those projects are important. Nobel laureates and other top scientists don't work on grant funded projects for the money... if all they cared about was feeding their families, they would just retire. And if all they cared about was money, they would pimp their reputations to private industry labs.
  - cm2187 7y ago
    I don't know about these specific scientists but often professors only get paid for the school terms and must rely on externally funded research grants for the rest of the year.
    - AlexCoventry 7y ago
      If you don't bring in grant money, you'll end up with a lab roughly the size and utility of a shoebox.
    - dgacmu 7y ago
      You're missing the parent's point. Another (one-time?) JASON who you might have heard of is Bill Dally. He was a prof at Stanford, including being the department chair, and is the chief scientist / senior VP of Research at Nvidia. Needless to say, silicon valley senior VPs don't usually need extra spending cash.
  - kilo_bravo_3 7y ago
    >These aren't contractors, they are scientists. If you are paid to perform a service based on the terms of a contract you are, by definition, a contractor. It doesn't matter if you are cleaning toilets or hosting a conference on quantum computing.
- achenatx 7y ago
  I own a contracting company and we regularly tell clients they should cut the project we are working on because it doesnt provide enough value. We do software requirements, identifying the minimum necessary features to maximize the value. Some projects have no redeeming value. Who wants to waste a clients money working on something that has no value for a client?
  - nn3 7y ago
    >Who wants to waste a clients money working on something that >has no value for a client? Isn't that the whole business model of Accenture and similar?
    - JetSpiegel 7y ago
      That's doing the least possible while billing the most. It's an optimizing function. Doing valueless projects is a consequence of that function.
- seem_2211 7y ago
  This is something I see on Twitter a bit (usually with "academics" who spend a lot of time telling other people how they should live their lives). "Very important work" is very subjective. Almost all of us want to think that our work is very important (myself included).
neilv 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JASON_(advisory_group) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JASON_(advisory_group)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Jach 7y ago
This seems shortsighted... they'll probably find more funding, but what a bunch of nonsense to have to deal with in the interim. This bit of the article makes it seem like it could be as petty as a clash of personalities: > "The department remains committed to seeking independent technical advice and review," Pentagon spokesperson Heather Babb said. But Aftergood sees another reason for the end of the relationship. He says that the Jasons are a blunt bunch. If they think an idea is dumb or won't work, they aren't afraid to say so. > "They were offering the opposite of cheerleading," he says. "And DOD decided that maybe they didn't want to pay for that any longer." An interesting bit of trivia from the wiki page shows they lost funding before in 2002 for something perhaps just as petty, them not relenting on having exclusive control over who they let join: > In 2002, DARPA decided to cut its ties with JASON. DARPA had not only been one of JASON's primary sponsors, it was also the channel through which JASON received funding from other sponsors. DARPA's decision came after JASON's refusal to allow DARPA to select three new JASON members. Since JASON's inception, new members have always been selected by its existing members. After much negotiation and letter-writing—including a letter by Congressman Rush Holt of New Jersey[26]—funding was subsequently secured from an office higher in the defense hierarchy, the office of the Director, Defense Research & Engineering, name changed to Assistant Secretary of Defense (Research & Engineering) (ASD (R&E)) in 2011.[27] I'm hesitant to blindly take the scientists' side however. I'm reminded of a remark from a Feynman interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f61KMw5zVhg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f61KMw5zVhg): > Honors, and from that day to this, always bothered me. I had trouble when I became a member of the National Academy of Science, and I had ultimately to resign. Because there was another organization, most of whose time was spent in choosing who was illustrious enough to be allowed to join us in our organization. Including such questions as: ‘we physicists have to stick together because there’s a very good chemist that they’re trying to get in and we haven’t got enough room…’. What’s the matter with chemists? The whole thing was rotten. Because the purpose was mostly to decide who could have this honor. OK? I don’t like honors.
