WEBVTT - The Origins of DARPA 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.560 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:16.680 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:21.119 I love all things tech, and today we're going to 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:25.840 start a week long journey to talk about a very 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:31.200 important agency that relates to technology. In many episodes of 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:34.559 tech Stuff, I have referenced DARPA, also known as the 0:00:34.680 --> 0:00:40.280 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It is the research arm 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:44.360 of the United States Department of Defense, and DARPA projects 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:48.760 have led to some pretty incredible technologies like the Internet 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:52.879 and autonomous cars spoiler alert for this week. But what 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:56.880 about the agency itself? What is its history? So in 0:00:56.920 --> 0:00:59.120 the following episodes, I hope to give you guys an 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:03.040 insight into one of the most secretive organizations in the 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:07.880 United States. This agency hides in plain site, and it 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:12.880 essentially advertises itself with some of its larger profile projects, 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:16.080 like the various Grand challenges that lead to things like 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:21.240 autonomous cars and UH and and more advanced humanoid robots. 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:23.679 So I'll be talking more about some of those in 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:27.679 my upcoming suite of episodes about autonomous cars. When I 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:29.560 get into that, I'll cover it a little bit in 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:31.440 these episodes, but I'll go into more detail when we 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:35.320 get into the autonomous car suite. Ultimately, the purpose of 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:39.080 DARPA is to make the United States technologically superior to 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:44.480 other countries. Is to maintain technological superiority, and that includes 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:48.240 making high tech weaponry and military systems. It is part 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:51.639 of the Defense Department. So while many of the stories 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:54.680 about DARPA have focused on the Gali g whiz that 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:57.480 texture is amazing kind of side of things, We're gonna 0:01:57.480 --> 0:02:02.080 look at the whole picture, which sometimes gets pritty darn grim. 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:05.680 But I think it's important to consider both the good 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:08.799 and the bad. We shouldn't just, you know, focus on 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:11.359 one at the expense of the other. So to understand 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:15.320 the climate that would create DARPA, we really need to 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:18.280 think back to World War Two and the development of 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:22.000 the atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project took advantage of some 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:26.120 of the most talented physicists and engineers in America, and 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.160 during the course of the development of the atomic bomb, 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:33.119 which was based off the process of nuclear fission splitting 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:36.480 the atom, the team also explored the possibility of a 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:41.200 fusion bomb a k A hydrogen bomb. Now during World 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:45.360 War Two, the Manhattan Project focused mainly on vision bombs 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:48.400 because a lot more work was going to be needed 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:51.320 to make a fusion bomb possible. There was work being 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:54.320 done on that, but it was trailing way behind. It 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:58.200 was considered to be far more complicated and difficult to do, 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:02.079 and therefore it was given low priority because of the 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:06.520 necessity to build a bomb in a wartime environment. So 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:09.760 some members of the team ended up being opposed to 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:13.320 working on a fusion bomb, particularly once the atomic bombs 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:18.799 dropped on Hiroshima, Nagasaki were deployed, because they were worried well. 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:22.120 They said, the atomic bombs were already bad enough, the 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:26.840 fusion bomb would be much much more destructive. There was 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:30.840 even a fear that such a device might ignite the atmosphere, 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:35.440 setting setting the atmosphere itself on fire, which would obviously 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:39.680 kill everyone all over the world after a single detonation. 