Fergie's Tech Blog

DoD selects three teams to develop the mother of all decoder rings

Via Red Herring.

With the aim of tackling one of the biggest obstacles in its fight against terrorists, the Pentagon’s weird science department has selected three teams to develop a decoding machine that can monitor chatter in many languages and translate any information relevant to U.S. spies into English.

The U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will award IBM, SRI, and BBN an estimated sum of nearly $50 million over two years to develop the equipment for use on the battlefield and elsewhere.

A DARPA spokeswoman declined to confirm that the three companies had been awarded the contracts, or the final amount of the award.

Meanwhile, experts describe the project as the most ambitious undertaking in the history of human language technology.

posted by Fergie @ 8/02/2005 02:52:00 PM