The Defense Intelligence Agency disclosed this week that it had funded research on warp drive, invisibility cloaking, and other areas of fringe or speculative science and engineering as part of a now-defunct program to track and identify threats from space.
From 2007 to 2012, the DIA spent $22 million on the activity, formally known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. It was apparently initiated at the behest of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, with most of the funding directed to a Nevada constituent of his. See “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program” by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean, New York Times, December 16, 2017.
Yesterday, the DIA released a list of 38 research titles funded by the program, many of which are highly conjectural and well beyond the boundaries of current science, engineering — or military intelligence. One such title, “Traversable Wormholes, Stargates, and Negative Energy,” was prepared by Dr. Eric Davis, who has also written on “psychic teleportation.”
(Dr. Davis responded vigorously to skepticism of his work in a 2006 comment to this Secrecy News post.)
The DIA list of research papers, marked for Official Use Only, was previously provided to Congress in January 2018. It was publicly released yesterday under the Freedom of Information Act.
Although many FOIA offices are closed due to the continuing shutdown of the federal government, the DIA FOIA office and at least some others in the Department of Defense are still operational.
A DIA FOIA officer noted with some exasperation that yesterday’s release of the list of research papers will, in all likelihood, prompt new FOIA requests to his Agency for each of the listed papers.
The public rarely sees the quiet, often messy work that goes into creating, passing, and implementing a major piece of legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act.
If this proposed rule were enacted it would have deleterious effects on government workers in general and federal researchers and scientists, specifically.
When we introduce “at-will” employment to government employees, we also introduce the potential for environments where people are more concerned about self-preservation than service to others.
There is no better time to re-invigorate America’s innovation edge by investing in R&D to create and capture “industries of the future,” re-shoring capital and expertise, and working closely with allies to expand our capabilities while safeguarding those technologies that are critical to our security.