Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

An Interview on Nanoweapons
NewsMax ^ | Friday, Sept. 26, 2003 | Ryan Mauro | Lev Navrozov

Posted on 10/12/2003 10:02:58 PM PDT by sourcery

Before launching the Web site www.worldthreats.com, Ryan Mauro was a geopolitical analyst for a maritime security company called Tactical Defense Concepts. I like our interview and have decided to publish it in my column because it "starts from scratch,? a useful approach, since in the last eight years or so the media have created an honest-to-goodness vacuum on the subject.

A Glimpse Into China?s Post-Nuclear Super-Weapons: Lev Navrozov Interviewed by Ryan Mauro for www.worldthreats.com (PhilNDeBlank9@aol.com)

I am thankful to Lev Navrozov, an expert in post-nuclear superweapons, as he calls them, for granting this interview.

Ryan Mauro: Mr. Navrozov, your "nano weapons columns? on Newsmax.com and WorldTribune.com are intriguing. What is nanotechnology and how can it neutralize the U.S. means of nuclear retaliation?

Lev Navrozov: The word "nano? means "one billionth.? Nanotechnology is a field of many fields, some of them civilian, dealing with such small systems. What is of interest to us is tiny systems (they are called "assemblers?) of molecular nanotechnology. Such assemblers can penetrate molecules and transform or destroy them.

The world peace has been based on Mutual Assured Destruction. That is, every nuclear power such as the United States, Russia, or China has had means of nuclear retaliation, which an enemy nuclear attack cannot destroy. Thus, nuclear weapons can destroy New York, Moscow, or Beijing, but they cannot destroy submarines deep underwater, carrying nuclear missiles, underground nuclear installations, or bombers on duty high in the air carrying nuclear bombs. Nano assemblers are expected to be able to find these means of retaliation and destroy them by penetrating in between their atoms. Thus an attacked country can be destroyed safely by nuclear weapons because it has no means of nuclear retaliation to retaliate after the enemy nuclear attack and destroy the attacker by way of Mutual Assured Destruction.

RM: If nanotechnology is to be used as a weapon, how does it work?

LN: Let me recall the description a nanotechnologist has e-mailed to me. A molecular assembler I spoke about is a device capable of breaking and creating the chemical bonds between atoms and molecules. Since a molecular assembler is by definition able to self-replace, the first could build a duplicate copy of itself. Those two then become four, become eight, and so on. This compounding capital base could lead to a massive and decisive force within days. As Eric Drexler described it in his book ? which he published in 1986! ? "a state that makes the assembler breakthrough could rapidly create a decisive military force ? if not literally overnight, then at least with unprecedented speed.?

Such a device is capable of rapidly manufacturing and deploying billions of microscopic/macroscopic machines at relatively little cost. These machines could comb the oceans for enemy submarines and quickly disable the nuclear arsenals they carry. Similar acts of sabotage could be carried out simultaneously against land-based nuclear facilities and conventional military forces in a matter of hours, if not minutes.

The race to build a molecular assembler, if won by China, will result in its worldwide nanotechnic dictatorship. We are certainly at a crucial juncture in history, not unlike 1938 and its nuclear scientists who foretold the atom bomb. This time, we cannot afford to be caught sleeping.

RM: What countries are developing the post-nuclear superweapons involving nanotechnology?

LN: It is worthwhile to speak only of China, Russia if dictatorship comes back to that country, and the United States if it awakens from its sleep, which may well be its last. To make the nanoweapons useful, a country must have the ability and the will to either world domination or to the defense against another country?s world domination.

RM: What do you believe are the motives and goals of the countries that are developing the post-nuclear superweapons?

LN: The national student movement of 1989, associated with Tiananmen Square, endangered the Chinese dictatorship more than any group in Soviet Russia endangered the Soviet dictatorship two years later. Yet the Soviet dictatorship fell. What a lesson for the Chinese dictators! We know authentic information about the Tiananmen Square movement from Zhang Liang?s publication "The Tiananmen Papers,? a 514-page collection of Chinese government documents. It is clear that the dictators of China saw how absolutism was endangered in China and understood that the only way to prevent future Tiananmens was to annihilate or subjugate the source of subversion, viz., the West.

