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DARPA Issues Call For Computer Science Devotees
coondoggie writes "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking for a few good university-based computer science researchers who might be interested in developing systems for the US military. The move is seen, in part anyway, as a way for the agency to win more hearts and minds of the advanced science community."
Call on Theo De Raadt
These are JOB postings, guys. Rare enough in the US these days.
Of course, you'll have to pass a background check, so you all just go ahead.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Maybe, maybe not. I know of researchers who have no problem with weapons funding whereas I do for the most part. IME, the DARPA program managers are sharp, but I reckon they're lap dogs of the military who simply want $WEAPON and don't really understand the science, and there are willing to throw money -- a lot of money -- at the problem.
In the current funding climate, it's perhaps inevitable to have to accept some funding from entities whose interests are not terribly academically aligned.
Job Spec: As part of this great, well paid opportunity, You will be developing our SkyNet and Colossus robot based anti personnel devices.
Be spending at home during the hard economic times. ... Your spending. Our passion, *now with 100% less FSB.
Trusted partners with security clearances who have been with the US security establishment from their inception*.
Larger organisations that can bring a wealth of real world experience to any DARPA project.
Developers who understand the interface needs of raw US armed forces recruits.
Developers who are committed to security.
Developers, developers
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Great idea!! DUCKS!!!!
Meus subcriptio est nocens Latin quoniam bardus populus reputo is sanus callidus
Test in Iraq, deploy at home? You would think they would just buy off the shelf from Australia, UK, Canada, France, Italy or South Africa. People who love and need their death jobs vs the questions of US patriots.
Have them see their work used in main street USA is a huge emotional security risk.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
...or does DARPA not already have a MASSIVE amount of researchers under their wing?
Yes, but there's been a recent policy shift.
DARPA has, for the past several years, been trying to refocus away from academic research and more into "applied" (meaning, basically, private-sector) research.
This has not worked out so well, in a number of respects (both practical and pseudo-political) so DARPA is now moving back towards a more academia-friendly approach.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Pharmacology is so 1980's
Anthropology will provide an insight into the family, tribe, clan and nationalist issues offering a clean divide and conquer process for long term resource control.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
as soon as they start issuing salaries that are competitive with the private sector. When I was at university job fairs last year, entry level positions at Microsoft offered almost 50% more than equivalent government jobs, and the latter seemed to have better career opportunities later in life. Not sure if this applies to all professions, or just programmers/computer scientists, but that's who they want apparently.
I have heard that at the moment wages are increasing faster in the government than the private sector due to the recession, but that's a temporary situation at best.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
You will be developing our SkyNet and Colossus robot based anti personnel devices.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could develop stuff like the Internet without at the same time spending such a vast quantity of otherwise productive wealth on deadweight loss activities like developing weapons systems?
And if we simply must pour huge amounts of otherwise productive wealth into deadweight loss activities, why not make it space exploration, unlikely-to-pay-off energy research, a cure for the common heartbreak?
What is it about killing people in large numbers that is so fascinating that it compels our interest?
It certainly isn't any actual utility: violience is the least efficient and effective way of solving any problem. History supports this with endless examples and a handful of counter-examples. So it can't be that anyone remotely sane ever looks at the world and says, "I know, what we need is more and better ways of killing people, because what we have isn't enough!"
So what is it? Why do people build such huge deadweight loss systems, far beyond anything required to simply protect ourselves from invasion by others? It can't be the purported serendipitous benefits because they could be had in far less devastating ways.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
What is "demonstrated exceptional potential"? This makes no sense. Either you have performed exceptionally or you haven't. And what is up with junior faculty? They are not interested in those with an actual record of world-class contributions? This looks to me as if they are just buying younger faculty (without the security of tenure to date) for use at a later date.
reckon they're lap dogs of the military who simply want $WEAPON and don't really understand the science,
Right, its DARPA. The D stands for Defense. In the US, Defense is a political term for Military. That is exactly who they are.
