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+--- Thread: The Pentagon's Brain by Annie Jacobsen (An Uncensored History of DARPA) (/thread-14905.html)
The Pentagon's Brain by Annie Jacobsen (An Uncensored History of DARPA) - Drew Phipps - 16-08-2016
A good read, if you like being alternately terrified and fascinated. (Did you know that there were four nuclear missiles detonated during the Cuban Missile Crisis?) The book tracks the role of DARPA (and the scientists who formed it) from the invention of the hydrogen bomb to today's cutting edge advances in cyber-technology and bio-chemical experimentation. Sadly, (predictably) it is anything but "uncensored;" there are many topics which the author touches on just long enough to mention that they are classified.
There are many interesting bits left, however. There is the story of how CentComm's 1990 annual wargaming session (Internal Look) for the first time, involved a foe not the Soviet Union, but instead started with the premise that Iraq invaded Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. "To everyone's surprise, on the last day of the simulated war game exercises, on August 4, 1990, Iraq invaded its small oil-rich neighbor, Kuwait."
There is also the June 2001 "Dark Winter" war game scenario, which began with the premise that Iraq attacked a US state with a biological weapon (weaponized smallpox). Coincidentally, Iraq was (falsely) blamed with the anthrax attacks that followed 9/11.
There is this amazing statement, with no elaboration: "Eisenhower warned the American people about the "total influence" of the military-industrial complex. The warning was a decade too late." The H-bomb was exploded 7 years before Eisenhower's farewell address. ARPA (precursor to DARPA) was formed in 1958. One is left to wonder what event in 1951 the author refers to.
The authors also claimed that JFK signed off on the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, and give the convoluted history of how ARPA kept sending in new teams of scientists in Vietnam till they wrote the reports the Pentagon wanted to hear.
There is also this which may be of interest to Deep Politics readers, the CIA's DARPA-like agency (called IARPA) has a program called "Narrative Networks" which "develop techniques to quantify the effect of narrative on human cognition." You can find a basic description of this program here:
http://www.darpa.mil/program/narrative-networks
and other topics of interest at darpa.mil:
[TABLE]
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[TD]Implantable "Neural Dust" Enables Precise Wireless Recording of Nerve Activity
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Minimally Invasive "Stentrode" Shows Potential as Neural Interface for Brain
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Bridging the Bio-Electronic Divide
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Work Begins to Support Self-Healing of Body and Mind
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Neurotechnology Provides Near-Natural Sense of Touch
The book is well written and well documented with extensive footnotes and citations to the scientific papers cited. The book closes with a rather ominous passage:
"This book ends with scientists inside the Pentagon working to create autonomous weapons systems, and with scientists outside the Pentagon working to spread the idea that these weapon systems are inherently evil things, that artificially intelligent hunter-killer robots can and will outsmart their human creators, and against which there is no defense.
There is a perilous distinction to call attention to: when the hydrogen bomb was being created, the military-industrial complex - led by defense contractors, academics, and industrialists - was just beginning to exert considerable control over the Pentagon. Today, that control is omnipotent."
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
The Pentagon's Brain by Annie Jacobsen (An Uncensored History of DARPA) - Michael Barwell - 16-08-2016
Chapters 18, 24, 25 & 26 are interesting.