Can you replicate DARPA in your country? | Bullaki Science Podcast Clips with Timothy Grayson (8/11)

Опубликовано: 07 Сентябрь 2026
на канале: BULLAKI

Some countries want to replicate the ‘high-risk, high-reward’ US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Here is what they need to do to succeed.

This is the 8th part of our conversation with Timothy Grayson. We’ll be releasing this podcast in episodes every one or two days. If you wish to access the full podcast immediately please join us on Patreon (  / bullaki  , otherwise subscribe and turn on the notification and you’ll know when the other episodes will be available.
As the director of the Strategic Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA), Timothy leads the office in development of breakthrough technologies to enable war fighters to field, operate, and adapt distributed, joint, multi-domain combat capabilities at continuous speed. He is also founder and president of Fortitude Mission Research LLC and spent several years as a senior intelligence officer with the CIA. Here he illustrates the concept of Mosaic Warfare, in which individual warfighting platforms, just like ceramic tiles in a mosaic, are placed together to make a larger picture. This philosophy can be applied to tackle a variety of human challenges including natural disasters, disruption of supply chains, climate change, pandemics, etc. He also discusses why super AI won’t represent an existential threat in the foreseeable future, but rather an opportunity for an effective division of labour between humans and machines (or human-machine symbiosis).

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The challenge is, it’s not going to be one for one, it’s not exactly cookie cutter. But it’s interesting to me. It’s less about budget and more about what do you want to get out of it. Are you willing to accept a couple of key attributes? So for example, this mission-centered focus that I mentioned, is a really big deal. Irrespective of how much top line budget you have, you need to have the notion of being able to be focused. I’ve seen a number of research organizations out there that do very good quality science, but it doesn’t have the same impact as a DARPA because it might be doled out in small, incoherent allotments or just working on the next logical step in evolutionary tech roadmap. Being focused on solving problems gives us a critical mass, regardless of an overall agency budget. To put it into perspective, one of our program managers might manage a few 10s of millions of dollars and in other research places I’ve seen they are managing maybe $100,000. It’s difficult to get a critical mass, I would say, with something like that. The new UK version, regardless of how much money you have, it’s more about getting the balance between the number of projects and the amount of money right.
Then there’s the execution models. There’s a model for how you hire people, and how you actually execute the work. One of the things I think is really important to note is that DARPA has zero full-time permanent technical employees, even to include myself, the agency director, and all the program managers. All of us have expiration dates. The typical tenure at DARPA is about four years. What we ended up doing is, because we’re very flat organizations, we talked about earlier, we recruit people who are already accomplished researchers who are mid-career, who can demonstrate to us they can think in this DARPA way. As my former boss, when I was a program manager liked to say, you know, “We bring them in, we squeeze all their good ideas out of them, then we toss them back out on the street”. It’s not like a great recruiting pitch, but it is sort of how it works. But the thing you get in exchange, first of all, I’d never heard of anyone leaving DARPA and being out on the street. But more importantly, it’s a place where there is enough resource and enough freedom that someone can come in with this great grand idea they’re trying to pursue, and they can’t get anyone else to listen. Here’s an environment where this is their chance now to go pursue their dreams. I think that’s the most important thing that any new organization trying to recreate the DARPA model they’ve got to get, that human [aspect].
It’s not about the pool of Nobel Prize winners or other accomplished PhDs; it’s finding that right cultural mindset, and then being willing to cycle people through. No matter how good someone is, they get stale or they get locked into a certain area of research.