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:43.680 The idea that you could have a world ending event 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:47.320 by detonating one of these bombs. But even without that 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:50.119 doomsday scenario, the thought was that such a bomb would 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:53.600 cause such widespread devastation that it would by its nature 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:58.160 wipe out civilian populations that there'd be no dancing around 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:01.400 it that you could argue, well, these other bombs we've created, 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:06.560 we meant for military installations, and tragically that also meant 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:10.320 that civilian populations were affected because of their proximity to 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:14.119 those military installations. With a fusion bomb, the effect would 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:16.800 be so large that you couldn't really use that as 0:04:16.839 --> 0:04:21.560 a justification. It was going to affect millions of people, 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:25.479 So it raised serious ethical concerns among many who were 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:29.640 working on the Manhattan Project. After World War Two and 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:33.719 after the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, there was still ongoing 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:36.320 debate about whether or not any work should be done 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:40.159 on creating a hydrogen bomb. Then, in nineteen forty nine, 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.000 the Soviet Union would conduct its first test of an 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:47.279 atomic bomb detonation, and that changed things in the US. 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:51.080 The General Advisory Committee of the US Atomic Energy Commission 0:04:51.440 --> 0:04:56.640 unanimously recommended that the United States not pursue the development 0:04:56.640 --> 0:04:59.920 of a hydrogen bomb. This was all the conscientious objector 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:04.720 who said such a technology is too terrible to even develop, 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:08.280 let alone build and deploy. That group would include people 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:12.080 like Jay Robert Oppenheimer, who was the chairman of the 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:17.560 Manhattan Project. Also Enrico Fermi and Isadore Robbie. They argued 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.799 that the hydrogen bomb would be a weapon so powerful 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:23.600 that it would just be an evil upon the world 0:05:23.760 --> 0:05:28.120 to build it. But there were other scientists like Edward 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:32.240 Teller and Ernest Lawrence who were not on the General 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:36.040 Advisory Committee, but they were in favor of developing a 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:41.040 hydrogen bomb. They argued that the Soviets would pursue developing 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:44.159 the hydrogen bomb whether or not the United States did, 0:05:44.560 --> 0:05:48.720 and therefore there would be a gap in in capability 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:51.719 if the US did not develop it first. There would 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:54.440 be nothing to stop the Soviet Union from threatening to 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:57.400 use such a bomb against the US and forced the 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:03.040 US to surrender, because what country would allow its population 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:06.800 to be wiped out in such a way if they 0:06:06.880 --> 0:06:11.560 did not have that capability themselves. So President Truman agreed 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:17.039 with Teller and Lawrence and said that the development of 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:19.880 a hydrogen bomb should happen in In In nineteen fifty, he 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:23.360 authorized an official program to develop such a bomb. As 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:27.039 part of that program, a second nuclear weapons development lab 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:30.920 would be formed. The original one was the Los Alamos Lab. 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:34.840 That's where the Manhattan Project tests took place, where the 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:39.560 atomic bombs were born. The second lab was founded in Livermore, California, 0:06:39.600 --> 0:06:42.960 at the University of California's Radiation Lab, later known as 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:46.679 the Livermore Lab and later still as the Lawrence Livermore Lab. 