Molecular Manufacturing: Start Planning
Molecular nanotechnology manufacturing is coming soon. The economic value--and military significance--of a nanofactory will be immense. But if a well-designed plan is not in place, serious risks will very likely lead to military destruction, social or economic disruption or unnecessary human suffering on a large scale. Here's what needs to be done.
Originally published in The
Federation of American Scientists Public Interest Report, Volume
56, Number 2, Summer 2003. Published on KurzweilAI.net October
8, 2003.
Despite claims to the contrary, molecular nanotechnology manufacturing
is coming soon. Because it will be so useful, there will be strong
pressure to develop it as soon as possible, and past a certain point
it could happen quite rapidly. Macro-scale integrated nanotech manufacturing
systems will improve product functionality, product design time
and manufacturing speed and cost by orders of magnitude. This advance
may profoundly affect economics and geopolitics, creating enormous
benefits and risks. It will be difficult to prepare adequately for
such a powerful technology. For all these reasons, molecular nanotechnology
should be a current topic in high-level policy and planning.
The word "nanotechnology" means several different things.
Today's nanotech research is mainly concerned with building small
structures that have novel properties. Such research adds steadily
to the technological toolbox, leading to improved products and occasionally
to new industries. Broadly speaking, such "structural"
nanotechnology creates risks comparable to other material science
work. The second kind of nanotech is the science-fictional kind,
in which nanobots can go anywhere and do anything but generally
do not conform to reality.
The third kind of nanotech, "molecular" nanotechnology
(MNT), is the focus of this article. MNT will combine chemistry
and fabrication to produce precise machines and manufacturing systems
at the nanometer scale. Much of the basic science work has already
been done; what remains is the engineering to create a working device
and then integrate many devices into a human-scale "nanofactory".
Although most nanotech projects today focus on structural nanotechnology,
development of molecular nanotechnology will surely become a priority
within a few years. Full MNT capability may not be developed for
a decade or longer, but preparation for it should probably start
now.
The economic value—and military significance-of a nanofactory
will be immense. Even a primitive model will be able to convert
CAD files to products in a few hours. Duplicate nanofactories will
cost the same as any other nano-built product. The capital cost
of manufacturing will be negligible by today's standards, and manufacturing
capacity can be doubled in a matter of hours.
Nanocomputers will quickly replace semiconductor technologies;
whoever controls this technology will be able to produce more computers
than the rest of the world combined. The ability to fit a supercomputer
(or sophisticated robotics) into every piece of equipment, at no
extra manufacturing cost, will enable new kinds of products and
weapons. A nanotech-built surgical robot with a full sensor suite
could be smaller than a hypodermic needle. Development and deployment
of new weapons systems could be far faster and cheaper. Even the
initial products of an MNT nanofactory would be worth hundreds of
billions of dollars, and the potential for extremely rapid advancement
of nanotech fabrication capability means that no economic or political
unit can afford to allow a competitor to control the technology.
Much evidence has accumulated to indicate that molecular nanotech
manufacturing is possible. A decade ago, Nanosystems studied the
required chemistry and engineering in detail; not a single significant
error has been found so far. Cells, natural self-replicating machines,
make a variety of minerals including magnetite and silica—and
they do this under water, using chemical techniques four billion
years old. Mechanically guided covalent chemistry has already been
accomplished with a scanning probe microscope.
The best arguments of intelligent critics regarding the feasibility
of nanotech manufacturing have been refuted in detail. There is
little doubt that a small self-replicating system can be built.
There is strong theoretical support for basing such a system on
mechanochemistry. And given the variety of buckytubes, buckyballs,
buckyhorns, and other graphitic and diamondoid shapes that have
been manufactured or found in nature, it's likely that a self-replicating
nanoscale machine based on 3D covalent carbon mechanochemistry will
be relatively straightforward to design.
A goal or milestone of MNT is an "assembler": a self-contained
mechanical system capable of fabricating duplicates of itself from
simple chemicals. Several researchers have investigated the requirements
of an assembler, and Robert Freitas and Ralph Merkle are due to
publish two books on the topic in 2003 and 2004. A single assembler
is not very useful, since it can only make very small products.
However, if a nanofactory containing many assemblers can combine
the tiny products (nanoblocks) into a single large product, the
result would be extremely useful. It has been claimed that this
will take years to achieve, blunting the utility of MNT assemblers.
However, work by the author demonstrates that a useful nanofactory
can be pre-designed, so that building and debugging the design might
take only a few months. Once the first assembler is built, a fully
functional nanofactory-and the nanofactory's products-may follow
in well under a year.
Although design at the atomic level will not be easy, a nanotech
product designer will not need to worry about that—just as
a software engineer does not think about the transistors in the
computer. A small and pre-tested set of nanomachines, built into
nanoblocks, can be combined in many ways to make a vast array of
products. By designing with nanoblocks instead of atoms, a product
designer loses little flexibility, and gains simplicity and reliability.
Nanoblocks can be fastened together in a process called "convergent
assembly." The joining process uses a single motion, requiring
only simple robotics, and the joints retain most of the strength
of the base material. A single nanoblock is big enough to contain
an assembler, computer or motor, and small enough to be built by
a single assembler in a few hours. A nanofactory built of nanoblocks
can build and assemble nanoblocks into a huge range of products-including
duplicates of itself.
Such a powerful technology introduces many risks. One obvious risk
is an unstable arms race. Rapid development of new weapons technologies
means less opportunity for surveillance and more uncertainty about
the enemy's future capabilities. Weapons could be more powerful
and far "smarter"—imagine the combined capability
of a million unmanned aerial vehicles with on-board pattern matching
and navigation capability.
Many factors tempt a preemptive strike if a temporary advantage
is gained in an MNT arms race. The likely outcome of a strike would
be either global domination requiring Draconian measures including
denial of technology, or a series of increasingly destructive high-tech
conflicts. Once weapons, or the systems that produce them, are dispersed,
preventing guerrilla use of them would require inspection of literally
every cubic millimeter, or continuous surveillance of entire populations.
Availability of unregulated MNT manufacturing could create several
serious problems. Criminal and terrorist activity would benefit
from smaller, more capable products. Small, widely available, cheap
surveillance devices would allow an unprecedented invasion of privacy
by governments, criminals and neighbors. Cheap microscopic products
can lead to widespread microscopic litter, with possible environmental
or health consequences. Small self-contained foraging self-replicating
systems ("gray goo") appear to be theoretically possible,
and might be released by terrorists, saboteurs or even irresponsible
hobbyists.
Though probably less dangerous than all-out war with MNT-built
weapons, such devices could be significantly more destructive than
invasive biological species because they would have no natural enemies.
Many of these problems can best be addressed by widespread environmental
monitoring, but the required systems may not be deployed quickly
or universally.
Molecular manufacturing may cause substantial economic disruption.
Several of today's sectors, including manufacturing, shipping and
raw materials, would be disrupted or outmoded. Fully automated self-duplicating
factories would reduce the value of both capital and labor, and
drive down the cost of goods. Large disparity between cost and value
would provide strong incentive for protectionism and anticompetitive
policy, resulting in widespread black markets. The entertainment
industry is already experiencing similar problems; MNT may extend
them to most manufactured products.
Simplistic attempts to regulate MNT could create more problems
than they solve. Attempts to restrict proliferation may generate
oppressive or even abusive regulation. Today, billions of people
live in sickness or poverty for lack of a few basic products like
water filters, mosquito netting and computers. All of this would
be easy to produce with MNT-based manufacturing, but recent US action
blocking a WTO attempt to provide affordable pharmaceuticals to
poor nations indicates that the same could happen with MNT.
A population denied access to lifesaving benefits of cheap molecular
manufacturing due to protectionist economic policy or paranoid security
policy (or even just blatantly overcharged) would have a strong
incentive to steal, duplicate or "crack" the technology.
Independent MNT development programs multiply many of the risks,
including the risk of necessary regulations and technical restrictions
being bypassed. Since nanofactories will be self-contained, incredibly
valuable and easily concealed, a black market in nanofactories would
be difficult to prevent. Ultimately, control of the technology could
be lost, and regions with excessive regulation may be sidelined.
In developing MNT, it may be that the safest course is a single,
international development effort, leading to a technology that can
be widely distributed and carefully administered—with tight
technological controls in place to limit its use. This would provide
an infrastructure for rapid humanitarian relief with basic products,
profit-making with other products, and perhaps even arms control-if
nations could be restrained from developing independent, unmonitored
MNT capability.
If this is in fact the best approach, the need for action is even
more urgent. A nation with an entrenched MNT development program
may be less likely to join or support an international development
effort. It will not be easy to convince military and political leaders,
captains of industry and environmental and social watchdogs that
the best course of action involves giving up some control in order
to retain some control.
MNT development appears inevitable for two reasons. The first is
the immense utility of MNT. Even if public pressure prevented it
from being used in consumer goods, various militaries would not
hesitate to develop it as a tremendous aid to military capability.
In conventional conflicts, the improvements in logistics, miniaturization,
development and cost would give an overwhelming advantage to the
possessor of such technology, both in preparation and in actual
combat.
The second reason is the increasing ease of development. Enabling
technologies are improving each year. New families of structural
chemicals are being discovered. New fabrication technologies, new
nanoscale imaging technologies and increased computer power for
mechanochemical simulation will rapidly decrease the difficulty
of building an assembler-and thus a nanofactory. Today, a successful
program might require billions of dollars and several years.
A decade from now it might be possible for only $100 million, within
the reach of many corporations and nations. At that point, if MNT
is not already widely available, it will be developed in multiple
labs around the world-and will be almost impossible to control.
By encompassing all phases of production from chemical processing
to final assembly, MNT manufacturing can be far more flexible than
any other single technology, with the possible exception of programmable
computers. A few other technologies may be equally dangerous, but
are easier to control.
Nuclear technology can only be used for a few things—bombs,
power generation, cancer treatment—so it has been possible
for a fairly small international effort to keep control of various
aspects of this technology. Biotechnology is flexible in its domain,
but biotech products have been difficult to engineer. Conventional
rapid prototyping systems will improve gradually; it will be a while
before they can make complete products, and even longer before they
can cheaply duplicate themselves.
A single technology with the programmability and speed of digital
computers, the chemical flexibility of biotechnology, the military
potential of nuclear technology or airplanes and the utility of
very advanced rapid prototyping, will bring many changes. The variety
of potential problems, in economic, military, political, humanitarian
and environmental spheres, indicates that no simple solution can
work. A balance must be struck between national defense and arms
control; between capitalist practice and social needs and between
unrestricted private use and oppressive restriction. These issues
will not be easy to solve.
The final stages of development will occur too quickly for solutions
to evolve. If a well-designed plan is not in place before this happens,
one or more serious risks will very likely lead to military destruction,
social or economic disruption or unnecessary human suffering on
a large scale. Each major risk should be studied in detail. Public
education and discussion should take place. Policy makers need to
be informed.
There is very little doubt that MNT manufacturing will be developed
within the next three decades, and it may be as soon as ten years.
It seems likely that some sort of international administration will
be necessary. Any large administrative body, especially one requiring
complex international cooperation, will take time to design, fund
and create. All this may require more than a decade. A large international
development effort may also be necessary, and would have to begin
even sooner.
These factors indicate that preparation for molecular nanotechnology
should become a current topic in high-level policy and planning.
References
"A Debate About Assemblers" http://www.imm.org/SciAmDebate2/index.html.
See http://CRNano.org/bootstrap.htm
for the latest work.
For more extensive discussion of risks, benefits, and administration
options, see http://CRNano.org/overview.htm.
' 2003 Federation
of American Scientists. Reprinted with permission.
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