Foresight Update 6
page 2
A publication of the Foresight Institute
 Military
Implications of Nanotechnology
Opinion by Scott Pace
In our
last issue Mark Gubrud of the Federation of American
Scientists started off what we plan to be a long-term debate on
potential military uses of nanotechnology. Here Scott Pace of
RAND presents another view; it is written from the U.S.
perspective, but his points generalize to other nations using
nanotechnology.
The Foresight Institute has raised awareness of the many
potential social, economic, and political impacts of
nanotechnology. The potential military significance of
nanotechnology has not yet been examined to comparable depths.
The purpose of this article is to raise questions for further
discussion of the military and arms control implications of
nanotechnology, rather than to offer any definitive answers.
Military capability is but one element of national power
addressed by U.S. national security strategy. Other elements are
international political influence, economic strength, and
national well-being. U.S. national security strategy reflects
national interests and consists of a broad plan for achieving
objectives supporting those interests. Among the most important
objectives are to:
"maintain the security of our nation and our allies.
The United States, in cooperation with its allies, must seek
to deter any aggression that could threaten that security
and, should deterrence fail, must be prepared to repel or
defeat any military attack and end the conflict on terms
favorable to the United States, its interests, and its
allies."[1]
Military analysts distinguish between confrontations at
peacetime or crisis levels, low-intensity (e.g.,
guerrilla) warfare, conventional theater war (e.g., the
1967 Arab-Israeli War), theater nuclear war (e.g., use of
tactical nuclear weapons in Europe), and strategic nuclear war (e.g.,
a massive U.S./Soviet nuclear exchange). The United States has a
policy of "flexible response" to potential threats
across this spectrum of conflict. Different military responses
are thus deemed appropriate at different levels of conflict.
How might nanotechnology contribute to U.S. military power at
these different levels of conflict? In peacetime or crisis,
nanocomputers may allow more capable surveillance of potential
aggressors. The flood of data from worldwide sensors could be
culled more efficiently to look for truly threatening activities.
In low-intensity warfare, intelligent sensors and barrier systems
could isolate or channel guerrilla movements depending on the
local terrain. In conventional theater war, nanotechnology may
lead to small, cheap, highly lethal anti-tank weapons. Such
weapons could allow relatively small numbers of infantry to
defeat assaults by large armored forces.
At nuclear conflict levels, accurate nanocomputer guidance and
low nanomachine production costs would accelerate current trends
in the proliferation of "smart munitions." Rather than
requiring nuclear weapons to attack massive conventional forces
or distant, hard targets, nanotechnology enhancements to cruise
missiles and ballistic missiles could allow them to destroy their
targets with conventional explosives. Conventional explosives
themselves might be replaced by molecular disassemblers that
would be rapidly effective, but with less unintended destruction
to surrounding buildings and populations. President Reagan's goal
of making nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete" could
be reached not by space-based defenses, but by terrestrial
nanoweapons making nuclear weapons irrelevant.
These potential military applications would allow the United
States a greater range of options in deciding how to respond to
aggression. Nanoweapons could lower the cost of meeting
aggression (in both dollars and lives) in tactical applications
while preserving strategic deterrence without nuclear weapons.
Strategic deterrence today is not limited to deterring nuclear
attacks on the U.S. homeland, but on preventing political
coercion of the U.S. and its allies. Should our allies be
threatened by a third country, the U.S. could either respond
directly with its own forces or provide support to our allies,
including nanotechnology weapons, to preserve their security.
Nanoweapons could deter war either by threatening unacceptable
damage to an aggressor, as with today's strategic nuclear
weapons, or by denying any plausible achievement of an
aggressor's objectives, as is the potential with space-based
missile defenses.
|
How might nanotechnology
affect the future
of nuclear and conventional arms control? |
|
How might nanotechnology affect the future of nuclear and
conventional arms control? Arms control has traditionally focused
on three objectives in support of U.S. national interests. The
first is to lower the possibility of war. The second is to lower
damage caused should war occur. The third is to lower the burden
of armaments on society. Nanoweapons may provide new temptations
to aggression should one nation or group of nations achieve a
great enough technical lead in the field. In achieving the first
objective of arms control, the U.S. may seek to either limit
knowledge of nanotechnologies (as is done with nuclear weapons)
or seek to disseminate knowledge widely to allow development of
countermeasures to potential nanoweapons.
In terms of limiting damage should deterrence fail,
nanotechnology may allow great increases in target discrimination
so that noncombatant casualties and damage are minimized.
