November 15, 2013 • 15 mins
Could shooting electricity through your brain give your superhuman powers of thought? Is it possible to build a real-life matrix? Join Ben and Matt for the second part of their series on DARPA.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Previously
on stuff they don't want you to know? Ben, did
you see this letter we got from DARPA, A letter
(00:22):
from Dark Yet It says, where's the rest of the
DARPA podcast? We paid you two million dollars? What's all
that dramatic music playing? And welcome back to stuff they
don't want you to know. This is part two of
our DARPA episode. Uh, Matt, how are you feeling about this?
I'm feeling pretty good. We've looked at a little bit
of the history. We're gonna get a little deeper now
(00:45):
in this section. I don't know. I think you guys
are gonna like it. So let's hop right in. We
have to admit, man, when we talked about DARPA, there's
gotta be a lot of stuff that we honestly don't
know about because because a technological edge, right, dark as
Mandate requires the technological edge, and a technological edge requires
(01:09):
secrecy during development, right, And so one theory that we
hear often on our show is the theory of suppressed technology.
And and basically the gist is that space age quote
unquote technology of some sort exists, be it free energy,
a more efficient aircraft, things like that, but they are
(01:33):
withheld from the public um because they're useful in military applications. Right, yeah, exactly,
as long as as long as only the military has
access to this equipment. Now, a lot of people would
just say that's bunk and throw it out entirely, dismiss
it out of hand. But when we hear stories about
(01:56):
ARPANET like you just caught us up on, it really
makes me wonder what's cooking over at DARPA. And also
how is DARPA related to that national security patent gag
order thing? Remember that Here's how it works. Uh, it
is possible for an inventor, Let's say that you met
(02:17):
um invent something that is just amazing has never happened before.
Let's say, for some reason, you invent a device that
can automatically download all information from a computer just by
walking by. So it has some sort of wireless method
to just suck out all the information on any computer. Okay,
(02:39):
highly unlikely that I could do that, but sure, I'm
with you. Hey, believe in yourself, man, and you know
wishes or horses in this. So hypothetically, again, you file
a patent for this information. Uh, this patent is denied
and you are not able to tell anyone about it.
There's a gag order on both the patent itself, the
(03:02):
information contains, and any comments you might make about it
due to national security. So it is actually legal for
the United States government to suppress technology if they feel
that this technology will somehow be a threat and the
information about this is very, very vague, minimal. Well, here
here's my question. Okay, can they then use that patent
(03:25):
or the technology outlined in that patent. If they can
extract they can figure out what that technology is, they
can use it. Yep, that's fun in the interest of
national security. Well again, it goes right back to their
charter right to maintain United States technological superiority over everyone. Yeah.
And uh, we can't talk about DARPA unless we talk
(03:49):
about one of the by far the most prevalent semi
secret bases or activities in United States. Mad science, It's history.
You know what I'm talking I'm talking about HARP. I
am talking about heart oh Man, the high frequency active
auroral research program. That name is thrown around just I
(04:11):
don't know, man, what is it thrown around? Like it's
it's thrown around like nickels at a nickel party. Okay,
so yes, it's HARP thrown around like nickels at a
Nickel party. This is the thing that's allegedly spurned from
Tesla's research, and it works on the uh, the ion
(04:31):
a sphere, and you know, they're all kinds of crazy
alleged stories about what it can or cannot do and
what it has been used to do. Like, let's say,
if you wanted to cause an earthquake somewhere, or if
the United States wanted to cause an earthquake somewhere, people
will allege that HARP did and they may be caused
a tsunami. Right, Yeah, we hear, we hear about HARP
(04:54):
often when people are talking about Nicola Tesla, or when
people are talking about weaponized weather. HARP is essentially from
what we we being the public. No, HARP is essentially
heating the ionosphere. Uh in kind of a let's see
what happens way according to again the information. Now, anytime
(05:15):
there's this level of secrecy, there's no end to proliferating rumors.
And the scariest thing about HARP is that we we
legitimately do not know what it is doing or the
extent of what it's doing. Actually, we know exactly what
it's doing. What is it? At least since May this year,
(05:38):
absolutely nothing. It's been shut down. I'm glad you got
to it, at least for the interim. It's been shut
down until they're awaiting another group to come in and
possibly run it that is not the United States government
or at least not government funded. Okay, so that is interesting, Hunts.
