It's interesting to see that as of the time I'm writing this, half the top-level comments in this thread are being downvoted.

I am NOT writing in support of the current slash-and-burn approach to government, but I suspect that the downvoted half are addressing a significant deficiency in this article -- it doesn't mention what has been meaningfully accomplished by the Minerva Initiative in 17 years, given that the program had a fairly discrete set of objectives. Did they prevent any terrorist attacks? Did they forestall any destabilizing uprisings in significant countries? Did they develop a real and actionable understanding of radicalization or similar movements?

This is not to say that those accomplishments don't exist (I wouldn't know, I'd never heard of the program before), but it's extraordinarily lazy writing by a supposedly-premier science publication for these not to be identified and highlighted, if they exist.

Edit: clarity.