Why Does DARPA Work? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#41

Post by tia4tia » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

tia4tia wrote: post #30

thoraway1010 wrote: post #20

Small anecdote, but good experience with DARPA and SBIR both. One thing I liked - they seemed pretty low overhead / low hassle and outcome / objective focused. That contrasts VERY strong with most govt contracting which is under allowable cost or cost reimbursement setups where the absolute most important criteria is to bill enough costs to draw contract in the right cost buckets (which can be super annoying if local…

SBIR? Totally corrupt. Please don't ask. Can not, will not, must not tell. I can tell you one thing. If not the best but the second best or third best proposal is accepted, IT IS a problem for the US in the long run. Side node: there is money on China! Fell free to down vote me down. Again Please don't ask. Can not, will not, must not tell.

"don't apply" VC buddy of mine and former SBIR grantee who explained me how his "application" was selected out of the large stack of applicants.

If asked: I am drunk and make this up. No wolf. Nothing to see here.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#42

Post by lazyjeff » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 8:09 PM UTC

siege_engineer wrote: post #31

currymj wrote: post #18

A bill, the Endless Frontiers Act, has been introduced in both houses of Congress to make a section of the National Science Foundation that works more like DARPA, while massively increasing its funding. The idea is to extend the DARPA model to many more non-military areas, just as suggested in this article. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/us-lawmakers-unveil-... Certainly a timely article. I don't know whethe…

Author here. I actually wrote a discussion of the Endless Frontier Act: https://benjaminreinhardt.com/the-endless-frontier-act/ I agree that the ARPA model is not suitable for all (or even the majority of research) and the act doesn't inspire confidence that shifting the NSF towards a DARPA-like model would do well.

Just wanted to say, thanks for writing the article about DARPA, and this analysis of the endless frontiers act. From reading both articles, obviously you're very pro-DARPA and anti-NSF.

I have two thoughts that might erode your thesis a bit, that 1) I think you're overestimating the amount of time that faculty spend on writing grants. We like to complain about it, but I've tracked my time to the minute over the past 7 years, and grant writing (both the proposals and the reports) is about 2% of my work time. 2) You might be misunderstanding indirect costs like many people, where you say "Universities can take more than half of grant money as administrative overhead". Indirect cost math is funny, but in order for administrative overhead to be more than half of the grant, the indirect cost rate would have to be over 100%. I can explain more if you're interested.

Obviously we're both biased by our job, but it's still useful to read your perspective.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#43

Post by zitterbewegung » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

riazrizvi wrote: post #17

IMO this analysis gets caught up looking for answers in process when the real problem that DARPA solves is a political-economic one. ATT didn't invent the internet not for lack of process, they were extremely innovative. They held back on innovations because they were making huge sums of money overcharging long distance mainframe-mainframe data link rates in the 50's-70's. DARPA succeeded as a trust buster. They have…

How are they becoming less relevant?

The DARPA grand challenges have bootstrapped:

1. Self driving cars and got them working as a prototype. [1] 2. A rapid Orbital Launch Program (Still in progress after only one competitor left)[2] 3. A subterranean challenge to map and search underground environments [1] 4. A way to use social networking to find something that is time critical [2] 5. Onion routing which is used in Tor. [3] 6. Cyber Grand Challenge to automate the exploitation and securing network systems [4]

Note that competitors also have open sourced what they have done. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Network_Challenge

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_routing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2007) [4] https://www.darpa.mil/program/cyber-grand-challenge

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#44

Post by tia4tia » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 8:19 PM UTC

darpa_commentor wrote: post #23

DARPA is effective, but this document paints a rosy picture that is far from the truth. I've been a part of DARPA projects both commerical, university and on the government side. The real process is: 1. PM gets picked due to knowing someone or being a former employee. 2. The biggest test of a program isn't if it's doable or a good idea, but if its able to be transitioned to another government agency with deeper pocke…

100% on track. You will get downvoted!

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#45

Post by xgk » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #32

riazrizvi wrote: post #17

IMO this analysis gets caught up looking for answers in process when the real problem that DARPA solves is a political-economic one. ATT didn't invent the internet not for lack of process, they were extremely innovative. They held back on innovations because they were making huge sums of money overcharging long distance mainframe-mainframe data link rates in the 50's-70's. DARPA succeeded as a trust buster. They have…

Back in the early days of the Internet, I met some of the Bell Labs people working in that area. What they didn't like about an IP-based network was the jitter. That was totally unacceptable for voice. They wanted something with reliable clocking, and had come up with Datakit. That sends all packets for a given call over the same path, in order. You don't open a virtual circuit unless all the nodes have enough bandwi…

Other networking protocols coming from a telco background, in particular ATM and ISDN, were all circuit switched, and had suitable resource reservation for QoS. Acceptance of telephony degradation was probably driven by cost: VoIP was free and that made a difference, especially for international calls. In my experience, in 2020 the VoIP calls I make are really high quality, even better than 1980s-style ISDN calls, and the main cause of audio quality degradation are people using "hands-free" setups with their laptops.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#46

Post by riazrizvi » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 8:28 PM UTC

siege_engineer wrote: post #28

riazrizvi wrote: post #17

IMO this analysis gets caught up looking for answers in process when the real problem that DARPA solves is a political-economic one. ATT didn't invent the internet not for lack of process, they were extremely innovative. They held back on innovations because they were making huge sums of money overcharging long distance mainframe-mainframe data link rates in the 50's-70's. DARPA succeeded as a trust buster. They have…

Author here. Good point about DARPA serving a political-economic role. It's a different lens on the coordination role. Is the corporate-political landscape becoming more trust-based than the Military-Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned about?

