This article is about the US military research agency. Not to be confused with the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA). For the skipper butterfly genus, see Darpa (butterfly)

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Agency overview
Formed	1958
Headquarters	Arlington, Virginia
Employees	240
Annual budget	$3.2 billion
Agency executive	Dr. Kaigham J. Gabriel[1], Director
Parent agency	Department of Defense
Website
DARPA.mil

DARPA headquarters in the Virginia Square neighborhood of Arlington.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military. DARPA has been responsible for funding the development of many technologies which have had a major effect on the world, including computer networking, as well as NLS, which was both the first hypertext system, and an important precursor to the contemporary ubiquitous graphical user interface.

Its original name was simply Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), but it was renamed to "DARPA" (for Defense) in March 1972, then renamed "ARPA" again in February 1993, and then renamed "DARPA" again in March 1996.

DARPA was established during 1958 (as ARPA) in response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik during 1957, with the mission of keeping U.S. military technology more sophisticated than that of the nation's potential enemies. From DARPA's own introduction,^[2]

DARPA’s original mission, established in 1958, was to prevent technological surprise like the launch of Sputnik, which signaled that the Soviets had beaten the U.S. into space. The mission statement has evolved over time. Today, DARPA’s mission is still to prevent technological surprise to the US, but also to create technological surprise for our enemies.

DARPA is independent from other more conventional military R&D and reports directly to senior Department of Defense management. DARPA has around 240 personnel (about 140 technical) directly managing a $3.2 billion budget. These figures are "on average" since DARPA focuses on short-term (two to four-year) projects run by small, purpose-built teams.

Mission[link]

DARPA's own introduction:^[2]

DARPA is a Defense Agency with a unique role within DoD. DARPA is not tied to a specific operational mission: DARPA supplies technological options for the entire Department, and is designed to be the “technological engine” for transforming DoD.

Near-term needs and requirements generally drive the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force to focus on those needs at the expense of major change. Consequently, a large organization like DoD needs a place like DARPA whose only charter is radical innovation.

DARPA looks beyond today’s known needs and requirements. As military historian John Chambers noted, “None of the most important weapons transforming warfare in the 20th century – the airplane, tank, radar, jet engine, helicopter, electronic computer, not even the atomic bomb – owed its initial development to a doctrinal requirement or request of the military.”^[3] And to this list, DARPA would add unmanned systems, Global Positioning System (GPS) and Internet technologies.

DARPA’s approach is to imagine what capabilities a military commander might want in the future and accelerate those capabilities into being through technology demonstrations. These not only provide options to the commander, but also change minds about what is technologically possible today.

History[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Early history[link]

DARPA was created as the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) by the Supplemental Military Construction Authorization (Air Force)^[4] (Public Law 85-325) and Department of Defense Directive 5105.15, in February 1958. Its creation was directly attributed to the launching of Sputnik and to U.S. realization that the Soviet Union had developed the capacity to rapidly exploit military technology. Additionally, the political and defense communities recognized the need for a high-level Department of Defense organization to formulate and execute R&D projects that would expand the frontiers of technology beyond the immediate and specific requirements of the Military Services and their laboratories. In pursuit of this mission, DARPA has developed and transferred technology programs encompassing a wide range of scientific disciplines which address the full spectrum of national security needs.

From 1958-1965, ARPA's emphasis centered on major national issues, including space, ballistic missile defense, and nuclear test detection. During 1960, all of its civilian space programs were transferred to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the military space programs to the individual Services. This allowed ARPA to concentrate its efforts on the Project Defender (defense against ballistic missiles), Project Vela (nuclear test detection), and Project AGILE (counterinsurgency R&D) Programs, and to begin work on computer processing, behavioral sciences, and materials sciences. The DEFENDER and AGILE Programs formed the foundation of DARPA sensor, surveillance, and directed energy R&D, particularly in the study of radar, infrared sensing, and x-ray/gamma ray detection.

During the late 1960s, with the transfer of these mature programs to the Services, ARPA redefined its role and concentrated on a diverse set of relatively small, essentially exploratory research programs. The agency was renamed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1972, and during the early 1970s, it emphasized direct energy programs, information processing, and tactical technologies.

