national drug control policy

 
Sharon Weinberger, The imagineers of war : the untold history of DARPA, the pentagon agency that changed the world, 2017

pp.290-291
p.290
White House of National Drug Control Policy in the mid-1990s funded DARPA's simulation experts to create a model of drug tafficking to see if there might be ways of cutting off the drug cartels in South America. 

p.291
“The big issue was and still is the movement of cocaine from Central and South America into the United States”, explained Dennis McBride, who was in charge of the effort.  He named the project after Iolaus, who in Greek mythology had helped Heracles battle Hydra.  The name ended up more appropriate than he had imagined. 

p.291
  “We built this incredible complex end-to-end model from seed planting down in South America through the changing to a product at a wholesale level, the transportation across myriad modes of transportation, ultimately into warehouses in the United States of America”, McBride said.  Yet the more DARPA modeled the problem, the worse it looked.  If one cartel was defeated, it ended up just strengthening another cartel.  Like the Greek Hydra, if you cut off one head, two more rose in its place.  DARPA came up with answers, but the answers did not fit what the White House wanted.  If the Drug Enforcement Administration put more aircraft in the air, it did not help, because the cartels still had more planes.  No matter which way DARPA modeled the drug war, it could not come up with a scenario that cut off the supply.  “We built this very big model. We played with it every way we could. We said, ‘Let's do this’, and ‘Let's do that’. At the end, this huge model would say here's the result and it was not good news.”

p.291
  The simulation showed the limits of technology to solve what was essentially a policy problem:  simulation was not going to teach anyone how to win the drug war, it could only demonstrate that it was unwinnable, and that was not a message the government wanted to hear.  The reaction was denial:  law enforcement would just have to try harder.  “I don't know if we're a hell of a lot better off that we now kind of understand the problem because we have the simulation”, McBride reflected. “It's like a massive wounds all over the body; blood is pouring out from everywhere. We can understand that, but there is nothing we can do about it.”

p.291
  The counter-drug simulation failed because technology hit up against the limits of policy. 

  (The imagineers of war : the untold story of DARPA, the Pentagon agency that changed the world / by Sharon Weinberger., New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2017, united states. defense advanced research projects agency──history. | military research──united states. | military art and science──technological innovations──united states. | science and state──united states. | national security──united states──history. | united states──defenses──history., U394.A75 W45 2016 (print) | U394.A75 (ebook) | 355/.040973, 2017, )
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