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When reading these program announcements, it's important to keep in mind that the (unofficial?) mandate for a DARPA program officer is to fund proposals that li

When reading these program announcements, it's important to keep in mind that the (unofficial?) mandate for a DARPA program officer is to fund proposals that lie in the boundaries of [Doesn't at face violate laws of physics, P(Success) = 0.2]. A program where the vast majority of aims were clearly successfully delivered would be a program that should have been funded by other government agencies. Of course, with R&D currently on the chopping block, we'll see if the same people that complain about NSF/NIH start coming for DARPA also...

laughingcurve 2y ago
If they come for DARPA then we are all in deep shit because that means things are far worse than we could have imagined.
- caycep 2y ago
  like even more far-worse than the current far-worse?
- SequoiaHope 2y ago
  In the words of Han Solo “I don’t know I can imagine quite a bit.”
- ballooney 2y ago
  Things already are that bad, you’re standing an inch beyond where the previous wave washed up to and saying “well if it gets here in the next few waves then suddenly we become in deep shit’ while all around people are shouting at you about the existence of a concept called ‘the tide’. This is happening right now. fight back.
  - foxglacier 2y ago
    Come on. Even if all of Darpa is shut down, it will hardly matter. Come back in 4 years and see that the world is still turning but you've used up your hyperbolic panic on a big nothing-burger.
    - hsuduebc2 2y ago
      Just because the world keeps turning doesn't mean it's unaffected. Small shifts today can have huge consequences down the line, and brushing everything off as a 'nothing-burger' is exactly how real damage gets ignored. I wonder-what would actually have to happen for you to stop calling it that? This situation is, at the very least, unusual.
      - foxglacier 2y ago
        For the past 25 years, there have been consistent small shifts towards more government deficit [1]. Aren't those the problem that has to be stopped? I don't know enough about economics but can this really continue forever or is it just exacerbating some painful problem in the future if it's not reversed now? Maybe non-essential for-the-future work like Darpa isn't the best thing to spend money on when you're trying to reduce spending as fast as you can? It can always be re-instated in more prosperous times. [1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-budget-deficit-tops-18-trillion-fiscal-2024-third-largest-record-2024-10-18/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-budget-deficit-tops-18...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- noobermin 2y ago
  They already came for NSF and the NIH, how can they not also come for DARPA? Most republicans don't believe in defense or anything like that, they believe in returning money to their investors...I mean campaign contributors who are defense contractors. A contractor makes money selling contracts, whether they affect the actual defense capabilities of the country or not.
  - afpx 2y ago
    From what I understand, the funding cuts are primarily related to DEI initiatives. And, generally the administration is trying to align activities with its goals, so it’s understandable that funds will be adjusted. DEI is a target because its goals are steeped in Marxist philosophy, which is antithetical to their own. Also, Republicans (of whom I’m not one) believe that spending should be controlled by the states. It’s not that they don’t believe in defense - they realize it’s more effective to invest in drones and use nuclear deterrence. Those are more effective and cheaper in terms of lives as well as money. This aligns with the US’s new isolationist strategy as it withdraws from the world.
    - eesmith 2y ago
      Do you have any idea of the breakdown? Because everything I've see is that no one knows, and the limited government publications are full of bullshit. Like, if a project studying biodiversity is cut, is that because it is "related to DEI initiatives" because it shared the word "diversity"? How many of the laid-off VA staff were DEI? The laid-off forest rangers? How much of USAID was DEI? The Trump administration says the cut was due to wasteful spending and fraud, not DEI. How do the cuts in DEI initiatives compare to the massive cuts to indirect grant monies? If the Republicans believe spending should be more controlled by the states, they have a majority and can, you know, change the law. We have a representative democracy to help balance national interests, rather than the interests of a king. I don't think we can regard threats to annex Greenland, Canada, or the Panama Canal as part of an isolationist policy. Such threats are more closely aligned with expansionism. An isolationist government would not be involved in international negotiations involving Ukraine, or providing support to Israel, to start. FWIW, DEI is no more steeped in Marxist philosophy than the Freedman's Bureau, public libraries, or the FDIC. As far as I can tell, "Marxism" when used this way is a boogieman term used to scare off any critique of capitalism or its effects, little different than how Republicans sneered that Dukakis was an "L word", castigating the word "liberal." Both terms are used as rhetorical propaganda. Given the influence Marx had on studying "class relations, social conflict, and social transformation" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism), it's all too easy to say that any study of those topics must be Marxism, and therefore fomenting a communist revolution.
