Dear Dr. Dugan,
Congratulations. You will be the next director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, producer of the U.S. military’s most advanced scientific research. You will also be the first woman to head the agency, a truly remarkable achievement. The challenges—though—are great. You enter the agency at a time when the universe of threats to American national security is ever expanding, and after the relationships between DARPA, the services, and academia have been severely strained by the agenda of your predecessor. The success of your tenure may well be defined by your ability to balance the agency’s need to focus on both long and short-term national security research problems, and at the same time restore working relationships with the academic community.
DARPA’s primary objective will always be to engineer the tools needed to protect and enhance America’s military, and continuing this tradition of excellence will help you meet the challenges of your office. Many of today’s most outstanding national security problems, however, do not have a technological solution. Transnational terrorism, political instability and failed states, global market crashes, etc. are all functions of the decisions and dynamics of people. For DARPA to address these critical issues, you must do what previous directors would not—create a DARPA office exclusively dedicated to basic social science research.
While DARPA has occasionally sought to integrate the social sciences into its research, these projects have always attempted to graft social science onto engineering problems, diluting the result. The U.S. military desperately needs to absorb the totality of knowledge the social sciences can provide, not only the parts that conveniently fit into a computer simulation. Establishing a new office of social science research also directly addresses the mission and and community shortcomings you inherit from the previous DARPA administration.
Economics, sociology, political science; all of the social sciences disciplines, each bring a unique perspective to DARPA’s long and short-term research needs. Using the tools of modern social science, such as rational choice theory, game theory and econometrics, a new office focusing on the application of these tools to prescient national security problems could have considerable impact on all manner of military policy, from ground-level tactics to high doctrine. This new office would also provide an unprecedented opportunity for the agency to form new relationships with universities and departments that may be skeptical of how the military uses social science. If done with careful consideration for the needs and perspective of faculty and graduate students, this exchange could foster enormous mutual respect between the military and academic communities, and result in ground breaking research.
As you embark on what will undoubtedly be a fascinating and difficult journey, I implore you to consider how the social sciences could enhance the work of DARPA. Again, congratulation, and I wish you the best of luck.
Sincerely,
Drew Conway
Photo: Aftermath News
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Seems an obvious and natural union …. hope your sentiments get the notice and action they deserves. Who knows such an approach might actually save lives.
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Your suggestion of creating a separate office of social sciences research and cooperation is both ground breaking and pragmatic. As you mention, getting academia to overcome its suspicions will require lots of planning and inter-institutional diplomacy, not to mention the inter-disciplinary jealousies and competition for which among them is the most applicable discipline.
Nevertheless, all of what you suggest could deepen and broaden DARPA’s vision and understanding of the constantly morphing social complexities in the global community.
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Point of pedantic order. Dr. Jane Alexander was acting director of DARPA for the short spell between Dr. Frank Fernandez and Dr. Tony Tether. That might have been part of the reason why the DoD press release didn’t make any assertions about “first woman…, etc. etc.”
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