(05:58):
It's shut down for a little while and that and
that's according to HARP Spurium manager dark Dr James Keeney,
and HARP itself has uh. It might sound unusual that
such an expensive thing should be suspended for a little
bit of time, but this brings us back to to circle,
(06:19):
back to DARPA. This brings us back to one of
DARPA's primary advantages, what they see as an advantage, which
is that DARPER Research has the freedom to fail. Yeah,
and this in a way gives the researchers and the
contractors enormous latitude to just try things out. This could
be seen in examples of the exoskeleton that you know,
(06:42):
the exo skeleton is one of those things that is
famously always five years away. Right in five years they
were saying, uh, in two thousand twelve will have a
superb exoskeleton, it will be used by senior citizens, will
be used by soldiers and people who have special needs
are disabled. Um, and then five years before that it
(07:03):
was going to be coming out in twelve, and then
five years before that. Right, this this goes on. But
despite all of these failures, Um, this is sort of
a spaghetti at the wall approach. Right, we throw at
the spaghetti at the wall, we see what sticks. And UM,
I know that's an overused comparison at times, but it
(07:24):
really does apply here. And Matt, we've kind of caught
people up right on what DARPA is. I think, so
I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, if
that's okay. I don't want to put you on the spot.
I'm on the spot. I don't want to put you
on the spot, he says, as he does. But the
question I wanted to ask you is what do you
(07:45):
think is next for dart Pa. Well, I've been on
their website, rummaging around looking at things, looking at projects
and programs, and I guess that's what they're onto now.
And some of the things are onto now. I'm just
gonna list off a couple of things just so I
can kind of tell you where I think they're going.
(08:06):
So one of the things they're looking at is called QUEST.
It's a program there quantum entanglement Science and Technology. That's
an actual thing that they're researching. And you know, when
you hear about quantum entanglement, there are a lot of
internet videos futurist people talking about it, scientists that want
to get excited about it because it isn't an incredible
(08:26):
thing that if we can make it into a usable technology,
it will speed up all of our processes and quantum
computers quantum computing exactly. And inside this, I'm just gonna
read this because this is kind of crazy. Fundamental discoveries
and quantum information science have potential for dramatic impact on
technologies related to modern military platforms. Okay, so already right there,
(08:48):
that's a little creepy. Well, no, I cannot decode that,
m But what the way you can start to decode
it is if you look at the other programs, Because
the way I like to think about DARPA is um
It's kind of weird, but like an octopus. Right, the
DARPA Center, the director, and let's say the actual staff
(09:09):
of DARPA is kind of the like you said, the
it's the information head and then it's got all these
arms of researchers with contracts researching certain topics. So let's
say quantum entanglement is one arm right on the other
arm over here, you've got mesodynamic architecture. This is another program. Now,
(09:30):
this is really interesting to me. All this one is
looking at spatial and short temporal scales, including new states
of matter. This is these are the things we're looking
at and untapped forces. So this is next level stuff here.
This is states of matter that I guess we don't
(09:50):
know yet, theoretical theoretical states of matter that currently we
don't know that exists, and or untapped forces and that
just untapped forces is so vague, but it's also so
cool and at the same time, Yeah, it's somewhere between
a horror movie and a science fiction film, isn't it. Yeah,
I don't know. I love that. So so when you
(10:11):
put those together, talking about quantum entangling, meso dynamic architectures.
I don't know. It's just a channel untapped force. So yeah, well,
it talks about all kinds of things like it's gonna
it's going to make communication easier, sensing and computation easier.
Again exploiting mesoscale characteristics. I don't know what the heck
(10:34):
that means. I'm not intelligent enough to comprehend even what
that means. I want to go back to the octopus comparison.
I think that's really good. One of the other primary
tentacles would be the use of information. How do DARPA
is very concerned with how we organize, compile, and I
don't know, position data. Uh, in order to make predictive things,
(10:58):
I've got to I've got an interesting little tangent and
you want to hear him absolutely, alright. So one of
my professors Georgia Tech, where I studied international affairs, he
worked with he's mad genius Matt and he worked with statistics.
Now you've heard this story before. He was contracted to
(11:19):
build a simulation of Afghanistan and it was the idea
was a real life matrix, just like we were talking
about with Dick Cheney and desert storm. Uh. The idea
was to build a model, a virtual model of Afghanistan,
where all of the variables were so realistic that a
change in a variable in the computer would create the
(11:41):
same changes um on the model that would happen in
the real world. So this, this fidelity um was such that,
for instance, you could say, well, what if the price
of gas for the US forces supply lines goes up
or down two dollars, let's plug that in. And then
apparently the idea deal was that it would be able
(12:01):
to predict this stuff. So ultimately we're building a real
life crystal ball, a real life magic cap ball or
something like that. And um, I don't know how successful
or unsuccessful that's been, but it is strange when we
think that in this country there really are people who
(12:22):
are pursuing what again you called the closest thing we
have to a real life fringe division. And it's no
wonder that it gets used or bandied about in a
lot of theories or a lot of rumors. The fact
of the matter is that DARPA is into a lot
of exotic, new pioneering technological research and oh we frankly,
(12:46):
we don't know and we won't know everything that's going
on there, from eliminating sleep for soldiers from one of
the one of the things that recently popped in the
news today as you and I are doing this podcast,
is that DARPA is building an underwater drone base, right, yeah.