I don't understand the comparison in reference to the question of 'Why Does DARPA Work?' or my comment.

Military-Industrial Complex is where defense industry profit motives drive unwarranted political influence that shapes defense policy, foreign policy. Military-Industrial Complex drives defense spending up.

Trust is about the erosion of market competition, which results in decrease product value-price ratio. In the context of defense product, it means that the products that the consumer (here military/govt) can buy from the market become increasingly expensive and weak. Which creates an opportunity for consumers to do-it-better-yourself-and-for-less, which to me, explains DARPA.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#47

Post by bane » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 8:30 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #32

riazrizvi wrote: post #17

IMO this analysis gets caught up looking for answers in process when the real problem that DARPA solves is a political-economic one. ATT didn't invent the internet not for lack of process, they were extremely innovative. They held back on innovations because they were making huge sums of money overcharging long distance mainframe-mainframe data link rates in the 50's-70's. DARPA succeeded as a trust buster. They have…

Back in the early days of the Internet, I met some of the Bell Labs people working in that area. What they didn't like about an IP-based network was the jitter. That was totally unacceptable for voice. They wanted something with reliable clocking, and had come up with Datakit. That sends all packets for a given call over the same path, in order. You don't open a virtual circuit unless all the nodes have enough bandwi…

I remember when cross-oceanic long distance calls required both parties to shout as loud as they could into the phone -- and often still not be heard well enough to make out what they were saying.

Modern IP telephony often has very high quality voice reproduction (my wi-fi to wi-fi Fi calls sound fantastic), in exchange for some timing issues. Echoes usually get solved in software (usually), and dropouts seem to be the main complaint.

In exchange, my wife can call her family in South Korea for approximately nothing, using the same data backbone as we use to watch movies and read web pages.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#48

Post by siege_engineer » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 8:45 PM UTC

lazyjeff wrote: post #42

siege_engineer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. I actually wrote a discussion of the Endless Frontier Act: https://benjaminreinhardt.com/the-endless-frontier-act/ I agree that the ARPA model is not suitable for all (or even the majority of research) and the act doesn't inspire confidence that shifting the NSF towards a DARPA-like model would do well.

Just wanted to say, thanks for writing the article about DARPA, and this analysis of the endless frontiers act. From reading both articles, obviously you're very pro-DARPA and anti-NSF. I have two thoughts that might erode your thesis a bit, that 1) I think you're overestimating the amount of time that faculty spend on writing grants. We like to complain about it, but I've tracked my time to the minute over the past…

Appreciate the correction about indirect cost math - I’ve applied for several grants but never did lab accounting so I interpreted it incorrectly when professors told me “50% overhead.” I’ll fix that when I’m at a computer.

I would characterize my position as less “pro DARPA and anti NSF” and more “I think on the margin the world needs more DARPA-like activity more than it needs more NSF-like activity”

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#49

Post by IggleSniggle » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 8:45 PM UTC

ycombonator wrote: post #27

[flagged]

I'm not sure where this comment is even coming from. Whether you agree or disagree with their agenda, these are all inherently movements of civil-disobedience, seeking to up-end a cultural status quo. Upending the cultural status quo is inherently short-term destabilizing even if it improves long-term state stability.

That said, BLM is clearly about finding a pareto improvement to individual well-being in the context of systemic racism, Antifa is as anti-government as the so called "Patriot" movement, and Communists value fairness over maximal well-being. Maybe I'm dense but I don't see how these three collectives are at all inherently related.

Organizations working to defend the State (like DARPA) are dedicated to both the short and long term survivability of the State. Any activist movement, right or left, is definitionally not aligned with the interests of the short-term status quo, even if they may well produce innovations that promote long-term stability. That said, those goals don't have an impact on the output of an R&D organization, except as they allow or disallow diversity of thought within an R&D organization. Any ideology, "left", "right", or "center", sufficiently outspoken enough, can be used to suppress the diversity of thought necessary to recognize/embrace true innovations when they are produced.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#50

Post by scotty79 » Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 8:50 PM UTC

My more top level view is that DARPA and such are just side channels to sneakily funnel public money into research.

In theory free market should take care of the economy. It's really good at optimizing manufacturing processes and getting stuff as cheaply as possible into hands of as many people as possible.

However there's one thing essential to the economy that free market sucks at. It's research. And that's not because companies are bad at doing research. It's because companies are bad at funding research. Research is inherently risky and no sane capitalist will invest in anything beyond tinker level research because he will loose. And he's not supposed to loose.

In theory you could fund research overtly with country budget, but no one is going to support that. Why spend money on eggheads playing with useless stuff if people are hungry and streets are dirty?

What nobody opposes is giving more money to the military. And what anyone can't oppose is military spending money in whichever way they please. So they can spend it on research. Most will be wasted, very few will have actual military potential. The rest can be graciously dumped into the economy for companies to tinker, optimize making of, manufacture, market and sell.

IMHO military is the core of USA success (or even success of global capitalism), not through might, but through ability to get plenty of public money and ability to allocate it into things that would never get funded in any other way.