The author was interviewed by the spy Museum Curator vince hogan. This is an hour. There should be a couple seats around. Welcome to the international, i am vince hoyton, the curator here at spy. This is a rare friday night and we appreciate you coming out tonight. I think it has a lot to do with who we have. We are pleased to have Annie Jacobsen at the spy museum. She is an investigative journalist and bestselling author who writes books about war, weapons, u. S. National security and government secrecy and intelligence. Her 2011, nonfiction best seller, area 51; an uncensored history of americas base has won awards. The boston globeand itunes have selected her book for the best book of the year. Here newest book, the pentagons brain an uncensored history of darpa, americas topsecret military research agency, was published on tuesday. After reading it, i am sure it will not take along before joining her other two books as a bestseller. Thank you for coming. Do you have copies of your books in all five languages . I actually do. The chinese one in particular. That is not on my card but i had to ask that. One thing we always want to do why have authors here, especially considering what all authors tend to write about a field that is not necessarily the most conducive to getting information and documents. It is a secret world of intelligence. It is a twopart question. How did you come across the idea of writing a book about darpa and how in the world do you find the sources necessary to write a full size Nonfiction Book about a top secret agency that does things they dont necessarily want historians to know about. Well, for starters, i want to thank some sources paul, neal, and folks in the back, thank you. The way i got the idea for writing the pentagons brain came as most of my books do on the tail end of the last book. When i was learning about what brown was doing in 58 i was surprised to learn that he was going to be the first director of this new agency at the pentagon called darpa. He wanted to be the director however he had one stipulation and that was he wanted to bring 12 of his former nazi colleagues with him and that did not fly at the pentagon. I thought, what a spicy way to do this. I thought this was going to be a great book. Darpa is something i have known about for a long time afo those that dont know it is the Pentagons Defense Advanced Research project agency and for clarity sake we will call it darpa to keep it it consistent. As we will talk about tonight, there is major innovations we use in our every day lives that is a result of darpa research. When the book came out, and the idea there might be a book about darpa, and there hasnt been a major work of this level, but what you last said is a great segue. I want to talk about the origins of darpa. A little bit about what it is as an organization. I think darpa is different than a lot of the other military Research Organizations in that it is not really a military Research Organization in a sense it doesnt do scientific research. Can you talk about how darpa is formulated . Well, darpa has approximately 120 Program Managers and has all of its entire existence working with a three billion budget. These individuals themselves are scientist, engineers at the top of their game. So they go out into the field, be it academic laboratories, or military laboratories, and they put together teams that bring forth this incredible science and technology and in essence create entire industries. We will talk about the intus dustries because they are important. You said it was formed in 1958. There is a real significant reason darpa was formed in 1958. It follows in the footsteps of monumental event in world history. Can you talk about what caused the United States government to think they needed an agency like this. I look to the book with the explosion of the capital bravo nuclear bomb in the marshall islands. This massive 15 megaton explosion four years before darpa is born is where i start and i do that because it is important to know why darpa was formed and that was initially to defend against this weapon that in essence there is nothing to do fend against. That brings the ideas we must be supreme and have these weapons to stay ahead of the enemy and there is a technology builtin that enemy must have that technology and we must be on to the next. Specifically sputnik was lunched and that idea that whatever laufshed that soviet longrange missile could carry a Nuclear War Head to the United States gave birth to darpa and the idea is we must never be taken by technical surprise and in all years since darpa has kept america in the core position, kept us the strongest. There has never been an undertaking in terms of weaponry. In the scientific world, robert alenhiemer helped build the atomic bomb and he is stripped of his security clearance and stigmatized. And the idea they could overtake us was in many ways the idea of you have to stay ahead technologically. Here is an interesting detail. The first thing the director of darpa did was determine, and i dont think this was reported yet, i found it in files, but was he had darpa scientist calculate the exact number of seconds it took for a soviet icbm to get from the soviet union to washington. It is 1,602nd seconds. That hasnt changed. That threat there is there then is there now. You do a great job playing out the secretary of defenses background. He wasnt in the defense world before becoming secretary. You said he was a guru who understood brand management. He invented the concept of the soap opera. He was a leading guy in the Advertising Department at png and in charge of soaps. He had four soaps and he said how will be sell them and he did during soap operas. That is handy because the first thing you have to do is the idea of darpa is not liked by the organizations he is competing with and he had to convince them this an idea worth doing. There was serious push back from the military agencies. In the old documents, i found mackelroy would meet with the heads to convince them darpa is a great idea. The army said it should be our territory, military science and research. They said the moon is just higher ground. The admirals in the navy were saying space is our territory because where the oceans end space starts. Everybody had a reason why they wanted to control space which was really how arpa came to be. In this period, sometimes the scientist dont know what they created. Cas o bravo was a larger explosion and the Manhattan Project is something i focus on and they had no idea. They were taking bets. The great story we talk about are the bmuse. The early Missile Warning system and how that almost started world war iii. Can you please lay it out. They setup a facility at the top of the world near the air force base, 15 miles north, and the idea was it was called jade site and it was going to be the place where we could watch for, it was a Ballistic Missile radar Early Warning site. I interviewed a fellow trying to tell stories through individuals who were there. A fellow name gene was electronic commissioner, and he said it was 90 boredom and 10 terror. The site had had only been open a few days. It was oct1960 and it was connected directly to noah. There was this idea of level one, level two, level three, and level five was endgame. But if you were to get a notice something was detected it would be level one and usually go away. The notice came in at three and it escalated to level five which means with 99 certainty we were under attack. Someone picked up the phone, and the reason i think this is important, is it talks about humans versus computers. These were early computers. One of the humans said where is christian and they said he is in new york city. There was this moment when everyone said there must be a mistake. And in fact there was a mistake. Someone looked outside and there was this giant moon coming up over norway. This radar system worked better than expected. It was supposed to detect missiles up to 2,000 feet and read the reflection of the moon a quarter of a million miles away and bounced back and forth so many times those were the thousand icbms that were not coming. Imagery intelligence is something you talk about. Darpa had a big influence in the first Imagery Intelligence satellites put in space. That was one of the fundamental jobs in the early days. The first real american satellite was inherited by darpa from the air force and they saw that program to fruition. And the idea of these satellites leaking into the civilian world a little bit. I am not going to screw up the acronym, but the television observation Satellite Program was the first weather satellite. Eisenhower loved that program and nasa inherited that program by then. These were these amazing images. It was in space for, i think, 79 days only. It took 23,000 photographs above the earth of the earth. Imagine in the world where we see with big perspective, imagine the idea these were the first images of weather coming from space. They were beautiful and eisenhower wrote about what it looked like over egypt, the Saint Lawrence river. He could see the whole world in these photographs and talked to the nation about it. They became a big National Geographic spread after that. It wasnt that long ago in the big picture where we could first see things from space. You mentioned in the beginning of the conversation darpa uses smarter scientist in the country. It rounds up the top people and this started from the beginning. I want to talk about this. One of these assembled scientist who had a particular name the jasons. People dont know about the amount of influence the jasons had over foreign policy, still have today, is extraordinary. They were assembled after darpa and led by a man named charles towns who invented something very important to us. Can you talk about the jasons, what they do and how their job continues. The jasons began in 1960s as a group they were referred to as the super men of hard science. They were Nuclear Physicist and handled all of the hard problems. Immediately when darpa was founded, the idea was we need exactly as you said, we need the best guys with the biggest minds. For a while, jasons only customer was darpa. I was able to interview a president ial science advisor and the cofounder of the jasons, and write about him in the book. He just passed. It was interesting hearing his perspective and his long lens of history working on these projecks going back to the 60s. The jasons were misunderstand and some people consider them to be part of the alum