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:50.560 The Los Alamos Group built a bomb based off a 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:54.280 design that Edward Teller had worked on, and they tested 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:57.560 this hydrogen bomb in nineteen fifty four. It was a 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:01.480 proof of concept hydrogen bomb that had been tested two 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:03.960 years earlier, actually in nineteen fifty two. That was a 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:06.960 smaller one, but that was based off an impractical design 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:09.280 for an actual weapon. It was more of a proof 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:12.000 of concept. This one in nineteen fifty four was a 0:07:12.000 --> 0:07:15.320 working hydrogen bomb. It was part of a test called 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:20.080 Operation Castle, and it ended up detonating with fifteen mega 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:24.640 tons of force, which was far far more powerful than 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:28.880 the group had anticipated. Uh there were stories about during 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:33.280 the detonation the initial reaction from the observers was one 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:36.920 of panic that the explosion, because it was so huge 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:41.640 and the the fire cloud was growing so quickly, that 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:45.280 there was at least a moment where people began to 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:48.440 worry that perhaps they had in fact ignited the atmosphere 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:51.280 and that this was the end. Ended up not being 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:54.080 quite that bad, but it was much much stronger than 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:59.000 they had thought. Meanwhile, the Livermore group to which Teller belonged, 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:02.720 had failed to deuce a working nuclear bomb. When the 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:05.320 lab was at risk of being shut down, Teller and 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:09.320 his team presented designs for a mega super bomb. This 0:08:09.360 --> 0:08:12.840 would be capable, according to the design, of delivering a 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:17.360 ten thousand megaton yield. Keep in mind, the big one 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:20.200 that was so big that the scientists were scared of 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:24.400 it was fifteen mega tons. Teller's proposal was for a 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:28.840 ten thousand mega ton hydrogen bomb. A single bomb of 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:33.400 that power would be capable of wiping out an entire continent, 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:38.000 not just a region, an entire continent with one bomb. 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:41.440 HERB York, who was a member of this team, would 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:44.480 later explain the reasoning for that design. He said that 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:48.080 the US had to employ a really aggressive research and 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:52.640 development practice to maintain its technological advantage against adversaries, and 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:57.560 that this unfortunately also meant an escalation of an arms race, 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:00.000 but that without it, the U s would be endanged 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:03.560 of being vulnerable to enemy attack. The Livermore Lab would 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:07.560 continue developing bomb technology, particularly after the Soviet Union tested 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:11.040 its first hydrogen bomb, and the nuclear arms race was 0:09:11.080 --> 0:09:14.640 picking up speed very very quickly, and the Livermore Group 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:18.280 was relying upon computer systems based off John von Neumann's 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:21.040 designs to speed things up. I talked about him very 0:09:21.080 --> 0:09:25.280 recently and in tech stuff. Meanwhile, as engineers were finding 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:29.080 new and exciting ways to potentially kill millions of people, 0:09:29.160 --> 0:09:33.080 and yes that's me being sardonic, there there was a 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:36.720 growing concern about what the citizens of the United States 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:39.840 could do in the event of a nuclear strike on 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:44.239 the US. So the US had formed a Civil Defense Agency, 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:47.080 but it became clear early on, at least to the 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:50.559 people running that agency, that the options open to US 0:09:50.720 --> 0:09:53.920 if a nuclear strike were to be carried out against 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:58.120 the United States would be limited at best and completely 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:02.199 ineffective at worst. Concern and fear about nuclear war was 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:06.080 growing as the Cold War continued. Some people like von Neumann, 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:09.800 felt that a nuclear confrontation was pretty much a guarantee 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:12.440 at some point in the future. Now it was that 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:16.680 philosophy that would become a cornerstone of DARPA. But the 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:20.600 historical event that would really lead to DARPA's founding happened 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:24.480 on October fourth, nineteen fifty seven. That's when the Soviet 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:29.480 Union successfully launched Sputnik, the first man made satellite to 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:33.640 go into orbit around Earth. Sputnik was transmitting a simple 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:37.319 signal over radio waves, which meant the US didn't have 