# DARPA’s primary purpose is to develop military technology The D in DARPA stands for “Defense” ultimately DARPA’s explicit purpose is to support the DoD. Even ARPA before the “D” was mission-oriented around the military. at the same time as [[JCR Licklider]] was sowing the seeds of personal computing and the internet, [[William Godel]] was managing ARPA programs to build silent planes and boats, agent orange, and AR-15 rifles. Even [[JCR Licklider]]’s computer work was started in response to an incident where the US almost started a nuclear exchange because a computer couldn’t tell the difference between the moon and a fleet of incoming bombers combined with JFK’s desire to have a better command-and-control overview of the US military. For the most part the non-military technology that came out of DARPA was a happy byproduct. While we can abstract the ARPA model away from DARPA’s military focus, it is important to keep in mind because in the long run incentives win and [[Innovation orgs need to be aligned with their money factory]]. Aspects of the overarching org leak into any innovation org’s focus regardless of their commitment to paradigm-shifting long-term work. The military milieu of the day has always driven DARPA’s focus: Vietnam, the Cold War, concerns about offshoring eliminating US ability to build its own military technology, and terrorism. DARPA is the source of many technologies that the show Black Mirror has used to paint dystopian futures - killer drones, surveillance AI, walking robots, and more. You can see this focus leak in the Department of Energy (DOE)’s ARPA riff -[[ARPA-E]]. The DOE doesn’t really have one straightforward mission - it used to be “ensure nuclear superiority” (historical sidenote - all the DOE national labs were originally established to optimize and advance different parts of the nuclear weapons process.) [[ARPA-E]] is similarly a bit confused - is it trying to lower the cost of energy? Shift us to renewables faster? Help the energy industry or upend it? There are two important upshots. First, DARPA’s military focus means that there are ideas that are *out of scope.* A former PM explicitly confirmed that while the ARPA model is ideas limited, there are ideas well-suited for the model that they don’t pursue. Second, the source of authority and funding matters for anybody attempting to riff on the ARPA model. <!-- #evergreen --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/DARPA’s+primary+purpose+is+to+develop+military+technology) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/DARPA’s+primary+purpose+is+to+develop+military+technology)