# Starting in 2001, DARPA directors began to sync up with presidential administrations Before 2001, DARPA director tenures seem to be fairly random distributions between 2-4 years. * [[Anthony Tether]] was there during the bush administration (2001-2009) * [[Regina Dugan]] was there for the first Obama administration (2009-2012) * [[Arati Prabhakar Podcast 6 Jan 2020 - Enabling the Barely Feasible]] - second obama administration (2012-2017) * [[Steven Walker]] - Trump administration (2017->) Only the Obama administration wasn’t white dudes The secretary of defense appoints the DARPA director. So it is absolutely within the President’s ability to change out the DARPA director. ### Why this matters [[Ben Mann]]’s story from [[mervisWhatMakesDARPA2016]] suggests that [[Regina Dugan]] at least changed out a number of project managers. On the other hand, most projects are 3-5 years, so the extent that partisan turnover causes the same effect as [[NASA comes up with a 10 year plan every 8 years]] might be less. It would be hard to tease out but I suspect this may be a reason for underperformance over the past twenty years. [[Was the shift from ARPA to DARPA a focus change or a process change?]]. Regardless, the change in director turnover pattern suggests a change in the politicization around DARPA. [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Starting+in+2001,+DARPA+directors+began+to+sync+up+with+presidential+administrations) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Starting+in+2001,+DARPA+directors+began+to+sync+up+with+presidential+administrations)