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Ari Melenciano

In the 1960’s, the U.S. was in the middle of the Vietnam War. Traditional physical weaponry warfare was proving to be unsuccessful with the challenges faced through drastic cultural differences between the Vietnamese and the US. So the U.S. embarked on a counter insurgency and domestic research project, known as ARPA, deeply investing in the behavioral and social sciences — creating a more efficient warfare. “The idea was to understand the enemy, to know their hopes, their fears, their dreams, their social networks and their relationships to power.” [1] But