I just look at that kind of stuff and uh,
(13:08):
it bridges the gap in my head of the little
kid that wants to understand the unknown or the the
not understandable, grasping at those big questions, and it really
is on the front lines doing that. But secretly, it's
just it reminds me of of so many strange things.
(13:29):
Just for fans of the TV show Lost, the proposed
undersea drone carrier that DARPA wants to build is code named,
wait for it, the Hydra. Huh. I know, not to
be too lighthearted, but uh, there it is. That's our
DARPA one oh one. Right, Yeah, anything to add there,
matt um there. I just want to add. If you
(13:52):
go to the DARPA website and you're interested in any
of these programs, maybe I don't know, you just want
to know more information. You can email a lot of
these the directors of these programs. They have email addresses
that you can send them an email and say, hey,
tell me a little more about this. Yeah, they are
they are human beings. And uh we have an email
(14:12):
them yet, but that might be interesting to do so
huh yeah, absolutely, I really want to call the quantument
quantum entanglement guys. H and uh if you do send
an email to the good folks at DARPA, please let
us know how it goes, so we get keep tabs
on you. Make sure you don't disappear please. Uh, We're kidding,
but that that is it. We would like to hear
(14:34):
what you think now about DARPA. What do you think
are some of their most interesting projects? What do you
think of the most interesting rumors about DARPA. Is it
all alarmism or is it true? Are they suppressing technology?
And if so what? Uh? We are very interested in
these questions. We have really stuck to the facts on this,
(14:56):
just the stuff that's known and established about DARPA. We
are always ready to get a little weird with it
and maybe we can return when we hear more about
our projects or when we want to drill down into
something really specific. Man. Absolutely, and if you want to
talk to us, you can hit us up on Twitter.
We're at conspiracy Stuff. You can find us on Facebook,
(15:19):
We're a conspiracy Stuff there, and you can also shoot
us an email at conspiracy at Discovery dot com. From
more on this topic, another unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube
dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in
touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
From UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Previously
on stuff they don't want you to know? Ben, did
you see this letter we got from DARPA, A letter
(00:22):
from Dark Yet It says, where's the rest of the
DARPA podcast? We paid you two million dollars? What's all
that dramatic music playing? And welcome back to stuff they
don't want you to know. This is part two of
our DARPA episode. Uh, Matt, how are you feeling about this?
I'm feeling pretty good. We've looked at a little bit
of the history. We're gonna get a little deeper now
(00:45):
in this section. I don't know. I think you guys
are gonna like it. So let's hop right in. We
have to admit, man, when we talked about DARPA, there's
gotta be a lot of stuff that we honestly don't
know about because because a technological edge, right, dark as
Mandate requires the technological edge, and a technological edge requires
(01:09):
secrecy during development, right, And so one theory that we
hear often on our show is the theory of suppressed technology.
And and basically the gist is that space age quote
unquote technology of some sort exists, be it free energy,
a more efficient aircraft, things like that, but they are
(01:33):
withheld from the public um because they're useful in military applications. Right, yeah, exactly,
as long as as long as only the military has
access to this equipment. Now, a lot of people would
just say that's bunk and throw it out entirely, dismiss
it out of hand. But when we hear stories about
(01:56):
ARPANET like you just caught us up on, it really
makes me wonder what's cooking over at DARPA. And also
how is DARPA related to that national security patent gag
order thing? Remember that Here's how it works. Uh, it
is possible for an inventor, Let's say that you met
(02:17):
um invent something that is just amazing has never happened before.
Let's say, for some reason, you invent a device that
can automatically download all information from a computer just by
walking by. So it has some sort of wireless method
to just suck out all the information on any computer. Okay,
(02:39):
highly unlikely that I could do that, but sure, I'm
with you. Hey, believe in yourself, man, and you know
wishes or horses in this. So hypothetically, again, you file
a patent for this information. Uh, this patent is denied
and you are not able to tell anyone about it.
There's a gag order on both the patent itself, the
(03:02):
information contains, and any comments you might make about it
due to national security. So it is actually legal for
the United States government to suppress technology if they feel
that this technology will somehow be a threat and the
information about this is very, very vague, minimal. Well, here
here's my question. Okay, can they then use that patent
(03:25):
or the technology outlined in that patent. If they can
extract they can figure out what that technology is, they
can use it. Yep, that's fun in the interest of
national security. Well again, it goes right back to their
charter right to maintain United States technological superiority over everyone. Yeah.
