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Title details for The Imagineers of War by Sharon Weinberger - Available

The Imagineers of War

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

by Sharon Weinberger
Hillary Huber
Audiobook
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1 of 1 copy available
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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 14, 2017

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781524752408
      • File size: 481294 KB
      • Duration: 16:42:41

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 2, 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.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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