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Why Does DARPA Work?

benjaminreinhardt.com

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Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#61

Post by Aperocky »

maxander wrote: post #59

A big part of the "DARPA formula" that doesn't seem to get much treatment here is consistency . DARPA is going to spend a few billion this year, and it spent a few billion last year, and it spent a few billion twenty years ago, and you can feel confident they'll spend a few billion next year. That means that if an academic researcher or similar can position their lab in an area that DARPA likes, they have a good shot…

creating fusion with sound waves (or shock waves, which is essentially what sound becomes at high enough energy) is one of the crazier ideas I've heard..

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#62

Post by eximius »

Aperocky wrote: post #61
maxander wrote: post #59

A big part of the "DARPA formula" that doesn't seem to get much treatment here is consistency . DARPA is going to spend a few billion this year, and it spent a few billion last year, and it spent a few billion twenty years ago, and you can feel confident they'll spend a few billion next year. That means that if an academic researcher or similar can position their lab in an area that DARPA likes, they have a good shot…

creating fusion with sound waves (or shock waves, which is essentially what sound becomes at high enough energy) is one of the crazier ideas I've heard..

It's literally one of the ways they make nuclear bombs so it isn't that crazy.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#63

Post by zitterbewegung »

riazrizvi wrote: post #52
zitterbewegung wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How are they less relevant? Well it's a bit left-field but I believe part of the reason why the political climate has become more pro-trust within the last twenty years is that international tech dominance is a national security boon. DARPA is not going to be asked to create ground-breaking tech in search, tracking, social media, tech generally, because the tech giants are already providing more than defense strategi…

I’m not arguing applications I’m arguing innovation. They do the initial research and then companies monetize .

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#64

Post by Aperocky »

eximius wrote: post #62
Aperocky wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

creating fusion with sound waves (or shock waves, which is essentially what sound becomes at high enough energy) is one of the crazier ideas I've heard..

It's literally one of the ways they make nuclear bombs so it isn't that crazy.

Well yeah, if your shock waves for fusion are created by nuclear fission chain reaction that technology has been quite ready and mature since the 1960s.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#65

Post by shoguning »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #43
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…

> The DARPA grand challenges have bootstrapped:

I have a contrarian opinion about the impact of DARPA and related programs (ARPA-e especially). To some extent, there is a confusion of cause and effect. DARPA is good at identifying possible nascent technologies and funding them. They then have a flag planted, and can claim "we helped invent X", which is hard to disprove. But was it because of DARPA involvement, or was DARPA merely there at the right time? They have definitely funded plenty of projects that go nowhere.

ARPA-e makes this strategy explicit. They'll give money to an up-and-coming startup between rounds and then claim all later investment as "follow-on funding". They then report "follow-on funding" as a success metric to congress, which seems easy to game. ARPA-e has been around for over 10 years and I don't think they can point to anything coming out of the program as a legitimate game changer.

I do think the applied research programs do some good and has some impact, mostly as a way to convene the broader technology community. But for the most part I would rather have the government focus on funding basic research instead of applied research.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#66

Post by p1esk »

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…

1 second of delay jitter with random dropouts and echoes are typically caused by problems at the ends (poor wifi/cellular signal, too much load on cpu during a high res video call, laptop overheating, etc). UDP protocol allows to make a call even in the presence of such issues, whereas circuit switching with reliable clocking would simply not work at all.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#68

Post by stochtastic »

Aperocky wrote: post #61
maxander wrote: post #59

A big part of the "DARPA formula" that doesn't seem to get much treatment here is consistency . DARPA is going to spend a few billion this year, and it spent a few billion last year, and it spent a few billion twenty years ago, and you can feel confident they'll spend a few billion next year. That means that if an academic researcher or similar can position their lab in an area that DARPA likes, they have a good shot…

creating fusion with sound waves (or shock waves, which is essentially what sound becomes at high enough energy) is one of the crazier ideas I've heard..

Sonofusion [0] was a neat idea, and some of the relevant experiments (at least the cavitation part) can be done on a bench top with a hobbyist level budget. Last I checked, the research had been somewhat tarnished by academic fraud. The physics of jet formation during bubble collapse near a solid boundary remains fascinating [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubble_fusion

[1] https://authors.library.caltech.edu/48933/1/On%20the%20Mecha...

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#69

Post by vilhelm_s »

maxander wrote: post #59

A big part of the "DARPA formula" that doesn't seem to get much treatment here is consistency . DARPA is going to spend a few billion this year, and it spent a few billion last year, and it spent a few billion twenty years ago, and you can feel confident they'll spend a few billion next year. That means that if an academic researcher or similar can position their lab in an area that DARPA likes, they have a good shot…

My impression is that it's not at all that consistent. The total spending is constant at a few billion per year, but what that gets spent on depends entirely on the taste of the program managers, which in turn depends on the darpa director. The program managers only serve for a few years at a time, and the director for a bit longer, so it can change drastically. I think the trends are typically last a decade: in the 1980s after the success with the F-117, they were funding all kinds of airplane projects. Also in the 1980s they funded a lot of AI research, until they suddently didn't (the "AI winter"). In the 1990s, they were into networked combat simulators and command & control systems.

Starting around 2010, DARPA suddenly began to fund a lot of computer science research on formal verification. I was a phd student at the time, and it was pretty striking, programming language theory used to be a really fringe subject, and now suddenly it was awash in cash and all the professors could hire huge herds of postdocs. But some of those professors also told me that I should not expect it to last: sooner or later there will be new people in DARPA and all the money will instantly stop.

Re: Why Does DARPA Work?

#70

Post by koheripbal »

maxander wrote: post #59

A big part of the "DARPA formula" that doesn't seem to get much treatment here is consistency . DARPA is going to spend a few billion this year, and it spent a few billion last year, and it spent a few billion twenty years ago, and you can feel confident they'll spend a few billion next year. That means that if an academic researcher or similar can position their lab in an area that DARPA likes, they have a good shot…

My favorite project was the MIT silicon wafer etched jet engine. Like full jet engines the size of a pencil eraser. They also made solid rocket engines etched out of silicon.

Super interesting stuff.

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