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Nanotech Scenario Series
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Results of Our Ongoing Research
These pages, marked with
GREEN headings, are published for
comment and criticism. These
are not our final findings; some of these opinions will probably change.
LOG OF UPDATES
CRN Research: Overview of Current Findings
Finding a Solution that Balances Many
Interests
This page is more preliminary than the others. CRN
is not recommending these solutions yet; we need to do more research before we
will know what can work in the real world. However, we do think that each of the
problems addressed by these solutions must be dealt with somehow.
Overview: The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has
developed a tentative outline for the international administration of
molecular
nanotechnology (MNT). Under this proposal, a self-contained, secure
molecular
manufacturing system—a
personal nanofactory—would be developed in a closely guarded
crash program. The personal nanofactory (PN) would be released for widespread use. A
PN would only be able to make approved
products, or approved classes of
products, and the approval process could be quite flexible without giving up too
much control. Very few products, even military products, require a built-in
molecular manufacturing capability. Families of products could be classified
according to increasing product safety and MNT containment. Only unusually
dangerous products would require any human approval. At the same time, the
built-in restriction infrastructure would allow military, commercial, and
societal interests to be protected. Intellectual property could be protected
without discouraging innovation or preventing humanitarian aid.
| A nanotech program must
balance many benefits and risks. |
Any good molecular nanotechnology
administration program will promote at least four benefits, while preventing
about a dozen major risks. This is not easy, and is proof that a
simplistic solution cannot work. The program
should promote personal, institutional, and international security; economic
well-being of groups and individuals; humanitarian relief and human rights;
and innovation. In addition to the
risks
previously analyzed, the existence of a global
MNT administration implies
the possibility of corruption, so the program must be carefully designed to
minimize that. A program that fulfills all these requirements should be
acceptable to most groups and people; this is good because it will need
cooperation from almost everyone to prevent the inevitable few malicious
people from bypassing it. |
| It's safest to develop one
nanofactory quickly. |
A key to our proposal is the use of a
flexible, carefully controlled manufacturing system. As described in our
Technical Restrictions page, self-contained
molecular manufacturing systems (personal nanofactories) can have restrictions built
in to prevent many kinds of misuse, by allowing only approved products or
classes of products to be built. This allows a fine degree of control over
the whole technology—as long as the restrictions are not broken, and as
long as no competing development programs exist. Competing programs are a
bad idea for at least two reasons. First, they multiply the chance of a
technology leak. Second, they reduce accountability and trackability, which
increases uncertainty and decreases security.
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The nanofactory project should begin as
quickly as
possible, both to preempt competing programs and because of the millions of
lives that could be saved each year by marvelously inexpensive molecular
manufacturing. The project should use the best of government, industry,
academia, and open source talent and resources. The more people and groups
who contribute in some way, the fewer will be working outside the system on
their own MNT projects, and the less chance there will be of independent
projects reaching the goal first. However, some parts of the project should
be highly secure. Much of the difficulty in building an assembler comes
from the lack of a reliable recipe; release of all project data would
probably make a rogue project too easy. The idea is to create "the only
game in town"—the only project that has a realistic chance of early
success—so that everyone feels the need to support it. |
| Products can be approved by a
flexible process. |
Foundational to this proposal is the idea
that no special interest group can be allowed to restrict the technology to
the point that it is not useful to other groups. Nanofactories should be
widely available—one in every store, one in every village, possibly one in
every home—to maximize the benefits and profits. Many different groups can
have input into the product approval process. The security group must be
able to veto any design that would allow a technology leak. Governmental
jurisdictions will want to prevent undesired products, and different
governments will have different ideas about what is undesirable. Support of
intellectual property rights will require the forbidding of designs that
violate trademark, copyright, or patent. Conversely, in order to maximize
the utility and benefits of the technology, most designs must be approved
quickly.