RM: What do you believe are going to be China?s next steps in terms of acquiring territory?

LN: In contrast to Hitler, who stupidly grabbed the rump of Czechoslovakia in 1939, China has been very cautious in its territorial claims, since the position of China now is the best for the development of "Superweapon No. 3,? such as the nano superweapon.

RM: Who does China see as allies and enemies?

LN: The worst enemy is the democratic West, whose very existence produces Tiananmens able to destroy the Chinese dictatorship. The best ally is the democratic West, supplying China with everything necessary for the annihilation or subjugation of the democratic West.

RM: Are the other post-nuclear weapons being researched to this day? If so, are they known? If not, can you enlighten us?

LN: Since the nano "Superweapon No. 3? is a hypothesis, and not an absolute certainty, the Chinese Project 863 has been engaged in genetic engineering and at least six or seven other fields.

RM: If China has or is close to, molecular nanotechnology to be used in war, what is the purpose of having a large, advanced conventional army and "traditional? nuclear weapons?

LN: Eric Drexler, the Newton of nanotechnology, alive and enriching us with his wisdom, discusses the problem in his historic book of 1986 "Engines of Creation.? My assistant Isak Baldwin says that, according to Drexler, "A nation armed with molecular nanotechnology-based weapons would not require nuclear weapons to annihilate a civilization. In fact, it seems that a rather surgical system of seeking and destroying enemy human beings as cancerous polyps could be developed--leaving the nation?s infrastructure intact to be repopulated.?

Nevertheless conventional weapons might be useful even on the "D-day,? after nanotechnology has been successfully weaponized. Conventional non-nuclear weapons have been useful even after 1945. Please recall that two "atom bombs? were delivered in 1945 by conventional U.S. bombers with conventional machine guns and all.

RM: What beliefs or desires are motivating the rulers of China? The belief that Communism must triumph over Capitalism?

LN: A New York taxi robber risks his life, life imprisonment, or death sentence to acquire the taxi driver?s $200. Hence the bulletproof partitions in taxis. The dictators of China defend not $200, but their power, which is worth trillions of dollars, apart from what cannot be expressed in terms of money (royal grandeur, cult, and glorification). Remember the French king who said, "The state ? it is me?? Many dictators have been saying and can always say: "Communism/capitalism/democracy/freedom/socialism/national socialism/our great country/the meaning of life/the goal of history ? it is me."

RM: If the U.S. is the most technologically advanced country, does this mean we have been surpassed?

LN: The "most technologically advanced country? is an ambiguous generality. In the 1950s, Russia was still a technologically backward country, with most of its population deprived of running water, to say nothing of passenger cars. Yet it did not prevent Russia from outstripping the United States in space rocketry, when the Soviet space satellite was launched before its American counterpart. In its annual "Soviet Military Power,? to which I subscribed, the Pentagon could not help praising certain Soviet weapons as second to none in the world.

RM: What today is holding China back from becoming overtly aggressive and reshaping the geopolitical world?

LN: The dictators of China are not insane! China?s government-controlled "capitalist corporations? have been penetrating the entrails of the Western economies, absorbing the latest science and technology ? or sometimes entire Western corporations, induced to operate in China on cheap local labor.

To become "overtly aggressive?? What for? To invade Taiwan? To perish, along with the West, in Mutually Assured Destruction? No, the dictators of China are not insane! They are developing superweapons able to annihilate the Western means of nuclear retaliation.

RM: What are your suggestions for defending the U.S.? What steps must be taken?

LN: It is necessary for the U.S. political establishment to understand what is going on. Then the right steps will be taken. This is not a recipe that one person or one group can offer. This must be a national effort.

In 1978, to enlighten the West, I convinced nineteen outstanding Westerners to join the Advisory Board of the Center for the Survival of Western Democracies under my presidency. The irony is that when we concentrated on Soviet Russia, before 1991, we had all the grants we needed. But in the last eight years or so, China was the American holy cow, and we have had no funds to carry on our research of China and the enlightenment of the West.

RM: How much progress have you made in alerting the government and intelligence apparatus about the Chinese threat?

LN: Since our Center for the Survival of Western Democracies began to regard China, and not Russia, as the key geostrategic player, the donations to our organization stopped. My assistants work without pay or with a token pay. We need a top-level publicist at $10,000 for four months, Chinese translators at $100 a week, etc. Quite unlike a conjectural $200 billion on the war in Iraq, where WMDs are still being hidden (presumably under Hussein?s bed, which is also being hidden) and a conjectural $600 billion for the reconstruction of Iraq (well, once it has been destroyed by the Coalition bombs, missiles, and shells, it is to be reconstructed).

RM: What do you predict will occur in the future?

LN: For the time being, the prediction is not difficult: Unless the situation changes, the West will be annihilated or will become a Chinese colony with all the consequences arising therefrom.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Technical
KEYWORDS: china; miltech; nanotech; nanoweapons; taiwan
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-51 next last
To: LoneRangerMassachusetts
I remember in 1985 the AI people were telling us that computers would be capable of greater intelligence than people by 1995.

The history of AI is embarrassing. Too many researchers with lots of ego and little fundamental justification shooting off at the mouth. The field is/was valid, but from a public perspective, it was poisoned by idiots. That it attracted more than its share of eccentric cranks didn't help. Research hasn't stopped, but most everyone keeps busily quiet now that nobody pays attention any more.

That said, a LOT of progress has been made in recent years with respect to AI, fundamental progress, to the extent that we've done more in the last five years than the previous forty. While there isn't any fanfare, the puzzle is finally starting to unravel, thanks in large part to some important mathematical breakthroughs that allowed the fundamental problem to be characterized. But since most researchers are gun shy these days, you won't hear about any kind of AI until it is extremely mature. That the current state of the art defies intuition and really can't be easily explained to anyone but other mathematicians in the appropriate fields despite being extremely elegant doesn't help either. At least things like "neural nets" could be summed up in a catchy soundbites.

I will say, as a mathematician tangentially associated with the AI community, that the capabilities developed in the last few years far exceed what you probably think is possible, and that it uses algorithms/technologies that essentially no layman has ever heard of.

P.S. The speed of your processor has little to do with why your computer is so stupid. That "we don't have computers fast enough" is a common misperception; CPU speed has nothing to do with intelligence except in the most pathological case. The bottleneck in hardware performance is elsewhere.

21 posted on 10/13/2003 1:14:30 AM PDT by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: Dan Evans
I see this field becoming as big as controlled nuclear fusion research -- a huge money pit for the last 50 years that has produced nothing.

Except that most of the research is being done by private industry and by numerous companies, including many very big and established ones. Not only that, if you follow that general field you will notice that advances are being made VERY fast. As I said earlier, I am intimately familiar with the field as an observer and even I am somewhat stunned by the blinding pace of improvements and discoveries. I honestly did not think they would be hitting milestones as fast as they are, and I considered myself a fairly well-informed optimist.

In some ways, this is actually quite a bit easier than fusion research. The nature of the problems are simpler and easy to do research on, all things considered.

22 posted on 10/13/2003 1:20:45 AM PDT by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: Dan Evans
Actually the appications for nano-technology is far more than most people can dream.

Unlike a protien, chemical or virus, you can program a nanite to do what you want it to do.

Also, technology has come up with a perfect material to have nanites use to built things, it is called carbon-nanotubes. It is really some fun stuff, go look it up.
23 posted on 10/13/2003 1:30:56 AM PDT by Paul C. Jesup
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: tortoise

Except that most of the research is being done by private industry and by numerous companies, including many very big and established ones. Not only that, if you follow that general field you will notice that advances are being made VERY fast

In 1985 I did some contract work for a company that claimed to be researching "artificial intelligence" along with a lot of other buzzwords. They had a guy at the front desk guy working the phones full time giving this line of bull to potential investors and writing up press releases. It was sad because I knew one of the programmers who told me how their demos were all faked, etc. They took the money and ran.

