The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World

The wizards of war and innovation toiled in an agency that received very little fanfare for forty years. The Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA, later DARPA, oversaw various technological initiatives from nuclear weapon shields to the Internet to neural science. Their scientists would have access to the captured minds of the Nazi war machine and would parallel NASA in attempting to beat the Soviets to the moon. Their forays into warfare reached infamous levels with men like William Godel battling the counterinsurgency in Vietnam. Any success in the Cold War-birthed agency would be matched with defeats such as the failure of the Strategic Hamlet Program, Mind Control, Project Agile, and others. Their successes would be obscured as their work would be hijacked by senior agencies and military branches. But the work done by the unsung men and women would now be brought to light. The only question is, was their work for the greater good or the needs of the few?

The Imagineers of War can be seen as a companion read to Annie Jacobsen’s The Pentagon’s Brain. However, this book distinguishes itself by examining men such as William Godel, whose work has been scrubbed from official histories but still exists in the government ether. Their work had meaning even if their approach was flawed. This book lifts the veil on government secrecy when it comes to technological breakthroughs. A must-read in our evolving AI world.