Conversely, nanotechnology could be used to create weapons of
mass destruction, such as chemical, biological, and nuclear
weapons. The first nanoweapons of certain classes will raise
interesting questions under the international law of armed
conflict and treaties proscribing biological weapons and
environmental modification techniques.
As for lowering the economic burden of armaments on society,
nanomachines may lower the cost of producing weapons and their
supporting command and control systems. The United States may
choose to use this new economic productivity to create more
capable forces, rechannel defense expenditures to other needs, or
lower taxes. Perhaps all three outcomes will occur.
U.S. air, naval, and ground forces all have distinct roles and
missions to perform that are not likely to disappear with changes
in technology, although some of the changes may be dramatic as
when the Army's cavalry gave way to the tank. Nanotechnology does
not allow one to violate the laws of physics; visible light
sensors built with nanomachines will still not be able to see
through walls. The most lethal nanoweapon is not very useful if
it cannot find or reach its target. A U.S. armed with nanoweapons
may be able to deter or prevent attack on its homeland, but it
will continue to have obligations to allies who may ask for help.
Discussions of military applications of nanotechnology will
likely be most productive if grounded in realistic appraisals of
nanotechnology limits, actual military needs, and continuing U.S.
national interests.
Reference
- The White House, National
Security Strategy of the United States,
Washington, D.C., January 1988, p.3.
Scott Pace is a graduate student in policy analysis at the
RAND Graduate School, Santa Monica, CA.
Online
Flourishing
FI was recently informed that USENET estimates about 5000
people read (at least occasionally) the nanotechnology discussion
on that system. This is a Netnews group called sci.nanotech, one
of the many USENET newsgroups which form a large, distributed,
hierarchical electronic bulletin board. Formerly available only
to those with UNIX machines, it is now accessible to anyone
through services such as the WELL at 415-332-4335 (voice) and
Portal at 408-725-0561 (voice).
In cooperation with FI, sci.nanotech
carries most FI publications. The moderator is Josh Hall
(josh@klaatu.rutgers.edu or rutgers!klaatu.rutgers.edu!josh), who
can answer specific questions about the group by electronic mail.
[Note: JoSH's current email address
is josh@cs.rutgers.edu. He maintains an archive of nanotechnology
papers and related material at http://nanotech.rutgers.edu/nanotech/
]
Hypermedia
Journal
A new journal, Hypermedia, has been announced.
Excerpts from the announcement follow:
"Hypermedia is a new international
journal designed to provide a focus for research and a source
of information on the practical and theoretical developments
in hypermedia, hypertext, and related technologies.
"The journal Hypermedia will cover the
following key themes: the conceptual basis of hypertext
systems; cognitive aspects; design strategies; knowledge
representation; link dynamics; authoring; navigation and
browsing; testing and evaluation; user interfaces; tools for
hypermedia; hypertext and expert systems; applications in
education and training, information management, publishing,
business, commerce, the professions, and public
administration.
"Vannevar Bush's vision of a device to complement man's
intellect by aping the associative powers of the human mind
finds practical expression in the current surge of interest
in hypermedia systems. It is intended that this new journal
will play a central role in supporting and reporting on the
significant developments in this important area of
information technology."
The announcement stated that publication would begin with the
Spring 89 issue, with three issues planned per year, for $85. For
more information or a free inspection copy contact Taylor Graham
Publishing, 500 Chesham House, 150 Regent Street, London W1R 5FA,
U.K. (Note: new publications don't always succeed; the last
hypermedia magazine mentioned here ceased publishing after a few
months. Caveat emptor.)
Journals
to Watch
Readers interested in keeping up with enabling technologies
leading toward nanotechnology will want to watch for these
relatively new journals at technical libraries:
Protein Engineering, IRL Press, 8/year, $85
individual (U.S).
Those who follow Russ Mills's technical column have seen this
mentioned. Its focus is the exploration of protein structure and
function through analysis of the properties of modified proteins.
High editorial standards have kept the early issues thin but well
worth reading.
Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design, ESCOM,
4/year, $190.
Described in Nature as "essential reading for
anyone interested in molecular modeling and molecular
design," a main goal of this journal is to be a forum for
multidisciplinary communication in molecular design, emcompassing
computer science, chemistry, biology, and structure-activity
relationships. Quality in the first year was high and papers
dealt with a broad range of topics, with a strong emphasis on
design. ASCII files of the actual coordinates of modeling results
are made available on IBM and Mac disks, which enable the
'readers' to view the figures on their own computers, giving a
three-dimensional effect.