Concerning information processing, DARPA made great progress, initially through its support of the development of time-sharing (all modern operating systems rely on concepts invented for the Multics system, developed by a cooperation among Bell Labs, General Electric and MIT, which DARPA supported by funding Project MAC at MIT with an initial two-million-dollar grant), and later through the evolution of the ARPANET (the first wide-area packet switching network), Packet Radio Network, Packet Satellite Network and ultimately, the Internet and research in the artificial intelligence fields of speech recognition and signal processing, including parts of Shakey the robot.^[5] DARPA also funded the development of the Douglas Engelbart's NLS computer system and the Aspen Movie Map, which was probably the first hypermedia system and an important precursor of virtual reality.

Later history[link]

The Mansfield Amendment of 1973 expressly limited appropriations for defense research (through ARPA/DARPA) to projects with direct military application. Some^[who?] contend that the amendment devastated American science, since ARPA/DARPA was a major funding source for basic science projects of the time; the National Science Foundation never made up the difference as expected. But the resulting "brain drain" is also credited with boosting the development of the fledgling personal computer industry. Many young computer scientists fled from the universities to startups and private research labs like Xerox PARC.

From 1976-1981, DARPA's major thrusts were dominated by air, land, sea, and space technology, tactical armor and anti-armor programs, infrared sensing for space-based surveillance, high-energy laser technology for space-based missile defense, antisubmarine warfare, advanced cruise missiles, advanced aircraft, and defense applications of advanced computing. These large-scale technological program demonstrations were joined by integrated circuit research, which resulted in submicrometre electronic technology and electron devices that evolved into the Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Program and the Congressionally mandated charged particle beam program. Many of the successful programs were transitioned to the Services, such as the foundation technologies in automatic target recognition, space based sensing, propulsion, and materials that were transferred to the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), later known as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), now titled the Missile Defense Agency (MDA).

Recent history[link]

During the 1980s, the attention of the Agency was centered on information processing and aircraft-related programs, including the National Aerospace Plane (NASP) or Hypersonic Research Program. The Strategic Computing Program enabled DARPA to exploit advanced processing and networking technologies and to rebuild and strengthen relationships with universities after the Vietnam War. In addition, DARPA began to pursue new concepts for small, lightweight satellites (LIGHTSAT) and directed new programs regarding defense manufacturing, submarine technology, and armor/anti-armor.

On October 28, 2009 the agency broke ground on a new facility in Arlington, Virginia a few miles from the Pentagon.^[6]

Fall of 2011, DARPA hosted the 100 Year Starship Symposium with the aim of getting the public to start thinking seriously about interstellar travel^[7] CleanTechnica.

Directors[link]

DARPA has had 20 directors since its foundation.^{[8][dead link]}

Organization[link]

Key characteristics[link]

According to former DARPA Director Tony Tether and W. B. Bonvillian (“Power Play,” W. B. Bonvillian, The American Interest, Volume II, p 39, November–December 2006), DARPA's key characteristics to be replicated to reproduce DARPA's success are:^[12]

• Small and flexible: DARPA has only about 140 technical professionals; DARPA presents itself as “100 geniuses connected by a travel agent.”^[13]
• Flat organization: DARPA avoids hierarchy, essentially operating at only two management levels to ensure the free and rapid flow of information and ideas, and rapid decision-making.
• Autonomy and freedom from bureaucratic impediments: DARPA has an exemption from Title V civilian personnel specifications, which provides for a direct authority to hire talents with the expediency not allowed by the standard civil service process.
• Eclectic, world-class technical staff and performers: DARPA seeks great talents and ideas from industry, universities, government laboratories, and individuals, mixing disciplines and theoretical and experimental strength. DARPA neither owns nor operates any laboratories or facilities, and the overwhelming majority of the research it sponsors is done in industry and universities. Very little of DARPA’s research is performed at government labs.
• Teams and networks: At its very best, DARPA creates and sustains great teams of researchers from different disciplines that collaborate and share in the teams’ advances.
• Hiring continuity and change: DARPA’s technical staff is hired or assigned for four to six years. All key staff i.e. Office Directors and Program Managers are rotated to ensure constant infusion of fresh thinking and perspectives.
• Project-based assignments organized around a challenge model: DARPA organizes a significant part of its portfolio around specific technology challenges. It foresees new innovation-based capabilities and then works back to the fundamental breakthroughs required to make them possible. Although individual projects typically last three to five years, major technological challenges may be addressed over longer time periods, ensuring patient investment on a series of focused steps and keeping teams together for ongoing collaboration.
• Outsourced support personnel: DARPA extensively leverages technical, contracting, and administrative services from other DoD agencies and branches of the military. This provides DARPA the flexibility to get into and out of an area without the burden of sustaining staff, while building cooperative alliances with its “agents.” These outside agents help create a constituency in their respective organizations for adopting the technology.
• Outstanding program managers: The best DARPA program managers have always been freewheeling zealots in pursuit of their goals. The Director’s most important task is to recruit and hire very creative people with big ideas, and empower them.
• Acceptance of failure: DARPA pursues breakthrough opportunities and is very tolerant of technical failure if the payoff from success will be great enough.
• Orientation to revolutionary breakthroughs in a connected approach: DARPA historically has focused not on incremental but radical innovation. It emphasizes high-risk investment, moves from fundamental technological advances to prototyping, and then hands off the system development and production to the military services or the commercial sector.
• Mix of connected collaborators: DARPA typically builds strong teams and networks of collaborators, bringing in a range of technical expertise and applicable disciplines, and involving university researchers and technology firms that are often not significant defense contractors or beltway consultants.

