Sharon Weinberger

In this popular history of DARPA, Weinberger sets herself the question of how an agency legendary for initiating a number of major transformative technological developments can often seem irrelevant when dealing with the big security questions. The answer would seem to be that most of the big failures occurred when DARPA entered the realm of political warfare when used as a tool in some of the more dubious wars of the United States, such as Vietnam and the ongoing "forever war" with an intractable Muslim world. Even the most elegant technological solutions (and DARPA has had its share of clunkers over the years) will not save one from an ill-chosen contest where there was always a low chance of success. As one disgruntled DARPA manager critical of this book noted at Amazon, those sort of mistakes get deservedly hung on the politicians. Still, I thought this book was worth reading and I suspect that it's about as good an account as one is going to get of the agency at the current time.… (mehr)