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Why Are the Best and Brightest Not Flooding DARPA?
David W. White writes "Wired mag's Danger Room carried an article today that highlighted how desperate the US Military's DARPA has become in its attempts to bring in additional brain power. The tactics include filmed testimonials, folders and even playing cards all screaming join DARPA! Where are all the Einsteins who want to be on the cutting edge for the Government?"
Word has gotten out that DARPA is run by political appointees selected for their blind loyalty to the present administration, not for their intelligence and expertise. The best and brightest are of course aware of this, and few of them relish the prospect of working for a pack of first-class morons who report up a chain of command which terminates in someone far too stupid to deserve the compliment "moron". It's possible that this will change once President Obama takes office and does some serious house-cleaning, although frankly, any institution so badly mismanaged for so many years can't be put right quickly no matter how competent and sustained the effort. It's a pity that this has been allowed to happen -- or rather, that this has been deliberately made to happen -- but that philosophical note aside, the practical impact is that anyone choosing to work for DARPA at the moment really needs a full psychiatric evaluation with particular emphasis on latent self-destructive tendencies.
I spent two years of my life post-graduate school working at DoD research laboratories, and can say with some experience why Geeks should not join DARPA (or any government research lab). It can be summed up in one word: "research."
Government labs no longer do the stuff for the most part. There are still some pockets left, but they are few and far between, and shrinking. I graduated with a MS in computer science, with a two-year focus on computer security. I was offered a job in a research team with with a DoD lab and eagerly took it. But it wasn't research. It was contract management. Essentially, I got to read research proposals from companies, and decide whether or not those companies would be funded for their ideas. My ability to influence the actual research of the companies was quite limited. I was able to come up with 'calls for proposals,' that is, statements of new topics that we'd like proposals on from companies. By the time these ideas were raped^Wvetted by the various program and contract managers, the descriptions were so incredibly vague that the proposals received in response to the call were completely off-topic. I got frustrated very early on and left.
In my exit interview, I asked my supervisor to define research. His definition was adequate. I then asked him if that's what we did. He stammered a bit, and ultimately conceded that we, "facilitated research." We had a very interesting discussion. Due to research project overruns throughout the 80s, particularly with software projects, as well as the end of the Cold War, the Congress changed the focus of DoD research programs. New funding rules dictate that research projects are placed under contract. In this way, if a company is paid to do research and development on a project, and it fails to deliver, the government has some recourse. If actual government employees received funding and failed, there would not be much that congress could do to them (Congress could slash the non-salary portions of the failed project's budget, but that's not very intimidating to the employees when you think about it).
The place where the 'cool' stuff happens these days is by the contractors. If you want to work on ARPA and DARPA quality work, start a small business and start winning on SBIR awards. I wouldn't recommend actually working for DARPA or a government research lab, though, unless you really want to be a contract manager and not be very hands-on with technology and ideas.
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
Well your post is offtopic and insulting to boot, but it would seem to me that the jobs are here in the US. Except of course that most of them are Indian and Chinese employed by IBM and companies like that.
No, not really. I'd agree with the wars part, but the trade thing is certainly false. Why do you hate China so much? Any particular reason? You keep going on and on about this and I still don't understand it.
That's rich, coming from the guy who has to pretend he's eleven different people.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
I witnessed a state come up with a way to provide free college education to all residents.
The stipulations were
A) Had to be a resident when graduating high school
B) Had to be an instate college
C) Had to have a B average and maintain it through college
When the enacting governor left office, the replacement governor promised college for all students.
The result was grade inflation where the D average inner city kid got that magical B average
and because of affirmative action, the D average kids got head of the line admission to the universities over the real B and A achievers.
We see animosity from the educational unions over the home and private schooled kids because their results are better and it's the unions that say that the results aren't fair.
Political correctness got rid of the best and brightest.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
I think you just offended a lot of people. I certainly did a little soul searching when the startup I worked for got bought out by a large defense contractor, but in the end I can't directly affect whether we go to war or not, but I sure as heck can give our soldiers the tools they need to come home alive. Yes, I tend to vote Democrat and I think the Iraq war was one of the most boneheaded public policy decisions in my lifetime, but I still go to work every day supporting the troops in a very real way (unlike most of those who think supporting the troops means buying yellow magnets and bumper stickers).
E pluribus unum
Personally, I have no problem with things which kill people. I own several guns, and would happily use them on people who would do me harm. If we had a country and a government where we acted morally and fairly in this world, didn't get needlessly involved in foreign affairs or start wars of aggression, and only used our killing technologies to protect ourselves from actual, valid threats, I wouldn't feel bad about helping to make those technologies. But the way this government behaves, I don't want to help it in any way. And with the way the stupid voters in this country keep voting for these buffoons, I don't have any hope that future administrations will be any better. So while I wouldn't mind, for instance, making guns to be sold to Citizens who pass a proper background check (hypothetically, since I'm a software engineer), I wouldn't want to make guns to be sold to the government.
Who wants to work at a crazy bureurcracy like DARPA ? It is an old boys network that is a way to give pork to industry and professors. They've had some successes, but hey that's shotgun science for you. They mostly like to make up crazy ideas that won't work. I worked on a robot project for them for a few years. It was insane. There was no way to do what they wanted - but my university got lots of money!!!
I understand what you're saying, and I agree with you and what the link proves. But you are not understanding my point. A great many of those people who are hired in those countries end up working here in the United States. IBM has thousands and thousands of "employees" working here, for IBM and under contract for U.S. companies. They might have been hired in India and China, but lots and lots of them are working here.
I should know, I work with an enormous amount of them every day.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
This is a wise observation: for a particularly detailed account of one such person, read Richard Rhodes' Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb . It prominently features Edward Teller, who was the driving force behind the hydrogen bomb even when many of the other Manhattan project scientists, and most notably Oppenheimer, had lost their zeal for weaponry and their certainty that we are the good guys, as the GP argues.
Note too that I pitched a theory as to why this is a problem in another comment.
A DARPA "program manager" is often what Government procurement people call a "Contracting Officer's Technical Representative". This is someone who knows what the project is about, technically, and goes out to check on progress. Back at HQ, you write reports, go to meetings concerning what projects ought to go forward, and look at incoming proposals. You get to see a lot, and have some influence over research, but don't really do much yourself. The problem is finding people smart enough to do the job, willing to work for the Government not actually doing technical work, senior enough to tell companies and professors what to do, yet not has-beens.
Although many academics are unhappy with DARPA under Dr. Tony Tether, I think he's done good work. Academic robotics needed a serious butt-kick. DARPA had been putting money into robot vehicles since 1969 without getting anything usable. Tether dreamed up the DARPA Grand Challenge to light a fire under academic researchers. Early on, the big-name schools didn't want to field entries. It was quietly made clear to them that the gravy train was over - if they couldn't compete, they weren't getting further funding in robotics. Entire academic departments were devoted to that problem, and it got results. More recently, Boston Dynamics' "Big Dog" robot has been demoed. Again, this was something far better than anything from decades of academic work. I can't speak for work outside robotics, but DARPA really has succeeded in forcing robotics groups to produce.
I am a programmer who on the job had the task of looking at DARPA's wish list for new projects with the consideration of bidding. I and several others in the company declined to bid because the requested projects were targeted at removing the freedom, privacy and civil rights of our fellow citizens. These projects included looking into how to intercept 100% of all E communications and all Phone and other similar communications. These projects included developing methodologies to evaluate human brains for what they were thinking. I am not against DARPA but so long as major goals are like these, no engineer with morals will want anywhere near the agency.
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