Current program offices[link]

DARPA has six program offices, all of which report to the DARPA director.

• The Adaptive Execution Office (AEO) is one of two new DARPA offices created in 2009 by the previous DARPA Director, Regina Dugan. Four thrust areas that have been identified, but not verified in DARPA publications: technology transition, assessment, rapid productivity and adaptive systems. On the DARPA website the AEO mission is defined as follows:

Conceive and execute novel technology and system developments that are adaptive both in end function and in the process by which they are developed. Improve the transition worthiness of DARPA programs across the enterprise.^[14]

• The Defense Sciences Office (DSO) vigorously pursues the most promising technologies within a broad spectrum of the science and engineering research communities and develops those technologies into important, radically new military capabilities.^[15]

• The Information Innovation Office (I2O) aims to ensure U.S. technological superiority in all areas where information can provide a decisive military advantage.

• The Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) mission focuses on the heterogeneous microchip-scale integration of electronics, photonics, and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Their high risk/high payoff technology is aimed at solving the national level problems of protection from biological, chemical and information attack and to provide operational dominance for mobile distributed command and control, combined manned/unmanned warfare, and dynamic, adaptive military planning and execution.

• The Strategic Technology Office (STO) mission is to focus on technologies that have a global theater-wide impact and that involve multiple Services.^[14]

• The Tactical Technology Office (TTO) engages in high-risk, high-payoff advanced military research, emphasizing the "system" and "subsystem" approach to the development of aeronautic, space, and land systems as well as embedded processors and control systems. This research includes an effort within the TTO to develop a small satellite launch vehicle.^[16] This vehicle is under development by AirLaunch LLC.^[17] This is part of the Force Application and Launch from Continental United States (FALCON) effort.

Former offices[link]

• Information Awareness Office - 2002-2003
• The Advanced Technology Office (ATO) researched, demonstrated, and developed high payoff projects in maritime, communications, special operations, command and control, and information assurance and survivability mission areas.
• The Special Projects Office (SPO) researched, developed, demonstrated, and transitioned technologies focused on addressing present and emerging national challenges. SPO investments ranged from the development of enabling technologies to the demonstration of large prototype systems. SPO developed technologies to counter the emerging threat of underground facilities used for purposes ranging from command-and-control, to weapons storage and staging, to the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. SPO developed significantly more cost-effective ways to counter proliferated, inexpensive cruise missiles, UAVs, and other platforms used for weapon delivery, jamming, and surveillance. SPO invested in novel space technologies across the spectrum of space control applications including rapid access, space situational awareness, counterspace, and persistent tactical grade sensing approaches including extremely large space apertures and structures.
• The Information Systems Office (ISO) in the 1990s developed system applications of advanced information technologies. It was a predecessor to the Information Exploitation Office.

A 1991 reorganization created several offices which existed throughout the early 1990s^[18]:

• The Electronic Systems Technology Office combined areas of the Defense Sciences Office and the Defense Manufacturing Office. This new office will focus on the boundary between general-purpose computers and the physical world, such as sensors, displays and the first few layers of specialized signal-processing that couple these modules to standard computer interfaces."
• The Computing Systems Technology Office combined functions of the old Information Sciences and Tactical Technology office. The office "will work scalable parallel and distributed heterogeneous computing systems technologies," DoD said.
• The Software and Intelligent Systems Technology Office and the Computing Systems office will have responsibility associated with the Presidential High-Performance Computing Initiative. The Software office will also be responsible for "software systems technology, machine intelligence and software engineering."
• The Land Systems Office was created to develop advanced land vehicle and anti-armor systems, once the domain of the Tactical Technology Office
• The Undersea Warfare Office combined areas of the Advanced Vehicle Systems and Tactical Technology offices to develop and demonstrate submarine stealth and counterstealth and automation.

