Festival. My name is mark korman a state legislator from district 16. Gaithersburg is a city that supports the arts and humanities and we are pleased to bring the fabulous event thanks in part to the generous support of our sponsors and volunteers. When you see them i hope you will say thanks. Please is silence your devices and if youre on social media today please use the gbs. Feedback is valuable and surveys are available here and on our website. By submitting a survey surveys available at the tent. By submitting a survey youll be entered into a trying for 100 visa gift card and i hope youll put that in. I will be signing books immediately after this presentation and copies of the book are on sale in the politics prose just year right. A quick word about buying books. This is a free event, but it does help the book festival if you buy a book in the more books you buy, the more publishersrs will want to send their authors here to speak with us. Purchasing the books benefits our local economy and local jobs. I have a bag full over there myself. I hope you will join me. Enjoy this program and if youre in position to do so, buy some books today. This afternoon is sharon weinberger, the book is the imagineers of war the untold story of darpa, the Pentagon Agency that changed the world. This is sharons third book longform explanation of the research weapons and practices of the department of defense. Sharon began her career as an analyst and became a journalist and author ship name to the establishment of what shes been working. Sharon is now the executive policy. They deal in more ushering great morning briefing a few on everything and dont have time to find it all yourself. The Research Project agencyrc darpa had a pretty solid reputation especially for denizens of the d. C. Area is no spat on and contribute to things like internet in gps. Oubu sharons book is much, muchplor deeper exploring from americass first space agency to the president and some of its less successful were concluding Research Related to act debating an atmosphere of relative nucle radiation, counterinsurgencydie practices in vietnam andd superhuman soldiers who could survive unless good insight than is currently biologically possible. Its a multifaceted story of colorful personalities, frankly a lot of fanciful failures in an agency ever in search of a mission. If you get to the back of the book and look at the sources, youll see when sharon wrote this, she did it without access to any of darpas classified materials which frankly after reading you might wonder why any of it isnt classified at. Youll wonder how she was able to figure this all out without access. I lurk forward to learning more. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome sharon weinberger. [applause] thank you, mark. I wanted to start off by thanking the gaithersburg book festival at politics prose, both are great for writers. When you spend so many years come in my case over four years working on a book and people actually want to hear you talk about it, not just read the book, but here about what motivated you to work on it in your passions of interest, that is wonderful. For me, the opportunity to meet readers who want to share an interest and passion is also a very special opportunity, so thank you. Im here today to talk about darpa agency. Something that is more associated today with the sciencefiction technology. People have heard about it and a lot of people have, but its still rather esoteric agency. They think of it in connection or things like stealth aircraft with drugs responsible for the targeted killings of places like afghanistan, iraq, yemen andth i elsewhere. They associated most notably perhaps at the internet traces directly back to darpa lineage, but perhaps a Driverless Cars just now coming into their own or to be up on your iphone with Voice Recognition which is directly back to darpa funding. Im not here today to talk about so much the technology as the origins of how darpa became what it was then but maybe that time successful and at times back to unsuccessful. It goes back to my career writing on pentagon funded science and Technology Come as something that fascinated me for over a decade. One of the questions i ask is how science can do it in a National Security a member of the National Security state, how is it different and not funded by several institutions or in academia or industry and why should we care about thee difference . Well, the question is even more relevant today. I have given several versions of this talk over the past two months since the book came out in each time i get the talk, ive been thinking more and more about what is going on today inb the country. I initially chose this chapter and talking about today because it offends our notion of darpa Technology Agency because it looks at history of the vietnam war when the agency was moving beyond technology to social sciences and Behavioral Sciences and the role of the pentagon and social sciences. I think especially it is relevant today as we see debates in the country about proposed cuts to science and her civilian institutions commemorating civilian institutions commemorating the national of Health Democrats for Climate Research at the same time we see a proposal to increase funding for the military and Defense Department while traditionally when funding for the Defense Department has increased, funding for darpa has increased. What i would post here today is what we see is not necessarily science but similar to what happened in the cold war, shifted funding from civil science to military funded science. It rather than say a good or bad iu thing, i would challenge everyone today to think about implications of it, whether good, bad and what that means for our country. I also chose