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There are at least four levels of risk. The most severe is technology leaks leading to unrestricted nanofactories. Next is massively destructive products. Next is dangerous products. Finally come products that are illegal but not destructive. Whole classes
of design can be approved as "probably safe". Products in these classes may
be illegal or even dangerous, but undesired designs can be dealt with even
after a few copies are produced. In more dangerous classes, designers and
builders, and the products themselves, may need to be licensed and tracked. A product that released microscopic diamond fragments, or that used a lot of
power, would probably need more careful review, just as many products today
are UL listed or CE certified. Still, the "probably safe" classes provide
much scope for innovation. Most of the products used by most people today,
and most of the early humanitarian products, would be considered "probably
safe". |
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A single, adaptable nanofactory with a
flexible and efficient product approval/disapproval process appears to
satisfy the requirements for usability. A well-designed process can satisfy
at least five groups simultaneously: military, businesspeople,
humanitarians, users, and innovators. Each of these groups has very
different goals, methods, and outputs. The next few paragraphs will
consider them individually. |
| Well-administered nanotech
can increase national security. |
Nations may attack each other to improve
their situation (e.g. by seizing a resource), to remove a threat, or because
of bad leadership. Nations maintain militaries both to deter and resist
attacks from others and to prepare to attack others. (In some nations, the
military also provides internal policing.) MNT can provide almost any
physical resource, reducing one incentive to attack. Molecular
manufacturing can relieve all desperate domestic conditions caused by lack
of resources, and can even make a big dent in conditions caused by lack of
education. However, unrestricted MNT could increase the perceived threat
from other nations. Nanotech weapons, developed and deployed in secret,
could be quite destabilizing. If neither side knows what the enemy may
develop or how to counter it, they may be tempted to launch a preemptive
strike when they believe they have a momentary advantage. |
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The main question, then, is how countries
that do not want war can be secure in a world with MNT. The ideal situation
is one in which everyone knows that no attack can succeed. This requires
some level of knowledge of each other's defenses—which each nation should
be happy to advertise as a deterrent—and some level of knowledge of
offensive capabilities—which they may not be happy to advertise, but should
consent to as long as the system is trustworthy and fair to all. It's
currently unknown whether some amount of secrecy will be necessary for
effective defensive systems. Complete openness in offensive capabilities
may not be acceptable to everyone no matter how beneficial it would be, and
open publication of new weapon concepts may not always be desirable. Solving such problems and making such compromises requires further study. |
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As long as all MNT capability is
administered by an international body, with product designs being reported
and tracked, it will be possible to verify the offensive and defensive
capabilities of each nation. This approach depends on individual nations
not developing independent MNT capabilities. Some designs will need to be
kept secret. A small, diverse, trustworthy, collectively disinterested
board of technology evaluators could assess the capabilities of each secret
design: lethality, destructiveness, size, etc. The manufacture of each
design could be tracked, allowing approximate knowledge of capabilities and
intentions to be published without giving away secret details. |
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If numerous countries do develop
independent capabilities, it is hard to see how any country could be secure;
even a massive (and wasteful) deployment of defensive MNT would not
guarantee protection against new and unexpected kinds of weapons. As
discussed in
this
essay by Thomas McCarthy, MNT's effect of cutting economic ties between
countries greatly reduces their economic incentive to avoid war. And
as discussed
here by Mark Gubrud, and on CRN's
Dangers
page, an arms race interrupted by a preemptive strike is likely. Faced with
such a scenario, all countries should be willing to accept mutual
inspections to verify that there is no independent MNT development. However, the United States recently
refused to allow biological inspections. Even if an international
approach is the best hope for international security, it may be difficult to
get it accepted. It is questionable, though, whether any one country such
as the United States can successfully take on the role of international
administrator. |
| Nanotech abundance is
compatible with capitalist economy. |
Much of society today is shaped by
economy. There are at least three reasons to avoid disruption of the
current economic model. First, a sudden change in economic activities would
be quite destabilizing. Second, economic interests are quite powerful today
and can probably prevent any plan they don't like. Third, capitalism is an
excellent system for optimizing positive-sum problems, and the capitalist
infrastructure is too useful to throw away. Opinions vary on whether
networked file sharing (copyright violation) threatens the entertainment
industry today, but the MPAA and RIAA are firmly convinced that it does, and
have taken legal action (including lobbying) that has sometimes led to
unexpected and unwarranted curtailment of freedoms. A distributed, low-cost
manufacturing system could provoke a similar uproar.
Embedded Security
Management
(ESM) can provide a platform for protection
of intellectual property rights. In addition to security licensing,
products could be restricted to be built only for customers who had paid for
them. Since most of ESM is automated, this would not require a lot of
resources. In addition, automatic scanning for designs that violate
trademark, copyright, or patent would be useful to prevent illegal
development of protected designs. (Copyright and patent law are very
complex; sometimes separately-developed designs are OK, and sometimes they
are not.) As explained below, this automatic scanning can also facilitate
innovation.