naughty. They would gather in the summers and discuss problems the secretary of defense put to them and said sort it out. It wasnt the easy problems. It was the difficult ones and nobody else could figure it out. We have no idea what to do. You fix it. And their track record is spectacular. I will tell you the unclassified documents that you can read that i read are one thing. But the classified documents, some of the names of the documents have been declassified, only the names, but when you read them, you realize i could not understand that even if it was declassified. Darpa comes of age during the vietnam war. You know, in a lot of the things that are you know, looked at in vietnam as being problemtic were things that darpa tried to get rid of or were the cause of in some respects. They were the first ones to really appreciate the idea of trying to defeat an insurgency with technology. Maybe not the first to think of it but that was the primary focus during vietnam was these high tech encounter insurgency strategies. Can you take about this. Things like psychological operations and social. Vietnam was a very interesting time. Many different programs came out of it. They were working on as you say soft science, anthropology, conventi conventional weapons like the m16, there were early gliders that led to selftechnology. The one i found the most impactimpact full was the insurgeants coming from the north to the south and the secretary of defense cast the jason scientist with figure a way to stop this. They thought of it as a human who needed to have its artery severed. A lot of documents spoke about it that way. It was like that is the locus. They tried, thought about nuclear weapons, that was not an option. It was discussed. Then this idea of an electronic fence which the reason i write about it and find it interesting to really explore was because all of this censor technology, you know, seismic censors which came from the program you referred to, audio censors, magnetic censors, these were incredibly early ideas during the vietnam war and now they make up so much of our existence. I am sure driving here somebodys windshield wipers just started to work at the drop of rain. Well that is essentially technology that goes back, the way i see it, to that vietnam war to the censors the jasons were working on. Massive technology that is used throughout the Intelligence Agency and civilian. I am sure one of us drove over a censor on the ground to determine how fast we were going. Vietnam is a time when darpa invested in questionable technologies. Agent orange is certainly one of these. Things i find interesting is Weather Modification technology. More devius things but outside the box and thinking about winning the war by causing man soons or changing the availability of the people of vietnam from growing food. They were and continue to be always at the cutting edge of science and darpa is an agency that is looking at the problem 25 years out. It is spoken of as prequirement research. That takes back the idea of inmilitary Industrial Complex that was one of the darpas directors who spoke after the vietnam war when darpa was in trouble saying you are making weap weapon we dont need. And it was said this is a chicken and egg problem. If a need for a Weapon System comes along and we have not developed it there is a real problem. And that is the chicken and the egg problem. I want to talk about civilian use of the technologies developed my darpa. This is where the audience, will go that is where that is from. Who is is lick lieder . He is the Johnny Appleseed of the internet. He is responsible for the internet we have today and the Technology Used by almost half the people on the planet. That began as an darpa project. Lick lieder came to the pentagon when the 1962, when congress decided there was a really Big Technology problem. If you can imagine the idea of a lead phone that was the Technology President kennedy had to use to make that dreaded nogo Nuclear Decision and mindful there is 1602nds until doomsday. Imagine wasting 30 seconds to dial a rotary phone. The pentagon said we need command and control. And the glider came to darpa to work on the problem. This very hard problem. He was an eccentric thinker and he talked about the idea of an intergalactical network. And everyone said work on the command and control problem. But that materializes later and it becomes what is now the internet. Computer scientist have gone back and looked at the wry writings and he predicts the cloud and this is similar to adam turing talking about Artificial Intelligence that is nowhere near created today back during that time. You know, it is hard not to talk about him not only for the internet but a commuter modeling pioneer and how data systems are used to create models for everything from war games to weather patterns and everything else. Can you talk about that . Yes, and many people dont know that. He did have, and i wonder and write it in the book what his intentions, he was very liberal in this thinking and transparent and obviously he had this idea of sharing everything. But at the same time, he was involved in one of the more controversial programs of the vietnam which has to deal with behavioral modeling with computers. So the new Computer