- ocschwar 7y ago
  > I'm hesitant to blindly take the scientists' side however I'm not. It's not a lot of money, and the Pentagon can think of far worse ways to blow that kind of money.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tus87 7y ago
> The Jasons' solution was to develop a system of remote sensors that could be airdropped into the jungle and provide intelligence on the enemy. The program, like much to do with Vietnam, was controversial and didn't work perfectly LOL so a bunch of ivory tower academics who have never left the cushy confines of campus let alone entered a battlefield come up with impractical and useless inventions that got dumped within a day. What's the bet men on the ground hated them! And the real solution came from some comms officer who knows a bit about soldering and sensors (and the reality of jungle warfare) probably. Im surprised the DOD put up with them for so long.
- learc83 7y ago
  Who do you think designs aircraft, ground vehicles, radar, and weapons systems? The vast majority of that work is done by people who have never seen combat, and that includes technology that the troops on the ground do love.
  - tus87 7y ago
    Big private companies that employ LOTS of ex soldiers who work closely with real engineers who solve problems. Neither of these should be conflated with airy fairy academics.
    - Aromasin 7y ago
      You've really wandered onto the wrong website if you don't like academics. At least as far as the UK is concerned, in my time in the Aerospace Defence industry every single person I've worked with has been an academic in some sense. There are almost no ex-soldiers involved in the process, unless they have an academic background. For us, the Defence Engineering and Science Group bring in a think-tank of currently serving soldiers to discuss their needs with them, then DESG work on procurement. They then contract that out to a private R&D company. We get a spec and work to fulfil that. From friends within the industry, other than perhaps BAE which do look favourably on ex-soldiers provided they have an degree (more academics huh...), all the work is done by a bunch of postgraduate scientists. It seems to me that your perception of how the 'big private companies' work it somewhat outdated...
bashwizard 7y ago
So much for that "top secret".
omeid2 7y ago
On a tangent, the group is part of Mitre Corp which maintains the CVE: https://cve.mitre.org/ https://cve.mitre.org/ amongst many other security related publications. Their SEG is a must read for anyone who wants to dive in or understand a systematic approach to System Engineering. https://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/publications/se-guide-book-interactive.pdf https://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/publications/se-gu...
Causality1 7y ago
The United States military-industrial complex is the world's largest jobs program. Paying sixty scientists for research means five hundred fewer people in a congressional district building tanks we don't need and can't use.
- mcherm 7y ago
  I agree with everything you say here. But I can't tell whether this is an argument for, or against, funding The Jasons.
  - Causality1 7y ago
    I don't know whether the Jasons are necessary. I would wager they're a better use of money than half of the stuff the pentagon does spend money on.
- jplayer01 7y ago
  Look at the papers they worked on. https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason Seems like they do important and meaningful research beyond tanks.
rendx 7y ago
A good book about the history of the Jasons (and everything in and around DARPA) is The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA (2016) by Annie Jacobsen. Recommended read! https://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-Brain-Uncensored-Americas-Top-Secret/dp/0316371661 https://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-Brain-Uncensored-Americas-T... https://www.npr.org/2015/09/25/443334499/pulling-back-the-curtain-on-darpa-the-pentagons-brain https://www.npr.org/2015/09/25/443334499/pulling-back-the-cu...
JulianMorrison 7y ago
Do you want supervillains? Because this is how you create supervillains.
xorand 7y ago
Which mathematicians or CS are (were) members of this group after 2000?

