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 di

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.