The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World

by Sharon Weinberger

Overview

The definitive history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon agency that has quietly shaped war and technology for nearly sixty years.

Founded in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik, the agency’s original mission was to create “the unimagined weapons of the future.” Over the decades, DARPA has been responsible for countless inventions and technologies that extend well beyond military technology. Sharon Weinberger gives us a riveting account of DARPA’s successes and failures, its remarkable innovations, and its wild-eyed schemes. We see how the threat of nuclear Armageddon sparked investment in computer networking, leading to the Internet, as well as to a proposal to power a missile-destroying particle beam by draining the Great Lakes. We learn how DARPA was responsible during the Vietnam War for both Agent Orange and the development of the world’s first armed drones, and how after 9/11 the agency sparked a national controversy over surveillance with its data-mining research. And we see how DARPA’s success with self-driving cars was followed by disappointing contributions to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Weinberger has interviewed more than one hundred former Pentagon officials and scientists involved in DARPA’s projects—many of whom have never spoken publicly about their work with the agency—and pored over countless declassified records from archives around the country, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and exclusive materials provided by sources. The Imagineers of War is a compelling and groundbreaking history in which science, technology, and politics collide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804169721
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/20/2018
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	528,017
Product dimensions:	5.18(w) x 7.95(h) x 1.04(d)

About the Author

SHARON WEINBERGER is Executive Editor at Foreign Policy and the author of Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld. She is currently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She has also held fellowships at MIT's Knight Science Journalism program, the International Reporting Program at Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. She has written on military science and technology for Nature, BBC, Discover, Slate, Wired, and The Washington Post, among others.

Table of Contents

Prologue Guns and Money 3

Part I An Agency For Unimagined Weapons

Chapter 1 Scientia Potentia Est 15

Chapter 2 Mad Men 28

Chapter 3 Mad Scientists 40

Chapter 4 Society for the Correction of Soviet Excesses 53

Chapter 5 Welcome to the Jungle 68

Chapter 6 Ordinary Genius 86

Chapter 7 Extraordinary Genius 106

Chapter 8 Up in Flames 125

Chapter 9 A Worldwide Laboratory 143

Chapter 10 Blame It on the Sorcerers 168

Chapter 11 Monkey Business 186

Chapter 12 Bury It 202

Chapter 13 The Bunny, the Witch, and the War Room 219

Part II Servants of War

Chapter 14 Invisible War 239

Chapter 15 Top Secret Flying Machines 257

Chapter 16 Synthetic War 276

Chapter 17 Vanilla World 294

Chapter 18 Fantasy World 316

Chapter 19 Return of Voldemort 342

Epilogue Glorious Failure, Inglorious Success 363

Acknowledgments 373

Notes 377

Sources 429

Selected Bibliography 441

Index 453

Editorial Reviews

Excellent… A warning worth heeding… Weinberger…has cracked much of the secrecy that surrounds DARPA. [She] is especially deft in tracing how drones went from their early days in spotting and tracking Viet Cong fighters in the jungle to today, where they are part of the foundation of modern warfare.”
—Ray Locker, USA Today

“Groundbreaking.... Provides a glimpse into the history of war itself through the lens of an agency that bills itself as trying to ‘prevent and create surprise.’.... The best kind of airport thriller.”
—The New Scientist

"Deeply researched and briskly paced."
—Fred Kaplan, the New York Times Book Review

"[A] defining behind-the-scenes look at the confluence of defense politics and technological prowess. Exploring silly schemes as well as sensible ideas, distinguished military science and technology expert Weinberger profiles the crusaders who thought outside the box in service to their country and their own limitless creativity."
—Carol Haggas, Booklist
 
"Her account is critical but not mocking…a well-researched contribution to the history of U.S. military technology."
—Lawrence D. Freedman, Foreign Affairs

"They are the wizards of war, the faceless scientists who fight the battles of the future in lab coats instead of body armor, turning insects into remote control cyborgs and designing warships without crews.  In her new book, Sharon Weinberger has placed one of the government’s most secret laboratories, DARPA, under an electron microscope and discovered a world far beyond anyone’s imagination."
—James Bamford, bestselling author of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA, from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America. 
 
