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The Dangers of Nanotech
Krees writes "Small Times talked with the Foresight Institute's Christine Peterson, Ralph Merkle of Zyvex, and Ray McLaughlin of Carbon Nanotechnologies about the potential of nanotechnology, which has benefited greatly from open source research methods, and nanotech weapons in particular falling into the wrong hands. Recent recognition of potential abuses will likely lead to incrased secrecy in nanotech research." This topic comes up every so often - what happens when nanotech falls into the wrong hands? I think that's a "when", not an "if", as that happens with almost everything.
While Human nature is one thing, I think the past 60 years...maybe 100 years have started to show a shift from using "ultimate weapons" whenever you have them, to only using them once in a while.
Chemical Weapons - Used in mass during the First World War, then used against civilian prisoners during the Second World War. Mass produced by members of NATO and WP during the Cold War, but not used that much except by Third World nations since the Second World War.
Nuclear Weapons - Used only twice by the United States during combat, even though the US had them for 56 years at this point. Never used in combat by any of the other nations to have them (USSR/Russia, South Africa, Israel, India, Pakistan, France, UK, China).
Biological Weapons - Not used in combat by any nation-states that we know of in the Modern era. (Simple biological agents have been used for centuries, but nothing like the modern biological weapons have been used).
I think that the West would not use/abuse nanotechnology unless someone else moved first. For an example...only three time since the Second World War have US political leaders or Congressmen spoke about using a nuclear device until a few weeks ago. Those times were the Chinese attack against the UN in '50, the Siege of Khe Sahn/Siege of Hue and a proposal in '81 for the US to fire a "warning shot" high above the Inter-German border.
Mankind is getting better, slowly but surely.
I thought the point that Americans are meant to be noticing is that it is low-tech which is a real danger, not high-tech. Osama bin Laden took out the WTC with fanatics, box-cutters and commercial airliners, not cruise missiles or stealth operations, or even a bomb.
Assuming the anthrax is even down to him (which is far from certain), it is not being distributed with cluster bombs, overhead sprays or even by infecting the water supply. It is simply put in some powder in the mail.
The point is, high-tech can be defended against. Computer systems can be secured, fighter jets can be shot down and bombs can be defused. The real danger occurs when something that is taken for granted, something that is very low-tech and forms a basic part of society, is used for ill means.
No doubt that nanotechnology could be used for war purposes. But I consider it far more likely that a Western power would do this than Osama bin Laden.
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
If all the science was open, then everyone could have an understanding of all the risks and work together to prevent anything terrible happening. If governemnts/scientists/corporations try to keep it secret, they can't. With the Internet and fast transfer of information, any small leak will be immediately available to the world.
Instead of putting the effort into protection, put it into prevention.
It is unrealistic to prevent information to be hidden in our modern would, instead we need to control how it can be used and by who.
I can't think of anything more rediculous. First of all, how are you going to build a self-replicating machine? The obstacles are so large as to be practically insurmountable. Consider that we've never even come close to building a machine that can make duplicates of itself in the macro-sized world, even using pre-machined parts, and then think how complex it would be to make a microscopic machine that could replicate. First of all, data storage would be a problem. The machine would have to have incredibly advanced molecular-level storage technology, and incredibly advanced tiny molecular storage reading technology to read the information. Then it would have to have a computer to process this information, and very sophisticated sensors to tell where it was, and some sort of locomotion device that worked in three dimensions somehow, and some sort of advanced grabbing arm to move stuff with. Just the grabbing arm itself would be an achievement. How do you expect this machine to grab atoms? With other atoms? It would be a clumsy arm that was built with the things it was supposed to move! Plus, the arm would have to build itself as part of the replicating process, so it couldn't include any components that would be too small for it to build itself.
And the final requirement: Power. Where is this machine going to be powered from? It's going to have to have a lot of power in order to grab atoms, since it will have to break atomic bonds to move the atoms around. It must be a steady, reliable source of power, one that is available everywhere in the world if it is going to turn the whole world into gray goo. Sunlight you say? What is going to collect the sunlight? Solar panels? These solar panels would need to be made of certain atoms which wouldn't be available everywhere. How would the machines replicate if they couldn't find the correct elements to build their solar panels? Remember that these are tiny machines that can only roam tiny distances, they can't go out searching for the elements they need.
One must only look at nature to see what can be accomplished in terms of molecular-sized self-replicating machines. Cells are masterpieces of design, with ingenious mechanisms that are still out of our realm of understanding in some cases, and certainly way out of our ability to design and create on our own. And yet algae is in no danger of turning the whole world into "green goo." It only survives under certain conditions. I don't think man will be able to out-design nature for the forseeable future.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Are we reading the same article? The one Bill Joy admits was inspired by the Unabomber manifesto?
As it stands today, humanity will only be around for a limited time. In the best case, we'll be around until the sun expands and swallows the Earth. More likely, a stray asteroid will finish us off first. Even if we decide to abandon technology, humanity will cease to exist one day.
So, do we want to make the most of the time we have, or not? We won't do ourselves any favors by becoming Luddites. We can only maximize human potential by the continuing to advance science and technology. That's the only chance we have for long-term survival as a species; and it will make the lives of individuals a fuck of a lot more pleasant along the way.