Systems in thailand at the Information Center were gathering information based on his ideas of behavioral modeling. So, for example, we would keep track of what certain viliage vilagers were doing with the idea we could track them and find them and see how they wound up. This gets into awkward territory for the pentagon today having to do with surveillance programs. They do yes, yes. Who is jack thorpe . We have neal cosby here today who was working with jack thorpe after this idea came around that computers were incredibly helpful and they could be used as a training tool. Jack thorp had this idea of creating a system, instead of using an old sand table to have generals make idea, it could be computerized. Wired magazine referred to jack thorp as the father of cyber space because that civilian technology that everyone knows today and everyones children in the audience works and plays these games, the giant systems finds their origins in the things thorp and cosby made for people who wanted to play the games at the pentagon and throw in stealth. I was in the army as a tanker and i worked with thousands around the country with others. Are there other civilian technologies like gps which is a brain child of the darpa. And Technology Used for s. W. A. T. Team as we. I think we can close out the conversation with civilian use with those technologies. Gps is an amazing one. One thing darpa does so well and this comes from the scientist and engineers i spoke with, so many of them, almost all of them are incredibly gung ho and talk about how darpa finds the solutions to things to darpa allows science to push scientist in a way that maybe their industry bosses wouldnt allow them to, darpa thinking of the future, darpa likes to say darpa makes the future happen. But another thing they do, and this is in the spirit of how eisenhower created this initial idea and that is cutting out interservice rivalry with gps being an example of that. They launched satellites and in the 70s the navy and air force got their own gps program and orders from the pentagon came saying this isnt working the way it should as one system for all of the agencies so darpa was put back on the program and then ultimately they created a system called nab star which is the gps we have today. There was a fast moving detail i didnt know and that is gps was working away and we didnt know about it. It had a feature because it was a targeting idea. It had a feature built in with selective availability so someone in europe or asia could easily hack into the system. The pentagon didnt want them to know for targeting reasons how close it was. So they created about a hundred or 150 foot offset. And then in the early 90s, europe started developing gps. We could benefit from having that technology. Just ask google. There was a fascinating detail in the book i didnt know about it. I was in the military before clinton took away that feature and we wondered by it wasnt used in civilian gps because they were smaller and the pluggers, we call the big one and say we have to use that one and now i know why. Lets move a little to the modern period. I think things we use or that are used and things like laser guided ammunition and things like drones. Drones are something we hear about but can you talk about how the current military technology is because of this agency. Darpa is very much about brilliance and hubris. It is about these incredibly, in my estimation, these incredibly programs and pushing science. One must ask questions about where we are now. Looking at the technology we have, the drone technology, that came out of vietnam and this is a decades old technology. Mindful of that idea that we are always ahead. So when drones hit the battlefield in afghanistan we were allegedly the only nation that armed drones and now 186 nations have armed drones. The predator is obsolete in some regard. The question is what is next. And that idea, when you really look at darpa, moving information technology, Bio Technology which we didnt have time to discuss, Nano Technology the art of making things small, what i learned from unclassified documents and that the agency is really moving or rather the pentagon is moving toward ituna atono atono atonomuwarfare. The pentagon sees it as four part steps. Starting with Remote Control and move toward governance. There are questions about ethics and robots that can do things without an operator in the loop. But these are certainly all places where darpa technology is taking us. And if darpa scientist have their way in 25 years a human on the battlefield will not be human. Artificial enhancement is what they are working on. The idea of brain wave interfaces and cyber medics. These are things that, you know, ten years ago are the realm of Science Fiction and are becoming truer and truer every day. I would use the word sigh borg but they use the word that couples animal with machine. Darpa has been able to do this with a rat, electrodes in the brain, remotely controlling a rat and now a moth. From the pentagon documents, what is clear is it is moving humans in the military environment toward being comfortable with this idea of merging man and machine. That makes a lot of people uncomfortable and and lot of others excited. It depends where you fall along the