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:40.559 to take the Soviets at their word about launching a 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:44.439 satellite into orbit. They could pick it up themselves. Ham operators, 0:10:44.640 --> 0:10:47.920 even amateur ones, could pick up the beeping transmission as 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:51.000 the satellite passed overhead. In fact, my old co host 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:54.000 Chris Palette would refer to spot Nick as the ball 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:59.640 what beeps. Spot Nik was launched from an intercontinental ballistic 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:03.000 miss SOUL and ICBM, and while spot Nik was a 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:06.800 primitive and limited satellite couldn't do much other than transmit 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:09.640 this signal, it did mean the Soviets would be able 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:12.959 to launch payloads across the world to hit a distant 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:16.600 target such as the United States, and those payloads might 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:20.440 include something like a hydrogen bomb, and the US population 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:24.719 was beginning to panic. For years, Americans were convinced that 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:29.320 their country was well ahead of all others scientifically and technologically, 0:11:29.520 --> 0:11:33.079 and in military matters as well. But the Soviets had 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:37.679 launched a satellite first, and now that belief in America's 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:43.280 capabilities was shaken, and that anxiety that citizens were feeling 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:45.839 was shared by branches of the US military. The Air 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:49.000 Force and the Navy were both developing long range missiles 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:52.199 that could be used for weapons or for sending payloads 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:57.080 to space. The American approach to developing this technology was fractured. 0:11:57.120 --> 0:12:00.840 These branches were working independently to varying greece of success, 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:04.120 whereas in the Soviet Union it was more focused. Although 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:07.920 changes at the top of the administration level would make 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:11.600 setbacks happen in that country, but let's focus on the 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:14.960 United States. So the nationwide anxiety in the in the 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:19.559 States grew. On December twentieth, nineteen fifty seven, President Eisenhower 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:24.119 had previously rejected a report that had the title Deterrence 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:27.360 and Survival in the Nuclear Age, better known as the 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:31.280 Gaither Report after h Rowan Gaither, one of the people 0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:33.679 who was working on the panel that produced it. This 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:37.960 report concluded that there was no effective way to protect 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:41.560 US civilians from a nuclear war in the case of 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:44.680 an all out strike from the Soviets, and so the 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:48.679 United States should produce more nuclear warheads to act as 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:52.160 a deterrent to say, you don't want to attack us, 0:12:52.200 --> 0:12:54.679 because we'll attack you back, and we'll destroy each other. 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:59.920 This is that mutually assured destruction strategy. The report also 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:02.920 warned that the Soviet Union was possibly on the verge 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:06.079 of producing thousands of I c b ms that might 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:10.000 deliver a nuclear payload across the world, but Eisenhower knew 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:12.400 that wasn't the case. He knew something the expert panel 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:15.600 didn't know because he had access to top secret spy 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:19.120 information from You two spy planes, which were still highly 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:22.000 classified at that time. No one outside of a small 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:25.480 group of people knew that they even existed, but Eisenhower didn't. 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:28.720 He also knew that information from those You two spy 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:32.400 planes had shown the Soviets were not ramping up for 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:35.360 an all our assault. They were not building out an 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:38.319 infrastructure at a furious pace the way the reports suggested. 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:42.160 So he rejected this report. He said, this, this does 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:45.840 not reflect reality. But then someone leaked that report to 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:49.920 the Washington Post, which then published parts of the report, 0:13:50.240 --> 0:13:52.920 and the subsequent articles sent the United States public into 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:56.160 a panic that made the Spotnik event look tiny in comparison. 