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DARPA Investment Strategy

beebee
edited September 2023 in Other Investing
The areas of Engineering, Science and Technology are long term themes in my investment portfolio.

Research is the cornerstone to the development of innovation in these fields.

I came across this link (see below) to the “investment strategy” of a US agency (DARPA) that has been partially responsible for:
Originally known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the agency was created on February 7, 1958, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik 1 in 1957. By collaborating with academia, industry, and government partners, DARPA formulates and executes research and development projects to expand the frontiers of technology and science, often beyond immediate U.S. military requirements.

The Economist has called DARPA the agency "that shaped the modern world," and said that "Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine sits alongside weather satellites, GPS, drones, stealth technology, voice interfaces, the personal computer and the internet on the list of innovations for which DARPA can claim at least partial credit."
What STEM innovations will be next?

https://darpa.mil/our-research

Comments

  • edited September 2023
    DARPA is a very familiar name in university & industry R&D. It is now a funding agency within the DOD that supports fundamental long-term research.
    The DOD also funds lot of applied research for its immediate military needs via other agencies within it. Many federal agencies (HHS, DOE, DOT, EPA, etc) also support applied research specific to their needs.
    NSF is another federal agency that funds fundamental long-term research.
  • I haven't looked at DARPA efforts for years. I briefly reviewed proposals for them (eons ago) and had a small startup effort funded that wasn't renewed. I am pleasantly surprised if they are getting back to their original mission. For a while, at the beginning of this century, it was my opinion, that DARPA funding was being diverted too much into non-innovative endeavors more related to today's army as opposed to tomorrow's world.
  • Yup. DARPA, IARPA, etc. are places where some nifty bleeding-edge tech comes to life. Might go somewhere and change the world (eg, the internet) or might not do anything -- but often very interesting and exciting stuff. I did some OTE work for DARPA several years ago, and their research RFP/RFIs cross my university inbox regularly....but I've not worked on any DARPA projects recently.
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