Reorganization in 2010 merged two offices:

• The Transformational Convergence Technology Office (TCTO) mission was to advance new crosscutting capabilities derived from a broad range of emerging technological and social trends, particularly in areas related to computing and computing-reliant subareas of the life sciences, social sciences, manufacturing, and commerce. The TCTO was folded into the I2O in 2010.^[14]
• The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) focused on inventing the networking, computing, and software technologies vital to ensuring DOD military superiority. The IPTO was combined with TCTO in 2010 to form the I2O.

Projects[link]

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this article if you can; the talk page may contain suggestions. (April 2012)

Active projects[link]

• ACTUV - A project to build an unmanned Anti-submarine warfare vessel.
• Adaptive Vehicle Make - Revolutionary approaches to the design, verification, and manufacturing of complex defense systems and vehicles.
• ArcLight (missile) - Ship based weapon system that is capable of striking targets nearly anywhere on the globe. It is based on the Standard Missile 3.
• Battlefield Illusion^[19]
• BigDog - a legged robot protoytpe, "gallops" 18 mph and has completed more rigorous field tests.[1]
• Boeing X-37
• Integrated Sensor is Structure
• Boomerang (mobile shooter detection system) - an acoustic Gunshot Location Detection System developed by BBN Technologies for detecting snipers on military combat vehicles.
• CALO or "Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes" - software
• Combat Zones That See - "track everything that moves" in a city by linking up a massive network of surveillance cameras
• DARPA XG - technology for Dynamic Spectrum Access for assured military communications
• EATR An autonomous tactical robotic system
• FALCON
• High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System
• High Productivity Computing Systems
• Human Universal Load Carrier battery-powered human exoskeleton
• MAHEM Molten penetrating munition
• MEMS Exchange MEMS Implementation Environment
• Mind's Eye - A visual intelligence system capable of detecting and analysing activity from video feeds.^[20]
• Persistent Close Air Support
• Protein Design Processes
• Proto 2 - a thought-controlled prosthetic arm
• Remote-controlled insects^[21]
• DARPA Silent Talk - A planned program attempting to identify EEG patterns for words and transmit these for covert communications.^[22]
• Satellite Remote Listening System - a satellite mounted system that can eavesdrop on a targeted area on the surface of the planet in coordination with satellite cameras. This project is in its infant stage.
• SyNAPSE - Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics
• System F6 - Fractionated Spacecraft demonstrator
• XOS - powered military exoskeleton
• Transformer - flying armoured car^[23]
• UAVForge^[24]
• Vulture
• WolfPack^[25]

Past Projects[link]

• Project AGILE
• ARPANET, the predecessor of the Internet
• Aspen Movie Map
• ASTOVL, precursor of the Joint Strike Fighter Program^[26]
• Boeing X-45
• CPOF - the command post of the future - networked information system for Command control.
• DAML
• DARPA Grand Challenge - driverless car competition
• DARPA Network Challenge^[27]
• DEFENDER
• High Performance Knowledge Bases
• HISSS
• Hypersonic Research Program
• I3 (Intelligent Integration of Information),^[28] supported the Digital Library research effort through NSF
• Internet
• Project MAC
• Luke Arm, a DEKA creation
• MOSIS
• MQ-1 Predator
• Multics
• NLS/Augment, the origin of the canonical contemporary computer user interface
• Northrop Grumman Switchblade - an unmanned oblique-wing flying aircraft for high speed, long range and long endurance flight
• Onion routing
• Passive radar
• Policy Analysis Market
• POSSE
• Rapid Knowledge Formation
• Sea Shadow
• DARPA Shredder Challenge 2011^[29] - Reconstruction of shredded documents
• Strategic Computing Program
• Synthetic Aperture Ladar for Tactical Applications (SALTI)
• SURAN (1983–87)
• Project Vela (1963)

Notable fiction[link]

ARPA/DARPA is well known as a high-tech government agency, and as such has many appearances in popular fiction. Some realistic references to ARPA in fiction are in Tom Swift and the Visitor from Planet X (DARPA consults on a technical threat),^[30] in episodes of television program The West Wing (the ARPA-DARPA distinction), the television program Numb3rs^[31] (DARPA research into creating the first self-aware computer), and in the motion picture Executive Decision (use of a one-of-a-kind experimental prototype in an emergency). It is also in the movie "Chain Reaction", starring Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman.

Other references often attribute to DARPA an operational or political role, in addition to its high-tech responsibilities. Examples are the Matthew Reilly books Temple and Hell Island, the James Rollins' books Sandstorm, Map of Bones, The Judas Strain, The Doomsday Key and Black Order, and the video game series Metal Gear Solid, as well as the video games Infamous, Vanquish and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction. DARPA also appears in three novels by Andy McDermott, The Search for Excalibur, The Covenant of Genesis and The Empire of Gold.

See also[link]

Military of the United States portal

• The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA is Remaking Our World (book)
• ARPA-E - a similar organization within the Department of Energy.
• DSTL - UK equivalent
• Defence Science and Technology Organisation - Australian Equivalent
• HSARPA - a similar organization within the Department of Homeland Security
• Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA)
• Defence Research and Development Canada - Similar organization in Canada
• People: Barry Boehm, Vint Cerf, Douglas Engelbart, Robert Fano, Anup K. Ghosh, James Hendler, Bob Kahn, JCR Licklider, John Poindexter, Larry Roberts, Robert Sproull, Ivan Sutherland, Bob Taylor, Gio Wiederhold.
• History of the Internet
• DARPA Grand Challenge - support for making autonomous land vehicles

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Castell, Manuel The Network Society: A Cross-cultural Perspective Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, Cheltenham UK 2004
• "The Men from Darpa" by John Sedgwick, Playboy magazine, August 1991

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

• DARPA Home Page
• Ongoing Research Programs

v t e The Department of Defense Headquarters: The Pentagon Secretary of Defense   OSD Deputy Secretary of Defense Deputy's Advisory Working Group Office of Net Assessment Special Access Program Oversight Committee Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Director, Defense Research and Engineering Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Missile Defense Agency Defense Contract Management Agency Defense Logistics Agency Defense Technical Information Center Defense Threat Reduction Agency Office of Economic Adjustment Defense Acquisition University Defense Acquisition Board Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Defense Security Cooperation Agency Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Defense Contract Audit Agency Defense Finance and Accounting Service Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Defense Commissary Agency Department of Defense Education Activity DoD Human Resources Activity Military Health System Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute Office of the Chancellor for Education and Professional Development Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Defense Intelligence Agency Defense Security Service Defense Information Systems Agency National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency National Reconnaissance Office National Security Agency Director of Administration and Management Pentagon Force Protection Agency Washington Headquarters Services   Military departments Department of the Army Secretary of the Army The Secretariat: Under Secretary of the Army Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology Assistant Secretary for Civil Works Assistant Secretary (Financial Management and Comptroller) Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs General Counsel of the Army The Administrative Assistant The Army Staff: Chief of Staff of the Army Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Sergeant Major of the Army Deputy Chief of Staff G-8 Chief of Chaplains Judge Advocate General Provost Marshal General Surgeon General U.S. Army Field Organizations: See Structure of the United States Army Department of the Navy Secretary of the Navy The Secretariat: Under Secretary of the Navy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Financial Management and Comptroller) Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Installations and Environment) Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Manpower and Reserve Affairs) Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Research, Development and Acquisitions) General Counsel of the Navy Judge Advocate General Naval Criminal Investigative Service Naval Inspector General Office of the Chief of Naval Operations: Chief of Naval Operations Vice Chief of Naval Operations Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy Director of Naval Reactors Chief of Chaplains Chief of Naval Personnel Surgeon General Headquarters Marine Corps: Commandant of the Marine Corps Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Chaplain U.S. Marine Corps Field Organizations: See Organization of the United States Marine Corps U.S. Navy Field Organizations: See Structure of the United States Navy Department of the Air Force Secretary of the Air Force The Secretariat: Under Secretary of the Air Force Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Acquisition) Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Financial Management & Comptroller) Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Installations, Environment & Logistics) Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Manpower & Reserve Affairs) General Counsel of the Air Force Air Force Office of Special Investigations The Air Staff: Chief of Staff of the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Chief of Chaplains Chief of Safety Chief Scientist Surgeon General U.S. Air Force Field Organizations: Major Commands Direct Reporting Units Field Operating Agencies   Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman Joint Requirements Oversight Council Director of the Joint Staff Joint Staff National Military Command Center Alternate National Military Command Center National Defense University   Combatant Commands Africa Command Central Command European Command Northern Command Pacific Command Southern Command Special Operations Command (Joint Special Operations Command) Strategic Command (Cyber Command) Transportation Command   National Guard Bureau Chief of the National Guard Bureau Air National Guard Army National Guard   Office of the Inspector General Defense Criminal Investigative Service

This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later.

This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. Discussion about the problems with the sole source used may be found on the talk page. (December 2011)

John Markoff
John Markoff
Born	John Markoff (1949-10-24) October 24, 1949 (age 62) Oakland, California
Occupation	Journalist

John Markoff (born October 24, 1949) is a journalist best known for his work at The New York Times, and a book and series of articles about the 1990s pursuit and capture of hacker Kevin Mitnick.

Biography[link]

Markoff was born in Oakland, California and grew up in Palo Alto, California. He graduated from Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington, with a BA in Sociology in 1971. Additionally he received a MA in sociology from the University of Oregon in 1976.^[1]

After leaving graduate school, he returned to California where he began writing for Pacific News Service, an alternative news syndicate based in San Francisco. He freelanced for a number of publications including The Nation, Mother Jones and Saturday Review. In 1981 he became part of the original staff of the computer industry weekly InfoWorld. In 1984 he became an editor at Byte Magazine and in 1985 he left to become a reporter in the business section of the San Francisco Examiner, where he wrote about Silicon Valley.

In 1988 he moved to New York to write for the business section of the New York Times. In November 1988 he reported that Robert Tappan Morris, son of National Security Agency cryptographer Robert Morris, was the author of what would become known as the Internet worm.

In December 1993 he wrote an early article about the World Wide Web, referring to it as a "map to the buried treasures of the Information Age."

Markoff and Kevin Mitnick[link]

This biographical section of an article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (March 2008)

On July 4, 1994 he wrote an article about Kevin Mitnick, who was then a fugitive on the run from a number of law enforcement agencies. He wrote several more pieces detailing Mitnick's capture. Markoff also co-wrote, with Tsutomu Shimomura, the book Takedown about the chase. The book later became a film that was released direct to video in the United States. Markoff's writing about Mitnick was the subject of criticism by Mitnick supporters and unaffiliated parties who maintained that Markoff's accounts exaggerated or even invented Mitnick's activities and successes. Markoff stood by his reporting in several responses.

The film went far further, with Markoff himself stating to the San Francisco Chronicle in 2000, "I thought it was a fundamentally dishonest movie." (Mitnick stated a number of times that he settled a lawsuit with distributors Miramax over the film, but details were confidential; Miramax has apparently never publicly confirmed that.)^{[citation needed]}

John Markoff at San Francisco New York Times bureau

Markoff was also accused by Jonathan Littman of journalistic impropriety and of over-hyping Mitnick's actual crimes. Littman published a more sympathetic account of Mitnick's time as a fugitive in his own book on the incident, The Fugitive Game. Further controversy came over the release of the movie Takedown, with Littman alleging that portions of the film were taken from his book The Fugitive Game without permission.

Markoff's involvement with Mitnick is thoroughly covered in the documentary Freedom Downtime, in which an interview is conducted with Markoff who is unable to elaborate on the veracity of Mitnick's charges.

Post-Mitnick[link]

After Mitnick, Markoff continued to write about technology, focusing at times on wireless networking, writing early stories about non-line-of-sight broadband wireless, phased-array antennas, and multiple-in, multiple-out (MIMO) antenna systems to enhance Wi-Fi. He covered Jim Gillogly's 1999 break of the first three sections of the CIA's Kryptos cipher [1], and writes regularly about semiconductors and supercomputers as well. He wrote the first two articles describing Admiral John Poindexter's return to government and the creation of the Total Information Awareness project. In 2009 he moved from the Business/Tech section of the New York Times to the Science section.

Bibliography[link]

• The High Cost of High Tech (with Lennie Siegel) (1985) ISBN 0-06-039045-X
• Hafner, Katie; Markoff, John (1991). Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-68322-5. 
• Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw (with Tsutomu Shimomura) (1995) ISBN 0-7868-6210-6
• What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (2005) ISBN 0-670-03382-0
• A robot network seeks to enlist your computer

See also[link]

• Interview with John Markoff about What the Dormouse Said, April 13, 2006 (audio)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John Markoff

• Recent and archival news by John Markoff of The New York Times.
• John Markoff radio interview on Tech Nation
• TED Talks: John Markoff on newspapers at TED in 2007