DARPA

DARPA is an acronym for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency. It is also referred to as ARPA or the Advanced Research Project Agency

DARPA is the central research and development organization for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD)). It manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DoD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions.

As noted in American Civil Liberties Union v. Reno:

“The Internet had its origins in 1969 as an experimental project of the Advanced Research Project Agency (‘ARPA’), and was called ARPANET. This network linked computers and computer networks owned by the military, defense contractors, and university laboratories conducting defense-related research. The network later allowed researchers across the country to access directly and to use extremely powerful supercomputers located at a few key universities and laboratories. As it evolved far beyond its research origins in the United States to encompass universities, corporations, and people around the world, the ARPANET came to be called the ‘DARPA Internet,’ and finally just the ‘Internet.’”