the selection today from a chapter called lehman on the sorcerers because its a lot about the manipulation of fact and most importantly more in a country thats been aware for 16 years come in to question the chapter races are more important than ever. The chapter takes us back to the vietnam war. Which i actually argue in the book is the most important. For darpas development and is the origin of almost all the technologies today that we think about when we think about darpa, naming aircraft, to some extent in the internet all traces back to the tumultuous period for the country and darpa. The story of blame in on the sorcerers starts in 1966 vietnam with the psychotherapist who is sent to a prison in saigon to interview a viet cong fighter whos in prison there. Part of the classical test of a lodge is indeed see anything on this card that reminds you of a . How about the top parts that appear in the picture . Anything there that reminds you of a penis . Do you see anything on the same thought that reminds you of a womans vegina . Neither man was in a particularly good mood. Frustrated because its effortlessly going through these cards that refuse to diagnose personality traits in a viet cong fighter was unhappy because he was sitting in a god stirred a bus rather than planting bombs and killing americans, which is what he been doing before. So they deployed a firm based in cambridge, massachusetts and the companies that tend to vietnam in 1966 under darpa offices to help the pentagon understand the growing insurgency there. Lets calibrate where we are in 1966. At that time, over 180,000 american troops in vietnam, which is as many at the height of our wars they are paid the vietcong insurgency in the meantime had grown tremendously. The pentagon papers estimated about an estimated 280,000 Viet Cong Communist fighters by 1966. This is up for what their estimates were up about 10 in 1962. So 10,002 max 292 going into war. There is also a doctor but its a prison in South Vietnam which included three monks who set themselves on fire, images of which were broadcast to american living room. The u. S. Understood thater American Intervention and the opposition to it was rising. In they didnt understand why there was opposition to the u. S. Vietnamese regime, but they thought the behavioral scientists could help themhey understand. One of these people at the pentagon funded to go to vietnam and the test used at the time popular among psychotherapist would help understand the reason for the United States in the u. S. South vietnamese regime. So far at least an interview with the vietcong fighter, then failed to yield any insider. He v they has to go through all the cars and identify something. Nothing. The nasa fighter to find anything that reminded him of a person. Nothing again. He was puzzled that be interviewed by a man hired by the pentagon and sensitive about his sex life. He finally asked the fighter to find a picture he simply liked or disliked. The imprisoned man who would want to sabotage reluctant to even touch the car. Speaking of archives, i found the verbatim interview others back and forth in the archives which goes to the question of how do you rate in history . Theres a button classified in the archives in maryland in the National ArchivesRecords Administration and private collections around the country. This is what the fighter replied according to the interview appeared to do not understand this picture so i do not know which ones i like and which onet i dislike. Ended up spending seven weeks in vietnam during which time he collected data. A french educated writer, Student Activist in hiding from a senior Buddhist Monk in the viacom insurgent, all for harvard deep feelings of South Vietnam, but even the antigovernment Buddhist Monks was more cooperative. Ive never seen one except on a child when he asked of a particular egg lot resembled a vagina. This is also from the final report icon in the archives archive sent to the pentagon. These are his conclusions based on the interviews. The viet cong number was it for old man and old man, strictly addressed it to space his expression was stoning flattened. He never reached out and truly responded. The only time they came alive as weve been telling of effects is. Besides a great many hundreds of greater dignity. As soon as it passes a bus backn into a lethargic apathy from a pattern and commence to and commence with lifelong and not by imprisonment. So just to remind you the entire interview is going on in prison. He was not interested in the nuance of the vietnamese politics. He praises for men about their parents, dreams and sex lights or lack thereof. After an abuse of this forum permits the problem with the people was not a thousand years of foreign domination to include french colonialism, chinas imperialism and the contemporaneous americanican i intervention. Instead, the root of the problem with her troubled family structure. It is my strong impression that the triad of civil rivalry and on this old the central psychological core of antiamerican vietnam. So lets back up a bit. Ac theres a basic question hereer but i asked myself a nice going through these darpa files, which is why was a psychotherapist setting up in vietnam . More importantly what does this have to do with have to do and darpa come away to darpa sadness person there . This goes back to the broader question of how a scienceba conducting a National Security stage in what is the role of science in the pentagon is opposed to other parts, whether academia or industry. Most importantly, what implications of science conducted in the state National Security and should we care. Quite obviously we do. Lets talk about why it dark days, created in 1950 as a direct response to sputnik and the soviet union