Thursday, November 21, 2019

Are U.S. Universities Helping DARPA Develop Weapons For Pentagon?--Part 1

Most anti-imperialist and anti-war students on U.S. university campuses, like Columbia University's campus, don't think U.S. university administrators should allow their professors to help the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA] develop weapons for the Pentagon on their campuses in the 21st-century. Yet most U.S. university administrators still apparently allow their professors to perform research work for DARPA on their campuses in 2019.

But, as Annie Jacobsen noted in her 2015 book, The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top Secret Military Research Agency:

"The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, as it is known, is the most powerful and most productive military science agency in the world. It is also one of the most secretive and, until this book, the least investigated...With an annual budget of roughly $3 billion...DARPA as an agency does not conduct scientific research. Its program managers and directors hire defense contractors, academics, and other government organizations to do the work. DARPA then facilitates the transition of its successful results to the military for use...Once ready for fielding, the resulting weapons and weapons-related systems are turned over to the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, and to intelligence agencies including the CIA, NSA (National Security Agency), DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency)...

"DARPA carefully controls its public persona...The bulk of DARPA's more consequential and sometimes Orwellian programs go largely unreported...In fact DARPA's stated mission is to create weapons systems...Admirers call DARPA the Pentagon's brain. Critics call it the heart of the military-industrial complex...

"...Darpa, by its mandate, pioneers...in secret...In the early 1960's, during the Vietnam War, DARPA began developing unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones...The first drone...appeared on the battlefield in Afghanistan in October 2001..."

No comments:

Post a Comment