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Comment by lispm | Hacker News Reader

how about investing LESS money into military research?

I'm all for it once you get someone to pay for the research before you spend less on military research. It's really great to want world peace and to be idealistic, but until you can offer real solutions to problems, you're just creating noise by making such comments. The Internet was started by DARPA funding. That's why we're here today.

So, AFTER you've convinced the American tax payer to directly fund this kind of research, or you create an X-Prize crowded funded site, I think we should be thankful that the military is willing to "invest in the future" rather than just build bullets and bombs, which have no positive side effects.

Having a military is a necessary evil in the world in which we live. Find ways to turn some of it into a positive force.

eg. http://www.npr.org/2012/02/17/147047543/desert-military-base...

The military spending has been long gone out of control. Funding of actually useful civilian projects lacks money. Instead DARPA invests into more weapons. We have already enough weapons.

Once again, "military bad" doesn't lead to any sort of useful discussion. Furthermore, complaining about it won't change anything. This is HN and I'd like to think people here solve problems rather they go off on political rants.

Consider that the US economy is $15 trillion. The US handbag market is bigger than DARPA's budget.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/handbags/leather_handbags/prwe...

How can we get more people to invest in science and engineering research? Hopefully, KickStarter and Petridish will eventualy lead to a boom in consumer funded science research.

http://www.petridish.org/

http://www.kickstarter.com/

Unfortunately, I think LESS money into military research -> LESS money into research altogether. DARPA research is also fairly broad in that its applications tend to span way beyond military-related functionalities.

The D of DARPA is for 'Defense'. It used to be ARPA, but the D was put in front to remind people that it is actually military research.

If you want non-military research, give it to other agencies instead: NSF, ...

Some perspective (that I learned at a "young faculty workshop" recently): DARPA funding is $3B, NSF is $7B, and NIH is $32B. I was surprised.

DARPA is also just one branch of military research agencies.

You're right. I could have been clearer. What I was trying to convey was that the work that goes into these DARPA challenges is still widely used in other areas too.

Hmmmmm, how about quadrupling DARPA's funds? They are miniscule compared to having a navy fleet that's larger than the rest of the world combined.

DARPA is a amazingly great idea, and a lot of their stuff makes their way to civilian applications. More DARPA, less 90,000 ton hardware.

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