Before delving into specifics of the possible implications of nanotechnology in terms of war and other crimes a few general thoughts about nano's role in the grand scheme of things might be in order. The first thing to notice is that nano is over determined.
When something is over determined historically and culturally that means that you don’t find just one cause for it; there is multiple causation. The same is true of cyborgs. For cyborgs, over determination is a sign that human tool use and human machine creation have reached a new stage: cyborgization. With nano, I think we can argue that the same engine that is driving progressive cyborgization technoscience, is behind nano. And that cultural forces that push for improved human-machine integration are equaled in the case of nanotechnology.
A major one is clearly the drive to explore, which can be a wonderful thing, and aesthetic desire (small is beautiful) but successful exploration inevitably leads to other less fine emotions. Once we realized that “small” was a place, the nanoworld became a destination. Exploration is followed by conquest (the will to power) and then colonization and exploitation, driven by that fundamental human desire to prosper and more-than-prosper (greed).
Therefore nanotechnology isn’t just a little corner of contemporary science/engineering/business; it is the expression of our postmodern age. So, one has bricollage (different types of nanotechnology…at whole different levels and with different strategies), you have the centrality of speed (milli and microseconds are now important in many processes. See Paul Virilio’s book, Speed, for a wild philosophic ride about the implications of same), and you have information.
If you think about it in one way than info is nano. What is smaller than a bit? Conceptually it is almost nothingness. Physically now in electronic machines it is very small indeed. What is the end result of Moore’s Law (that computer hardware power doubles every 18 months…now down to 12 months)? Optical and quantum computing… In other words real nanocomputing.
And don’t neglect the other two great sciences of the postmodern era: physics and biology. Physics gains its vast power from its understanding of the smallest possible elements and forces and not just as science, but as engineering as well. And biology is leveraging its own explorations of the subcellular (genetics and biochemistry) for its great power. Nano is indeed pomo and it is 21st Century science as well.
Nanowar
As nanotechnology is part of the wave of new technoscientific discovery that is washing over the end of the 20th century it is also clearly an integral part of the contemporary Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA many military commentators have discussed in the past few years. In one sense this isn’t new, as the pseudo-nano war technologies of biochem war and nuclear war are also based on “getting small” and so is the electronic battlefield. All of these are producing the cyborg soldier and they have also produced the fundamental contradictions that frame postmodern war.
So nanotechnology enjoys some of the same paradoxes that CBN (chemical/biological/nuclear) has; and some of the ironies and illusions of information war specifically and computer war in general.
Among the most salient are:
- The transformation of the soldier into a cyborg, a part of a weapon system.
- The insanity of total war. The most effective nanoweapons can no more be used (except by the insane, and eventually they will get such weapons) than can nuclear or biological weapons.
- The shift in casualties from soldiers to civilians.
- The expansion of the territory of the battle (space). Now it isn’t just World War, it is war at the bottom of the oceans, war in the upper atmosphere and in space, it is also war at the microlevel. As the high ground (space) and the deep sea (for boomer subs and secret passage) confer great military advantages so does the super mall. He who controls the micro world controls the normal world…perhaps. Couldn’t hurt.
- The more highly technological the army and/or culture the more vulnerable it is to attack by nuclear weapons, by infowar assaults, and by nanotechnology. As with infowar and biowar building effective defenses will probably be a major motivation for the growth of a nano capability.
- Offense has the advantage over defense.
- Postmodern war is transitory. Postmodernism itself is clearly just a short period between the modern and the future, the same is true of postmodern war. War will either destroy us (so nano is irrelevant) or be outlawed (and nano could play a large role in this through surveillance especially), or it will transition into a lower-level kind of conflict…. Cool War is what it is called in Fredrik Pohl’s science fiction novel. Cool War won’t be nearly as bloody as ancient/modern/postmodern wars have been (that’s 3,000 years of history guys!), and it won’t be just for city- and nation-states. In a cool war situation one can expect that corporations will be major players, probably as important as most, if not all, the nation-states. The stealth potential of nano (and it’s cousins bio and info) technologies could make cool war possible. The danger of nanowar (especially linked to CBN war) could lead to One World Government; even a horribly effective one otherwise what’s the point?
- Fear of technological surprise will encourage the military to throw gobs of money at all potentially deadly technosciences, including nano. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.
- Illusions about the effectiveness of state-of-the-art weapons leads to disasters, such as Vietnam and Afghanistan, especially by those states that feel these weapons have conferred a great advantage. Techno-things don’t work perfectly in real life (in jungles urban or not, or deserts, or space, or anywhere) like they do in Tom Clancy novels. Weapons fail and war is still politics, even nanowar, and the culture that has the most to gain, and is willing to lose the most, will win most wars. But not all, if they have stupid leaders, like Iraq does, they can still lose easily.
Some of the analysis of nanowar I’ve seen argues that nanotech will allow for fightable/winnable wars. No. How many times have I read this about computers? A thousand, minimum. Now, all things being equal the army that effectively integrates the new weapon(s) into their battle system will win. This is why Germans won the first half of World War II. They didn’t spread their tanks out, they made Panzer armies. They didn’t use the best part of their air force for strategic bombing, they used it to support the ground armies. So with tanks, trucks, radios and Stukas they invented Blitzkrieg.
In terms of actual nanotech, the most interesting weapons proposed are the insect warriors. Roboroach, who the Japanese have created (See the “Understanding the Postmodern Cyborg” article for a picture), is clearly the grandfather of such weapons eventually. And note in the RAND report that the weapons won’t just be aimed at people. A spider that spins conductive webs would be great to “bug” computers. In fact, most nanoweapons I’ve seen proposed, microbots of different types, are really aimed at machines more than humans, after all, and folks have been working on them for some time.
In the far future, if war survives, one could imagine a complex nanowar fought entirely on that level by beautifully sophisticated machines, capable of everything current human-machine weapon systems are, but in the interim we can expect that most effective nanomachines will be surveillance or targeting devices, not weapon platforms. Many will be inert, waiting for something to come to them, not mobile. And that small, but not nano, machines will become more common and some of these will have kill potential and many will be tele-operated.
Postmodern War is starting to blur the line between business competition, and politics/war and crime, and vice-versa. Nano-surveillence technologies and nano-sabatoge can easily be deployed between companies as well as between political institutions.
Nanocrime
The dark side of nano isn’t just from crime, it also includes the danger of over-effective government and other institutions using nanotechnology to eliminate the last vestiges of privacy in our society in their zealous “wars” on crime and drugs. These large irresponsible institutions will have the best nanotechnology.
With nanotechnology one can imagine:
- Tine spies everywhere, even in the form of mists or clouds.
- Drug and DNA analysis could be performed on people without their knowledge just as the passed by.
- Tiny machines could measure bioresponses and become effective truth machines.
- New nano technologies could produce new ways of doing drugs or committing murder that remain ahead of the police (offense trumps defense).
- There will probably be new ways to harm the environment using nanotech to extract valuable elements from the land, sea, and even air.
At a minimum we can expect traditional surveillance will increase drastically; prisoners and parolees will be monitored continuously; homes will be turned into effective prisons; mind and emotion reading will improve tremendously; universal drug detection will lead to legalization (fueled by many new ways to achieve psychotropic effects) or massive repression; undetectable assassination will become feasible.
The “escape” of nanotechs into their own life cycle is not impossible considering how many proposals there are for making nanos that can reproduce. It is actually the basis for many of the stronger claims about the power of nanoteachnology and so there is the inevitable ecological dangers this could pose.
Nanofutures
Just how much nano will change the world we cannot say. But the indications are that it will be tremendous and, if given enough time, almost beyond the scope of our imagination. For example, a number of science fiction writers have postulated that reproducing nanos could develop into an autonomous, even intelligent form of life. It’s certainly not impossible. While nanos certainly won’t take over from humans in the near future they might lead to our extinction. After that, who knows?
Chris Hables Gray - Philosopher. Author and editor of numerous books and articles about the social and political implications of new technologies. See in ...
