ESQUIRE LOOOOVES DARPA

So explain this one: You’re Tom Junod, one of the top writ­ers for Esquire, one of the finest-​​written mag­a­zines on Earth. You’re assigned a fat fea­ture on Darpa, the Pentagon’s research arm, for the mag’s “Best and Brightest Issue.” And in your story, you devote one sen­tence one! to Total Information Awareness, Darpa’s infa­mous uber-​​database project.
Now, instead of focus­ing on TIA — a pro­gram that’s been the sub­ject on front pages and Congressional inquiries you choose to wax rhap­sodic for para­graphs with­out end about Darpa’s unpar­al­leled genius. Aside from a few throw-​​away lines about the ter­ror futures mar­ket, you make no men­tion of the agency’s creepier pro­grams the ones to keep an entire city under watch, for exam­ple.
Here’s a sam­ple of the wet-​​kiss approach: “If there’s any­thing you learn from vis­it­ing DARPA, it’s this: An alien race is exactly what we are. Americans. Humans. There’s noth­ing we won’t think of, noth­ing we won’t do. There are no lim­its. Nothing is impos­si­ble.“
Oy vey. I guess at this point I’m sup­posed to cue the rous­ing theme music.
It’s true, of course, that Darpa and the sci­en­tists they fund do a tremen­dous amount of work that is really, really cool. And it’s led to a lot of not-​​unimpressive achieve­ments, like this whole Internet thing.
It’s also true that these “Best and Brightest” mag­a­zine issues are boos­t­er­ish, by their very nature.
But one sen­tence? Come on.
THERE’S MORE: Esquire atones for its sin of Darpa syco­phancy by suck­ing up to Secrecy News chief and Defense Tech pal — Steven Aftergood.
This guy deserves more atten­tion for his many efforts. It’s nice to see him get it.

November 5th, 2003 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.