And uh, we can't talk about DARPA unless we talk
(03:49):
about one of the by far the most prevalent semi
secret bases or activities in United States. Mad science, It's history.
You know what I'm talking I'm talking about HARP. I
am talking about heart oh Man, the high frequency active
auroral research program. That name is thrown around just I
(04:11):
don't know, man, what is it thrown around? Like it's
it's thrown around like nickels at a nickel party. Okay,
so yes, it's HARP thrown around like nickels at a
Nickel party. This is the thing that's allegedly spurned from
Tesla's research, and it works on the uh, the ion
(04:31):
a sphere, and you know, they're all kinds of crazy
alleged stories about what it can or cannot do and
what it has been used to do. Like, let's say,
if you wanted to cause an earthquake somewhere, or if
the United States wanted to cause an earthquake somewhere, people
will allege that HARP did and they may be caused
a tsunami. Right, Yeah, we hear, we hear about HARP
(04:54):
often when people are talking about Nicola Tesla, or when
people are talking about weaponized weather. HARP is essentially from
what we we being the public. No, HARP is essentially
heating the ionosphere. Uh in kind of a let's see
what happens way according to again the information. Now, anytime
(05:15):
there's this level of secrecy, there's no end to proliferating rumors.
And the scariest thing about HARP is that we we
legitimately do not know what it is doing or the
extent of what it's doing. Actually, we know exactly what
it's doing. What is it? At least since May this year,
(05:38):
absolutely nothing. It's been shut down. I'm glad you got
to it, at least for the interim. It's been shut
down until they're awaiting another group to come in and
possibly run it that is not the United States government
or at least not government funded. Okay, so that is interesting, Hunts.
(05:58):
It's shut down for a little while and that and
that's according to HARP Spurium manager dark Dr James Keeney,
and HARP itself has uh. It might sound unusual that
such an expensive thing should be suspended for a little
bit of time, but this brings us back to to circle,
(06:19):
back to DARPA. This brings us back to one of
DARPA's primary advantages, what they see as an advantage, which
is that DARPER Research has the freedom to fail. Yeah,
and this in a way gives the researchers and the
contractors enormous latitude to just try things out. This could
be seen in examples of the exoskeleton that you know,
(06:42):
the exo skeleton is one of those things that is
famously always five years away. Right in five years they
were saying, uh, in two thousand twelve will have a
superb exoskeleton, it will be used by senior citizens, will
be used by soldiers and people who have special needs
are disabled. Um, and then five years before that it
(07:03):
was going to be coming out in twelve, and then
five years before that. Right, this this goes on. But
despite all of these failures, Um, this is sort of
a spaghetti at the wall approach. Right, we throw at
the spaghetti at the wall, we see what sticks. And UM,
I know that's an overused comparison at times, but it
(07:24):
really does apply here. And Matt, we've kind of caught
people up right on what DARPA is. I think, so
I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, if
that's okay. I don't want to put you on the spot.
I'm on the spot. I don't want to put you
on the spot, he says, as he does. But the
question I wanted to ask you is what do you
(07:45):
think is next for dart Pa. Well, I've been on
their website, rummaging around looking at things, looking at projects
and programs, and I guess that's what they're onto now.
And some of the things are onto now. I'm just
gonna list off a couple of things just so I
can kind of tell you where I think they're going.
(08:06):
So one of the things they're looking at is called QUEST.
It's a program there quantum entanglement Science and Technology. That's
an actual thing that they're researching. And you know, when
you hear about quantum entanglement, there are a lot of
internet videos futurist people talking about it, scientists that want
to get excited about it because it isn't an incredible
(08:26):
thing that if we can make it into a usable technology,
it will speed up all of our processes and quantum
computers quantum computing exactly. And inside this, I'm just gonna
read this because this is kind of crazy. Fundamental discoveries
and quantum information science have potential for dramatic impact on
technologies related to modern military platforms. Okay, so already right there,
(08:48):
that's a little creepy. Well, no, I cannot decode that,
m But what the way you can start to decode
it is if you look at the other programs, Because
the way I like to think about DARPA is um
It's kind of weird, but like an octopus. Right, the
DARPA Center, the director, and let's say the actual staff
(09:09):
of DARPA is kind of the like you said, the
it's the information head and then it's got all these
arms of researchers with contracts researching certain topics. So let's
say quantum entanglement is one arm right on the other
arm over here, you've got mesodynamic architecture. This is another program. Now,
(09:30):
this is really interesting to me. All this one is
looking at spatial and short temporal scales, including new states
of matter. This is these are the things we're looking
at and untapped forces. So this is next level stuff here.
