Annie Jacobsen QUOTES

41 " Von Neumann saw great promise in a redesign of the ENIAC computer’s memory. He believed there was a way to turn the computer into an “electronic brain” capable of storing not just data and instructions, as was the case with ENIAC, but additional information that would allow the computer to perform a myriad of computational functions on its own. This was called a stored-program computer, and it “broke the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things,” writes von Neumann’s biographer George Dyson, adding, “Our universe would never be the same.” These “instructions” that von Neumann imagined were the prototype of what the world now knows as software. "

― Annie Jacobsen , The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

43 " We walk through another part of the building. While we wait for an elevator, Dr. Kenyon unfolds a dinner-size napkin and holds it up in the air in front of his forehead. “This is about the size of your brain, spread out,” he says. “The part that matters. The cerebral cortex.” The 100 billion neurons there are also known as the brain’s gray matter. “And the human brain does things beyond anyone’s comprehension. Evolution created the smartest machine in this world. "

― Annie Jacobsen , The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

45 " Building the bomb was the single most expensive engineering project in the history of the United States. It began in 1942, and by the time the bomb was tested, inside the White Sands Proving Ground in the New Mexico high desert on July 16, 1945, the bomb’s price tag, adjusted for inflation, was $28,000,000,000. The degree of secrecy maintained while building the bomb is almost inconceivable. "

― Annie Jacobsen , Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base

47 " Carl Sagan once stated, “It is suicidal to create a society dependent on science and technology in which hardly anybody knows anything about the science and technology "

― Annie Jacobsen , The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

49 " One of the CIA’s early programs sought to develop a truth serum, an age-old quest that touched upon ideas of magic potions and sorcerers’ spells. In consort with U.S. Army scientists at the Army Chemical Center in Edgewood, Maryland, this classified program was first called Bluebird, then Artichoke, and finally MKULTRA. "

― Annie Jacobsen , Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis

51 " DARPA funds questions, "

― Annie Jacobsen , The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

53 " Now McElroy was the U.S. secretary of defense. He took office with a clear vision. “I conceive the role of the Secretary of Defense to be that of captain of President Eisenhower’s defense team,” he said. His first job as captain was to counter the threat of any future Soviet scientific surprise. "

― Annie Jacobsen , The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

55 " War is the father of all things.” —Heraclitus "

― Annie Jacobsen , Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America

57 " Is the NSA mapping the human terrain in America in this same way? "

― Annie Jacobsen , The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency

59 " For the Pentagon, trying to fight a war in an urban center was like fighting blind. "

― Annie Jacobsen , The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency