Dark Skies for "DARPA for Spies"?

The new "DARPA for spies" isn't supposed to officially get started until October, 2008. But, already, there are some gloomy clouds on the horizon for the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, or iARPA.

The new group is supposed to combine way-out research efforts, once conducted by the NSA, the CIA, and the National Technology Alliance. But Shane Harris uncovers a report from the Intelligence Science
Board, which, in his words, "urged caution when combining all research programs under one umbrella, arguing that doing so could stymie innovation and 'maximize the probability of failure, not success' if the new efforts were inadequately funded. 'That legacy would have agonizing consequences,'
the report stated."

The board also wrote that its members
"enthusiastically support the iARPA concept" but asserted that existing research programs "lack adequate staffing and finances." (The intelligence research budgets are classified.) The board urged the director of national intelligence to use his authority to reallocate agency budgets and to fund iARPA "at a minimum of double the level of the existing organizations." A funding increase, the board argued, was needed to free up more money for new ideas and longer-term projects,
"and avert poaching on programs already under way."

One former intelligence official, who asked not to be identified because Congress has yet to pass next year's intelligence budget, worried that Congress hasn't sufficiently funded iARPA, and questioned whether administration officials had pushed hard enough for more money. The official also described significant resistance at the individual agencies to giving up any resources, and cautioned that iARPA could stymie innovation if it "stovepipes" research and development all in one place.

[Acting director Steve] Nixon, while not addressing the specifics of the report, said that iARPA will centrally manage contracts and projects but that outside researchers and other agencies will handle much of the work. He also said that, following the DARPA model, the new agency would limit the tenure of its managers as a way of ensuring a constant flow of new talent and ideas.