18SEP
2026
2026
VIRTUAL & ALLEGEDLY LIVE
Proposers Day: Biological Cloud Storage
Program staff will describe how to encode the federal tax code into DNA and determine whether E. coli understands it better than taxpayers.
TACTICAL LOGISTICS
Ordinary vacuums. Extraordinary paperwork.
Tactical Roomba Swarm for Contested Indoor Logistics
Explore today’s program⟶01 / 03
News
All News ➜L1
SEP 11, 2026
LARPA seeks proposals for detecting whether anyone read the terms of service
A new program will establish the first reproducible benchmark for informed consent on the internet.
L2
SEP 10, 2026
Tactical Roomba swarm clears critical shag-carpet milestone
Independent evaluators confirmed that seventeen of twenty units returned to base with dignity.
L3
SEP 09, 2026
Biological GPU program manager assures committee the neurons seem fine
Early results suggest wetware remains difficult to expense and surprisingly easy to offend.
Latest from LARPA
TODAY’S PROGRAM
Operation Dead Internet
Build a browser extension that estimates whether the page you’re reading was written by a human—without building a machine for confidently accusing high-school students.
Explore the program⟶62%estimated probability of useful discourse
VOICES FROM LARPA
The Office of Extremely Advanced Concepts
In this episode, Acting Undersecretary for Vibes Dr. Mina Bell explains why a 3.7% chance of success is still a 100% chance of a status meeting.
Listen to episode 01⟶“Failure is only wasteful when nobody writes down what happened.
— Mina Bell, acting undersecretary for vibes
Communities
Our program managers work closely with partners and stakeholders of all kinds. Together, we create technological surprise for the open internet.
LARPA newcomers
Start here if you possess curiosity but lack a contracting department.
Independent builders
Garages, hackerspaces, basements, spare bedrooms, and other national laboratories.
Small businesses
Organizations agile enough to buy a $4 component without a six-month source selection.
Academia
For researchers prepared to disclose that the experiment did not work.
Funders & operators
Put small amounts of money behind specific, falsifiable outcomes.
Professional weirdos
No institutional affiliation required. Unreasonable specificity preferred.
Technical Offices
Our six technical offices turn dubious premises into testable programs, open tasks, and unusually small invoices.
Biological Oddities Office
Applies living systems to problems that were already complicated enough.
View office ➜Artificial Intelligence & Bureaucracy
Automates paperwork until the paperwork becomes sentient.
View office ➜Dubious Sciences Office
Finds the useful experiment hiding inside the terrible premise.
View office ➜Internet Information Operations
Studies the network, its people, and whatever the bots are doing now.
View office ➜Terrible Technology Office
Builds hardware nobody ordered for conditions nobody anticipated.
View office ➜Things Nobody Asked For
Program information available on a strict need-to-regret basis.
View office ➜OPEN SOLICITATION // LARPA-PS-26-09
Build the cheapest possible Raman spectrometer.
$2,500 fixed-price bounty. Resolution sufficient to identify acetaminophen from ibuprofen. Housing may be ugly. Documentation may not.
WORK AT LARPADo consequential work.
Do consequential work.
Use inconsequential titles.
LARPA pursues transformational change rather than incremental advances. It does so with researchers, engineers, builders, funders, critics, and people banned from naming meetings.