Poindexter was introduced to Brian Sharkey, a program manager at DARPA who was interested in analyzing data to help predict political crises. Soon, Poindexter was working under contract to DARPA. Together, Sharkey and Poindexter in 1996 launched a DARPA-sponsored data-analysis program called Collaborative Crisis Understanding and Management, later changed to Genoa (because both were former naval officers, they liked the idea of naming the program after a sail).
