PJ Vogt

Honestly, less a doc, more an ad for DARPA, the Pentagon's research arm.

DARPA's mission is to try to keep American technology one generation ahead of everybody else.

It doesn't always work, but DARPA has invented or funded a lot.

GPS and the M16, thoroughly internet, and the Predator drone.

In 2002, DARPA decided to pursue the driverless car in a very unusual way.

The director of DARPA at the time, a guy named Tony Tether, who had been a door-to-door salesman in his youth, definitely has that flair and that way of thinking, says, let's have a contest.

Let's see who can put all of these ingredients that we've developed together into a proper self-driving car.

His original idea is, we'll drive him down the Las Vegas Strip.

That's almost immediately next because it's insane.

Oh, right.

You would have to literally gridlock a huge American city so people could put robot cars on it.

Exactly.

So he says, okay, do you know what?

We'll do it in the desert.

We'll do it in the desert outside Las Vegas.

And anyone who wants to can make a team, build a self-driving car, bring it to the desert, and we'll race him.

The driver that DARPA wanted to replace was the American soldier.

DARPA wanted a vehicle that could drive itself down roads that might be filled with hidden explosive devices.

So in this moment, at the tail end of the dot-com boom, DARPA's trying to inspire tech to build something besides another website.

DARPA's Tony Tether announces that the prize for whoever can win its grand challenge will be $1 million.