Responsible Nanotechnology

Learning Lessons

1. Nuclear War
   
2. Global Warming  
3. Anti-aging Research

What do you suppose they have in common?

Besides the fact that the first one, if it's all out, stands a good chance of eliminating worries about the second one (because the war could bring a nuclear winter) while also making interest in the third one essentially obsolete -- besides all that, what do these three items have in common?

This blog and, more generally, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology are concerned with: a) raising awareness of the benefits, the dangers, and the possibilities for responsible use of advanced nanotechnology; b) expediting a thorough examination of the environmental, humanitarian, economic, military, political, social, medical, and ethical implications of molecular manufacturing; and c) assisting in the creation and implementation of wise, comprehensive, and balanced plans for responsible worldwide use of this transformative technology.

What you've just read is CRN's mission statement. Now consider that other organizations concerned with other issues might adopt a similar statement regarding nuclear war, global warming, or anti-aging research. (Obviously, it's hard to imagine any sane person calculating benefits from nuclear war, but you could easily substitute nuclear energy for that clause.) 

But what these three issue areas have in common is that CRN (and other groups like ours) can learn lessons from each of them about raising awareness, encouraging studies, and developing solutions.

So, who has done the best? Which one is struggling the most, and why?

NUCLEAR WAR (& ENERGY)

We're tempted to say that those who have worked hard to prevent nuclear war are the most successful of the lot. Until, that is, you remember that their efforts did not get going until after an initial catastrophe already had taken place. When just two bombs can cause some 200,000 deaths in a few months (about half in the first few seconds), that does have a tendency to concentrate interest and activity. Since then, attempts to contain proliferation and avert nuclear war have been markedly successful, when you consider that in more than half a century, only a handful of nations have gained nuclear capability.

So, should CRN look at this as a model for success? Or, because it took a deadly crisis to generate wide interest, should this example be ruled out? Can we afford to wait for the first nano-weapon shots to be fired, thereby gaining the impetus needed to accomplish a global agreement on responsible administration of molecular manufacturing? We don't think so.

Consider this trenchant analysis from NuclearRisk.org:

For 99.9% of our tenure on this planet, we could wait for direct evidence of our errors before correcting our actions. Sometimes the results were horrendous, as in the two World Wars and the environmental degradation due to hydraulic mining (now outlawed). As bad as those results were, our trial and error approach did not threaten our existence as a species. But during the last 0.1% of our existence our physical power has become so great that we can no longer wait for direct evidence that we are on the wrong path before changing our ways. Given that 99.9% of humanity's data says trial and error works, it is understandable – but horribly dangerous – that we have not yet recognized the obsolescence of that approach.

This warning is about the obscene danger of taking a "trial and error" approach to nuclear war, but we think it applies equally well to the equally severe threats posed by a nanotech arms race and an out of control war.

GLOBAL WARMING / CLIMATE CHANGE

Those of us who take seriously the results published last November by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are becoming increasingly worried about the signs of impending danger and the lack of corresponding action.

The IPCC's latest report [PDF] — signed off by 130 nations including the U.S. and China — slams the door on any argument for delay and makes clear we must under no circumstances listen to those who urge that we wait for a more convenient time to take the needed steps, however difficult they may be.

As the New York Times put it:

Members of the panel said their review of the data led them to conclude as a group and individually that reductions in greenhouse gasses had to start immediately to avert a global climate disaster that could leave island states submerged and abandoned, African crop yields decreased by 50 percent, and cause over a 5 percent decrease in global gross domestic product.

Concerns about global warming are nothing new. Since at least the 1980s, some world leaders and many scientists have warned that atmospheric effects from human activity would begin causing problems in the 21st century. What is unexpected is how quickly some of those effects seem to be occurring -- and are now strengthening -- showing that the old models were far too conservative in their predictions.

