Universities Need Research Funding and the Government Needs an Overwhelming Intelligence Advantage

A few months ago, I had an interview for a job assisting in a research project on my campus. A professor at SU information sciences school had received part of an 11.5 million-dollar government grant for her response to a research initiative designed by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a research grant-funding arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The goal of the project is to develop a program that assists intelligence analysts in decision-making by identifying factors that could lead to biases in the decision-making process so that analysts can correct their biases or see them before they affect their conclusions.

I didn’t end up getting the job; the professor had to rethink some of the project and eliminated some of the positions they thought they needed.

This project is part of a growing trend of University professors (and universities as a whole) participating in military and intelligence research on a large scale. Read my illustrated essay, Normalizing Destruction, to learn more about this trend and how it is rhetorically justified.