Agoric
Software Advances
by Chris Peterson
In our last issue we announced the availability of The
Ecology of Computation (ed. B. Huberman, Elsevier, 1988,
paperback, $39.50), which includes three papers by Mark S. Miller
(formerly at Xerox PARC, now at Xanadu) and K. Eric Drexler
(Stanford) on using market mechanisms to organize computational
systems, an approach which may lead to the evolution of more
adaptable and intelligent software:
(For information on obtaining reprints, see the end of this
article.)
In independent work, Donald Ferguson--now at IBM Yorktown--has
completed a 1989 Ph.D. thesis at Columbia entitled "The
Application of Microeconomics to the Design of Resource
Allocation and Control Algorithms." Here he describes his
work on market-based distributed resource allocation algorithms,
which were shown to outperform known-to-be-good noneconomic
algorithms for those purposes. Dr. Ferguson encountered the
Miller and Drexler papers toward the end of work on his thesis,
and cites them as providing "a very compelling motivation
for work in this area [i.e. on how the field of economics
can contribute to computer science]."
Work has continued at Xerox PARC in this area. A Master's thesis
by Carl Waldspurger of MIT, involving work done in collaboration
with PARC researchers, presents experimental results on processor
allocation derived from an algorithm having fundamental
similarities to that proposed by Drexler and Miller. These
results support key predictions made in "Incentive
Engineering." This new work is being prepared for
publication, with additional coauthors at Xerox PARC (T. Hogg, B.
Huberman, J. Kephart, S. Stornetta), for the Communications
of the ACM and perhaps other journals. It has also been
covered in news items in Science, The
Economist (a British newsweekly), and the New York
Times.
The three papers have also drawn the attention of Professor Don
Lavoie of the Center for the Study of Market Processes at George
Mason University in Fairfax, VA. As one of the first professional
economists to pick up on these ideas, he read the papers with
"enormous interest and excitement" and plans to
encourage his graduate students to pursue the ideas further.
(Lavoie's undergraduate degree in computer science helps explain
his alertness to this interdisciplinary work.)
[Note: For a follow-up on Prof. Lavoie's
interest in agoric computing, see article in Update
8.]
Industry also has shown interest in agoric systems; on April 4
Eric Drexler spoke on the topic at Hewlett-Packard.
Mark S. Miller has generously agreed to donate 40 sets of the
three papers to the Foresight Institute for distribution to
computer scientists and economists who request them. Requests
should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed 9 by 12 inch
envelope with $2.05 in postage. (From outside the U.S., send a
self-addressed envelope with airmail postage in the form of
either a bank check showing a U.S. address or an international
money order, made out to the Foresight Institute; $4.22 for
delivery to Europe, $5.55 for delivery to Asia.)
Hypertext
Multievent
The Italian Multievent on Hypertext will take place on
September 19-21, 1989, consisting of Advanced Tutorials and an
Advanced Workshop (Sept. 19-20) and a Conference with
accompanying Exhibition (Sept. 21-22). Sponsored by Eurogroup
Marcopolo, A.R.G., and Synergia, the event expects the following
speakers: Robert Akscyn of Knowledge Systems, Mark Bernstein of
Eastgate Systems, M.C. Borelli of A.R.G., B. Croft of University
of Massachusetts, G. Degli Antoni of Universita di Milano, M.
Frisse of Washington University, P.K. Garg of Hewlett-Packard
Labs, F. Garzotto of Politecnico di Milano, S. Gibbs of
University of Geneva, Robin Hanson of NASA Ames, M. Holm of Apple
Computer, Kirk Kelley of Sun Microsystems, Norman Meyrowitz of
Brown University, Ted Nelson of Autodesk and Project Xanadu,
Paolo Paolini of Politecnico di Milano, F. Rabitti of
I.E.I.-C.N.R., R. Schwartz of Borland International, C. Thanos of
I.E.I.-C.N.R.
Over 200 people are expected to attend the Conference, at which
"a set of very advanced lectures of leading researchers and
practitioners will present the state of the art of the field. A
balanced view between technology and applications will be
provided."
The Workshop will have restricted attendance and will produce a
set of position papers. "The basic goal would be to compare
research activities in Europe with research activities in U.S.A.,
focusing on possibilities of joint projects.
"Within the global framework, specific technical issues can
be developed, according with the interests of the participants.
"One example: is it true that in Europe researchers tend to
think (and to make use) of Hypertext products as Knowledge
Management tools, while in North America emphasis is placed on
cooperative development of documents?"
For further information, see the Calendar listing.
From Foresight Update 6, originally
published 1 August 1989.
Foresight thanks Dave Kilbridge for converting Update 6 to
html for this web page.
|