The Pentagon's Brain (55 page)

1 not one of the 1,200: Declan Walsh, “Afghan Militants Attack Kandahar Prison and Free Inmates,”
Guardian,
June 13, 2008; Carlotta Gall, “Taliban Free 1,200 Inmates in Attack on Afghan Prison,”
New York Times,
June 14, 2008.

2 “proto-type system”: DARPA, IAO Mission, briefing slides.

3 “Based on our experience in Iraq”: Thom Shankar, “To Check Militants, U.S. Has System That Never Forgets,”
New York Times,
July 13, 2011.

4 On patrol:
USA v. Don Michael Ayala
(U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division), Document 33, May 6, 2009, and Document 5, November 24, 2008.

5 “An indefinable spirit”: U.S. Army, “In Memory of… Paula Loyd,”
Human Terrain System,
September 2011.

6 center of the alleyway:
USA v. Don Michael Ayala,
photographs.

7 A young bearded man: Gezari, 3–18.

8 He wore:
USA v. Don Michael Ayala,
photographs.

9 drew his pistol:
USA v. Don Michael Ayala,
Document 5, 4.

10 previously guarded: Ibid., Document 5, 3.

11 “the man was the devil”: Ibid., Document 33, 2.

12 leniency: Matthew Barakat, “Contractor Gets Probation for Killing Prisoner,” Associated Press, May 8, 2009.

13
“advise brigades”: In
Human Terrain: War Becomes Academic,
Udris Films, 2010.

14 earned more:
USA v. Don Michael Ayala,
Document 33, 1.

15 “military commanders”: U.S. Army press release, digital archive, http://humanterrainsystem.army.mil.

16 “dangerous and reckless”: AAA [American Anthropological Association] Executive Board, Statement on the Human Terrain System Project, October 31, 2007.

17 “mercenary anthropology”: Roberto J. González, “Towards mercenary anthropology? The new US Army counterinsurgency manual FM 3–24 and the military-anthropology complex,”
Anthropology Today,
Volume 23, Issue 3, June 2007, 14–19.

18 Catherine Lutz: Quotes are from
Human Terrain: War Becomes Academic,
Udris Films, 2010.

19 Hugh Gusterson: Ibid.

20 Roberto González: Ibid.

21 “My very first time”: Carlson quotes are from Dan G. Cox, “Human Terrain Systems and the Moral Prosecution of Warfare,” 27–29.

22 “Can doctrine be applied”: This account is drawn from Nigh, “An Operator’s Guide to Human Terrain Teams,” 20–23.

23 “clearing operation”: ISAF, TAAC South, “Impacts, Contributions,” 2007; U.S. Army, “Human Terrain Team Handbook,” December 11, 2008.

24 replaced Paula Loyd: Korva Coleman, “Social Scientists Deployed to the Battlefield,” NPR, September 1, 2009.

25 “infamous as a killing zone”: Jonathan Montpetit,“Canadian Soldiers Resume Mentoring Afghan National Army After Turbulent Spring.”
Military World,
October 28, 2010.

26 “Michael Bhatia was”: “One Man’s Odyssey from Campus to Combat,” Associated Press, March 8, 2009.

27 $200,000 a year: Jason Motlagh, “Should Anthropologists Help Contain the Taliban?”
Time,
July 1, 2010.

28 “People use human networks”: Tristan Reed, “Intelligence and Human Networks,”
Stratfor Global Intelligence Security Weekly,
January 10, 2013.

29 “Phase Zero pre-conflict”: Jim Hodges, “Cover Story: U.S. Army’s Human Terrain Experts May Help Defuse Future Conflicts,”
Defense News,
March 22, 2012.

30 biomedical technology program: Department of Defense, Fiscal Year 2015, Budget Estimates, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1:51.

31
“applies forecasting”: Ibid., 1:130.

32 “far behind enemy lines”: “DARPA Receives Joint Meritorious Unit Award,” U.S. Department of Defense, press release. December 17, 2012.

33 Deep Exploration and Filtering of Text: Department of Defense, Fiscal Year 2015 Budget Estimates, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, 1:88.

1 “This war”: Quotes are from “Remarks by the President at the National Defense University, Fort McNair,” White House, Office of the Press Secretary, May 23, 2013.

2 Department of Defense reports: U.S. Department of Defense, “The Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap FY2013–2038,” 2014, 8:13, 26.

3 “My daughter”: Quotes are from interview with Bernard Crane, September 2014.

4 “Those are not insects”: Quotes are from Rick Weiss, “Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs,”
Washington Post,
October 9, 2007.

5 insisted that President Bush be impeached: C-SPAN, “Stop the War Rally,” September 15, 2007.

6 multiple truck bombs: Damien Cave and James Glanz, “Toll in Iraq Bombings Is Raised to More Than 500,”
New York Times,
August 22, 2007.

7 reportedly played a role: “A Carpet for Radicals at the White House,”
Investigative Project on Terrorism,
October 12, 2012.

8 served as imam: “Al-Qaida cleric death: mixed emotions at Virginia mosque where he preached,” Associated Press, September 11, 2011.

9 “Insect-size”: Grasmeyer and Keennon, “Development of the Black Widow Micro Air Vehicle,”
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
2001, 1.

10 “We have seen sparrows”: Ibid., 8.

11 “micro-explosive bombs”: Lambeth, “Technology Trends in Air Warfare,” 141.

12 trained bees to locate: “Sandia, University of Montana Researchers Try Training Bees to Find Buried Landmines,” Sandia National Laboratories, press release, April 27, 1999. In the late 1990s, the Mine Bee Program met with great success when DARPA researchers at Sandia National Laboratories worked with entomologists at the University of Montana to train honeybees to detect buried land mines.

13 Insectothopter: Author tour of the CIA museum, Langley, VA, September 2010.

14
Animal rights: Duncan Graham-Rowe, “Robo-Rat Controlled by Brain Electrodes,”
New Scientist,
May 1, 2002.

15 “The tissue develops”: A. Verderber, M. McKnight, and A. Bozkurt, “Early Metamorphic Insertion Technology for Insect Flight Behavior Monitoring,”
Journal of Visualized Experiments,
July 12, 2014, 89.

16 animated video: online at “Armed with Science,” the DoD’s official science blog.

17 DARPA’s hypersonic stealth drones: DARPA News, “Hypersonics—The New Stealth: DARPA investments in extreme hypersonics continue,” July 6, 2012; “Darpa refocuses Hypersonics Research on Tactical Missions,”
Aviation Week and Space Technology
, July 8, 2013.

18 Falcon HTV-2: Animated performance videos of Falcon HTV-2 at Lockheedmartin.com.

19 hypersonic low-earth-orbit drones: Toshio Suzuki, “DARPA Wants Hypersonic Space Drone with Daily Launches,”
Stars and Stripes,
February 4, 2014.

20 Hydra: John Keller, “DARPA Considers Unmanned Submersible Mothership Designed to Deploy UAVs and UUVs,”
Military Aerospace Electronics,
July 23, 2013.

21 Unmanned Ground System robots: Demonstration videos on DARPA’s YouTube channel, DARPAtv.

22 LANdroids: USC Information Sciences Institute, Polymorphic Robotics Laboratory, “LANdroids,” n.d.

23 what “autonomy” is: U.S. Department of Defense, “Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap FY2013–2038,” 15.

24 “The autonomous systems”: U.S. Department of Defense, “Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap FY2011–2036,” 43.

25 “autonomous and semi-autonomous”: Department of Defense Directive 3000.09, “Autonomy in Weapon Systems,” sec. 4, Policy, 2, November 21, 2012.

26 fourfold process: U.S. Department of Defense, “Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap FY2011–2036,” table 3, 46.

27 “unimagined degrees of autonomy”: Ashton Carter’s letter, dated (stamped) March 29, 2010, is attached to the end of Department of Defense, Defense Science Board, “Task Force Report: The Role of Autonomy in DoD Systems,” Appendix C, Task Force Terms of Reference.