"From the Internet of today to the robots of tomorrow, DARPA has shaped not just the technology of war, but our day to day lives. Sharon Weinberger's The Imagineers of War lays out its untold history in an easy and informative read, along the way, reshaping the way you will look at events that range from the Vietnam War to the War on Terror."
—P.W. Singer, author of Ghost Fleet and Wired for War

"[A] fascinating and absorbing history… Weinberger’s account, based on extensive and meticulous research, reveals surprising twists in the recent history of the age-old entanglement between knowledge and power."
—David Kaiser, Nature Research
 
"A deep organizational history rather than a technological chronicle. [Weinberger] scours reams of archival material and interviews former officials…revealing a highly secretive organization with a fittingly mixed legacy."
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

…deeply researched and briskly paced…

The New York Times Book Review - Fred Kaplan

01/02/2017
Weinberger (Imaginary Weapons), national security editor at the Intercept, scours reams of archival material and interviews former officials of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, revealing a highly secretive organization with a fittingly mixed legacy. Following Annie Jacobsen’s 2015 book on DARPA, The Pentagon’s Brain, Weinberger’s complementary take is a deep organizational history rather than a technological chronicle. The now “$3-billion-a-year research agency” was founded in 1958 as the Advanced Research Projects Agency, with a post-Sputnik mission “to get America into space.” That quickly shifted into finding a science-based “solution to counterinsurgency.” DARPA’s real purpose has been to tackle critical national security problems while freed of bureaucratic oversight and scientific peer review. Agency scientists developed the Saturn rocket, the technologies that led to GPS, and evidence supporting the then-controversial theory of plate tectonics. Perhaps most famously, they “laid the foundations for computer networking.” DARPA has engaged in regular turf battles with competing agencies or branches of the armed forces, and some of its big risks have resulted in disastrous consequences; DARPA spent much of the early 21st century embroiled in debates over data-mining, privacy, and surveillance. Weinberger’s fascinating, if occasionally dry, account abounds with examples of technocratic arrogance in thrall to the “allure of science fiction.” Agent: Michelle Tessler, Tessler Literary. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

2016-12-19
A journey through "the agency responsible for some of the most important military and civil technologies of the past hundred years."Intercept security editor Weinberger (Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld, 2006, etc.) again sets her sights on the Department of Defense, combining historical context with a focus on waste, fraud, and abuse in one realm of the gigantic government agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, often referred to by its acronym DARPA. Cobbled together in 1958 in the aftermath of Cold War panic that the Soviet Union had launched the Sputnik satellite, the original DARPA personnel felt uncertain about their mission. The already established military services of the Army, Navy, and Air Force seemed to overlap with DARPA's amorphous mandate. Should a military agency control the government's rush to match or surpass the Sputnik launch? (At that time, NASA had not yet been created.) Weinberger traces how the pieces fell into place, focusing first on a detailed history of William Godel, a former military member who remained in government as a negotiator with foreign leaders. Godel's previously low profile receives a boost from Weinberger, a tireless researcher. The ascension of Godel leads to the crispest narrative in the book; after he exits, the story loses steam due to his many successors and the many disparate projects that ended up in DARPA's jurisdiction. Some of those projects led, at least indirectly, to the valuable creation of the nonmilitary internet plus brilliant devices that could detect tests of nuclear weapons by foreign nations. But when DARPA personnel became deeply involved in strategies to fight insurgent wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the agency waded into controversial waters that caused damage to its standing within the Pentagon. Given the complications of writing a comprehensive book about an octopuslike agency, Weinberger handles the material well. At times, though, the reading feels like parsing a government agency annual report.

Kirkus Reviews