Now it seems that Foresight has used the study to pat itself on the back, trying to implicate that the public has a great understanding of nanotechnology due to Foresight’s efforts. Did anybody read this study?! It specifically stated that 80% of Americans had heard “little to nothing” about nanotechnology. The American public does not have a clear understanding of the benefits and risks of nanotechnology, and the statement that an arms race is the public’s #2 concern of nano is completely worthless. There were only four other choices in the survey besides an arms race, and the wording of the questions leaves me rather unsurprised at the results.

I work in the defense industry (not even remotely nanotech-related) for a number of reasons. But nowhere on that list of reasons is, “I want to have an arms race! That sounds coooool!” I’d really rather not ever have one again. But I am more than enough of a student of history– real history, written by real historians, not the slanted sound-bytes you’ll get from the politicians and the politically funded think-tanks– to realize that just because I don’t want something doesn’t mean I won’t get it. Declaring that we don’t want an arms race and then failing to pursue the obvious military applications of the technologies involved doesn’t avert an arms race. That’s just head in the sand crazy-talking, of the sort that assumes only the West (or even more specifically, only the United States) acts, and the rest of the world simply re-acts; that assumes that if we don’t make weapons of a type, no one else will make weapons of that sort. But that’s simply false on the face of it. The United States does not have an exclusive license on military innovation, as the history of the 20th century should make abundantly clear.

If we need a message for the military– and by extension, the supporting defense industry– let’s start with something along these lines: “It’s a dangerous world, but you already knew that. Dramatically new opportunities will open up, and amazing new force multipliers will be developed in the next ten to fifty years, many of them associated with nanotechnology. Do not ignore it. But do not pursue it blindly. Pursue it doggedly, with foresight, with wisdom, with failsafes, and respect for our past. Pursue it with one eye on the dangerous future of warfare; and one eye on the past of Western tradition which has kept the military from dominating our government thus far and emphasized layers and layers of failsafes around the most dangerous weapon systems. Don’t fuck this up. It’s important.”

(And note, my entire little spiel can be changed into a talk about the weaponization of space with just a one word modification.)

And also, Christine doesn’t have to “whip these people up.”

“These people,” are, in my experience, profoundly not-stupid and are looking in this direction already.

So here’s a question: what should be our message to the U.S. military?

I grew up during the Vietnam War, suspicious of anyone in uniform. But my actual experiences in interacting with actual military-oriented people who are thinking about nanotechnology have been positive. They don’t seem to be focused on world domination, but on trying to avoid wars and promote peace and freedom.

In any case: your and others’ thoughts on what our message should be would be most welcome –CP

This isn’t necessarily about destroying species or biospheres. It may also be about nanotech-enabled tyrrany… a tyrrany that might be impossible to break for centuries. One of the big risks of the jingoistic country-oriented attitude is that people may decide that some country, or some arbitrary way of life, or some other totalizing fetish, has to be preserved at the cost of all else… and have the technology to force that on the rest of us.