Your "nanotechnology" (i.e. biology) has extremely limited and brittle capabilities. Machine phase nanotech does not have these limits, and quite frankly, will eventually eat the little biological critters alive at their own game.
If you think biology is comparable to what these other people are talking about, you don't understand the subject matter. Apples and oranges, really.
When all they do is talk, they can talk about a lot of fancy stuff, but talk is all they've done. 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.