The mission of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is to identify and create the next generation of scientific discovery to fuel innovation throughout the Agency and beyond. DSO serves as “DARPA’s DARPA” by developing and executing an aggressive and forward leaning portfolio that expands the art of the possible across a broad set of technical areas. DSO aims to create strategic surprise advantage for the DoD by pushing science towards its fundamental limits. We look to prevent technological surprise by understanding the path commercial R&D is taking, anticipating that our adversaries will exploit what’s available to develop new capabilities in the coming decades. In addition, the office looks for changes at the global scale and the impact they may have on our nation.