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Consumers will want to purchase products
and benefit from the major improvements that molecular manufacturing
produces. Purchasing of designs will be quite easy—the main trouble will
be finding the designs they want among the flood of new inventions. This
implies that marketing and sales will still be necessary. Much of the
economy in the United States today is based on service industries, and this
need not change. Taking advantage of the nanofactory infrastructure,
thousands of design companies may spring up, and may also develop from
existing companies. With strong intellectual property protection, the cycle
of innovation and purchase can continue, producing much profit for all
involved and supporting a strong economy. |
| Capitalist nanotech is
compatible with humanitarian relief. |
There are billions of people in the world today who have
almost no way of earning money. Many of these people are sick and even
dying from malnutrition and disease, but may not be able to pay licensing
fees for cheaply manufactured MNT products that would keep them alive. Global security, as well as humanitarian considerations, demand that their
basic material needs be provided whether or not they can pay. There are
many arguments that the owners of nanofactory technology should allow free
use for humanitarian purposes. First, the profits to be made from selling
water filters and mosquito netting are miniscule compared with the profits
from selling high-end luxury goods. Second, if only one nanofactory design
is allowed, this creates a monopoly, and monopolies can legitimately be
regulated. Third, if billions of people can rapidly be raised from abject
poverty, the global market for luxury goods will increase dramatically,
which allows the owners to make more money (the "rising tide" argument). Fourth, both governments and charities should be willing to compensate the
nanofactory owners handsomely for a blanket humanitarian license. Fifth,
innovative products generate more money for the nanofactory owners—and to
spur innovation, basic technologies should be free anyway. Sixth, if the
future owners are not willing to agree to this at the time nanofactories are
developed, they may be locked out of the development project in favor of
those who will allow free humanitarian (and perhaps government) use. Seventh, lifesaving technology will be so cheap to produce that to restrict
its use would be obscene; few individual business owners or stockholders
would actually choose to prevent lifesaving use if they were directly
confronted with the choice. |
| Innovative products, and
control of new products, are both possible. |
Even "mostly safe" products can be
revolutionary by today's standards. The ability to pack a supercomputer
into a sand grain allows all sorts of innovation. That combined with more
capable sensors, displays, and actuators will allow amazing robotics to be
developed. The range of products will be limited far more by human
imagination than by technological restrictions. More risky products could
be developed under careful scrutiny by licensed developers. CRN's
ESM
system allows a single nanofactory design to be used for both safe and risky
products. Approval for production of especially risky products would be
given only under carefully controlled circumstances. However, most product
functions could be fulfilled within the safer categories. As nanofactory
technology improves, new versions would have to be carefully checked to
prevent technology leaks. However, even the first nanofactory will be able
to build products with perhaps 50% of their theoretical maximum capability,
so slow nanofactory improvement will not be a severe limitation.
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Decisions about which products to approve can be made at
several levels. As noted above, MNT security monitors would be able to veto
any product or class of products in order to prevent technology leak. Governments would be able to track the design and manufacture of products
within their jurisdiction. Illegal product designs could be vetoed from
further manufacture, and their designers arrested or blacklisted. Depending
on the circumstances, people causing the creation of illegal products from
foreign designs might also be detected and stopped or punished. There are
many opportunities for a state to maintain control—a bigger problem seems
to be avoiding the creation of a degree of control that violates human
rights or allows government oppression such as blackmail and selective
denial of service. |
| Environmental controls can be
imposed, and remediation implemented. |
Some products may not cause problems individually, but
may cause problems when many copies are used.
Environmental damage may
occur from a variety of mechanisms, including construction of large
buildings, deployment of large numbers of solar cells, release of heat
produced by the operation of many nanodevices at high power density, and
release of small particles creating litter that is hard to clean up and may
be toxic at high concentrations. Such problems may not deter an individual
user, so must be regulated collectively. A product (or type of product)
that was sufficiently popular to be collectively damaging could be regulated
through
ESM, allowing only a certain number per person or per land area to
be built. |
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Molecular manufacturing
will offer unprecedented mechanisms for alleviating existing air and water
pollution and for cleaning up toxic waste sites. Working at the molecular
level, such remediation will be far safer, more effective, and less
expensive than today's techniques. |
| Patents, and patent reform,
can be supported. |
Innovation is important for several reasons. First,
innovation will increase wealth and well-being as more useful products are
created. Second, innovation will be a major driving force in the post-MNT
economy. Third, people who are driven to innovate need an outlet for their
talents. Nanofactory manufacturing provides an incredibly rich field for
innovation. The basic unit of design is the nanoblock, less than a
micron
on a side; a cubic
millimeter contains billions of nanoblocks, allowing an
almost unlimited number of products. Maximum support of innovation depends
on two factors: first, the field must be open, and second, specific
inventions must be protected. This means that protection should not be
applied in such a way that large areas of the field are unavailable. (Software patents have not had a good record in this regard.) Since a
nanotech product design is no more or less than a specification of
