Elite DARPA cyber heroes will protect interwebs … DARPA is upping its cyber game in order to protect the internet it came up with, increasing its research budget from $120m (£74.6m) to $188m (£117m) for the fiscal year 2012. "DARPA's role in the creation of the internet means we were party to the intense opportunities it created and share in the intense responsibility of protecting it. Our responsibility is to acknowledge and prepare to protect the Nation in this new environment," Regina E Dugan, DARPA director, said in a canned statement. "We need more and better options. We will not prevail by throwing bodies or buildings at the challenges of cyberspace. Our assessment argues that we are capability limited, both offensively and defensively. We need to fix that." – The Register

Dominant Social Theme: DARPA to the rescue of the Internet. Government on the march … and aren't we grateful!

Free-Market Analysis: We can see from the above excerpted article that the Darth Vader of US Intel/technology agencies is on the march again. DARPA – Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Collectively, it will now shove its big, black helmet in the path of Internet "hackers" and make the 'Net once again safe for the "American Way."

This means expanded budgets if they have their "druthers!" Very important. It also means, no doubt, an overhaul of the Internet – what DARPA controls of it – and far more intrusive government surveillance (e.g., the Nano Hummingbird to "provide reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities in urban environments," left). All to fight the relatively non-existent threat to "Internet security."

According to government types, the Internet now is only frequented by a few miserable people on a regular basis. There are "pedophiles" on the troll for little girls and boys. There are Jihadists with big beards and exceptional technological skills. There are Julian Assange-type hackers who are young and redeemable. Finally, there are the ChiComs, busily plotting the unraveling of Western technology.

That's generally it! The rest of the denizens of the 'Net are neither important nor numerous. The threats abound, though! DARPA has decided to confront them. One positive side effect, from the point of view of DARPA-types: They get to perpetuate the meme that DARPA "invented" the Internet.

In fact, "government invented the Internet" is a power elite subdominant social theme of sorts. This is the way government/military-industrial propagandists always operate. NASA basically invented the modern age, including Tang; the Pentagon invented America's "can do" spirit; the President "creates" jobs; Congress creates prosperity by passing laws.

What did DARPA actually do? Long ago, its technologists decided that they needed a communication device to link America's military-industrial complex together so as to be able to build more efficient weapons of mass destruction. This duly took place and the Pentagon like a malevolent Queen Bee sat in the middle of the entrenched nervous system of worker-bee universities, specialized libraries and think tanks all plotting new ways to kill people.

But then, as we have related many times before, the "two Steves" came along in the 1970s and, working in a garage, helped invent and popularize the personal PC. Many, many years later, Bill Gates woke up and wrote his famous memo saying the Internet was indeed a Serious Thing.

That's because, unbeknownst to DARPA, their weaponized network had been overtaken by the Hayekian Spontaneous Organization of the free market. Millions had connected to DARPA's tiny network of putative mass destruction and turned it into something else entirely. The Age of the Internet Reformation had begun.

Today, we see the results. All around the world, people are waking up to Directed History and rubbing their eyes like old Rip van Winkle. They realize they've been living in a Matrix, and the Internet is, as well, (to mix metaphors) a red pill that is helping them understand what's really going on.

But not if DARPA has its way. No doubt the mavens at DARPA have in mind retaking control of the 'Net as best they can under this plan to create better security for a technology that needs no more help from the government than it already gets.

There is nothing that government can do that private security cannot do better. DARPA intends to CONTRACT OUT what it claims is necessary to accomplish. The solutions will come from the private sector as always and then DARPA-types will claim credit for the ultimate impetus, as they claim credit for the Internet.

The Register is the one of the world's biggest online tech publications, we learn from its website, with 1.5 million readers each month. You would think its writers would do a little research in order to stop perpetuating the lie that DARPA "invented" the Internet.

DARPA techs did not. They created a tiny functionality designed to stitch together people who were mulling over new ways to kill people. All the good stuff, in our humble opinion, came later. That's how it always is. Here's some more from the article:

Dugan was speaking at DARPA's Colloquium on Future Directions in Cyber Security, where the agency also announced an elite cyber team of experts to combat online threats. The cyber-defence crack team come from the white hat hacker community, academia, labs and non-profits, major companies, and of course, the defence and intelligence communities.

"I should emphasise that national policymakers, not DARPA, will determine how cyber capabilities will be employed to protect and defend the national security interests of the United States," Dugan said. "But the Agency has a special responsibility to explore the outer bounds of such capabilities so that our Nation is well prepared for future challenges."

Edited on date of posting.

A little prayer … "May the Good Lord help us and keep us – and the world – safe from the 'protection' that DARPA and its 'white hats' intend to provide …"