This is states of matter that I guess we don't
(09:50):
know yet, theoretical theoretical states of matter that currently we
don't know that exists, and or untapped forces and that
just untapped forces is so vague, but it's also so
cool and at the same time, Yeah, it's somewhere between
a horror movie and a science fiction film, isn't it. Yeah,
I don't know. I love that. So so when you
(10:11):
put those together, talking about quantum entangling, meso dynamic architectures.
I don't know. It's just a channel untapped force. So yeah, well,
it talks about all kinds of things like it's gonna
it's going to make communication easier, sensing and computation easier.
Again exploiting mesoscale characteristics. I don't know what the heck
(10:34):
that means. I'm not intelligent enough to comprehend even what
that means. I want to go back to the octopus comparison.
I think that's really good. One of the other primary
tentacles would be the use of information. How do DARPA
is very concerned with how we organize, compile, and I
don't know, position data. Uh, in order to make predictive things,
(10:58):
I've got to I've got an interesting little tangent and
you want to hear him absolutely, alright. So one of
my professors Georgia Tech, where I studied international affairs, he
worked with he's mad genius Matt and he worked with statistics.
Now you've heard this story before. He was contracted to
(11:19):
build a simulation of Afghanistan and it was the idea
was a real life matrix, just like we were talking
about with Dick Cheney and desert storm. Uh. The idea
was to build a model, a virtual model of Afghanistan,
where all of the variables were so realistic that a
change in a variable in the computer would create the
(11:41):
same changes um on the model that would happen in
the real world. So this, this fidelity um was such that,
for instance, you could say, well, what if the price
of gas for the US forces supply lines goes up
or down two dollars, let's plug that in. And then
apparently the idea deal was that it would be able
(12:01):
to predict this stuff. So ultimately we're building a real
life crystal ball, a real life magic cap ball or
something like that. And um, I don't know how successful
or unsuccessful that's been, but it is strange when we
think that in this country there really are people who
(12:22):
are pursuing what again you called the closest thing we
have to a real life fringe division. And it's no
wonder that it gets used or bandied about in a
lot of theories or a lot of rumors. The fact
of the matter is that DARPA is into a lot
of exotic, new pioneering technological research and oh we frankly,
(12:46):
we don't know and we won't know everything that's going
on there, from eliminating sleep for soldiers from one of
the one of the things that recently popped in the
news today as you and I are doing this podcast,
is that DARPA is building an underwater drone base, right, yeah.
I just look at that kind of stuff and uh,
(13:08):
it bridges the gap in my head of the little
kid that wants to understand the unknown or the the
not understandable, grasping at those big questions, and it really
is on the front lines doing that. But secretly, it's
just it reminds me of of so many strange things.
(13:29):
Just for fans of the TV show Lost, the proposed
undersea drone carrier that DARPA wants to build is code named,
wait for it, the Hydra. Huh. I know, not to
be too lighthearted, but uh, there it is. That's our
DARPA one oh one. Right, Yeah, anything to add there,
matt um there. I just want to add. If you
(13:52):
go to the DARPA website and you're interested in any
of these programs, maybe I don't know, you just want
to know more information. You can email a lot of
these the directors of these programs. They have email addresses
that you can send them an email and say, hey,
tell me a little more about this. Yeah, they are
they are human beings. And uh we have an email
(14:12):
them yet, but that might be interesting to do so
huh yeah, absolutely, I really want to call the quantument
quantum entanglement guys. H and uh if you do send
an email to the good folks at DARPA, please let
us know how it goes, so we get keep tabs
on you. Make sure you don't disappear please. Uh, We're kidding,
but that that is it. We would like to hear
(14:34):
what you think now about DARPA. What do you think
are some of their most interesting projects? What do you
think of the most interesting rumors about DARPA. Is it
all alarmism or is it true? Are they suppressing technology?
And if so what? Uh? We are very interested in
these questions. We have really stuck to the facts on this,
(14:56):
just the stuff that's known and established about DARPA. We
are always ready to get a little weird with it
and maybe we can return when we hear more about
our projects or when we want to drill down into
something really specific. Man. Absolutely, and if you want to
talk to us, you can hit us up on Twitter.
We're at conspiracy Stuff. You can find us on Facebook,
(15:19):
We're a conspiracy Stuff there, and you can also shoot
us an email at conspiracy at Discovery dot com. From
more on this topic, another unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube
dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in
touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff.
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Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com