combinations of nanoblocks, automated design analysis systems can be an
integral part of the patent system for these designs. This would allow
immediate detection of patent infringers and of prior art, ensuring that
patents are used as far as possible but not overused. A "patent holiday" of
a few months would allow a base of prior art to be developed, ensuring that
the most obvious and useful designs could not be owned by opportunists. However, a few months of invention will not even scratch the surface of the
possible products; most inventions would remain to be developed and patented
after the patent holiday expired. |
| Nanofactories can run
off-grid. |
Nanofactories are incredibly useful as a way of deploying
advanced nanotechnology. A nanofactory would be self-contained, and would
not rely on any 20th century infrastructure. Sunlight could be used for
power—a solar electric generator can be built using only a few grams of
diamondoid material per square meter. Feedstock material is currently
unspecified, but lab-on-a-chip technology would probably allow locally
available organic material to be processed into feedstock. (There isn't
much carbon dioxide in the air; using that as a source of carbon would
require processing huge volumes of air.) There is no reason why literally
every person on earth should not have access to a nanofactory and its
products. Humanitarian necessities could be free to all who needed them;
luxuries could be far more luxurious, and far more lucrative for the owners
and inventors of the technology, than today's crude products. |
| Almost all groups would have
strong incentive to support this system. |
Once the nanofactory is invented and deployed, and
products are invented and made available, there will be little legitimate
need for a competing technology. Every group that is benefiting from the
nanofactory system stands to lose some or all of those benefits if a second
system arises. (Consumers might enjoy lower prices, but would also suffer
from lower security.) The potential damage to personal, national, and
international security by a successful competing MNT program should inspire
almost universal agreement that such a thing should not be allowed. Legitimate commercial use would be impossible, so no commercial entity would
try it. Governments might want a covert nanofactory, but would not want any
other government to have one; this should be sufficient incentive to submit
to mutual inspections. Criminals would have many uses for powerful,
untraceable products, and some criminal organizations have sufficient
resources to finance a nanofactory program, especially since the difficulty
will drop sharply once the first program is successful, and continue to
decrease with time. Rogue political entities may have similar motivations
and resources. Some amount of control of technology in general will be
necessary to prevent the criminal development of independent nanofactories. However, a decade from now, this would merely be an extension of controls
already in place to prevent terrorist development of weapons of mass
destruction. |
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This proposal lays a flexible
foundation for evolving administrative policy. |
As MNT products and capabilities are better understood,
and as defensive technologies (and possibly surveillance and monitoring
technologies) are developed and deployed, it will be clearer how much
control is necessary to prevent irresponsible use of molecular
manufacturing. As discussed on our
Technical Restrictions page,
miniaturized MNT products allow the creation of intensive, semi-automated
surveillance systems, which in theory can be implemented so as to preserve
privacy. The degree to which such technologies are necessary will be
determined by a much improved understanding of the destructive and defensive
capabilities of nanotech products. Abusive use of such surveillance
capabilities is quite possible, and we must hope that democracy and
accountability will be able to prevent this. MNT will increase the ease of
such surveillance but does not create the problem; even non-nanotech
computers and surveillance devices will be quite powerful and may be
ubiquitous within a decade. CRN cannot foresee what will be possible, or
necessary, more than a few years after the invention of the nanofactory—the
technology will become extremely powerful too quickly to forecast its
effects on society, or society's effects on the direction of technology
development. However, we believe that the policies outlined here will
provide a means of surviving the first few years, and a sufficiently
flexible foundation for whatever changes are needed in the subsequent
years. Increased technological capabilities could reduce economic,
environmental, and possibly political pressure, switching the emphasis of
many of today's issues from allocating resources to maximizing wealth. In
the same way, increased monitoring capabilities will decrease the need for
intrusive and abusive police actions—even as they increase the possibility
of extreme abuse. The kind of system we end up with will be the result of
our choices. Almost anything is possible, and the great power of the
technology demands a high degree of responsibility. |
DEVIL'S ADVOCATE —
Submit your criticism, please!
What if some group doesn't want to participate in a
coordinated program of MNT development?
If they want to reject molecular manufacturing altogether,
they should be allowed to—except where that would cause human rights
violation such as unnecessary starvation. If they want to develop their own
MNT, we don't think that's very safe. If most groups agree with our facts and
conclusions, they will probably work to prevent independent development.
So you're proposing a ruling class that dispenses MNT to
everyone else? Human nature guarantees that this will be abused.
Without our proposal, there are two likely bad
possibilities. One is that MNT is unrestricted: everyone manages molecular
manufacturing by themselves. That just looks too risky, especially in the
first few years when we don't fully understand what MNT can do or how to
defend against misuses of it. The other is that whoever gets molecular
manufacturing first tries to set themselves up as world rulers; this is worse
than what we're proposing. At least if we design it in advance, we can build
in checks and balances between diverse interests, and try to avoid a single
"ruling class".
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The Need for Early Development
Previous Page: The Need
for Immediate Action
Title Page:
Overview of Current Findings
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