Why are we still dragging our feet? Instead of decreasing, carbon dioxide emissions are rapidly accelerating. Why hasn't more been done? Is it because the plans proposed are just too unpalatable to the public and politicians alike? Is it because the oil and gas and goal and automobile manufacturer lobbies are just too strong? Or is it because we haven't yet had a full-scale environmental disaster, a cataclysm equal to Hiroshima and Nagasaki that's directly traceable to global warming? Have scientists not yet made a strong enough case? It's hard to imagine how the evidence could become more conclusive without clearly being way beyond the point of no return.

So, unfortunately, this model also does not look like a good one for molecular manufacturing policy advocates to emulate. 

 

 

ANTI-AGING RESEARCH

They're making lots of news, getting coverage everywhere from "60 Minutes" to Popular Science to the Wall Street Journal. They've hosted large conferences and built a significant foundation with a large staff and millions of dollars in contributions. Still, though, the research touted by the main exponents is usually dismissed and sometimes ridiculed by mainstream gerontologists. That situation is changing, but slowly.

 

Hoping to hurry things along, a series of large cash prizes is on offer for researchers able to demonstrate that aging in mice can be delayed or reversed. In effect, they're looking for the opposite of a major catastrophe, instead trying to provoke the achievement of a scientific "miracle" that will turn the world in their direction.

Could such an effort succeed for nanofactory technology? Possibly, although no one yet has figured out how to set up and market a competition that gains as much interest, publicity, and practical results as the M-Prize. That doesn't mean it won't happen in the future, but it also doesn't mean that it will.

Besides, even if this approach did generate a lot of researchers spending a lot of money to build the first operational molecular fabricator, that alone would offer no guarantee that CRN could fulfill our mission statement. Remember, our aim is not just to hurry the technology along. It's mostly about understanding all the implications of a nanofactory-enabled world and being prepared for it so that we don't have to suffer through a disastrous learning experience.

Mike Treder

Updating the Blogroll

We've recently done some housecleaning on our Blogroll (see the list in the panel to the right), and removed several blogs that were either dead or largely inactive.

If you have a favorite blog that's not listed and you think it covers subjects relevant to responsible nanotechnology, please let us know. No guarantee that we'll add it, of course, but we're always interested in seeing good blogs.

Mike Treder

Debating CRN's Scope

Although we call ourselves the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, we've confined our focus to a specific, powerful application of advanced nanotechnology known as molecular manufacturing.

Nanotechnology, in its traditional sense, means building things from the bottom up, with atomic precision. By contrast, much of the work being done today that carries the name 'nanotechnology' is not nanotechnology in its original meaning. Current nanoscale technologies can and do include everything from lithography to optics to metrology, encompassing materials science, semiconductor manufacture, and even ranging into biotechnology.

Not everyone believes that CRN should continue concentrating only on molecular manufacturing and its implications. For example, Mick, writing to comment on our main website said:

CRN at Five Years Old

Our December 2007 newsletter included a promise that in the next issue we would offer an assessment of CRN’s first five years and present an overview of our accomplishments, our disappointments, and our plans for the future.

In approaching this task, we chose to go back and review what we believed and what we said when we started CRN, and to ponder and report on what we have learned since then.

Early in 2003, we published the following foundational statements that summarized CRN's basic positions:

• Effective use of nanotechnology can benefit everyone.
• Unwise use of nanotechnology can be very dangerous.
• Nanofactory technology can be used safely.
• Preventing nanotechnology is impossible; careful study will be necessary for wise use.
• Effective use of nanotechnology will require intelligent and prudent policy-making.
• The situation is urgent; nanofactories may be developed within a decade.

Let’s take those points one at a time and see if they still apply today, in early 2008...

Wise-Nano Wiki Upgrade

Many of you probably are familiar with the Wise-Nano wiki site started by CRN a few years ago. I'm happy to report that we have just successfully completed an upgrade to the MediaWiki software, using the expert assistance of Nato Welch, CRN's Tech Support Specialist.

Nato says:

Our wiki at http://wise-nano.org/ has recently been updated to Mediawiki 1.11, the current stable release. Due to some minor problems with spambots, we have instituted a new policy requiring all wiki users to confirm by email before being allowed to edit or create pages. If you have an existing account on the wiki, you can confirm your email in your user preferences.

We invite everyone to take a look at the material collected by the community there, and consider making your own contributions. That could be done by improving, editing, discussing, or expanding on existing material, or contributing one or more articles of your own that are relevant to development of molecular manufacturing.

Among the "hot debates" you'll find at the Wise-Nano site are these:

Slope of technology curve: Will exponential production arrive as a sudden leap in technology or will it fit in the incremental growth curve of progress?

Should people be required to die at some point, as nanotechnology extends health to 100, 120, even 200 years?

Is there a secret U.S. molecular manufacturing project, or is the U.S. government clueless?

Does molecular manufacturing need breakthroughs, or just lots of R&D?

Will global administration be necessary? Or is that intolerable?

Early MM pros and cons: Is it wiser to develop molecular manufacturing ASAP, or delay it?

We hope you'll enjoy reading -- and better yet becoming an active participant -- in these important discussions.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics blog

The Death of Murder

We work hard at CRN to maintain a balance in presenting both the risks and the potential benefits of advanced nanotechnology. Similarly, we try to steer a middle path between optimistic and pessimistic views about the future. That's not always easy, especially when you spend as much time as we do trying to understand the range of bad outcomes that could occur, and how to avoid them.

But amidst the dire predictions of danger from runaway climate change, a nanotech arms race, severe economic upheaval, and so on, it's always nice to find some bright spots.

One trend that should give us hope is the significant long-term reduction in violent crime in our largest cities. For example, in New York, where I live, the murder rate has dropped to its lowest level since 1963, when the city began keeping "reliable records."

Given the fact that the further back in history you go, the more violent and lawless human society has been, you could make a strong argument that New York City's murder rate is now at its lowest rate ever.

The decline is so striking, and apparently inexorable, that it allows headlines like this one:

The Killing of Murder
As the homicide rate continues to drop, the impossible beckons: What would it take to go all the way to zero?

The previously unthinkable "death of murder" (admittedly, an idealistic exaggeration, but still) merges well with an equally remarkable, statistically observable, longer-term historical trend away from violence and toward peace:

Global violence has fallen steadily since the middle of the twentieth century. According to the Human Security Brief 2006, the number of battle deaths in interstate wars has declined from more than 65,000 per year in the 1950s to less than 2,000 per year in this decade. In Western Europe and the Americas, the second half of the century saw a steep decline in the number of wars, military coups, and deadly ethnic riots.

Does all this mean, then, that CRN's concerns about nano-weaponry and the increasing "democratization of violence" are unnecessary? Or should we continue to be wary?

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics blog

Preparation, Not Prediction

In this month's C-R-Newsletter, our feature essay is by Jamais Cascio, CRN's Director of Impacts Analysis. Instead of excerpting the essay, as is our usual custom, we're going to post the whole thing here, because it is an important restatement of CRN's purpose...

How soon could molecular manufacturing (MM) arrive? It's an important question, and one that the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology takes seriously. In our recently released series of scenarios for the emergence of molecular manufacturing, we talk about MM appearing by late in the next decade; on the CRN main website, we describe MM as being plausible by as early as 2015. If you follow the broader conversation online and in the technical media about molecular manufacturing, however, you might argue that such timelines are quite aggressive, and not at all the consensus.

You'd be right.

CRN doesn't talk about the possible emergence of molecular manufacturing by 2015-2020 because we think that this timeline is necessarily the most realistic forecast. Instead, we use that timeline because the purpose of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology is not prediction, but preparation.

