DARPA is an R&D agency under the DoD. Even if you work on their classified projects, it's going to be under the umbrella of the DoD. There are specific R&D agencies for the Intel community (see IARPA).
Some constructive criticism: it's better to just admit when you made a false statement than to double down on being wrong.
that's misdirection and bureaucratic hair splitting. surely if I'm not being precise about the roles of sub-agencies, this blob of code is trustworthy. on the inside, they're different agencies, but on the outside, it is absolutely not.
if you're doing cleared work you have obligations and spooks are spooks. Not only is it government, but it is part of DoD. DARPA isn't creating anti-state anarchist communications platforms in spite of the rest of law enforcement and the IC, and if they are, you'd be insane to trust them with your black market or terrorist operation, which is the only meaningful use case for measuring the integrity of an encrypted anonymous platform like the one being proposed.
the extremist example use case means that authorities are forced to use some legal method other than mass or passive interception to exploit it for evidence or to disrupt a plot. pretty sure DARPA isn't arming enemies like that, and if they are, they can provide something security pros can reason about instead of something for naive developers to play with.
I don't do gov work anymore if I can afford to. I'm imagining the eco-terrorist meeting where they're introducing their new member and someone says, "don't worry, he's cool, he's from DARPA."
I'll reiterate that their product isn't going to work in any space if they don't learn how to write a security protocol and include it as the extraodinary evidence required for something like a secure anonymous communications. the way they can show good faith is by providing something objective. I even look forward to walking this comment thread back when they do.
Some constructive criticism: it's better to just admit when you made a false statement than to double down on being wrong.