The restrictions? An eligible participant must be a junior faculty member at a US higher education institution. Participants should be no more than seven years beyond receiving a doctoral degree, pretenure junior faculty, with demonstrated exceptional potential for worldclass contributions to the field of computer science.
So, it seems like they only want faculty with the most tenuous positions at their institutions to do projects that will likely be viewed with suspicion by their more senior peers. After completing their project terms, they'll likely be anathema to the other faculty in their departments, and since they don't have tenure and likely won't be able to get it, will be ripe for the poaching. But they pay and benefits are probably a lot better than the universities can muster these days.
I wouldn't hire any of my university professors to do anything software related.
Academics should stay in academia.
The move is seen, in part anyway, as a way for the agency to win more heart and braaaaiiiiiinnns of the advanced science community.
There, fixed that for 'em.
Interviewer: "At the start, you will be involved with testing this new weapon system."
Interviewee: "Hey, what happened to the researchers who used to work on this project?"
Interviewer: "Oh, you know, the tough work here can sometimes just devour you."
Bad comic: ". . . tip the veal, try the waitress . . ."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Assembling a top-notch team is more than just getting some bright bulbs, even the brightest bulbs cannot illuminate a large enough room. Right now these bulbs are being put in a tiny little box, which has such intensity on the inside that they're more likely to burn the box than illuminate it. My guess is they will get 12 awesome computer scientists which will build something very cool under the guise of something noble; however, they could also build something that China might be interested in as well...something like a reverse anonymizing system. Oh well, someone has to do it...
So what is it? Why do people build such huge deadweight loss systems, far beyond anything required to simply protect ourselves from invasion by others?
Here are a few reasons I see:
1. Offshoring of manufacturing. Weapons are physical things, and most other physical things are now made in China. If you live somewhere like Ohio, weapons development is pretty much what is left. In theory we could make other stuff like windmills, but there is a lot of inertia in economic development. Most people can't just get together with a half dozen friends and start an alternative energy company. But its pretty easy to get into DoD work, because it already exists locally.
2. Job competition from immigrant graduate students. If you've got US citizenship or a greencard, there's a lot less competition for grant money in research areas that are closed to non "US persons". This tends to drive native US engineering talent into DoD and 'homeland security' R&D, which fuels expansion in those areas.
3. Blood lust. A fairly significant portion of the people involved in DoD research are fascinated by lethal power, and presumably this accounts for much public support for it also. I think there are metaphysical causes for this, that it can't be understood purely in terms of a rational cost/benefit analysis. Or, if you're adverse to philosophical speculation, just chalk it up to our prehistoric past as hunter-scavangers, though I don't think that's a complete answer.
4. Fear. There is a lot of dishonesty our lives, and living a lie tends to be productive of paranoia. Some people are in a position to take advantage of that. There's a lot of fear in congress also, which results in ostensibly dovish representatives pouring a lot of money into secret defense and surveillance programs.
5. Greed. People want money so they can live in big houses, take expensive vacations, and retire early. Fear sells at higher margins than other services.
Government jobs are now -generally speaking- higher paying than civilian jobs, at least in the US. Of course this will contribute to the insane economic trickle down theory of boom and eventual bust/collapse (along with the usury and wealth skimming industry and money "creation" model we have), but they hold most of the aces now and can just demand that everyone else support their growth and raises.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20091211/1afedpay11_st.art.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503983_162-5007862-503983.html
of the scientific community would be to stop wasting money developing things that kill people.
DARPA is probably seeking junior faculty members because they are more likely to have fresh ideas than do the more-established senior faculty. Also, junior faculty are in greater need of funding, especially in this economy where a lot of corporate funding for computer science research has been cut. Those research funds primarily support graduate students working on their advanced degrees. Finally, DARPA is sort of marketing itself to these young researchers, who may never have considered working with DARPA, especially when it was so directly focused on military programs.