1 artificial brains: ArtificialBrains.com tracks scientific and technological progress toward the goal of building sentient machines. The website is maintained by James Pearn in Munich, Germany.

2
our interview: All quotes in this section are from my interview with Allen Macy Dulles, March 2014.

3 brought her brother: Interviews with Joan Dulles Talley, March 2014–May 2015.

4 The White House calls: White House Briefing Room, “BRAIN Initiative Challenges Researchers to Unlock Mysteries of Human Mind,” April 2, 2013. Of note: partnering with DARPA on many of its brain programs is IARPA, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or the CIA’s DARPA.

5 Brain programs: Information on DARPA brain-computer interface programs from Robbin A. Miranda et al., “DARPA-Funded Efforts in the Development of Novel Brain–Computer Interface Technologies,” 1-17. The authors are: Robbin A. Miranda, William D. Casebeer, Amy M. Hein, Jack W. Judy, Eric P. Krotkov, Tracy L. Laabs, Justin E. Manzof, Kent G. Pankratz, Gill A. Pratt, Justin C. Sanchez, Douglas J. Weber, Tracey L. Wheeler, and Geoffrey S. F. Ling.

6 According to the Pentagon: Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, “Summary of Mental Disorder Hospitalizations, Active and Reserve Components, U.S. Armed Forces, 2000–2012,”
Medical Surveillance Monthly Report
20, no. 7 (July 2013): 4–11.

7 SUBNETS: “SUBNETS Aims for Systems-Based Neurotechnology and Understanding for the Treatment of Neuropsychological Illnesses,” Department of Defense, press release, October 25, 2013.

8 chips wirelessly transmit: George Dvorsky, “Electroconvulsive Therapy Can Erase Unwanted Memories,” iO9, December 23, 2013.

9 “incorporate near real-time”: “SUBNETS,” DARPA News, October 25, 2013.

10 “notes on a piano”: Emily Singer, “Playing Piano with a Robotic Hand,”
MIT Technology Review,
July 25, 2007.

11 “The Intrinsic hand”: Jonathan Kuniholm, “Open Arms,”
IEEE Spectrum,
March 1, 2009.

12 Dean Kamen: Kamen interview with Scott Pelley, CBS News,
60 Minutes,
April 10, 2009.

13 yet to find a partner: Rhodi Lee, “FDA Approves DEKA Arm System,”
Tech Times,
May 10, 2014.

14 “debt we owe”: “From Idea to Market in Eight Years: DARPA-Funded DEKA Arm System Earns FDA Approval,” DARPA News, May 9, 2014.

15 “turn a valve”: Interview with Noel Sharkey, September 2014.

16 Even the cooks: Interview with LANL cooks, March 2014.

17
Kenyon and his team: Kenyon’s DARPA contract is administered through the University of Michigan as part of the New Mexico Consortium (NMC). Kenyon says, “The NMC is sort of an incubator for LANL. It’s a place where scientists like myself can work with a team of students and pursue risky ideas that would be hard to pull off within the confines of LANL itself.”

18 simulating the primate visual system: Quotes are from interviews with Garrett Kenyon, March–November 2014.

19 world’s record: “Science at the Petascale,” IBM Roadrunner supercomputer, press release, October 27, 2009.

20 Tianhe-2: Lance Ulanoff, “China Has the Fastest Supercomputer in the World—Again,” Mashable.com, June 23, 2014.

21 points inside: Kenyon noted that the computer room contains a number of different machines.

22 “Regeneration is really coming alive”: Quotes are from interviews with David Gardiner and Sue Bryant, June 2013–October 2014.

23 children born with mutations: Ngo Vinh Long, “Vietnamese Perspectives,” in
Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War,
ed. by Stanley Kutler (New York: Scribner’s, 1996).

24 a human uterus: Stephanie Smith, “Creating Body Parts in a Lab; ‘Things Are Happening Now,’” CNN, April 10, 2014.

25 make body parts: “Ears, Noses Grown from Stem Cells in Lab Dishes,” Associated Press, April 8, 2014.

