PLAYING DARPA ON THE OCEANS’ FLOORS

(Nota Bene: Over the next three weeks, due to some circumstances beyond my control, and in order to help him and his son Benny out, I will be super busy, and thus am scheduling three weeks' worth of blogs, rather than my normal two, so please bear this in mind if the blogs appear somewhat "dated" when they are actually posted.)

There has been such a spate of technological and geopolitical news in the last few weeks, that I hardly know how to begin this next cycle of blogs. Indeed, as I detailed in last Thursday's (August 17, 2013) News and Views from the Nefarium, there seems to be an odd move afoot in the various media outlet organs of the Nefarium to prepare the world in general and western civilization in particular for the sweeping social and cultural changes that will occur with the introduction of new technologies like quantum computing and 3d printing. Chief among these changes, as I have attempted to argue, will be our attitude toward the coming commercialization of deep space, as projects such as asteroid mining eventually become realities.

There is a story that I've been following quietly, but have not yet blogged about, but now it seems a prudent time to do so, as the story has taken a significant step toward becoming a reality.  It seems that the DARPAcrats are at it again. Now, for those who might be new here or unfamiliar with the agency, DARPA stands for the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency, the Pentagram's very own high-octane think tank brainstorming all sorts of advanced research projects and technologies to maintain the USA's military-technological edge. It is, of course, one of many such agencies and corporations within the sprawling Venetio-American "military industrial intelligence finance" complex. Among others we could include the JASON group, the MITRE corporation, and a host of others. We may think of DARPA as a kind of "coordination" agency, though many other agencies and corporations fill this bill too. Here at gizadeathstar.com, following a suggestion of one of our regular readers and members, Mr. J.B., we like to call DARPA the Diabolically Apocalyptic Research Projects Agency.

And with this story, shared with us by yet another regular reader here, Ms. P.H., we have more grist for the mill, both technologically and geopolitically, for there are two other last great frontiers besides deep space, the second being the human mind and consciousness, and the third being the world's oceans. It is with the last of these three great frontiers that we are concerned today, for now DARPA has awarded a contract to develop a technology to deploy drones on the oceans' floors:

Sparton Secures DARPA Contract for UFP Program

For our purposes the crucial paragraphs are these:

"Sparton Corporation was awarded a Phase 1 contract for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Upward Falling Payload (UFP) program. Sparton, under the UFP program, will design a system intended to live on the sea floor and release payloads. This enablement would represent a game changing capability for mission commanders. Sparton will leverage their 60 year legacy of developing and delivering solutions for the Undersea Warfare (USW) and Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) domains to develop a Universal Payload Delivery System module for the UFP program."

Consider all the vast implications of the development of a technology deployed on the oceans' floors, at depths that would perhaps crush ordinary technologies. Granted, the article nowhere is suggesting such technological capabilities deployable, say, in the blackened gloom and depths of the Atlantic trench. More realistically, such technologies for the moment are more likely envisioned at shallower depths or continental shelves.

But when DARPA is involved, one must think not only outside the box, but far beyond the limits of known capabilities, and thus, to my mind, the goal is precisely to develop the technological expertise to make and maintain "great depth" installations on the oceans' floors, to any conceivable depth.

And this, whether we like it or not folks, eventually will imply a militarization of the oceans and their vast inherent resources.

In short, we are looking at the second pillar in the massive realignment of the economic basis behind all the vast and hidden system of finance that was set into place by the Anglosphere following the Truman administration's decision to make all the Axis loot part of a top secret hidden system of finance: a slush fund precisely for covert operations and, more importantly, covert research. To put it succinctly, not only was space covertly collateralized, so were the oceans' floors.

But you'll also notice something else, something equally profound, and this is the total unilateralism of the step. Notice is being served by the Anglosphere that they intend to claim the oceans (the second implication of their collateralization). This will profoundly affect international law and geopolitics, so watch for new conventions and new treaties and explorations of old loopholes in the existing international conventions...

...and as always, look for pushback from the BRICSA nations, because, you'll recall, Brazil already announced similar steps, and we did blog about that here. In retrospect, it was BRICSA quietly serving notice that a new geopolitical game is in the making. Forget about the Middle East, folks, the next big long term geopolitical struggle will be the oceans. Call it "oceano-politics" or "oceano-geopolitics."

Ultimately, of course, such technologies eventually make their way into the public domain, as we have seen with 3d printing, with radar stealth, and so on. Here, the long term implication is a growing human presence on the ocean floors, and as technological expertise increases, a presence at ever greater depths.  And that technology, make no mistake, will also have profound implications for space exploration of all those moons of the gas giants, that appear to have sub-terranean or sub-ice oceans in them...

See you on the flip side.