There are many of us in the academic computer science research community (including me) who have never applied for DARPA funds or participated in their programs. But everyone with a computer has been the beneficiary of DARPA-funded projects.
Did you RTFA? These aren't job postings. You already have to have a very particular job. A mere PhD is not good enough, no you must be employed at a university as a junior faculty member and have received your PhD within the last 7 years. (Amazing how quickly an advanced degree becomes stale. Guess it would have been discriminatory to require that every participant be under the age of 40.) This DARPA program is a way for you to secure your tenured faculty position by bringing in DARPA money.
Nowadays there are so many new PhDs fighting for so few positions that it has become extremely competitive. Lot of new professors quickly lose their positions for not having done enough quality publishing. DARPA will have no trouble recruiting, and attaching all kinds of onerous strings. Before the 1970s, you could have your own lab before you turned 30. Not impossible today, but very, very hard. This is a big reason why universities have been able to get away with paying at least 20% less than industry. And why DARPA can push such arbitrary criteria. Maybe they're trying to help younger faculty with this restriction of no more than 7 years. Bar highly, highly competitive, more experienced faculty from participating. But it is easy to see a self-serving pandering to the pop-science idea that people are mentally sharpest and do their best thinking and work before the age of 50 or perhaps 40. They're also angling for the more desperate professors who still have to prove themselves, and will therefore supposedly work harder. They may also impose their unthinking assumptions of how research should be done, and demand "action plans", "deliverables", and a full accounting of hours worked, as if research was only another business process. This is consistent with what I have seen from military backing of research efforts. That DARPA has the luxury to play along with such notions is yet another sign of how bad it is out there.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
And AQ/Taliban killed what? Guilty ppl?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Finally, a slashdove who acknowledges that DARPA actually had a positive role...
It gets results.
An item of faith among pacifists, particularly those protected by a government willing to use violence at a drop of a hat. But false; violence is quite effective, perhaps uniquely so; that's why all current systems of government are based on it.
It certainly isn't any actual utility: violience is the least efficient and effective way of solving any problem.
There's a saying: violence is like XML. If it isn't solving your problem, you're not using enough of it!
(A more serious answer would be that at some point or in some cases, only more violence can beat violence. If I'm willing to solve my problems with violence and you aren't, at some point I'm always going to win. Passive resistance only works if I have a sense of shame.)
I forgot to thank you at the time for ARPANet.
This article is by the same dumbass that wrote the Juno article that was posted here yesterday! Can we put a moratorium on links to this a-hole's column until he learns to convert metric and Imperial units correctly, at the very least?!?! I would give his articles a grain of salt on being accurate in any sense!
This has been going on since Day One for DARPA. How do you think this Intertube was developed? Many of the innovations in computers and networks were initiated within DARPA projects. Read some history.
Keep Doing Good.
... because I got into the field to write code to help kill people.
Yes, I know that it's now the Department of Defense, but we seem to be doing a whole bunch of offense lately. Why don't we just go back to what it was originally called - The Department of War? It seems to be much closer to their mandate right now.
But all of you basement warriors out there won't have to worry. I'm sure that there are plenty of contract whores in academia to pick up the gun.
That is all.
Violence isn't effective. Quite the contrary, it involves tremendous costs; for example, the current running cost of Iraq and Afghanistan wars comes to over one trillion dollars - and let's not forget that these are wars against a hopelessly outmatched foe, and have actually failed to meet their objectives, for Al-Qaida and Taleban still exist and Iraq is far from a peaceful democracy. It's the threat of violence that's effective, but once you resort to actual violence, you'd better hope that you have some deep pockets to draw from.
Suppose you'd given trillion dollars to, say, NASA instead of blowing shit up? You'd be selling hot dogs at the Moon right now. Or maybe you'd prefer to have covered the Wall Street bailout with it? You'd still had over 300 billion dollars to spend on NASA, social security, or simply tax cuts. Instead, you used it all to blow shit up half the world over, and accomplished nothing except killing thousands of your people and possibly close to a million other people. And you call that effective? Hell, you could had put a billion dollar bounty on Osama's head; you'd almost certainly got him, and still had 999 billions left over.