26 laboratory-grown beef burgers: Maria Cheng, “First Reaction: Lab-Made Burger Short on Flavor.” Phys.org, August 5, 2013.

27 “One can imagine”: S. Hawking et al., “Stephen Hawking: ‘Transcendence Looks at the Implications of Artificial Intelligence—But Are We Taking AI Seriously Enough?’”
The Independent,
May 1, 2014.

28 “these [autonomous] systems”: Interview with Steve Omohundro, May 2015; See also “Autonomous Technology and the Greater Human Good,”
Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence,
November 21, 2014, 303–15.

29 “human-machine interaction failures”: Interview with Noel Sharkey, September 2014.

1 sharing his idea: Interview with Charles Townes, April 2014.

2 SIGMA group: Interview with Doug Beason, who is a member. Beason, a physicist and the former chief scientist, U.S. Air Force Space Command,
is the author of fourteen science-fiction books, eight with collaborator Kevin J. Anderson; Email correspondence with Arlan Andrews.

3 “Those responsible”: Jenna Lang, “Sci-fi writers take US security back to the future,”
Guardian,
June 5, 2009.

4 brain-computer interfaces: R. A. Miranda et al., “DARPA-Funded Efforts in the Development of Novel Brain-Computer Interface Technologies,”
Journal of Neuroscience Methods
(2014). The term was coined by Jacques J. Vidal, in 1971.

5 DARPA’s stated goal: M. L. Cummings, “Views, Provocations: Technology Impedances to Augmented Cognition,”
Ergonomics in Design
(Spring 2010): 25.

6 “Human brain activity”: DARPA, Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System (CT2WS) Solicitation no. BAA07-25, April 11, 2007.

7 DARPA scientists: R. A. Miranda et al., “DARPA-Funded Efforts in the Development of Novel Brain-Computer Interface Technologies,”
Journal of Neuroscience Methods
(2014).

8 “groundbreaking advances”: Ibid., 3, 5.

9 DARPA program managers: Ibid., 10-13. The four DARPA program managers are William D. Casebeer, Justic C. Sanchez, Douglas J. Weber, Geoffrey S. F. Ling.

10 augmenting cognition: Quotes are from Jason, MITRE Corporation, “Human Performance,” 70, 72.

11 “The Jason scientists”: Quotes are from interview with Michael Goldblatt, April 2014.

12 “For commanders”: Quotes are from Defense Science Board, “The Role of Autonomy in DoD Systems,” 2012, 2, 19, 46, 48. “Among the key challenges moving forward,” according to the DSB, “is advancing tests and evaluation capabilities to improve trust for increasing autonomy in unmanned systems.”

13 “probability and consequences of failure”: Department of Defense Directive no. 3000.09, November 21, 2012.

14 “the effect of narrative”: Miranda et al., 9.

15 “We would all benefit”: Interview with Paul Zak, October 2014.

16 “erase fear”: Bret Stetka, “Can Fear Be Erased?”
Scientific American,
December 4, 2014.

17 DSB chairman Paul Kaminski: Information according to his White House biography. Kaminski had a twenty-year career as an officer in the Air Force. He served as director of Low Observable Technology and was responsible for developing and fielding the Pentagon’s stealth programs. Later, as under secretary of defense for acquisition and technology, he had
responsibility for an annual budget that exceeded $100 billion. See also “Dr. Paul G. Kaminski, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, 2011 Ronald Reagan Award Winner,” Missile Defense Agency, digital archive.

18 DSB members: Email correspondence with Major Eric D. Badger, public affairs officer for the DSB Executive Director; Department of Defense press release, January 5, 2010; DSB, Appendix D—Task Force Membership, 109, Appendix E—Task Force Briefings, 110. Also participating in the DSB report advising the Pentagon on the role of autonomous weapons systems were briefers from the defense corporations Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, General Atomics, SAIC, and QinetiQ.

19 “chicken-and-egg”: Barber, VIII-76.

20 military-industrial complex: Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People,” January 17, 1961, UCSB.

21 “The battlefield is no place”: Cited in Van Atta et al.,
Transformation and Transition,
Volume 2, V-19.