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
First of all, how are you going to build a self-replicating machine? The obstacles are so large as to be practically insurmountable
Yeah, men will probably walk on the Moon before we build such things!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
First of all, how are you going to build a self-replicating machine? The obstacles are so large as to be practically insurmountable.
It's easy to demonstrate that it's possible and to put an upper bound on the complexity of a replicater by looking for existing examples. Bacteria are self-replicating machines capable of synthesizing a wide variety of things, and while they're quite complex, understanding them is far from being an insurmountable challenge. Ditto understanding enough to design our own similar machines from scratch.
Wishing that the hypothetical airplane has a "crash button critical mass" of 50% is comforting but not completely realistic. Remember the Japanese cult a few years ago that released Saran gas in the subways. Its easy to forget that their ultimate goal was to end all life on earth [not just the lives of those who were different from them]. It was part of their "religion" so don't expect that we could understand it. With the right technology you only need one such cult.
The terrorists we're facing right now only want to destroy us. The Japanese cult wanted to kill everyone. They're both terrorists but there's a significant difference. Once we get a "lets-commit-suicide-for-everyone" cult with nanoweapons then all bets are off. Any technology as powerful as this one can and eventually will be turned against us just as every one before it.
Secrecy and other safeguards may not be 100% effective, but they have the potential to fare better than wishful thinking. Since I don't see any guidelines or safeguards in the near future I hope I'm wrong.
Them: You should be afraid of nanotechnology getting into the wrong hands!
You: Well, ok...Why? Whats there to be afraid of? Isn't the whole idea circumvented by...
Them: Nanotechnology. Be afraid.
You: Huh? That doesn't answer my question.
Them: You should be afraid of nanotechnology.
You: Err...What?? You're just repeating yourself!! You haven't given me a reason why I...
Them: Yes. Nanotechnology--It could get into the wrong hands. Osama Bin Laden's hands!
You: How on earth is nanotechnology a threat to anyone? What, you think someones going to introduce some sort of synthetic nano-machine virus into the water supply? Come on.
Them: You need to be afraid of nanotechnology falling into the wrong hands. And the water supply
You: FINE. OK. Jeezus, lets say for the sake of the argument that some "evil organization" learns how to develop nanotechnology. Fine. What good is it going to do them? What are they going to build that would be such a terrible threat to anyone? Why not simply use standard, boring old chemistry tricks to kill people? Hasn't it ever occured to you that the idea of "death by nanotechnology" is about as sensical as "And now, Batman, I will spend millions of dollars to construct a machine that lower you very slowly into a pool of imported Burmese pirahna!!"
Them: You should be afraid of nanotechnology falling into the wrong hands.
You: Hasn't it occured to you that a single drop of benzene is enough to kill a room full of people? All Benzene is, is just a ring of 8 carbon atoms. It doesn't require a knowledge of nanotechnology to make a whole bucket of....
Them: You should be afraid of Osama Bin Laden, and nanotechnology. And benzene. And mail. And muslims. And cryptography. And steganography. And bridges. And...
You: {click}
Bowie J. Poag
Perhaps, but I think the world would be trashed pretty quickly. Besides, time travel is the only technology that gives you the ability to magically undo the actions of the bad guys.
For another analogy, suppose instead you gave everyone on the planet a hydrogen bomb that they could explode wherever they wanted. How long do you think society would last? Destruction is a lot easier than creation, so I'm not so confident that defensive abilities will outpace offensive ones.
Now it's well more than half of my friend's worst-case estimate later. We have nothing approaching any of those things. What we have is exactly one thing, C 60, also called buckminsterfullerene. It's a very interesting thing, but it's a material, not a machine. Its co-inventor, Dr. Richard E. Smalley, explained in the Sept. 2001 Scientific American that the Drexler assembler is and always will be impossible, because molecules are not tinkertoys that you can put together an atom at a time.
In his 1999 Senate statement, Dr. Smalley said this about potential natural security ramifications of nanotechnology research:
As you can see, it promises some incremental advances, but no basic revolutions -- certainly nothing on the level of the atomic bomb. Stronger armor, lighter planes, faster computers, smaller missiles, absolutely. But hordes of nanobattlebots? Get real.
The Drexler revolution has fallen flat on its face. We do not yet have even a semi-autonomous microbot, much less any kind of nanobot. Even at the microscale it turns out the laws of mechanics are too different from the mesoscale to allow for something as standard as a gear, and the nanoscale is much more different than that. We do not have anything vaguely resembling an assembler, and chemists say that the assembler will always be impossible.
Yet for some reason people are still concerned with these fantasies. It's just bad science fiction, like warp drives and human-animal hybrids. It's not important. We will have nanotechnology but it will be far more modest and less dangerous than the whacked-out speculations of fake futurists. Start dealing with the technology issues we really do face, like cloning, nuclear proliferation, and social monitoring. They're important. Drexler and his cult are not.
Tim
Think about it, if a nanite that could construct more of itself went rogue and began making more rogue nanites like itself, it would overwhelm the area before humans could even draw five measured breaths. Unless, that is, it is built so that it cannot replicate more often than every x time period - and what if that measure "breaks"?
The only protection would seem to be to have security nanite completely saturated in the surroundings (ie., the entire world), and then what if a security nanite breaks or goes Rogue? Which nanites watch others, and which watch the watchers? There needs to be a more concrete answer to this before we go releasing nanites into the wild.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger