Fall 2006 - Air & Space Power Chronicle - Air Force Link

MOLECULAR NANOTECHNOLOGY AND NATIONAL SECURITY 101toxic poisoning of organs, either from thenanolitter itself or from toxic elements attachedto those nanoparticles. 26Indirect ThreatsWe can expect severe disruptions from MNTsince it gives “little or no advantage to the entrenchedleader of an earlier technologicalwave.” 27 Thus, it has the potential to radicallyupset the geopolitical playing field and posepowerful indirect threats to national security.Economic. Glimpsing the potential economicchange triggered by MNT, Bill Joy has estimatedthat the wealth generated by fusing theinformation and physical worlds in the twentyfirstcentury will equal a thousand trillion USdollars. As former US House Speaker NewtGingrich observed, this is equivalent to “adding100 US economies to the world market.” 28No one can be quite sure what an MNTbasedeconomy would look like, but mostspeculations seem to agree that it would probablyresemble the software economy withproduct design being the most difficult andexpensive part of production—distributionand manufacturing being very inexpensive. Acurrent analogy would be the millions of manhoursand dollars expended to create a computerword-processing program, compared tothe ease with which users can “burn” copies ofthe program with their home computers anddistribute them to friends. This analogy alsopoints out the problems with piracy and intellectualproperty rights that would almost certainlyplague an MNT economy. 29Essentially a highly advanced manufacturingprocess emphasizing distributed, low-costmanufacturing, MNT directly threatens economiesthat are heavily dependent on mass production.For example, China’s economic growthdepends on using mass human labor to produceinexpensive, high-quality goods; in 2004it provided over $18 billion worth of manufacturedgoods to the Wal-Mart department-storechain. 30 But what will happen to China’seconomy when Wal-Mart is able to use its ownMNT-enabled fabrication facilities at home toproduce higher-quality goods at even lowercost? For that matter, when consumers areable to produce their own high-quality, lowcost,custom-designed products in their ownhomes, who will need Wal-Mart?MNT is also expected to improve energytechnologies such as solar energy by makingsolar cells tougher and much more efficient;combined with more efficient manufacturingand lighter but stronger vehicles (carbonbasedmaterials can be up to 60 times as strongas steel), the requirements for petroleumfueledenergy supplies may decline rapidly.This would obviously have significant impacton oil companies and countries with oil-basedeconomies; a correspondingly significant disruptionis likely for the shipping industry,which last year ordered petroleum-shippingtankers valued at $77.2 billion. 31 In addition, ifdistributed manufacturing were to allow mostpeople or communities to construct what theyneed locally, international trade in physicalitems may also decrease, which casts somedoubt as to whether globalization’s “peacethrough interdependence” effect will be aspowerful in the future. Indeed, isolationismmay become a more attractive policy optionfor many countries.Social. MNT’s medical applications maypresent some of the greatest social and ethicalchallenges in human history. Issues of cloning,genetically modified crops, abortion, andeven cochlear implants have created politicalatomic bombs in recent years—MNT offers acompletely new level of control over the humanbody and its processes. Accordingly, MNThas been embraced by the transhumanistmovement, which advocates using technologyto intellectually, physically, and psychologicallyimprove the human form from its current“early” phase to a more advanced “posthuman”phase. Reactions to transhumanistconcepts range from enthusiasm to indifferenceto outright fear and hostility. HistorianFrancis Fukuyama has declared transhumanismone of “the world’s most dangerous ideas.” 32Revolutionary. The final threat discussedhere essentially results from a synergy ofthe other threats. Prof. Carlota Perez hasadvanced a model of technological revolutioncomposed of two periods: (1) an installationperiod, during which the new