[Strategerist]

Those other agencies aren’t really related to DARPA - they just adopted similar acronyms in emulation of them.

My impression of working with DARPA is that they’re vaguely incompetent and a bit detached from reality. That varies greatly from program manager to program manager and they have a lot of personnel turnover (deliberately).

They are linked to industry for the obvious reason that the vast majority of technological innovation comes from industry.

There’s not much of an evil conspiracy here.

[seeker41]

I disagree, but everyone has an opinion.

[Wonder Warthog]

"My impression of working with DARPA is that they’re vaguely incompetent and a bit detached from reality. That varies greatly from program manager to program manager and they have a lot of personnel turnover (deliberately)."

Over the life of the agency, DARPA has been WILDLY successful, which is why those other organizations are copying them. They were originally set up to be (and still are) a "wild, wild blue sky" organization to provide seed funding for ideas that have very low probability of success, but which, if successful, will have huge impact.

"They are linked to industry for the obvious reason that the vast majority of technological innovation comes from industry."

Correct.

"There’s not much of an evil conspiracy here."

Also correct. ANY technology can have "evil" implications depending on how it is used.