161 points by Meerax 7y ago

Headline should read "after funding cut, scientists look for new funding". Not quite as clickbaity though... ETA: I used to work at a government lab. I've never heard a contractor say "they made the right choice. My work is obsolete/irrelevant/a waste of money." At the end of the day, people have livelihoods to maintain. Their work is always "needed now more than ever". Some of it actually is. Some of it isn't.

microwavecamera 7y ago
The article doesn't cover much of the history and mystery behind the Jason group. They were the stuff of conspiracy theory lore when I was younger.
- starpilot 7y ago
  MJ12, Bilderberg group. Think tanks. Anyone can join.
notthegov 7y ago
Perhaps but the JASON Group is the most famous group of top secret scientists. Half of their studies are classified but here's some that aren't- https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason JASON was founded as Project 137 by John Archibald Wheeler and others. It was only publicly confirmed to exist after the Pentagon Papers mentioned them.
- pontifier 7y ago
  Thanks, I'm particularly interested in their evaluation of low cost Fusion concepts. I really wish I could get some funding to build my prototype reactor.
notbob 7y ago
> I used to work at a government lab. Most JASON scientists haven't worked at a government lab for decades. How is this relevant? > ...I've never heard a contractor... These aren't contractors, they are scientists. And not just any scientists. In most cases, they aren't even the scientists employed by a national lab. They're scientists employed by all manner of institutions, including universities who will pay their paychecks regardless of whether this funding comes in. Usually senior and well-respected. Many of those scientists have, if not "fuck you money", at least "fuck you reputations" that translate into "fuck you money". E.g., the current chairperson is fucking Russell Hemley... he's not putting up with federal background checks because he needs the extra pennies... JASON members work on JASON projects because they think those projects are important. Nobel laureates and other top scientists don't work on grant funded projects for the money... if all they cared about was feeding their families, they would just retire. And if all they cared about was money, they would pimp their reputations to private industry labs.
- cm2187 7y ago
  I don't know about these specific scientists but often professors only get paid for the school terms and must rely on externally funded research grants for the rest of the year.
  - AlexCoventry 7y ago
    If you don't bring in grant money, you'll end up with a lab roughly the size and utility of a shoebox.
  - dgacmu 7y ago
    You're missing the parent's point. Another (one-time?) JASON who you might have heard of is Bill Dally. He was a prof at Stanford, including being the department chair, and is the chief scientist / senior VP of Research at Nvidia. Needless to say, silicon valley senior VPs don't usually need extra spending cash.
- kilo_bravo_3 7y ago
  >These aren't contractors, they are scientists. If you are paid to perform a service based on the terms of a contract you are, by definition, a contractor. It doesn't matter if you are cleaning toilets or hosting a conference on quantum computing.
achenatx 7y ago
I own a contracting company and we regularly tell clients they should cut the project we are working on because it doesnt provide enough value. We do software requirements, identifying the minimum necessary features to maximize the value. Some projects have no redeeming value. Who wants to waste a clients money working on something that has no value for a client?
- nn3 7y ago
  >Who wants to waste a clients money working on something that >has no value for a client? Isn't that the whole business model of Accenture and similar?
  - JetSpiegel 7y ago
    That's doing the least possible while billing the most. It's an optimizing function. Doing valueless projects is a consequence of that function.
seem_2211 7y ago
This is something I see on Twitter a bit (usually with "academics" who spend a lot of time telling other people how they should live their lives). "Very important work" is very subjective. Almost all of us want to think that our work is very important (myself included).

neilv 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JASON_(advisory_group) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JASON_(advisory_group)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Jach 7y ago

This seems shortsighted... they'll probably find more funding, but what a bunch of nonsense to have to deal with in the interim. This bit of the article makes it seem like it could be as petty as a clash of personalities: > "The department remains committed to seeking independent technical advice and review," Pentagon spokesperson Heather Babb said. But Aftergood sees another reason for the end of the relationship. He says that the Jasons are a blunt bunch. If they think an idea is dumb or won't work, they aren't afraid to say so. > "They were offering the opposite of cheerleading," he says. "And DOD decided that maybe they didn't want to pay for that any longer." An interesting bit of trivia from the wiki page shows they lost funding before in 2002 for something perhaps just as petty, them not relenting on having exclusive control over who they let join: > In 2002, DARPA decided to cut its ties with JASON. DARPA had not only been one of JASON's primary sponsors, it was also the channel through which JASON received funding from other sponsors. DARPA's decision came after JASON's refusal to allow DARPA to select three new JASON members. Since JASON's inception, new members have always been selected by its existing members. After much negotiation and letter-writing—including a letter by Congressman Rush Holt of New Jersey[26]—funding was subsequently secured from an office higher in the defense hierarchy, the office of the Director, Defense Research & Engineering, name changed to Assistant Secretary of Defense (Research & Engineering) (ASD (R&E)) in 2011.[27] I'm hesitant to blindly take the scientists' side however. I'm reminded of a remark from a Feynman interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f61KMw5zVhg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f61KMw5zVhg): > Honors, and from that day to this, always bothered me. I had trouble when I became a member of the National Academy of Science, and I had ultimately to resign. Because there was another organization, most of whose time was spent in choosing who was illustrious enough to be allowed to join us in our organization. Including such questions as: ‘we physicists have to stick together because there’s a very good chemist that they’re trying to get in and we haven’t got enough room…’. What’s the matter with chemists? The whole thing was rotten. Because the purpose was mostly to decide who could have this honor. OK? I don’t like honors.

ocschwar 7y ago
> I'm hesitant to blindly take the scientists' side however I'm not. It's not a lot of money, and the Pentagon can think of far worse ways to blow that kind of money.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tus87 7y ago

> The Jasons' solution was to develop a system of remote sensors that could be airdropped into the jungle and provide intelligence on the enemy. The program, like much to do with Vietnam, was controversial and didn't work perfectly LOL so a bunch of ivory tower academics who have never left the cushy confines of campus let alone entered a battlefield come up with impractical and useless inventions that got dumped within a day. What's the bet men on the ground hated them! And the real solution came from some comms officer who knows a bit about soldering and sensors (and the reality of jungle warfare) probably. Im surprised the DOD put up with them for so long.

learc83 7y ago
Who do you think designs aircraft, ground vehicles, radar, and weapons systems? The vast majority of that work is done by people who have never seen combat, and that includes technology that the troops on the ground do love.
- tus87 7y ago
  Big private companies that employ LOTS of ex soldiers who work closely with real engineers who solve problems. Neither of these should be conflated with airy fairy academics.
  - Aromasin 7y ago
    You've really wandered onto the wrong website if you don't like academics. At least as far as the UK is concerned, in my time in the Aerospace Defence industry every single person I've worked with has been an academic in some sense. There are almost no ex-soldiers involved in the process, unless they have an academic background. For us, the Defence Engineering and Science Group bring in a think-tank of currently serving soldiers to discuss their needs with them, then DESG work on procurement. They then contract that out to a private R&D company. We get a spec and work to fulfil that. From friends within the industry, other than perhaps BAE which do look favourably on ex-soldiers provided they have an degree (more academics huh...), all the work is done by a bunch of postgraduate scientists. It seems to me that your perception of how the 'big private companies' work it somewhat outdated...

bashwizard 7y ago

So much for that "top secret".

omeid2 7y ago

On a tangent, the group is part of Mitre Corp which maintains the CVE: https://cve.mitre.org/ https://cve.mitre.org/ amongst many other security related publications. Their SEG is a must read for anyone who wants to dive in or understand a systematic approach to System Engineering. https://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/publications/se-guide-book-interactive.pdf https://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/publications/se-gu...

Causality1 7y ago

The United States military-industrial complex is the world's largest jobs program. Paying sixty scientists for research means five hundred fewer people in a congressional district building tanks we don't need and can't use.

mcherm 7y ago
I agree with everything you say here. But I can't tell whether this is an argument for, or against, funding The Jasons.
- Causality1 7y ago
  I don't know whether the Jasons are necessary. I would wager they're a better use of money than half of the stuff the pentagon does spend money on.
jplayer01 7y ago
Look at the papers they worked on. https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason https://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason Seems like they do important and meaningful research beyond tanks.

rendx 7y ago

A good book about the history of the Jasons (and everything in and around DARPA) is The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA (2016) by Annie Jacobsen. Recommended read! https://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-Brain-Uncensored-Americas-Top-Secret/dp/0316371661 https://www.amazon.com/Pentagons-Brain-Uncensored-Americas-T... https://www.npr.org/2015/09/25/443334499/pulling-back-the-curtain-on-darpa-the-pentagons-brain https://www.npr.org/2015/09/25/443334499/pulling-back-the-cu...

JulianMorrison 7y ago

Do you want supervillains? Because this is how you create supervillains.

xorand 7y ago

Which mathematicians or CS are (were) members of this group after 2000?