aaron695 2y ago
> When reading these program announcements, I think DARPA projects often are not what they say they are. Admittedly this project is quite out there. > P(Success) = 0.2 They themselves admit it's lower than this, which is not 'success' but successful outcomes to limited specs.
- szvsw 2y ago
  Yeah, wouldn’t P(success) = 0.2 be pretty fantastic for any highly experimental/speculative/moonshot research entity?
0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
My reference point, the DARPA self driving challenge was in 2004. AlexNet was a sea change in image processing, which did not happen for another eight years.
rayiner 2y ago
I started my career at a DARPA contractor. Part of the DARPA ethos also is that it’s lean and mean. Program managers have a ton of discretion, but they’re not lifers. IIRC they get a 4 or 8 year stint then are expected to leave. Office space is leased from the private sector, etc. Complete mission-oriented and non-ideological, at least it was 20 years ago.
- kamaal 2y ago
  >>IIRC they get a 4 or 8 year stint then are expected to leave. If they refuse to leave they get fired? >>Part of the DARPA ethos also is that it’s lean and mean. Program managers have a ton of discretion, but they’re not lifers. Curious what kind of people are hired? Without overarching long term leadership its hard to chart out a continuous direction.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    I misremembered, the terms were 2 years or 4 years: https://www.darpa.mil/careers/program-manager https://www.darpa.mil/careers/program-manager (Maybe they shortened it.) Sometimes you can stay longer than that, but yes, you’re pushed out. The organization is highly decentralized: much of the substantive authority to decide project direction is invested in program managers. There’s a deliberate effort not to have a central vision which, the reasoning goes, could lead to inertia and stagnation. PMs tend to be ambitious young PhDs who want to go into industry or start their own companies. The PM on the project I worked on is now principal wireless architect at Google Fi.
    - thom 2y ago
      This is very interesting. I know obsessing over Roman history is seen as somewhat fascist-adjacent, especially emanating from tech spaces, but I keep wanting to run a company along the lines of the Republic’s mixed constitution. No king with centralised power (CEO) but elected Consuls with term limits, who have the power to kick off and deliver big projects, aligning teams however they need to. Give every tribe (product, design, engineering, platform etc) a tribune with some degree of veto power. Create a senate with every Senior, who elect the consuls and approve new wars (projects). Employ quaestors across the company to do finops. At the end of your period you get a big triumph if you were victorious, or you get dumped in the Tiber if you abused your power.
rajnathani 2y ago
SpaceX started off based on a DARPA proposal/challenge too right? Or at least the DARPA challenge for re-usable rockets aligned well with SpaceX's demonstrable success.
- hoppp 2y ago
  They wanted to go to mars and tried buying russian rockets first, but they were too expensive so they started building them. Nothing to do with Darpa, at least I dont find any relations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_SpaceX https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_SpaceX
- Xmd5a 2y ago
  >In a post-accident report, NASA's Brand Commission blamed the accident on a burnt-out field crew who had been operating under on-again/off-again funding and constant threats of outright cancellation. The crew, many of them originally from the SDIO program, were also highly critical of NASA's "chilling" effect on the program, and the masses of paperwork NASA demanded as part of the testing regimen.[citation needed] >NASA had taken on the project grudgingly after having been "shamed" by its very public success under the direction of the SDIO.[citation needed] Its continued success was cause for considerable political in-fighting within NASA due to it competing with their "home grown" Lockheed Martin X-33/VentureStar project. Pete Conrad priced a new DC-X at $50 million, cheap by NASA standards, but NASA decided not to rebuild the craft in light of budget constraints.[16] Instead, NASA focused development on the Lockheed Martin VentureStar which it felt answered some criticisms of the DC-X, specifically the airplane-like landing of the VentureStar, which many NASA engineers preferred over the vertical landing of the DC-X. Just a few years later, the repeated failure of the Venturestar project, especially the composite LH2 (liquid hydrogen) tank, led to program cancellation.[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X

laughingcurve 2y ago

If they come for DARPA then we are all in deep shit because that means things are far worse than we could have imagined.

