The Crazy Government Research Projects You Might've Missed in 2019

Excerpts:

If you imagine the U.S. research community as a family party, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is your crazy uncle ranting at the end of the table and the government’s other “ARPA” organizations are the in-laws who are buying into his theories.

In April, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity announced it was pursuing AI that could stitch together and analyze satellite images and footage collected from planes, drones and other aircraft. The program, called Space-based Machine Automated Recognition Technique, essentially looks to use AI to monitor all human activity around the globe in real-time.

The Energy Department’s bleeding-edge research office, ARPA-E, is also supporting a wide array of efforts to advance the nation’s energy technologies. This year, the organization launched programs to improve carbon-capture systems, reduce the cost of nuclear energy and increase the efficiency of the power grid, among other things.

But despite those efforts, the Trump administration has repeatedly tried to shut down the office.

In its budget request for fiscal 2020, the White House proposed reducing ARPA-E’s funding by 178%, giving the agency a final budget of negative $287 million. The administration similarly defunded the office in its 2019 budget request.

https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2019/12/crazy-government-research-projects-you-mightve-missed-2019/161977/

Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20191223183154/http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2019/12/crazy-government-research-projects-you-mightve-missed-2019/161977/