This is what I've never understood about hawks: their position is completely irrational. Even if one adopts the position that the only thing that matters is homeland's power and glory, it's still irrational: a nation that invests its money on growing its economy will always beat one that invests in its army instead, simply because of compound interest. Getting involves in a war always weakens you, simply because you are wasting resources you could invest in making yourself stronger otherwise. Why are these people having such a problem understanding this?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Don't forget, the internet is a product of DARPA (formerly ARPA). Having advanced communications is essential for an effective military spread over the world, but it also happens to be very handy for everyone else too. Military campaigns are about more than just shooting things and blowing things up; fundamentally, they're really just giant exercises in logistics. Logistics have many applications outside the military: construction, commerce, etc. Someone who develops tools to improve logistical capabilities would be helping not only the military, but many other areas of human endeavor as well.
Revolutionary IT is an oxymoron. IT is all about deep infrastructure and you can't revolutionize the status quo; you can only evolutionize it after first understanding it thoroughly and then chipping away at the edges. No prof is willing to immerse him/herself in that level of ritual embowelment just to win a $100k contract.
Now robotics might be different. A new robot can serve an isolated niche for DARPA which doesn't require the professor to first understand the workings of a huge and complex hierarchical organization like the US military.
The same is true of spy technology. Though IMHO DARPA should be prohibited from funding spy tech since it's so likely to be misguided to civilian targets and then misused domestically, info fusion and surveillance are readily served by a clever prof with a better mousetrap.
This is a non sequitur. I never said it was cheap. I merely said it was effective. It's efficiency varies widely.
More likely we'd have a couple more half-developed launch platforms destined for cancellation.
Actually, at least two things intended were accomplished: One, Al Queda is no longer in effective control of Afghanistan. This goal was accomplished relatively quickly. Two, Saddam Hussein is no longer running Iraq. You can argue all day about whether the latter goal was an important one, but it was accomplished. Both wars were badly managed, and the goals (besides those two) were pretty murky to begin with.
Until the nation which invests in the army waltzes in and takes over. Or some group hating that nation just starts blowing infrastructure up.
Given infinite resources, almost everything is "effective", since it gets your goal. Given finite resources, whatever gets your goal cheapest is "effective".
The reason NASA projects get cancelled is that the funding gets cancelled. Give them a trillion dollars and a directive to colonize the Moon with it, and it'll get done.
As soon as USA pulls off - as it has to do pretty soon, since the money to continue the war is running out - Taleban and Al-Qaeda will retake the country.
Indeed. Of course, Saddam was a secular maniac, so with him gone Iraq is on its way to become a terrorist training ground, but hey: mission accomplished.
Yes, I get the feeling that the people in charge just wanted a war, and damn the consequences.
It takes far less money to defend than to attack. A nation that invests in its infrastructure can hold off nation that attacks, yet still increase the size of its economy, and eventually dwarf that nation even in military might.
An army can't stop a terrorist group. You need intelligence services and police for that.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Infinite resources spent in the wrong way are NOT effective.
Now there's an article of faith. I find it more likely they'd burn through the trillion with various poorly thought out and poorly executed programs, and then go begging for more.
Maybe. But even if so, was there another way to unseat them?
Hokay! I'll take fries with that!
Military technology is a double-edged sword. A peaceful society with white marble libraries, people in flowing robes discussing philosophy and nary a bad word to be heard will be destroyed when the first Viking longboat comes ashore.
On the other hand, an otherwise peaceful society with fantastically effective military technology might become militarily adventurous. And what the modern communications media is teaching us is that all war - ALL war - results in mangled noncombatants as well as mangled soldiers.
There needs to be a balance.
> heart and minds
Old nomenclature. "Trust and confidence" is the official new.