In their current issue, the folks who usually focus on nuclear war take a look ahead to nanotech war, via a book review by CRN’s Mike Treder of the book Military Nanotechnology: Potential Applications and Preventive Arms Control by Jürgen Altmann.
Deeply researched and carefully worded, Military Nanotechnology is an overview of an emerging technology that could trigger a new arms race and gravely threaten international security and stability. Jürgen Altmann’s academic style allows the reader to assess nanotechnology’s perilous military implications in plain, dispassionate terms. What we face might sound like science fiction, but, in this book, we have the facts laid bare, and they are hair-raising enough without embellishment.
See also the earlier review by James Lewis, Research Analyst here at Foresight Nanotech Institute:
The goal of Military Nanotechnology: Potential applications and preventive arms control “is to do a first assessment of the implications that NT weapons and other military NT systems could entail, and to present first considerations on preventive limitations.” This goal is decisively achieved.
Although the book’s description of molecular nanotech is very seriously out of date, it sounds like it still is a contribution to the debate despite this major flaw. —Christine