lines of transhumanism. This idea that essentially we can now create our own evolution. We can engineer our own evolution. It may sound like sciencefiction but i thought the interesting thing you talk about into the book is the sigma groups which are a Science Fiction writers brought in to thing about the future. The pentagon loves fiction writers. They are thinking about the Science Fiction lines of the future. Charles towns invented the laser and won the nobel prize in 1964 for it. I wasnt getting many answers about lasers at the pentagon, they are classified for obvious reasons, i had a question with towns in his office at berkeley. It was an incredible interview. He told me that the way he got the idea for inventing the laser, now considered one of the most important technologies of the present day, for military and civilian use. The way towns got the idea was way back in 1926 when he was a little boy in bed reading a Science Fiction brooks called the daren death ray and that inspired him to create the laser. So no wonder the pentagon is interested in Science Fiction. Absolutely. You talked several times about eisenhower and the Industrial Complex. And anyone who listens to anything you talked about tonight, read the book, knows about darpa, has to be concerned at some level about the influence of the billions of dollars being spent by the defense industry. You even say in your book and talk about the idea that the people who are pulling many of the first strings, the Science Board, are not made up of scientist or engineers. Well they are, but science and engineers from belling and lockede martin and defense industries. Is that something we should be concerned about . Is that something that has changed . It is much to do about nothing . Or is it something that means a continued militarization . How does this dynamic work . Is it problematic moving forward . It is an important question. I keep in mind my job as a journalist is to report the fact do is the public. It is hard when you get oo the end to not have conclusions. I think people like that as they take you through the narrative. One of the conclusions i ask people to think about is what you are talking about and that is the idea of the military Industrial Complex having a little too much power. Eisenhower warned about it but always said they can Work Together as long as you have an alert citizenry. The problem i came across actually had to do with the jas jason scientist. I went to interview a Famous Program manager from darpa who is responsible for the transhumanism programs in 19902000 and we were discussing the boiling plant programs that are merging man with machine in ways that make some people uncomfortable. I said to him i read a jason report that the jason scientist had counseled the pentagon this is a bad idea and we should not put brain ships in peoples brain because it could lead toward brain control. That is the jason scientist asse assessment not mine. The steerable rat or moth could become the steerable human. I was told the jason scientist that are not relevant and the defense Science Board is more important and they are an inhouse pentagon think tank and advise the president and are super men of science but question mark because what is true sun like the jason scientist, who were fulltime academics, and parttime defense scientist, the defense Science Board members, as their list explains, are defense contractors and sit on the boards of the defense contractors which raises the question that eisenhower raised, not me, which is lets make sure the citizenry maintains a knowledge they are aware of what the military industrial com pm plex is planning to do. In the same speech he warns about the scientific technological elite having unwarranted influence over the country as well. We will open it up to questions from you. Please, raise your hand and microphones are coming around so they can be picked up by the camera. Laura is grabbing them. Keep your hands up and they will come to you. Do you have examples of where the influence goes the other way . Where the darpa scientist are seeing something in the civilian world and build upon it and create technology . That is a great question. The place where i observe that have to do with a situation in the war on terror in iraq where darpa created a program called combat zones at sea. The idea was to use that advance censor technology, what was once the vietnam electronic trance, is overhead drones and censors on the ground and cameras to get an idea of the urban warfare environment that is difficult to defend against. From what i understand, the pentagon, darpa, followed there google map model and sent contractors into the field to map the territory very similar to how google maps did. Now we know there are partnerships as well. Amanda . Thank you so much for your first two books. I am looking forward to this one. I was on a Consultant Team with the man who consulted to darm who i believe was a paper clip scientist. My question is were there many paper clip scientist involved with darpa and how were they vetted . That is a great question. In my research, i didnt come across the paperclip scientist that by no means they were not there. That is a great question. You stumped me. There were foreigners that were on the jasons and worked with darpa. They didnt have discrimination against people born in other countries, people who had worked for Manhattan Project and other places as well. I havent seen it either. I will change that. There was one name i came across. Hans zigler. Back there, amanda. Hi, when you go back to the brain implant programming, what about the use of robots . Is the military thinking of that first . Or i guess they have to think of everything at the same time. But robots are already out in other markets and parts of the world. When are they going to implement them on the battlefield . How much will there be of a human needing to control that. Will that be a case at all . Well, there are so many darpa robots in play presently. You can go to the darpa website and see these amazing videos. They crawl, they walk, they climb, they can fall over and get back up, they are up in space, they are this big. There is robotics across every military service and certainly the pentagon plans of unmanned warfare through 2038 indicate this movement as i was saying that forced the movement from Remote Control to governen governance. Right up here, amanda. Thank you. Thank you for your good moderating. What are some of the ways that darpa morphs its projects into the Greater Public sector . Do you know what where mean . Technology distribution, i guess you would call it. We talked about the internet and gps. If you mean specifically how do they just, say, now it is out there, from what i understand it is a decision as it was with gps like clinton and gore and they decide who will make the announcement and someone does. It is a declassification issue in many cases. It is also a key case, and you said this in your talk, about when other countries have established this technology by themselves then it is no longer something that needed to stay classified. Gps, as you mentioned, was a good example with europeans and others putting up satellites so there was no need to keep our program classified anymore. Hi, what is the level of cooperation between darpa and jay sock and the war on terror . Well, i mean, darpa cooperates with everyone because from my understanding of talking to individuals is everybody wants what darpa has because it has all of the best stuff. So i think it goes both ways in as much that i write about a couple programs in the book where you have a darpa team. There was a program, i want to say it is extra seven but it isnt, no, it is the depth program. And darpa guys went in with jay sock in afghanistan. Unclear about how that works. I am sure that is classified. But most definitely cooperation from my understanding with all of the military services. Hi. This may be an unfair question. If it is you can tell me to shut up. But, with all of these interesting ideas and leads, where are you what is your next book going to be . Since it seems that one reads to the next, our your next books out of all of this effort on darpa. Well, i generally keep it under the sleeve until i write the next book. But the one thing i can say is i always love writing about how the agency and military intelligence Work Together because there is always this idea that they dont. It is my understanding that way really do. The next book involves a program between the cia and the dia. Quick question. Thank you for the talk. There are a lot of people from darpa who, you know, were in various positions in government before and after darpa, the psychological tragedy going on to be the chief arms negotiator. Can you talk about darpa as a germinator for senior managers and broader impact for policy and people who went on to much higher positions. That is a great question. It really speaks to how important science and technology is at the pentagon and of course the current secretary of defense, being a scientist and technology. The first came from liver more and when he went to the pentagon he was the person who all of the darpa people reported to during the vietnam war. In 1977 he became secretary of defense. A very important secretary of defense and in essence created a really important darpa concept called the salt breaker, which i write about in the book, which absolutely allowed the u. S. Military to dominate in gulf war i and that was all science and technology driven. I think when he was secretary of defense he was able to get money into arena that didnt exist before by, you know, certainly with the historians by creating an entire industry around technology at the pentagon. Back over there. Question, you alluded to the linkage between darpa and the Intelligence Community. Did you ever run across researchers where darpa benefits from espionage providing the seeds of later research or suffered from espionage where like you said they have the good stuff and others want access to it. I dont know of darpa being infiltrated by any spies. I dont know. But i know there is an incredibly interplay the other way because these programs are so interwoven. Science, technology and intelligence. The cia has its own called the iarpa. I interviewed someone who was involved in the early organization of iarpa and presenting that idea to congress. He told me the Intelligence Community was very much wowed by darpa and what darpa was able to do and wanted their own model. So they really models them self after darpa. It is almost taking darpa back to its score where iarpa is just putting out contracts for people to bid on the ability to doed a vance to do advance computing and darpa is wanting people linking 3040 thinking years down the road. Back here . Would you tell us more about how darpa is organized . How long you are there and is it an appointment process or recruit . Thinks like that. As jodi arias, there is generally 120 tram managers. This is the way it is said people stay for five years. We have someone in the audience for has been there for decades. So, you know, that is the structure allegedly. But i would also remind everyone that as with all of these agency, the information that is given is only part of the story. So we know that darpa is free of red tape and and they farm it out. They have an awfully large building that not many reporters get into so who knows what is really going on in there. How is darpa involved in the cyber war today . Can you talk about that. Leading all efforts. If you look at the budget, you can see how many of the programs are trying to defend against cyber warfare. I think it is interesting that perhaps the only vulnerability i have ever heard the pentagon speak of is cyber warfare. In other words, the pentagon is clear we have this supremacy everywhere but admits cyber warfare is an enormous threat. I dont think darpa could be doing enough in that area. I imagine they are. Cyber now is the number one potential threat to the United States. It is planted terrorism as the number one threat. People are paying attention and there is a lot of money going to it certainly. Any last questions . There is one in the back. Hi, i want you to know, the pr privitization for the military, and do you think darpa has the edge still over private companicompan compani companies . Do you think darpa has the edge . I am sure darpa has the edge. They have incredible Satellite Programs including one that is lofting satellites, reusable technologies. The whole idea of what is happening in space is having this resurgeance now that is similar to what it was back then. Since darpas job is to keep us safe from technological surprises one can only matter how much darpa is looking up. Darpa has always worked with private companies as part of the organizational structure. We dont know if the private company is getting technological advantages on their own or money from darpa. My kids may know that one day but not any time soon. Any final questions . I always enjoy reading the acknowledgment section of the book. I was curious about your reason for writing the book and did darpa cooperate in your research. Can you talk about the process for doing the research and writing the book. I always love talking to scientist and engineers who write on the programs. It is a common question of how you get sources. I always carry the idea when i wrote a book about area 51 that a science who workeded with richard from the cia pioneer. Lubbock said fortune favors the prepared mind. If you are also on top of your information and you keep current about things that are interesting to you, people gravitate toward you to share their stories with you. He also told me to look up. That is a physicist concept. They are always looking up for the answers whether it is bats, birds, the moon or the cosmos the answer lies from above. And what lubbock was also saying is go higher up. He told me if a source doesnt want to talk to you it is probably they are too low down and they cant. Seek out their boss. I have found in this way that i find wonderful and inspiring and important that the greatest minds, these scientist and engineers, the bud we lons of the world and charles towns and neal cosby of the world, people who have knowledge and information are willing to share it if you ask the questions. Maybe the darpa press office isnt going to give me the answer but surely 70 scientists did for this book as they do for all of my books. When you look back, you say what can i share with my country that i spent my life dedicating time to. People have questions and i am a journalist and civilian. We have a lot of exagency times here that have to go through hurdles before they do anything. These are questions from the author like who looked at this. In the latter part of the book you write about a fear among some, particularly the Ethics Community of the robots taking over and we lose control. Having been through this now for years, do you share that . Here is what i think, i begin the book with the idea that scientist created a weapon against which there is no defense. Two of those science both wrote to the president of the United States, truman at the time, this weapon shouldnt be made, it is an evil thing. That is what they called it. They feared there would be no defense against it. We moved these decades with sort of like i hope it doesnt happen. It hasnt. But we are at a parallel situation in my mind, and the minds of many scientist i interview, who think about the question should we be afraid of Artificial Intelligence and the idea along the smartest scientist in the world is that too could be a weapon against which there is no defense and therefore limits must be in place
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