applications to China and their clients from the Commerce Dept. for a few $$$$$ for the DNC
they did not have the foresight to ask China for theirs.
Now the US must suffer.
Posted on 07/22/2004 7:50:37 PM PDT by Libloather
U.S. Losing Nanoweapons Race to China
Lev Navrozov
Friday, July 16, 2004
On the last page of her four-page testimony of April 9, 2003, to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, allocating funds for nanotechnology, Christine Peterson, president of Drexler’s Foresight Institute, wrote two lines that are so paradoxical, horrible – nay, obscene – that I am not sure it is proper to quote them publicly.
She wrote at the very end of her statement that "there is no guarantee that the U.S., an ally, or other democracy will be the first to reach molecular manufacturing, and failure to do so would be military disaster."
Ms. Peterson did not mention China. That would have been so scandalous that the congressional committee would no doubt have requested her psychiatric examination. She merely conjectured that not all countries are democracies, and not all of them are as small as Iraq or North Korea.
Hence, a dictatorship, such as China, or perhaps Russia if it becomes a dictatorship again, or both of them in “strategic partnership,” may be the first to reach molecular manufacturing, that is, molecular nanoweapons (Ms. Peterson did not mention the words “weapons” or “war” either).
In short, her testimony contained the most delicate hint possible, but the meaning of such hints has been so outrageous to nano businessmen that they have been insulting Dr. Eric Drexler (the founder of nanotechnology in general) as an ignorant and dangerous quack, warmonger and enemy of mankind. Thus, Richard Smalley, working in the peaceful and practical field of nanotechnology, declared that Drexler had invented a “monster” that “scared our children.”
Why children? Well, a normal adult will not believe Drexler’s nonsense – only children are its victims.
But here is Drexler in a different key. It seems that he is described by his favorite disciple from the Foresight Institute. We learn that as
...a pioneer of nanotechnology, Dr. K. Eric Drexler introduced the term “nanotechnology” in the mid-1980s. It describes atomically exact molecular manufacturing systems and their products. Afterward, he received the first and only doctorate “in the field of nanotechnology” from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991. By publishing his research work, “Nanosystems,” in 1992, he introduced to the world the core physical principles of nanotechnology. And it goes on:
A leader in nanotechnology design, he is still engaged in nanotechnology research. He will undoubtedly be considered a hero of the technology of the next century.
Next century? Yes, the above hymn to Drexler was published on Oct. 15, 2001. Where? In “China Daily,” a government tabloid of the People’s Republic of China.
The article is entitled “All Things Are Possible.”
The title is crucial. From 1938 onward, some nuclear scientists who had fled from anti-Semitism in Europe to the United States insisted, led by Einstein, that the “atom bomb” was possible. Others claimed that these scientists were simply in a panic at the prospect of Hitler’s world domination. Still others opined that the “atom bomb” might be possible, though it was not clear when.
No private corporation would touch the Manhattan Project with a barge pole. To be acceptable by business, the project should have cost, say, $100 billion (in 2004 U.S. dollars) before its completion and then sell for a price no lower than 30 percent above its cost. Profit!
Actually, while its cost was to be indefinitely high, its profit was zero except for the victory over Japan, but this is not profit in the business sense. From the point of view of business, the Manhattan Project was a tremendous money loser.
After three or four years of procrastination, the U.S. government started the Manhattan Project in 1942 in all earnestness because Hitler had launched in 1939 a conventional war for world domination – the United States was at war with Germany, which was developing the “atom bomb,” as those terrified Jewish nuclear scientists from Europe (plus Fermi, whose wife was Jewish) kept reminding.
“All things are possible” with molecular nanotechnology, including molecular nanoweapons. But the development of molecular nanoweapons, able to create a nano Mutual Assured Destruction, may be no more expensive than was the development of the “atom bomb,” yet no more profitable in the business sense of the word “profit.”
Even in Russia I knew that in the United States, business, profit, private enterprise are held in greater reverence than in any other country. But recently I saw that I had not known enough. A billionaire, who inherited his billions from his father after the latter’s demise at the age of 90 and began to work every weekday from 9 to 5 to obtain the maximum profit from the money inherited, told me, without any acrimony: “You have never worked a day in your life.”
He knew that my life was daily work: Before our emigration from Russia in 1971, I translated Russian classical literature into English, from 1972 to 1991 I tried to draw Western public attention to the danger of Soviet development of post-nuclear superweapons, and from 1986 to this day I have done the same with respect to China. I physically wrote, studied, edited or spoke on radio and television every day, including weekends.
But to this billionaire who inherited his billions of dollars from his father, I never worked a day in my life, for work is business (from the word “busy”) and hence profit. Now, where are my billions of dollars?
Where are Drexler’s billions of dollars? On the other hand, Mark Modzelewski called Drexler’s pastime “playing with futuristic sci-fi notions” and helped the Congress to deny any government allocations to Drexler and his institute. Modzelewski was at that time the head of the NanoBusiness Alliance. The very name suggests billions of dollars in profit, surely to go to this pushy young businessman, looking in the photograph like a schoolboy. Well, actually, he has lost his high business post.
The congressional committee that left Drexler without “allocations” – and the United States without defense – was chaired by Sen. John McCain. The other day I saw him in a television interview. Asked why France had opposed the United States on the “pre-emptive war” on Iraq, he answered that France is like a woman still expecting men to pay for her dinner, but finding that they do not.
This witticism (shall I call it a McCainism?) cannot be interpreted or commented on. It can only be accompanied with a TV image of his puffy face (do women pay for HIS dinner?).
Similarly, discussing the allocations for nanotechnology, Senator McCain said: “Had I the chance to do it [his life] again, I would strongly consider a career in the nanotechnology industry after all the millions of dollars in Member adds nanotechnology received in this bill.”
From this McCainism, it is clear that McCain was against any allocations for nanotechnology. But finally, nano business received its allocations for the next few years of the 21st century, while the nanotechnology essential for the defense against the nano annihilation of the United States (or the West in general) was “omitted” from the act for forthcoming years.
Suppose that, though Drexler et al. have shown that the nano Manhattan Project will be not so expensive and prolonged, a certain nano sage has convinced the credulous world that the probability of development of molecular nanoweapons is only 1 percent, provided the investment will amount to $1 trillion.
U.S. nano businessmen, such as that youthful but now retired Modzelewski, would roar with laughter: “What idiots would invest in such a project?”
The “supreme leaders” of China would. Those who will win such a 1 percent prize will gain the world, while Modzelewski will be reduced to atoms.
On July 6, 2004, it became known that in 2002 China accounted for more than $2.5 billion worth of Russia’s military export contracts signed that year, that is, far more than all other countries put together. This seems illogical. The “supreme leaders” of China are planning the takeover of the globe by post-nuclear superweapons and here they buy those conventional Russian weapons. Meanwhile, they buy those weapons from Russia that they cannot buy from Boeing or General Motors.
Here there is an analogy between money in business and power in dictatorship. In business, money is never enough. The question “Why do you need $10 billion if $1 billion is enough to last you and your wife and provide for your children?” is irrelevant.
Similarly, military power for dictatorship is never enough. It should come from all possible sources. The more the better.
There is an old Oriental ditty about the argument between the gold and the sword.
The gold: “I will buy all there is on earth.” The sword: “I will take all you will buy.” For more information about Drexler’s Foresight Institute and its lobbying in Congress, see www.foresight.org
* * * * *
For information about the Center for the Survival of Western Democracies, Inc., including how you can help, please e-mail me at navlev@cloud9.net.
The link to my book online is www.levnavrozov.com. You can also request our webmaster@levnavrozov.com to send you by e-mail my outline of my book.
Yup, someday the Chinese are going to wake up all Borg.
Take heart, Libloather.
The SR-71 was invented in the late '50s. The U.S. invented stealth aircraft long before they were unveiled in the strikes during Gulf War I. Typically, U.S. weapons development is far ahead of the public's knowledge of same. I suspect the U.S. has a whole mess of stuff that the rest of the world has not conceived of yet even though carter and klintoon tried to give them everything possible.
It's cause they got them little hands.
There's a lot of hype surrounding nanotech. But, OTOH, I don't want to find out the hard way. I hope we've got a massive nano-Manhattan Project in the works right now to make sure we master military nanotech first -- IF it really is possible.
Now the US must suffer.
Ayup. and then they'll deploy some a them thar FOBS that they've been cooking up since...when did I read that article? 1986?
<p.
I think we're a looooooooooooooooooooong way from gray goo weapon systems.
Battle Stations! Battle Stations!
There's a Chinese Nano-Navy foating in my bowl of Congee!
Make that 'floating' in my Congee
Not necessarily: they 'foat' in their own drinking water; a terribly unpleasant and unclean people.
We could all not wake up. If nano-technology fails there is the "grey goo" scenario. Like ice-9 in that Vonnegaut novel, the nano machines run out of control and convert all matter they can reach to something.
One theory for why we don't see intelligence in the universe is that almost no one survives the technology wave we are on verge of.
Google "singularity" for more on this topic.
And the grey goo scenario has basically been discredited by the very person who first proposed it.
bayourod: It's cause they got them little hands.Heh... All we have to do to f*** 'em up is to infiltrate their labs with pepper, or pollen, or something else that'll make 'em sneeze.
Chu Gary: I suspect the U.S. has a whole mess of stuff that the rest of the world has not conceived of yetI agree wholeheartedly.
fourdeuce82d: I think we're a looooooooooooooooooooong way from gray goo weapon systems.Just to seem incoherent, I agree wholeheartedly with that too.
Mulder: China will eventually surpass the United States technologically within 50 years, unless our course changes.Not a chance. In fifty years, China will be in need of foreign labor, just to operate the nursing homes. Fifty years after that, there will be fewer Chinese than there are US citizens today, while the US' population will exceed one billion, or perhaps two billion.
Jack Black: One theory for why we don't see intelligence in the universe is that almost no one survives the technology wave we are on verge of.I've never put much stock in that, probably because it was semi-articulated by Carl Sagan.
mcg1969: And the grey goo scenario has basically been discredited by the very person who first proposed it.That's because the gray goo took over, and made him say that to conceal their existence until it's too late!!!
This is not some small matter. And any businessman who thinks there's no profit in nano-technology better think again. At the top of my head: Medicine. Healthcare. Nano-technology will be capable of amazing things in the medical and healthcare field. I'm no big fan of grants. But if it takes a grant to get this rolling, we better consider shelling out a billion every year.
There were more than two Chinese guys that were severe risks. I can remember two. Wen Ho Lee [Cox Report]. And John Huang [Thompson Committee].
Vonnegut also wrote about very tiny Chinese dominating the world (changing gravity and the like) in "SlapStick: Or Lonely No More". The US has become a conglomerate of anarchical kingdoms and Manhattan is deserted. Great Read.
If you didn't catch it, Vonnegut also just wrote an Op-Ed piece about how the US is addicted to Oil and that our leaders are like pushers committing crimes to get us our fix.
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