Remember the dot-com crash? Same thing. Same old stuff. And big & established companies have in the past been taken over by scoundrels. Happens all the time. Remember Enron?

24 posted on 10/13/2003 2:02:06 AM PDT by Dan Evans
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: Paul C. Jesup
Nanotubes are real, engineering nanomachines from them is not. I've read about this stuff for ten years and it just doesn't have the ring of truth to it.
25 posted on 10/13/2003 2:16:29 AM PDT by Dan Evans
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: Dan Evans
Have a little faith, also did you hear about IBM figuring out how to hold computer memory at the atomic level.
26 posted on 10/13/2003 3:08:37 AM PDT by Paul C. Jesup
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: dighton; general_re; hellinahandcart; Poohbah; BlueLancer; Catspaw; Physicist
Robert Flaherty approves.

(Says "Nano OK!")

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305257442.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

27 posted on 10/13/2003 5:06:02 AM PDT by aculeus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Dan Evans
Physics...not Psychic.. :)
28 posted on 10/13/2003 5:07:02 AM PDT by Dr. Marten (Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: sourcery
A molecular assembler I spoke about is a device capable of breaking and creating the chemical bonds between atoms and molecules. Since a molecular assembler is by definition able to self-replace, the first could build a duplicate copy of itself. Those two then become four, become eight, and so on. This compounding capital base could lead to a massive and decisive force within days.

Oh. A virus.

The idea of trillions of "Robot bugs" searching for submarines, etc. wins the "Pull It, Sir" award for Science Fiction this week.

More nano BS.

29 posted on 10/13/2003 5:10:40 AM PDT by Gorzaloon (Contents may have settled during shipping, but this tagline contains the stated product weight.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dighton; aculeus; BlueLancer; Poohbah; Physicist
Maybe it looks like gobbidge, maybe it's gobbidge.

Let's just say I'm wary of "problems" where the "solution" is to write the messenger a check ;)

It is necessary for the U.S. political establishment to understand what is going on. Then the right steps will be taken...But in the last eight years or so, China was the American holy cow, and we have had no funds to carry on our research of China and the enlightenment of the West...Since our Center for the Survival of Western Democracies began to regard China, and not Russia, as the key geostrategic player, the donations to our organization stopped. My assistants work without pay or with a token pay. We need a top-level publicist at $10,000 for four months, Chinese translators at $100 a week, etc.

30 posted on 10/13/2003 5:48:03 AM PDT by general_re (SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Quitting Sarcasm Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks To Your Health.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: sourcery
?somebody else ?using? Netscape? ?or? ?Opera? to ?pos?t?
31 posted on 10/13/2003 6:47:09 AM PDT by boris (The deadliest Weapon of Mass Destruction in History is a Leftist With a Word Processor)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: LoneRangerMassachusetts
I will say, as a mathematician tangentially associated with the AI community, that the capabilities developed in the last few years far exceed what you probably think is possible, and that it uses algorithms/technologies that essentially no layman has ever heard of.

After the AI people went underground, a new breed of structural engineering students arose in the 1990's. They were promising a revolution in engineering analysis where expert systems would guide a design engineer through a project. The engineer would interact with the program answering queations, whatever that meant, and the program would knowingly come up with an optimized design all the while meeting the needs of complex set of engineering rules. Graduate students were writing their theses on this subject. Then the term ‘fuzzy logic’ made it into the lexicon of structural engineering academics. All of a sudden, these proponents appear to have gone underground. I’m still working with a stupid finite matrix analysis program that has an up-to-date windows interface. As time wears on, I become increasing impressed with how much our intuition guides our lives and thinking and how little that rigorous logic no matter how fuzzy is ever applied.