launch of the first artificial satellite which created a political panic somewhat akin to the 9 11 attacks here in 2001, meaning it represented to think that the time in 1957 when the lunch to face. First of the soviet union was ahead in the space race which is a psychological blow to theaurs United States. The second most importantly, the technology to launch the satellite was linked to technology intercontinental ballistic missiles. The idea of the soviet union could launch a Nuclear Weapon attack against the United States really shattered bat post world war ii era idea of visibility. Ps in 1958, dwight d. Eisenhower authorized the birth of what was then called arpanet, the advanced Research Projects agency. Present the time the nationsag first space agency with the creation of nafta. All of the satellite and Space Programs civil and military would go into this agency and the agency would do everything possible, throw bureaucracy toto the wind, cut red tape and get america into space. Darpa did this successfully inis under a year and a crew eventually into what it is today, a 3 billion to your agency made up of 140 technical personnel called program managers. It still bears some of that unique traits from its early days, lack of bureaucracy and an ability to move quickly to find new projects. D unlike the National Science foundation and snet is peer review to review projects. I can move very quickly. Does not permit employees by scientific managers coming for periods coming for. The two to five years to manage projects that live or die and the sailors succeed in that time. And then they move on. It has the ability unlike other parts of government to fail and hopefully succeed as well. It is the originator of so many technologies that it changed battlefields in our daily lives to include drugs, precision weapons, arpanet, Driverless Cars. You could argue and i think i do agree that it is the most Successful Research agency ever created for at least the most successful military research agency. That doesnt mean it doesnt have flaws. Writing in the book, what i was trying to do with not count up how many of its projects succeed or fail, but create a history of how this agent they got to wherp it was. I think the presumption is that it goes back to the space race. The truth is that darpa was on the eighth agency for about a year and a half before nasa was created in the civil satellite programs and the military took back its other Space Programs. So what i look at is what i think is the seminal period of darpas existence and what made it what it is today, which his involvement in vietnam. I came to the conclusion that everything apart we associate with darpa comes out of vietnam and work in counterinsurgency and more critically to the extent of how extent appellate prosecutor wars today with precision weapons, computers is an outgrowth of work and specifically darpas experience in vietnam are most failed war effort. If you think about that for ahi second, the way we wage a war is as an outgrowth of our most privy seal forever should give us pause. B it also goes to the title of the book, the imagineers of war, because that is what darpa was at its height in the made up of people who are just developing science and technology, but imaginary worth thinking how we fight our wars today, how will fight them tomorrow and how they come up with solutions to those wars. It didnt always work sometimes a day. Lets return for a minute to her psychotherapist to vietnam. What was going on. The research they sound ludicrous today but it was part of a much broader effort by the pentagon to study the roots from a scientific vantage point. Pentagon officials realized thel war in vietnam was not going well and they also realize there was a phenomenon. Weve done a lot with that. They turned to researchers rather than physicists are engineers, they said maybe the softer scientists, social scientist from anthropologist from a political scientist to help us understand whats going on. Darpa got involved in this because it was about to be shut down. In 1959 to 1960 it is no longer space agency, but they didnt have a rather creative individual ,com,com ma a very legendary intelligence operative by the name of bill podell. He was in my mind sort of thedew original imaginary was that i think that a Nuclear Confrontation with the soviet union however terrible is unlikely pair but more likely is the type of wars will be in places like southeast asia. They will be proxy wars. In 1961, the Deputy Director of darpa got permission from president kennedy to establish what was called the combat development and test center in saigon is going to work with the South Vietnamese forces and military advisers to help them fight the jungles. So they did everything from silent aircraft to chemical pollution, better known under its nomenclature agent orange. They also started sendingarted anthropologist and social scientist to vietnam and thailand. In 1961, formally assigned by the pentagon and assignment in Behavioral Sciences. To run this program, they hired a man who was a psychologist who is interested in computers. He went on to be the godfather of arpanet and the modern internet. What was going on with by the mid1960s, darpa was being flooded by proposals from universities and independent researchers all suggesting ways to use the social sciences to help understand when and crazy i number of vietnamese in whichbet vietnamese reciting with a day rather embracing u. S. Forces. The Industrial Complex as it does operative is some bizarre solution. My favorite one that i founded the National Archives is dated august 1965 from general from electric. They wrote to darpa suggesting the company beginning a continuing openended contract which is every Company Favorite t