It looks like while the U.S. Defense Department got $2 billion lopped off its R&D budget for next, Darpa is looking good as the White House sees it as putting technological innovation as a key to America’s economic recovery.
“I wasn’t in on the end game negotiations, but I did advocate for preserving R&D/S&T department/government wide in a economic down turn,” says Gen. James Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who now chairs the defense policy studies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The reasoning being we will need all the competitive advantage we can muster. The Administration was on board with this and fairly explicit in their support of labs and innovation organizations, the best of which they [the Administration] believe is Darpa.”
–Wired