UPDATE: When reached for comment by Gizmodo, DARPA provided the following statement clarifying that the program had not been named after the pedophile temple from True Detective. It reads:
Thank you for reaching out for clarification…The program manager is a fan of the notable civil war vet and author, Ambrose Bierce, and named the program after the short story, “An Inhabitant of Carcosa.”
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The Pentagon recently released its fiscal year 2025 budgetary estimates. Hidden in the document is a new classified program run by the DoD’s defense development agency, DARPA, that is destined to give the internet’s conspiracy theory community a collective heart attack. The name? “CARCOSA.”
TV buffs will recall that this is the name of an ancient temple featured in HBO’s prestige cop drama True Detective, the likes of which is used by a homicidal cabal of creeps to abuse and murder children. Interesting choice, guys!
Of course, by all accounts, DARPA’s “CARCOSA” is just a boring cybersecurity program that has nothing to do with ritualistic cabals in the backwoods of Louisiana. The program, which was originally spotted by The Intercept, is budgeted at $40 million and would use AI to help America’s cyber operators “minimize cognitive burden” while doing their jobs. In the budgeting documents, a sparse description reads:
The Carcosa program is developing and demonstrating cyber technologies for use by warfighters during tactical operations. Carcosa cyber technology aims to provide warfighters in the field with enhanced situational awareness of their immediate battlespace. Carcosa technologies are being integrated in prototype tools suitable for use by warfighters with a range of cyber knowledge and skills, including both cyber novices and advanced cyber practitioners.
It’s not totally clear what that means but it sounds boring. The Intercept has noted that CARCOSA will be used to support something called “Cyberspace and Electromagnetic Activities,” a field that involves administering “technical and tactical advice on all aspects of offensive and defensive cyberspace and electronic warfare operations” to military leaders.
It’s worth pointing out that True Detective writer Nic Pizzolatto took “Carcosa” and a number of other thematic and narrative elements from The King in Yellow, a book of short stories by Robert W. Chambers. Chambers, himself, appears to have taken “Carcosa” from a 19th-century short story by Ambrose Bierce. So, uh, hypothetically, DARPA’s codename progenitors could have been referencing one of those sources—hypothetically.
Gizmodo reached out to the Defense Department to ask what exactly it was thinking on this one. We will update this story if it responds.