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

MOLECULAR NANOTECHNOLOGY AND NATIONAL SECURITY 97mizing the benefits of MNT’s impending development,the United States should take thelead in creating a cooperative strategy of internationalregulation and do so as soon as possible.MNT’s arrival will cause an avalanche ofproblems and threats, many of which the humanrace has not yet encountered; the controlstrategy must therefore be ready before thatday arrives.BackgroundNanotechnology (NT) is the manipulationand control of matter at the scale of the nanometer(one-billionth of a meter)—roughlythe diameter of a small molecule. Unlike itspredecessor, microtechnology, which deals withthe relatively gargantuan scale of amoebas,nanotechnology represents human engineeringat the atomic or molecular level. But NTentails much more than just taking wellunderstoodmicrotechnology engineering techniquesdown another step in size: it abruptlyand vastly expands of the limits of what is possible.NT works with the basic building blocksof nature—atoms and molecules—allowingfor an unprecedented level of engineeringprecision and matter control. Also, the effectsof the “regular” Newtonian physics that governeveryday human experience and the “weird”quantum physics that govern the atomic andsubatomic worlds begin to overlap in thenanometer scale (or nanoscale). Working atthe nanoscale will thus permit human engineersto take advantage of the benefits of bothrealms of physical law simultaneously.It is not surprising that government andbusiness interest in NT is significant and growingrapidly. The US National NanotechnologyInitiative, which coordinates US governmentresearch and development (R&D) efforts, expectsto have a budget exceeding $1 billion infiscal year 2006, a ninefold increase over its1997 budget of $116 million. 1 But this increasingR&D budget also illustrates that today’snanotechnology “is still almost wholly on thedrawing board.” 2 Nanoscience is in its infancy,and the characteristics of even familiar, exhaustivelystudied materials (such as commonmetals) may hold surprises at the nanometerscale. 3 Thus, despite the introduction of newNT-based products to the marketplace, NT’strue practical potential is still being discovered. 4Some disagreement exists within the NTR&D community about the ultimate potentialof the field. One school of thought promotesMNT, also called molecular manufacturing(MM), the brainchild of Dr. K. Eric Drexler,originator of the term nanotechnology itself. 5MNT is “extreme” NT, with engineering soprecise that it approaches the theoreticallimits of nature by exerting “thorough, inexpensivecontrol of the structure of matterbased on molecule-by-molecule control ofproducts and byproducts of molecular manufacturing.”6 Whereas mainstream NT focuseson creating small-scale components to be incorporatedinto larger products in a conventionalmanner, MNT products will be humanscale or larger, built from start to finish byMNT processes. 7 Because the degree to whichNT will disrupt human affairs is still unclear,this article will focus on MNT, the most potentiallydangerous manifestation.MNT’s promise depends on a few key capabilities.The first is the ability to mechanicallyguide chemical reactions at the molecularlevel, called mechanochemistry. 8 In MNT,mechanochemistry will be accomplished bymolecular fabricators: essentially tiny, controllable,mechanical tools capable of physically“grabbing” specific molecules and puttingthem together in useful ways.A single fabricator, however, is not very usefulfor building large objects, as it would takethousands of years for one to build an objectlarge enough to see with the naked eye. Therefore,the second key capability is exponentialmanufacturing, or the ability to create largenumbers of fabricators that will work in unison.This is accomplished by having the fabricatorsbuild more fabricators—the number ofwhich will thus grow exponentially.Note that fabricators are autoproductive—capable of building other fabricators, but onlywith extensive outside assistance. They do notself-replicate—that is create copies of themselveswithout direct outside assistance like cells andbacteria. Fabricators are limited in this way by