Announcing CRNtalk

In her column on "Creating Productive Nanotech Communities" posted at Nanotech Now, CRN's Jessica Margolin invites readers to join a new Yahoo discussion group, "CRNtalk." She said:

Bring your questions, your observations, those news stories that bother you. Our hope is that this community will help would-be interns find internships, students find mentors, and people find other friends with like interests.

This is an overdue development for CRN, and we're grateful to Jessica for making it happen!

Until now, we've never offered an open forum for feedback, discussion, criticism, sharing, and networking. We have this blog, which allows comments, of course, but only on subjects that we choose to write about. And we have a monthly e-newsletter, but that's strictly one-way communication.

Finally, there's a place for you to bring questions, raise issues, offer ideas, suggest articles of interest, or basically say anything that's on your mind. Naturally, we will expect users to adhere to some basic community standards, but beyond that, it's a wide-open space for sharing and discussion. Enjoy!

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Context is Everything

Some recent commenters have noted that entries on this blog sometimes stray from the immediate topic of 'Responsible Nanotechnology'.

For example, Dan S. says:

I've got an impression that these days CRN is more concerned with problems of climate change, privacy, China, nuclear power, etc. rather then safe administration/development of molecular manufacturing.

There are a couple of explanations for this. One is that after years of writing articles on a fairly narrow range of subjects, it's hard to resist the temptation to occasionally throw in something different, like this, or this.

But a more substantive explanation has to do with how we are, over time, coming to see that the issues CRN is nominally concerned with are inextricably linked with a wide range of other topics.

Molecular manufacturing will not be developed in a vacuum, nor will it emerge unhindered into a welcoming world.

How, when, or even whether desktop nanofactories are finally produced will depend largely on external factors that have little or nothing to do with nanotech. This is a big drive behind our efforts to create a series of professional-quality scenarios about the near-future development of molecular manufacturing within the context of projected trends in science, technology, and global politics.

The task of designing effective policy toward safe development and responsible use of advanced nanotechnology is both highly complex and vitally important. A broad base of knowledge is required for that, including as good an understanding as we can get of the rapidly changing social, economic, and political systems that atomically-precise exponential manufacturing eventually will encounter. Those new conditions must be taken into account, because the world of circa 2020 is expected to be vastly different from 2007 -- and in developing responsible global solutions, context is everything.

Jamais Cascio, CRN's new Director of Impacts Analysis, recently wrote a column for Nanotechnology Now that tackled a whole set of issues beyond the purely technical. He considered:

• Designs
• Distribution methods for nanofactories
• Distribution methods for products
• Distribution methods for "toner"
• Physical reliability
• Physical safety
• Health and safety evaluations
• Knowledgeable users
• Ways to avoid abuse
• Political support
• Economic support
• Market acceptance

And that's just one circle of expansion outward from CRN's earlier concerns.

Expect to see much more of this -- including discussions of climate change, privacy, China, etc. -- as we strive to understand the world that awaits the development of desktop nanofactories. We'll try to relate those explorations as clearly as we can to the basic mission of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, but remember, we're on a journey here, a journey together into mostly unknown territory.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

China and Continuity

We spend a lot of time on this blog writing about China, and we think with good reason. It's common to hear the last 100 years referred to as "The American Century," and many observers now suggest that the next 100 years eventually will be known as "The Chinese Century."

Of course, a lot could happen to change that outcome. For one thing, China faces huge internal and external challenges on its path to global supremacy. For another, the United States is still the preeminent superpower in both economic and military terms and is likely to remain so for some time.

But in looking outward over the next several decades, it's hard to conceive a plausible scenario of world development that does not include China in some capacity. So, as we try to envision how, where, and when molecular manufacturing will emerge and what its implications will be, we must include China in our calculations of context.

In an analysis piece this week in the New York Times, Joseph Kahn writes:

To judge by the reports in China’s state-run news media, the Communist Party took a bold step toward democracy at the just completed 17th National Congress, which approved a new leadership team to run the country.

