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The rise of ‘ARPA-everything’ and what it means for science

superluserdo 5y ago
"ARPA-everything" sounds like what IoT would have been called 40 years ago
deregulateMed 5y ago
Does this have the risk of taking private sector talent and putting them on slow moving government projects? I like the idea of public technology and innovation, but I'm concerned about the efficiency of the US military.
- therobot24 5y ago
  efficiency problems of the US military can largely be blamed on a few factors: 1) It's absolutely, mind-mindbogglingly huge and it's nearly impossible to track all that's going on in the many, many different areas in any meaningful way. 2) Due to (1) and all the areas it supports, many actual projects are relatively underfunded for what they're expected to produce. 3) Because of (2) and the fact that it's public money, there's a lot of focus when going a few steps above the working level to make things efficient, remove redundancy, push for more collaboration, get more bang for your buck, etc. This often creates scope creep as things support more than what they can handle [see (2) now getting worse for maybe a little more money being added to the program] and are now expected to deliver the single solution to a multifaceted problem. 4) Because of (3) the program now has a lot more hands (people) who contribute to or rely on the outcome. This also starts to grind things to a halt as the program becomes more difficult and laborious to manage given all the new moving parts, people involved, and inevitable demonstrations and experiments to support. The best way to be efficient in the US military, is to stay small as long as possible. To carve out some area that no one else is going to touch (so you don't get merged or lose funding) and make that 'your lane'. This adds to the challenge in (2), which leads to (3)...i guess if maybe we weren't so aggressive with (3) we wouldn't have as much challenge with (2) after some time for things to settle. That said, (3) is inevitable because of (1).
dnautics 5y ago
Back in the first decade of the millenium I remember ARPA-E (DOEnergy) getting started and dealing with PMs who were in charge of synthetic biology RFCs that didn't know any biology. Even DARPA had kind of lost its lustre, there was a super-PM in charge of the synthetic biology projects who we later learned had politically connected parents and whose graduate school work was chasing a nanotechnology artifact ("stripey nanoparticles fiasco") -- this all later came into focus when the PM's ex-PI railroaded a postdoc for speaking out about how the work was questionable, and the super-PM was quietly let go from DARPA, and no shit, started a blood nano-draw analysis company (you can't make this up!). In general I feel like this ARPAization is very much organizational cargo culting on the part of the government.
einpoklum 5y ago
> Science agencies such as ARPA-Health hope to replicate the success of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, but researchers question whether they will thrive. Well, I think one can figure out the answer pretty quickly: > US President Joe Biden’s administration wants to create a US$6.5-billion agency to accelerate innovations in health and medicine ... the Biden administration has proposed launching a second US agency, the $500-million ARPA-Climate (ARPA-C), to spur technologies for fighting climate change. That's per-capita funding of 20 bucks and 1.6 bucks. And I'm not even sure those figures are per annum or just flat sums! So it will fail for lack of funding if for nothing else. The US is notorious for lacking public funding for research, with money much more often coming from private corporations or the military establishment (like DARPA - the Defense APRA; ONS - Office of Naval Research; and such). Another reason one can expect a failure, at least for that second agency, is the problem at hand. The struggle to contend with climate change is, at this point, not so much a struggle for better technology but rather for the necessary socio-economic and cultural changes (within world states and on the international level). Of course, better tech can _mitigate_ the depth of necessary change somewhat, but it is unreasonable to expect deus-ex-technica solution coming out of some lab.
alexwasserman 5y ago
“…who’s work a generation ago fueled the modern internet”. It’s 2021, and generations are traditionally 20 years. I think they’re off a bit. 3 generations ago. Quite a long time now.

"ARPA-everything" sounds like what IoT would have been called 40 years ago

Does this have the risk of taking private sector talent and putting them on slow moving government projects? I like the idea of public technology and innovation, but I'm concerned about the efficiency of the US military.

therobot24 5y ago
efficiency problems of the US military can largely be blamed on a few factors: 1) It's absolutely, mind-mindbogglingly huge and it's nearly impossible to track all that's going on in the many, many different areas in any meaningful way. 2) Due to (1) and all the areas it supports, many actual projects are relatively underfunded for what they're expected to produce. 3) Because of (2) and the fact that it's public money, there's a lot of focus when going a few steps above the working level to make things efficient, remove redundancy, push for more collaboration, get more bang for your buck, etc. This often creates scope creep as things support more than what they can handle [see (2) now getting worse for maybe a little more money being added to the program] and are now expected to deliver the single solution to a multifaceted problem. 4) Because of (3) the program now has a lot more hands (people) who contribute to or rely on the outcome. This also starts to grind things to a halt as the program becomes more difficult and laborious to manage given all the new moving parts, people involved, and inevitable demonstrations and experiments to support. The best way to be efficient in the US military, is to stay small as long as possible. To carve out some area that no one else is going to touch (so you don't get merged or lose funding) and make that 'your lane'. This adds to the challenge in (2), which leads to (3)...i guess if maybe we weren't so aggressive with (3) we wouldn't have as much challenge with (2) after some time for things to settle. That said, (3) is inevitable because of (1).

dnautics 5y ago

Back in the first decade of the millenium I remember ARPA-E (DOEnergy) getting started and dealing with PMs who were in charge of synthetic biology RFCs that didn't know any biology. Even DARPA had kind of lost its lustre, there was a super-PM in charge of the synthetic biology projects who we later learned had politically connected parents and whose graduate school work was chasing a nanotechnology artifact ("stripey nanoparticles fiasco") -- this all later came into focus when the PM's ex-PI railroaded a postdoc for speaking out about how the work was questionable, and the super-PM was quietly let go from DARPA, and no shit, started a blood nano-draw analysis company (you can't make this up!). In general I feel like this ARPAization is very much organizational cargo culting on the part of the government.

einpoklum 5y ago

> Science agencies such as ARPA-Health hope to replicate the success of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, but researchers question whether they will thrive. Well, I think one can figure out the answer pretty quickly: > US President Joe Biden’s administration wants to create a US$6.5-billion agency to accelerate innovations in health and medicine ... the Biden administration has proposed launching a second US agency, the $500-million ARPA-Climate (ARPA-C), to spur technologies for fighting climate change. That's per-capita funding of 20 bucks and 1.6 bucks. And I'm not even sure those figures are per annum or just flat sums! So it will fail for lack of funding if for nothing else. The US is notorious for lacking public funding for research, with money much more often coming from private corporations or the military establishment (like DARPA - the Defense APRA; ONS - Office of Naval Research; and such). Another reason one can expect a failure, at least for that second agency, is the problem at hand. The struggle to contend with climate change is, at this point, not so much a struggle for better technology but rather for the necessary socio-economic and cultural changes (within world states and on the international level). Of course, better tech can _mitigate_ the depth of necessary change somewhat, but it is unreasonable to expect deus-ex-technica solution coming out of some lab.

alexwasserman 5y ago

“…who’s work a generation ago fueled the modern internet”. It’s 2021, and generations are traditionally 20 years. I think they’re off a bit. 3 generations ago. Quite a long time now.