• Andrew Marshall: Futurist-in-chief

    DARPA is not the only Pentagon outfit in which bold, out-of-the-box ideas and concepts are tested; the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), led since its 1973 inception by Andrew Marshall, should be recognized as well for its original work

  • Computer models of unconventional warfare

    Wildcats researchers to design intelligent software that can analyze the behavior and customs of political and cultural groups; part of the Asymmetric Threat Response and Analysis Project, known as ATRAP

  • DARPA, U.S. Army looking for social computing technology

    Here is the Pentagonese for social network technology: “new technologies to rapidly create theoretically-informed, data-driven models of complex human, social, cultural, and behavioral dynamics that are instantiated in near-realtime simulations”

  • TSA wants to screen your baggage -- emotional baggage, that is

    To improve on X-ray and millimeter-wave scanning and go beyond group profiling, some suggest screening passengers for hostile intentions

  • Soft power: CIA funded first Russian edition of Dr. Zhivago

    The Soviet authorities banned Boris Pasternak’s “Dr. Zhivago” because of its critical treatment of the 1917 revolution; the manuscript was smuggled to the West and published — but to be considered for the Noble Prize, a work of fiction must be published in its original language; the CIA steps in to fund publishing the Russian version of the book (in Holland) — allowing the Noble Prize committee to award Pasternak, and embarrass the USSR