0:13:56.559 --> 0:14:00.160 People were freaking out. The president saw the need for 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:05.400 action on multiple fronts, including in research and design and innovation. 0:14:05.520 --> 0:14:08.680 So he turned to an unlikely hero. He turned to 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:12.480 the guy who invented soap operas. I'll explain more in 0:14:12.480 --> 0:14:14.720 a second, but first let's take a quick break to 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:25.480 thank our sponsor. So the person that we often credit 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:28.440 as being the inventor or the father of the soap 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:33.240 opera was Neil H. McElroy, who had been president of 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:36.960 the consumer goods company Proctor and Gamble. He had started 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:39.360 off in advertising at the company before he rose to 0:14:39.400 --> 0:14:42.520 the role of president, and in his career he made 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:46.440 several innovative changes in the way the company would market 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:52.120 to consumers, including creating ads designed to run during daytime television. 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:55.840 Because his research showed that many women in the United 0:14:55.880 --> 0:15:00.400 States were watching daytime TV, so he decided that each 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:03.440 product within Procter and Gamble would have its own marketing 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:08.000 team creating ads aimed at women to air on daytime TV, 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:11.720 and they would be inserted into shows that would have 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:16.400 ongoing storylines from show to show soap operas. In other words, 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:20.520 he directed those teams to uh do this, and they did, 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:23.520 and he sold a lot of soap. In his own words, 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:27.040 in nineteen fifty seven, just two days after Sputnik went 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:30.160 into orbit, he was sworn in as the Secretary of 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:35.200 Defense in President Eisenhower's administration, an interesting move to go 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:39.400 from president of Procter and Gamble to the Secretary of Defense. 0:15:39.920 --> 0:15:43.400 McIlroy proposed that the United States form a new agency 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:47.520 called the Advanced Research Projects Agency or ARPA. The DARPA 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:50.960 name would come later, and go and then come back 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:55.600 again anyway. McIlroy's vision was for an agency that would 0:15:55.680 --> 0:16:00.000 oversee scientific and technological research and development in multiple fields 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:03.320 and applications, all with an eye towards securing the United 0:16:03.360 --> 0:16:07.240 States as the most technologically advanced and capable country in 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:10.280 the world. He was advocating that the U s invest 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:13.920 not just in the immediate crisis of answering the Soviets 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:18.760 displays of technological capabilities and the uh space race that 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:23.120 would soon follow, but also to constantly work toward the 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:26.800 future of innovation, not just to focus on a single 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:29.360 problem and once that was solved, to finish, but to 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:33.640 be an ongoing concern. The agency's job was to future 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:39.760 proof weapons and defense technologies. McIlroy's proposal one support from politicians, 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:43.560 but it won a lot of criticism from military officers. 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:46.880 Part of what McIlroy was proposing was using area to 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:50.320 advance the US's efforts to exploit outer space, and the 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:53.200 various branches of the armed forces all claimed that that 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:56.320 was their domain. They didn't want to surrender it. They 0:16:56.360 --> 0:17:00.000 all had their own projects in line, and they were 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:03.720 worried about money being diverted from their efforts into some 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:06.000 other one. They were thinking it was all going to 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:09.600 dilute the field. The Joint chiefs of Staff didn't want 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:13.000 to see this agency form, but Eisenhower, who himself was 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:16.879 a former five star general, was out of patients. He 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:20.920 did not like the constant disagreements between the various military branches, 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:24.560 or the fact that different branches were independently pursuing similar 0:17:24.600 --> 0:17:28.080 goals but not sharing resources. He felt there was too 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:31.800 much waste, not enough focused, enough cooperation, and so on 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:35.440 January seven, nineteen fifty eight, Eisenhower authorized a budget to 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:38.280 McElroy for the founding of our PA. Now, the initial 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:42.280 budget for the founding was about ten million dollars, but 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:46.000 over the course of nineteen fifty nine, the first full 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:50.080 year of our PA really running projects, it would have 0:17:50.600 --> 0:17:53.840 a budget of more than half a billion dollars, which 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:58.800 in the late nineteen fifties was an incredible, incredibly huge 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:01.080 amount of money. It's huge. Now, don't get me wrong. 0:18:01.160 --> 0:18:04.680 I would not refuse half a billion dollars, but back 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:10.600 in nineteen fifty nine that was even more of an enormous, 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:15.119 unimaginably huge sum Eisenhower revealed the need for ARPA to 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:19.440 the United States and his nine State of the Union address, 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:25.720 he said, we need an organization dedicated to this pursuit 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:29.879 of innovation. He laid out the case, and he simultaneously 0:18:29.960 --> 0:18:32.520 casted a lot of shade on the top officials of 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:34.520 the various military branches. There was a bit of a 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:38.359 reprimand in that State of the Union address. Meanwhile, the 0:18:38.480 --> 0:18:40.680 U S Army was preparing to answer the U S 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:43.320 s RS spot Nick with the launch of the first 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:47.360 U S satellite called Explorer one. Now, unlike spot Nick, 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.160 which really just orbited the Earth and beeped a lot, 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:53.399 the Explorer one was packed with instruments meant to do 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:56.800 some serious research. And the Explorer one would detect the 0:18:56.920 --> 0:19:00.080 Van Allen radiation belts around the Earth, making it the 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:05.120 first space instrument to produce a major discovery, but Eisenhower 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:09.080 felt the task of developing, building, launching, and administering space 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:12.400 missions should not fall to the army, so that would 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:16.080 be at least initially part of ARPA's domain. To head 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:20.119 up the new ARPA agency, McElroy would name Roy W. 0:19:20.560 --> 0:19:23.760 Johnson as director. Johnson had been a vice president of 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:27.919 General Electric, and the deputy director would be Rear Admiral 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:31.760 John Clark. McIlroy whittled down the list of candidates for 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:35.200 chief Scientists to two people. One of those two people 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:38.159 was Herb York, the guy who was part of Edward 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:43.199 Teller's team. The other was Werner von Brown, the German 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:47.240 scientist who had been a prominent figure in Germany's rocketry 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:50.280 program during World War Two. The United States had brought 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:53.919 Von Brown over as part of Operation paper Clip, in 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:56.960 which the United States would put to work many former 0:19:57.040 --> 0:20:01.600 Nazi scientists on US projects. Not all those scientists were 0:20:01.640 --> 0:20:05.320 necessarily sympathizers with the Nazis, I should add some of 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:08.280 them probably were, but not all of them were. But 0:20:08.359 --> 0:20:09.920 all of them ended up being put to work in 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:12.359 the US, and or at least all the ones that 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:15.440 the US picked up and Van Brown had a condition 0:20:15.560 --> 0:20:17.760 that if he were to be offered the role of 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:21.000 Chief Scientists over at ARPA, he also wanted to bring 0:20:21.080 --> 0:20:23.480 over a dozen or so of his peers who had 0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:26.680 been brought over an Operation paper Clip, and ultimately McElroy 0:20:26.760 --> 0:20:29.399 decided that this was probably not a good move for 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:32.280 the young agency. It might look really bad to have 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:37.160 a government agency merely completely staffed with former Nazi scientists, 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:39.520 so he chose to put herb York in the role 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:43.160 of chief Scientists instead. The two major areas that ARPA 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:47.920 would initially focus on were military space activities and anti 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:51.840 missile strategies. Essentially, how can the US rapidly match the 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:56.760 Soviets capabilities while simultaneously counteracting any possible advantage they might 0:20:56.880 --> 0:21:00.720 have attained over the United States? And it would be 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:03.439 a good time to talk about how the agency worked 0:21:03.480 --> 0:21:06.720 in general. So our path is not some big, super 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:11.600 secret laboratory with scientists and engineers pouring out various liquids 0:21:11.600 --> 0:21:15.040 into other various liquids, or running electricity through stuff and 0:21:15.080 --> 0:21:19.679 shouting it's alive. It's more like an RFP and funding operation. 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:23.040 So an RFP as a request for proposal. It's where 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:26.200 an organization states a goal that it wants to achieve, 0:21:26.680 --> 0:21:31.199 maybe some general guidelines on how it it assumes this 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:35.080 goal will be achieved, and then invites qualified organizations or 0:21:35.119 --> 0:21:39.880 individuals to apply to be part of this project, essentially 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:43.560 to receive funding from our PA in order to pursue 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:46.440 these goals and to achieve them. So with our path, 0:21:46.560 --> 0:21:49.480 these were proposals to develop technologies that would contribute to 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:51.800 the defense of the United States in some way, shape 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:55.119 or form. These r fps can arrange from very specific 0:21:55.359 --> 0:22:00.880 to extremely broad. Our PA tends to work with research facilities, universities, 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:05.119 and defense contractors a lot. The agency can set parameters 0:22:05.280 --> 0:22:08.639 and collaborate with these parties, but ultimately it exists to 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:11.560 a minister those programs. And a lot of stuff was 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:15.040 happening all at once at this time. In fact, this 0:22:15.080 --> 0:22:17.760 episode and the next one in particular, are going to 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:21.880 have a lot of concurrent things happening. And it's because 0:22:22.359 --> 0:22:25.679 it's very hard to jump around. If I were to 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:28.640 go just chronologically, I would have to switch gears so 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:31.800 frequently that it would be Oh and by the way, 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:33.840 you remember when I was talking about twenty minutes ago 0:22:33.880 --> 0:22:36.040 about such and such, Well, here's what was happening then, 0:22:36.080 --> 0:22:38.520 and I thought that would be too confusing, so instead 0:22:38.520 --> 0:22:41.280 I'm going to try and focus project by project. In general, 0:22:41.680 --> 0:22:44.840 so ARPA was gearing up to develop space technologies and 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:48.439 an umbrella of programs dedicated to bringing down missiles that 0:22:48.560 --> 0:22:51.199 was called Project Defender that was starting to shape up. 0:22:51.240 --> 0:22:54.920 That would become the biggest project of ARPA at least 0:22:54.920 --> 0:22:57.520 in those early years. But while all that was going on, 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:00.720 President Eisenhower was also exploring the possible ability of a 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:05.439 nuclear test ban. The fallout, both literal and figurative, of 0:23:05.480 --> 0:23:10.359 the Castle Operation tests was catastrophic, and things were bound 0:23:10.400 --> 0:23:12.760 to get worse as both the US and the Soviet 0:23:12.840 --> 0:23:16.800 Union continued to build up nuclear arsenals and test nuclear warheads. 0:23:17.240 --> 0:23:20.439 Eisenhower wanted to arrive in an agreement with the USSR 0:23:20.840 --> 0:23:25.240 and with Khrushchev to bring nuclear weapon tests to an end, 0:23:25.359 --> 0:23:27.960 but there was a big concern what if one side 0:23:28.480 --> 0:23:30.920 stuck to the agreement while the other one didn't. How 0:23:30.920 --> 0:23:33.200 could the United States be certain that the Soviets would 0:23:33.200 --> 0:23:35.760 stay true to such an agreement. And so one of 0:23:35.800 --> 0:23:38.840 the big projects that area would launch, in addition to 0:23:38.920 --> 0:23:42.880 the Defender and military space projects, would be called VILA 0:23:43.119 --> 0:23:45.679 v E l A. Now, the purpose of VILA or 0:23:45.800 --> 0:23:49.000 VELA if you prefer, was to create systems that could 0:23:49.000 --> 0:23:53.119 detect a nuclear weapons test. VILA had three sub programs. 0:23:53.119 --> 0:23:57.640 They were codenamed Hotel, Uniform, and Sierra. These programs sought 0:23:57.720 --> 0:24:01.440 to design and build technology that could detect a nuclear 0:24:01.560 --> 0:24:06.800 explosion through atmospheric sensing or seismic sensing, so in other words, 0:24:06.840 --> 0:24:11.160 testing for radioactive isotopes that are perhaps airborne, or looking 0:24:11.160 --> 0:24:13.560 for any tremors in the Earth that could indicate the 0:24:13.600 --> 0:24:18.399 detonation of a nuclear warhead. That way, the United States 0:24:18.400 --> 0:24:22.119 could say, hey, we picked up the evidence that you 0:24:22.200 --> 0:24:25.320 in fact did detonate nuclear war warhead despite the fact 0:24:25.359 --> 0:24:28.399 that we've agreed to this. This test band back to 0:24:28.440 --> 0:24:32.000 space for a second. So ARPA came into being shortly 0:24:32.160 --> 0:24:38.159 before NASA. ARPA NASA both were launched figuratively speaking, the 0:24:38.240 --> 0:24:42.480 same year nineteen. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration became 0:24:42.480 --> 0:24:45.840 official on October one, nineteen fifty eight, so several months 0:24:46.480 --> 0:24:51.600 after ARPA had begun. ARPA, therefore was the agency responsible 0:24:51.640 --> 0:24:55.000 for overseeing the development of space technologies like launch vehicles 0:24:55.119 --> 0:24:58.240 for those first several months, and ARPA began to fund 0:24:58.240 --> 0:25:01.639