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Latest Read: The Imagineers of War

The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World by Sharon Weinberger. Sharon has written for Wired, Slate, the Financial Times and the Washington Post Magazine. Furthermore, Sharon is the former editor-in-chief of Defense Technology International. Today Sharon is an executive editor at Foreign Policy.

The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World by Sharon Weinberger

Obviously the simply amazing stories within The Pentagon’s Brain (my review) inspired me to read Sharon’s book. The Imagineers of War is a very worthy reading experience all by itself.

Unquestionably both books combine for an amazing one-two punch of DARPA history. The most astounding impact of DARPA technology? Many weapons developed for Vietnam are today a cornerstone of US troop technology in Afghanistan: precision weapons, drones, robots, and networked computing.

The first half of The Imagineers of War reveals the very large, looming role of William Godel. He certainly casts a long shadow across DARPA’s early history. However only Sharon can address Godel’s departure and later accusations that may have crippled DARPA.

For the most part, Sharon provides a deep dive into the lives of key players at DARPA. Godel is certainly no exception. Severely injured fighting as a Marine in World War II, he began working as a spy in 1949. Besides Godel’s assignment, he was recruiting former German scientists held in Soviet-controlled East Berlin. Godel is unquestionably acknowledged by American military leaders as an emerging key resource along with Edward Lansdale and William Colby.

Part One:

The opening chapters address the bombing of Nagasaki to post World War II goals. One focus was securing Germany’s key physicists including Wernher von Braun from the Soviets. The role of von Braun’s departure is quite amazing. His team was working at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville Alabama. This team would design Jupiter-C missiles. Then Sputnik changed everything.

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Education Innovation Network Reading Technology Vietnam War

Latest Read: The Pentagon’s Brain

The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top-Secret Military Research Agency by Annie Jacobsen. Her narrative is certainly compelling, describing the historical launch of ARPA. The name of the organization first changed from its founding name to DARPA in March 1972. Yet it was changing back to ARPA in 1993, only to be reverted back in March 1996.

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

This book is addressing five categories of time: Cold War, Vietnam War, Operations other than war, War on Terror, and Future War. Researching newly de-classified materials make Annie’s book difficult to put down.

Cold war events beginning with Sputnik led to the formation of ARPA. Without over exaggerating, this group would be changing the world. There are so many brilliant physicists, scientists, and mathematicians, this book is literally a Who’s Who of brilliant minds called upon to drive the Pentagon’s mission.

Annie is a master storyteller. She clearly reveals Eisenhower’s administration was ill prepared for post war technology challenges.

Cold war hysteria in the State Department was certainly ripe after China fell to Mao in 1949. France would be defeated by an Asian guerrilla force in 1954. Certainly Sputnik only added to that hysteria in 1957.

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Design Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: The Art of Gathering

The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker. In the year of COVID why would anyone consider reading a book about gathering? Admittedly it crossed my mind when I received notification from my library. On the contrary this book taught me how to make gatherings a great memorable experience.

The Art of Gathering

Priya is a professional meeting facilitator and certainly has been accumulating a deep understanding how creating meaningful gatherings creates an amazing impact. Yet this is an area we have been overlooking since office meetings began with Powerpoints.

Subsequently I never realized how much we have all lacked advice for making others feel comfortable, engaged, and authentic in social and business gatherings.

As you can see, one may view this book as simply focusing on gatherings. Yet Priya is delivering a solid book on leadership.

Constructing meaningful gatherings is revealed to be a core leadership skill. Priya shares meaningful examples she has facilitated. For all those reasons she breaks down the “how and why” gatherings can work so well.

Decide Why You’re Really Gathering

Her journey to create memorable events begins with a simple challenge. For this purpose many of us are unaware of what is actually required to fully commit to gatherings.

For business meetings this is why defining a clear purpose and an agenda is critical. This includes prepping your guests prior to the event, and establishing meeting rituals from start to finish.

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Mindset

Mindset – Changing The Way You think To Fulfill Your Potential by Carol Dweck. Carol is Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Her study of human motivation is researching why people succeed or do not, and how individuals can understand how to foster success.

Mindset - Changing The Way You think To Fulfill Your Potential by Carol Dweck

Hence Carol’s popular research regards two mindsets, and the difference they make in outcomes is incredibly powerful. In addition, by learning where an individual’s view on ability are sourced, you can change their reaction to failure.

Her growth versus fixed mindset is the core of the book and has won her much acclaim. For this reason, there is almost no audience that should pass on reading her book.

Accordingly, anyone can appreciate that middle school children can benefit the most and become a sponge for knowledge. Consequently in the age of COVID, resilience is a key lesson for the need for a growth mindset in an almost daily changing environment.

Dweck’s research reveals why one’s raw talent and abilities do not define success, however approaching them with a growth mindset will prove success in the long run. This is also effective for any parent’s goals, personal or professional.

Carol reveals what great parents, teachers, CEOs, and athletes already know: how a simple idea about the brain can create a love of learning and a resilience that is the basis of great accomplishment in every area.

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: The Man Who Solved the Market

The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman. This book is an easy ‘book of the year’ recommendation. The storyline is a mathematical whizkid recruiting talented mathematicians and scientists in building a successful investment firm.

The Man Who Solved The Market

Simons went to MIT in 1958, obtaining a mathematics Bachelors, then a PhD at UC Berkeley also in mathematics PhD at the age of 23. During the cold war Simons began working for the NSA in 1968 breaking Soviet encryption. Simons won the Oswald Weblen Prize in Geometry in 1976. Likewise he later became chair the Math department at SUNY at Stony Brook from 1968 to 1978. He began developing a talent for recruiting high performing, well respected mathematicians away from Ivy League schools.

Simons is widely recognized for establishing pattern recognition, development of string theory, and developed the Chern–Simons form. His efforts combining geometry and topology with quantum field theory has paid off handsomely. At the same time, Gregory serves four keys lessons for anyone striving to achieve success.

Lesson #1: Believe in yourself

Yet to the surprise of many, Jim left academia in 1978 to launch his investment firm. Here is where James shines: establishing a firm by believing in yourself. Chiefly hiring noted mathematicians James Ax, Sandor Strauss, Leonard Baum, Elwyn Berlekamp, Robert Mercer, and noted programmer David Magerman to join him was the bedrock of his firm. Gregory writes about the upbringing of key players in the book to provide just enough insight to what makes mathematicians and scientists tick.

Simons understood that bringing very intelligent people to his company would continue to build a foundation for success. Even Jim’s competition would shortly change markets:

One programmer, Jeffrey Bezos, worked with Shaw a few more years before piling his belongings into a moving van and driving to Seattle, his then-wife MacKenzie behind the wheel.

Page 124

The Man Who Solved the Market is an excellent book which reinforces the notion to surround yourself with smart people. Along this path, his company dealt with his own bad behaviors while also managing the motivations and decisions of those he hired. From time to time, these talented teams caused friction. Name an organization that is immune from this.

Lesson #2: True success is not an overnight gimmick

Although society expects little today by the way of grit and success must be immediate. On the contrary, Simons and his team created, tested, and then re-created models over a twenty year span.

Furthermore, Simons understood historical financial big data would better tune their prediction models. The longer tail provided the math quants a tested, fine tuned approach in establishing new success whose by-product was large sums of money.

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