caycep 2y ago
like even more far-worse than the current far-worse?
SequoiaHope 2y ago
In the words of Han Solo “I don’t know I can imagine quite a bit.”
ballooney 2y ago
Things already are that bad, you’re standing an inch beyond where the previous wave washed up to and saying “well if it gets here in the next few waves then suddenly we become in deep shit’ while all around people are shouting at you about the existence of a concept called ‘the tide’. This is happening right now. fight back.
- foxglacier 2y ago
  Come on. Even if all of Darpa is shut down, it will hardly matter. Come back in 4 years and see that the world is still turning but you've used up your hyperbolic panic on a big nothing-burger.
  - hsuduebc2 2y ago
    Just because the world keeps turning doesn't mean it's unaffected. Small shifts today can have huge consequences down the line, and brushing everything off as a 'nothing-burger' is exactly how real damage gets ignored. I wonder-what would actually have to happen for you to stop calling it that? This situation is, at the very least, unusual.
    - foxglacier 2y ago
      For the past 25 years, there have been consistent small shifts towards more government deficit [1]. Aren't those the problem that has to be stopped? I don't know enough about economics but can this really continue forever or is it just exacerbating some painful problem in the future if it's not reversed now? Maybe non-essential for-the-future work like Darpa isn't the best thing to spend money on when you're trying to reduce spending as fast as you can? It can always be re-instated in more prosperous times. [1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-budget-deficit-tops-18-trillion-fiscal-2024-third-largest-record-2024-10-18/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-budget-deficit-tops-18...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
noobermin 2y ago
They already came for NSF and the NIH, how can they not also come for DARPA? Most republicans don't believe in defense or anything like that, they believe in returning money to their investors...I mean campaign contributors who are defense contractors. A contractor makes money selling contracts, whether they affect the actual defense capabilities of the country or not.
- afpx 2y ago
  From what I understand, the funding cuts are primarily related to DEI initiatives. And, generally the administration is trying to align activities with its goals, so it’s understandable that funds will be adjusted. DEI is a target because its goals are steeped in Marxist philosophy, which is antithetical to their own. Also, Republicans (of whom I’m not one) believe that spending should be controlled by the states. It’s not that they don’t believe in defense - they realize it’s more effective to invest in drones and use nuclear deterrence. Those are more effective and cheaper in terms of lives as well as money. This aligns with the US’s new isolationist strategy as it withdraws from the world.
  - eesmith 2y ago
    Do you have any idea of the breakdown? Because everything I've see is that no one knows, and the limited government publications are full of bullshit. Like, if a project studying biodiversity is cut, is that because it is "related to DEI initiatives" because it shared the word "diversity"? How many of the laid-off VA staff were DEI? The laid-off forest rangers? How much of USAID was DEI? The Trump administration says the cut was due to wasteful spending and fraud, not DEI. How do the cuts in DEI initiatives compare to the massive cuts to indirect grant monies? If the Republicans believe spending should be more controlled by the states, they have a majority and can, you know, change the law. We have a representative democracy to help balance national interests, rather than the interests of a king. I don't think we can regard threats to annex Greenland, Canada, or the Panama Canal as part of an isolationist policy. Such threats are more closely aligned with expansionism. An isolationist government would not be involved in international negotiations involving Ukraine, or providing support to Israel, to start. FWIW, DEI is no more steeped in Marxist philosophy than the Freedman's Bureau, public libraries, or the FDIC. As far as I can tell, "Marxism" when used this way is a boogieman term used to scare off any critique of capitalism or its effects, little different than how Republicans sneered that Dukakis was an "L word", castigating the word "liberal." Both terms are used as rhetorical propaganda. Given the influence Marx had on studying "class relations, social conflict, and social transformation" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism), it's all too easy to say that any study of those topics must be Marxism, and therefore fomenting a communist revolution.

aaron695 2y ago

> When reading these program announcements, I think DARPA projects often are not what they say they are. Admittedly this project is quite out there. > P(Success) = 0.2 They themselves admit it's lower than this, which is not 'success' but successful outcomes to limited specs.

szvsw 2y ago
Yeah, wouldn’t P(success) = 0.2 be pretty fantastic for any highly experimental/speculative/moonshot research entity?

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago

My reference point, the DARPA self driving challenge was in 2004. AlexNet was a sea change in image processing, which did not happen for another eight years.

rayiner 2y ago

I started my career at a DARPA contractor. Part of the DARPA ethos also is that it’s lean and mean. Program managers have a ton of discretion, but they’re not lifers. IIRC they get a 4 or 8 year stint then are expected to leave. Office space is leased from the private sector, etc. Complete mission-oriented and non-ideological, at least it was 20 years ago.

kamaal 2y ago
>>IIRC they get a 4 or 8 year stint then are expected to leave. If they refuse to leave they get fired? >>Part of the DARPA ethos also is that it’s lean and mean. Program managers have a ton of discretion, but they’re not lifers. Curious what kind of people are hired? Without overarching long term leadership its hard to chart out a continuous direction.
- rayiner 2y ago
  I misremembered, the terms were 2 years or 4 years: https://www.darpa.mil/careers/program-manager https://www.darpa.mil/careers/program-manager (Maybe they shortened it.) Sometimes you can stay longer than that, but yes, you’re pushed out. The organization is highly decentralized: much of the substantive authority to decide project direction is invested in program managers. There’s a deliberate effort not to have a central vision which, the reasoning goes, could lead to inertia and stagnation. PMs tend to be ambitious young PhDs who want to go into industry or start their own companies. The PM on the project I worked on is now principal wireless architect at Google Fi.
  - thom 2y ago
    This is very interesting. I know obsessing over Roman history is seen as somewhat fascist-adjacent, especially emanating from tech spaces, but I keep wanting to run a company along the lines of the Republic’s mixed constitution. No king with centralised power (CEO) but elected Consuls with term limits, who have the power to kick off and deliver big projects, aligning teams however they need to. Give every tribe (product, design, engineering, platform etc) a tribune with some degree of veto power. Create a senate with every Senior, who elect the consuls and approve new wars (projects). Employ quaestors across the company to do finops. At the end of your period you get a big triumph if you were victorious, or you get dumped in the Tiber if you abused your power.

rajnathani 2y ago

SpaceX started off based on a DARPA proposal/challenge too right? Or at least the DARPA challenge for re-usable rockets aligned well with SpaceX's demonstrable success.

hoppp 2y ago
They wanted to go to mars and tried buying russian rockets first, but they were too expensive so they started building them. Nothing to do with Darpa, at least I dont find any relations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_SpaceX https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_SpaceX
Xmd5a 2y ago
>In a post-accident report, NASA's Brand Commission blamed the accident on a burnt-out field crew who had been operating under on-again/off-again funding and constant threats of outright cancellation. The crew, many of them originally from the SDIO program, were also highly critical of NASA's "chilling" effect on the program, and the masses of paperwork NASA demanded as part of the testing regimen.[citation needed] >NASA had taken on the project grudgingly after having been "shamed" by its very public success under the direction of the SDIO.[citation needed] Its continued success was cause for considerable political in-fighting within NASA due to it competing with their "home grown" Lockheed Martin X-33/VentureStar project. Pete Conrad priced a new DC-X at $50 million, cheap by NASA standards, but NASA decided not to rebuild the craft in light of budget constraints.[16] Instead, NASA focused development on the Lockheed Martin VentureStar which it felt answered some criticisms of the DC-X, specifically the airplane-like landing of the VentureStar, which many NASA engineers preferred over the vertical landing of the DC-X. Just a few years later, the repeated failure of the Venturestar project, especially the composite LH2 (liquid hydrogen) tank, led to program cancellation.[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X