Category: Future Warfare

from the implanted-nano-survelliance-for-combat-readiness dept.
William Morgan reminds us of the Defense University Research Initiative on Nanotechnology (covered here previously) and adds: "Topic #16…on this related page may be a mind-opener for some too!" CP: the whole list at that second URL is interesting; see also items 8, 12, 13, 18, 35, 36.

from the one-such-incident=disaster-in-more-ways-than-one dept.
Senior Associate Charles Vollum writes "In a UPI story headlined U.S. totally unprepared for bioterrorism, Dr. Tara O'Toole, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, makes a case that 'The technology to manufacture biological weapons of mass destruction is now widely available through open literature and the United States is totally unprepared to cope with a bio-terrorist attack…' This is a crude precursor to the dangers nanotechnology will potentiate. Will stories like this lead towards the kind of reasoned debate the Foresight Institute is working to create, or will they just scare people into wild over-reactions?"

from the here-comes-SuperSoldier dept.
Jonathan Desp points out the Focused Study of Biotechnology & Nanotechnology from the Military Health Services System (MHSS 2020). Senior Associate Richard Smith, who participated in the study, gives a behind-the-scenes report on the process. From the MHSS 2020 report: If a breakthrough to a universal assembler occurs within ten to fifteen years, an entirely new field of 'nanomedicine' will emerge by 2020. Initial applications will be focused outside the body in areas such as diagnostics and pharmaceutical manufacturing. The most powerful uses would eventually be within the body. Possible applications include programmable immune machines that travel through the bloodstream, supplementing the natural immune system; cell herding machines to stimulate rapid healing and tissue reconstruction; and cell repair machines to perform genetic surgery. CP: My favorite section title is "3.1.3 Benefits to Health Operations Other Than War".

from the why-the-good-guys-have-to-work-work-work dept.
Foresight advisor Ralph Merkle responds to Bill Joy's concerns in an interview for ACM's Ubiquity: "…if we attempt to block the development of new technology, if we collectively try and say, 'These technologies are technologies that are not meant for humans to understand,' and we try to back away from them, what we effectively have done is not to block the technologies, we have simply ensured that the most responsible parties will not develop them…In other words, a relinquishment of the new technology, unless it is absolutely 100 percent effective, is not effective at all. If it's 99.99 percent effective, then you simply ensure that the .01 percent who pays no attention to such calls for relinquishment is the group that will develop it."

from the OK-so-they're-BIG-chemicals dept.
MarkGubrud has pointed out that the 1996 Chemical Weapons Convention includes a strong verification, monitoring, and challenge inspection system (unlike, say, the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention). Given this, I wonder whether it wouldn't be easier to have nanotech weapons classified as a (large) form of chemical weapon, rather than writing a whole new treaty which would then need to be adopted?

from the wow-Glenn-writes-really-fast dept.
Senior Associate/law professor Glenn Reynolds has been busy — here's another media article he co-authored, responding to Bill Joy's comments on nanotechnology: "…given that research into nanotechnology — like the cruder forms of biological and chemical warfare — can be conducted clandestinely on small budgets and in difficult-to-spot facilities, the likelihood of such research going on is rather high. Terrorists would have the greatest incentive possible to develop nanotechnologies far more deadly than old-fashioned biological warfare. This makes Joy's relinquishment argument hard to swallow. At the very least, it suggests that Joy and those who agree with him need to step up to the plate and make some more sophisticated arguments. No one doubts that Joy and the rest have good intentions. But as the example of biological warfare illustrates, good intentions, even when embodied in popular agreements to abandon a technology, don't necessarily have good consequences." (Glenn points out that the anti-trust comment in the article was not his.)