32 posted on 10/13/2003 6:48:42 AM PDT by LoneRangerMassachusetts
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: boris
Mozilla.
33 posted on 10/13/2003 8:27:53 AM PDT by sourcery (Moderator bites can be very nasty!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies]

To: general_re
Let's just say I'm wary of "problems" where the "solution" is to write the messenger a check ;)

Yup. Gotta be suspicious there.

On a serious note...I don't know if ANYBODY is ready for this or the likely consequences. There's a joke in the nanotechnology research community: we can expect to have nanoassemblers in fifty years if we're lucky. If we're not lucky, then we'll have 'em in twenty.

34 posted on 10/13/2003 8:42:49 AM PDT by Poohbah ("[Expletive deleted] 'em if they can't take a joke!" -- Major Vic Deakins, USAF)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: tortoise
"As I said earlier, I am intimately familiar with the field as an observer and even I am somewhat stunned by the blinding pace of improvements and discoveries"

Are you at liberty to disclose what these improvements are and what implcations they have?

Forgive me if you've already done so.

35 posted on 10/13/2003 8:59:37 AM PDT by truthandjustice1
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies]

To: Dr. Marten

Physics...not Psychic.. :)

No, I read about twenty or thirty years ago that the Russian military was into all kinds of supernatural mind-reading, mind-control and telekinetic crap. It may be a put-on but it's amazing the people who believe in these pseudo-sciences. Even Democratic candidate General Wesley Clark thinks we should work on time travel.

Like I say, though, I don't know if they really believe in it or if the people who research nanotechnology are sincere. One thing is sure, like with cold fusion, a lot of naive people are going to be separated from their money. There are a lot of crooks in the world and not all of them carry a gun.

36 posted on 10/13/2003 9:34:35 AM PDT by Dan Evans
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies]

To: sourcery
bttt
37 posted on 10/13/2003 9:36:50 AM PDT by Walkingfeather
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Dan Evans
hmm..interesting. I had not heard about any of that, but it does not surprise me.
38 posted on 10/13/2003 9:44:07 AM PDT by Dr. Marten (Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 36 | View Replies]

To: Paul C. Jesup

Have a little faith,

That smooth-talking guy working the phones just loves it when people have faith in him.

also did you hear about IBM figuring out how to hold computer memory at the atomic level.

Chemists and solid state physicists have been getting better at designing molecules and surfaces with specific geometry for years. There is nothing new about layers one molecule thick. That's what these guys do -- they point to conventional research and try to characterize it as nanotechnology. That's a long way from self-replicating machines.

39 posted on 10/13/2003 9:58:40 AM PDT by Dan Evans
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: Dan Evans
Remember the dot-com crash? Same thing. Same old stuff. And big & established companies have in the past been taken over by scoundrels. Happens all the time. Remember Enron?

For every one of those companies, there are a dozen companies that are actually in the business of being in business i.e. accomplishing something useful. Just because it makes good press when there is a scandal doesn't mean it is representative of the industry. Give me a break. If, as you seem to be saying, the entire tech industry was a bunch of charlatans, we would not be seeing the rapid real-world progress that we are actually seeing.

As for dotcoms, I work in Silicon Valley and every single startup that I worked at during the dotcom boom is still in business and making money. The stack of stocks, options, warrants, etc I collected during the boom are all good. You've probably never heard of any of the companies, but that is your problem, not mine. The stock market is neither the industry nor the economy. Just because the market crashed from the perspective of the idiot investors who drove it up does not mean that the fundamental economic engine that was underneath the dotcom expansion hasn't continued to grow. In fact, the "dotcom economy" has continued to grow; the "crash" was in the market, mostly because the "dotcom economy" didn't grow as fast as people wanted, not because it was shrinking. This is like how the Democrats in congress call a reduction in budget growth a "budget cut". A lot of nonsense for the consumption of fools.

40 posted on 10/13/2003 10:01:44 AM PDT by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-51 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson