Integration

For decades, U.S. national security was ensured in large part by a simple advantage: a near-monopoly on access to the most advanced technologies. Increasingly, however, off-the-shelf equipment developed for the transportation, construction, agricultural and other commercial sectors features highly sophisticated components, which resourceful adversaries can modify or combine to create novel and unanticipated security threats. To assess this growing security challenge and identify specific potential risks, a new DARPA effort will ask experts across multiple disciplines to look at today’s bustling tech marketplace with an inventor’s eye and imagine how easily purchased, relatively benign technologies might be converted into serious security threats.

For decades, U.S. national security was ensured, in part, by a simple advantage: a near-monopoly on access to the most advanced technologies. Increasingly, however, off-the-shelf equipment developed for the communication, transportation, construction, agriculture, and other commercial sectors features highly sophisticated components and systems, which resourceful adversaries might modify or combine to create novel and unanticipated threats to military operations.