President Hu Jintao used the word democracy 61 times in his main address to the congress. The official Xinhua news agency reported that the party nominated 221 candidates to fill the 204 full seats on the Central Committee, meaning that 7.6 percent of those declared eligible did not get a seat. Xinhua called this a “competitive election.”

In reality, of course, China’s one-party system still owes more to Lenin than to Jefferson. It convenes congresses every five years to ratify leadership decisions on policy and personnel. The message is not change, but continuity.

And specifically what type of continuity are they looking for? Kahn says:

They want fast growth, a nonaligned foreign policy and political stability.

Okay, remember that, because we'll come back to it at the end.

An article by John Feffer in the November 2007 issue of The Nation describes various perspectives from which U.S. foreign policy analysts may view China. I'm paraphrasing here, but the basic question seems to be this:

Should America (and the rest of the world) view China as a political threat or partner, as a military threat or partner, as an economic threat or partner, or as some combination thereof?

I encourage reading the whole article (and while you're at it, also read this snarky-but-informed critique by a "Qing historian"). I'll offer a few quotes, and then my own slant from CRN's position.

On the matter of weaknesses that may qualify China's rise to power, Feffer notes:

Foreign policy analysts speak of various crunches that China will face. There's the demographic one, when China suddenly becomes a senior citizen society virtually overnight because of its one-child policy. There is the economic one, when rapid growth begins to sputter and an angry middle class joins hands with the disenfranchised to close down the party. There's the environmental one, when the poisons of industrial development choke the country to death...

Washington should pay less attention to the strength of China, some knowledgeable courtiers are whispering, and more to the great country's weakness. In this telling of the story, China is an elaborate pyramid scam, its prosperity resting on a foundation of sand. Only by continuing to generate unprecedented levels of growth -- 11 percent in 2006 -- can China continue to fool its domestic supporters and foreign investors into playing the game.

Inside China, troubling stories appear every day. There is rampant corruption. Some grow impossibly rich while many remain impatiently poor. Tens of thousands of protests break out in the cities and the countryside every year. The AIDS and SARS scandals, the harrowing coal mine disasters, the ruthless suppression of dissidents -- eloquently described by Chinese activists themselves in the new collection Challenging China, edited by Human Rights in China staffers Sharon Hom and Stacy Mosher -- all have the potential of sapping the confidence of the population in the leadership's capacity to govern.

What about the growing military might of China?

The issue of greatest controversy is China's increased military spending. Beijing argues that it is spending around $36 billion a year; some US estimates run double or even triple that amount. However you slice it, China wants a world-class army to match its world-class economy. But with its air and sea power still limited, China has an anemic ability to project force over distance. A mere twenty long-range nuclear missiles serve as a very slender deterrent force. And while the bean counters scrutinize China's arms purchases, the annual US military budget has sailed past $500 billion (not including the Iraq and Afghanistan supplemental spending). To match the United States, China would have to play Soviet-style catch-up, and it knows the endpoint of that strategy.

Finally, Feffer concludes:

Predicting what will happen with China is a fool's errand. China is the exception that proves so many rules wrong. It is a Communist system that has managed a transition to "capitalism with Chinese characteristics." It has fostered market growth without much political reform. And it has pulled huge swaths of its population out of poverty and illiteracy faster than all the well-paid development professionals in the West. Yet as Gifford [an NPR reporter] argues, "For every fact that is true about China, the opposite is almost always true as well, somewhere in the country." The data set is so large that it defies generalizations.

We said earlier that China's leadership wants "fast growth, a nonaligned foreign policy and political stability." But let's assume for a moment that all three are not possible to maintain at the same time...if challenges arise that require China to choose between them, which aims will take priority?

I assume political stability would be valued above all else. Keeping the regime in power is the one essential goal; therefore, sacrificing some amount of growth or even making concessions in foreign policy alignment would be considered before risking significant political instability.

Tomorrow we'll continue this discussion by looking at "Radical Breakdowns."

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog