Revolution in a Box
An Interview with the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has a modest goal: to ensure that the planet navigates the emerging nanotech era safely. CRN's founders discuss the promises and perils of nanotechnology, as well as the need for a middle ground between resignation and relinquishment.
Originally published on WorldChanging
February 6, 2006. Reprinted on KurzweilAI.net March 23, 2006.
Founded in December 2002, the Center
for Responsible Nanotechnology has a modest goal: to ensure
that the planet navigates the emerging nanotech era safely. That's
a lot for a couple of volunteers to shoulder, but Mike Treder and
Chris Phoenix have carried their burden well, and done much to raise
awareness of the potential risks and benefits of molecular manufacturing,
including a
major presentation at the US Environmental Protection Agency
on the impacts of nanotechnology....
[WorldChanging] conducted this interview as a series of email
exchanges over the last few months. This post captures (and organizes)
the highlights of that conversation. Mike, Chris—thank you.
Your work is one of the reasons we have optimism for the future.
— Jamais Cascio
WorldChanging: So, to start—what is the Center for
Responsible Nanotechnology hoping to make happen?
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology: We want to help create
a world in which advanced nanotechnology—molecular manufacturing—is
widely used for beneficial purposes, and in which the risks are
responsibly managed. The ability to manufacture highly advanced
nanotech products at an exponentially accelerating pace will have
profound and perilous implications for all of society, and our goal
is to lay a foundation for handling them wisely.
WC: So you set up a non-profit. How is that going?
CRN: CRN is a volunteer organization. We have no
paid positions. Our co-founders have dedicated time to this cause
in lieu of professional paying careers. But the thing is, technical
progress toward nanotechnology is really accelerating, and it's
become more urgent than ever for us to examine the global implications
of this technology and begin designing wise and effective solutions.
It won't be easy. CRN needs to grow, quickly, to meet the expanding
challenge. We're asking people who share the belief that our research
must keep moving ahead to support us with small or large donations.
WC: One of the unusual aspects of CRN is that you're neither
a nanotech advocacy group nor unmoving nanotech critics. Your focus
is on the responsible development and deployment of next-generation
nanotechnologies. Tell me a bit about what "responsible nanotechnology"
looks like.
CRN: You’re right that we have tried hard to
stay in a "middle" place. We sometimes refer to it as
between resignation (forsaking attempts to manage the technology)
and relinquishment (forsaking the technology altogether). Our view
is that advanced nanotechnology—molecular manufacturing—should
be developed as fast as it can be done safely and responsibly. We’re
promoting responsible rapid development of the technology—not
because we believe it is safe, but because we believe it is risky—and
because the only realistic alternative to responsible development
is irresponsible development.
CRN: So, what does 'responsible' mean? First, that we take
effective precautions to forestall a new arms race. Second, that
we do what is necessary to prevent a monopoly on the technology
by one nation, one bloc of nations, or one multinational corporation.
Third, that we seek appropriate ways to share the tremendous benefits
of the technology as widely as possible; we should not allow a 'nano-divide.'
Fourth, that we recognize the possibilities for both positive and
negative impacts on the environment from molecular manufacturing,
and that we adopt sensible global regulations on its use. And fifth,
that we understand and take precautions to avert the risk of severe
economic disruption, social chaos, and consequent human suffering.
WC: How does the "responsible" approach differ
from something like the "Precautionary
Principle?" What's your take on the concept of "precaution"
applied to emerging technologies?
CRN: One of our earliest published papers was on that very
topic. It’s called "Applying
the Precautionary Principle to Nanotechnology." CRN’s
analysis shows that there are actually two different forms of the
Precautionary Principle, something that many people don’t realize.
We call them the 'strict form' and the 'active form.'
The strict form of the Precautionary Principle requires inaction
when action might pose a risk. In contrast, the active form calls
for choosing less risky alternatives when they are available, and
for taking responsibility for potential risks. Because the strict
form of the Precautionary Principle does not allow consideration
of the risks of inaction, CRN believes that it is not appropriate
as a test of molecular manufacturing policy.
The active form of the Precautionary Principle, however, seems
quite appropriate as a guide for developing molecular manufacturing
policy. Given the extreme risks presented by misuse of nanotechnology,
it appears imperative to find and implement the least risky plan
that is realistically feasible. Although we cannot agree with the
strict form of the Precautionary Principle, we do support the active
form.
WC: What is the CRN
Task Force, and what do you hope to have it accomplish? [Disclaimer:
I am a member of the CRN Task Force.]
CRN: Without mutual understanding and cooperation on a global
level, the hazardous potentials of advanced nanotechnology could
spiral out of control and deny any hope of realizing
the benefits to society. We’re not willing to leave the
outcome to chance.
So, last August we announced the formation of a new Task Force,
convened to study the societal implications of this rapidly emerging
technology. We’ve brought together a diverse group of more
than 60 world-class experts from multiple disciplines to assist
us in developing comprehensive recommendations for the safe and
responsible use of nanotechnology.
Our first project is just nearing completion. Members of the task
force have written a series of essays describing their greatest
concerns about the potential impacts of molecular manufacturing.
We have completed editing approximately 20 excellent articles that
range from discussion of economic issues and security issues, to
the implications of human enhancement and artificial intelligence.
They will be published in the March 2006 issue of Nanotechnology
Perceptions, an academic journal maintained by a couple of European
universities. We will simultaneously publish the essays at the Wise-Nano.org
website, where anyone can read and comment on them.
• • •
WC: We've discussed the different
kinds of nanotechnology on WorldChanging, and you folks posted
a very
useful follow-up to one of our pieces on that subject. To be
clear, when we talk about "nanotechnology" in this context,
we're talking about "nanofactories." So let's drill down
a bit on that particular subject. What kinds of things could an
early version of a nanofactory make? Are we just talking desktop
printing of simple physical objects (like a cup), items embedding
diverse materials & electronics (like a laptop), or organic
and biochemical materials (like medicines or food)?
CRN: The first, tiny nanofactory will be built by intricate
laboratory techniques; then that nanofactory will have to build
a bigger one, and so on, many times over. This means that even the
earliest usable nanofactory will necessarily work extremely fast
and be capable of making highly functional products with moving
parts. So, in addition to laptops and phones, an early nanofactory
should be able to make cars, home appliances, and a wide array of
other products.
Medicines and food will not be early products. A large number of
reactions will be required to make the vast variety of organic molecules.
Some molecules will be synthesized more easily than others. It may
work better first to build (using a nanofactory) an advanced fluidic
system that can do traditional chemistry.
Food will be especially difficult because it contains water. Water
is a small molecule that would float around and gum up the factory.
Also, food contains a number of large and intricate molecules for
taste and smell; furthermore, nourishing food requires mineral elements
that would require extra research to handle with nanofactory-type
processes.
WC: It seems to me that manufacturing via nanofactories
will require some different concepts of the manufacturing process
than the automated assembly-line model most of us probably have
in mind when we think of "factories." Parallel to early
design work on the hardware end, has there been much work done on
the software/design end of how nanofactories would work?
CRN: We have thought about how nanofactories would be controlled,
and it seems probable that it's just not a very difficult problem,
at least for the kind of nanofactory that can include lots of integrated
computers. (This should include almost any diamond-building nanofactory,
and a lot of nanofactories based on other technologies as well.)
Until automated design capabilities are developed, products will
be limited largely by our product design skills. A simple product-description
language, roughly analogous to PostScript, would be able to build
an enormous range of products, but would not even require fancy
networking in the nanofactory. (Drexler discusses product-description
languages in section 14.6 of Nanosystems.)
WC: What makes nanofactories so different from traditional
production methods?
CRN: It's important to understand that molecular manufacturing
implies exponential manufacturing—the ability to rapidly build
as many desktop nanofactories (sometimes called personal fabricators)
as you have the resources for. Starting with one nanofactory, someone
could build thousands of additional nanofactories in a day or less,
at very low cost. This means that projects of almost any size can
be accomplished quickly.
Those who have access to the technology could use it to build a
surveillance system to track six billion people, weapons systems
far more powerful than the world's combined conventional forces,
construction on a planetary scale, or spaceflight as easy as airplane
flight is today.
Massive construction isn't always bad. Rapid construction could
allow us to build environmental remediation technologies on a huge
scale. Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory are suggesting
that equipment could be built to remove significant quantities of
carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. With molecular manufacturing,
this could be done far more quickly, easily, and inexpensively.
In addition to being powerful, the technology will also be deft
and exquisite. Medical research and treatment will advance rapidly,
given access to nearly unlimited numbers of medical robots and sensors
that are smaller than a cell.
This only scratches the surface of the implications. Molecular
manufacturing has as many implications as electricity, computers,
and gasoline engines.
WC: In other words, nanotechnology is both an engineering
process and (for lack of a less jargony phrase) an "enabling
paradigm"—it doesn't just make it possible to do what
we now do, but better/faster/ cheaper, it also makes it possible
(in time) to do some things that we can't now do.
CRN: Yes, exactly. Another good way to look at it is as
a general-purpose technology: enhancing and enabling a wide range
of applications. It will be similar in effect to, say, electricity
or computers.
WC: Back up a sec. The complexities of surveillance systems,
planetary engineering, and cheap & easy space flight come from
much more than not being able to make enough or sufficiently-precise
gear. There are also questions of design, of power, of scale, and
so forth. These seem likely to take substantial effort and time.
CRN: The speed of development will differ for each project.
But by today's standards, almost any project could be done quite
quickly. A lot of hardware development time today is spent in compensating
for the high cost and large delay associated with building each
prototype. If you could build a prototype in a few hours at low
cost, a lot of engineering could be bypassed. Of course, this is
less true for safety-critical systems. But imagine how quickly space
flight could be developed if Elon Musk (SpaceX), John Carmack (Armadillo),
and Burt Rutan could each build and fly a new (unmanned) spacecraft
every day instead of waiting three months or more.
Power will of course have to be supplied to any project. But one
of the first projects may be a massive solar-gathering array that
could supply power for planet-scale engineering. A nanofactory-built
solar array should be able to repay the energy cost of its construction
in just a few days, so scaling up the solar array itself would not
take too long.
A comparable advantage can be seen today in computer chip design.
FPGA's and ASIC's are two similar kinds of configurable computer
chips. They differ in that ASIC's are designed before they are built,
and FPGA's can have new designs downloaded to them in seconds, even
after they are integrated into a circuit. An FPGA can be designed
by a person in a week or two. An ASIC requires a team of people
working for several months—largely to make absolutely sure
that they have not made even a single mistake, which could cost
the company millions of dollars and months of delay. The difference
between today's development cycle and nanofactory-enabled product
R&D is the difference between ASIC's and FPGA's.
• • •
WC: The degree to which research is largely corporate, academic
or governmental will obviously vary from country to country. Who
are some of the organizations doing innovative work in nanotech?
CRN: There are only a few companies that are explicitly
working on molecular manufacturing. Many more are doing work that
is relevant, but not aiming at that goal—or at least not admitting
to it.
Zyvex LLC is working on enabling technologies, with the stated
goal of providing "tools, products, and services that enable
adaptable, affordable, and molecularly precise manufacturing."
In Japan, individual silicon atoms have been moved and bonded into
place since 1994, first by the Aono group and then by Oyabu. Because
this used a much larger scanning probe microscope to move the atoms,
it is not a large-scale manufacturing technique.
Researchers at Rice University have developed a "nano-car"
with single-molecule wheels that roll on molecular bearings, and
reportedly are aiming toward "nano-trucks" that could
transport molecules in miniature factories.
WC: To what degree is nanotechnology research a province
of the big industrial countries, and to what degree is it accessible
to forward-looking developing countries (what we term on WorldChanging
the "leapfrog nations")?
CRN: In the broad sense of nanoscale technologies, some
kinds of nanotech research are quite accessible to leapfrog nations.
Molecular manufacturing research may be accessible as well. Atom-level
simulations can now be run on desktop PC's. Some of the development
pathways, such as biopolymer approaches, require only a small lab's
worth of equipment.
We don't yet know exactly how difficult it will be to develop a
nanofactory. Several approaches are on the table, but there could
be a much easier approach waiting to be discovered. It's probably
safe to say that any nation that can support a space program could
also engage in substantial research toward molecular manufacturing.
Note that several individuals are now supporting space programs,
including Elon Musk of SpaceX and Paul Allen who funded SpaceShipOne.
WC: Do you expect home "hobbyist" designers—perhaps
using home-made nanotools—to have any role in the nanotechnology
revolution, as "garage hackers" did in the early days
of personal computing?
CRN: We have been aware of some of the scanning probe microscope
efforts. If advanced molecular manufacturing requires a vacuum scanning-probe
system cooled by liquid helium, it's doubtful you could do that
in your garage. On the other hand, if all it requires is an inert-gas
environment at liquid nitrogen temperatures, then some work might
be doable by a very competent hobbyist.
Design of nanomachines (as opposed to construction) is already
accessible to hobbyists. Without the ability to test their designs
in the lab, many of the designs will have bugs, of course. However,
at least in the early stages, the development of new design approaches
and the demonstration that we've learned even approximately how
to implement mechanisms will be important contributions.
• • •
WC: A big concern in a world of easy fabrication is what
to do with broken or obsolete stuff. In what ways could a nanofactory-type
system use "waste" materials, with an eye towards the
"cradle-to-cradle" concept?
CRN: If the stuff is made of light atoms, such as carbon
and nitrogen, it should be straightforward to burn it in an enclosed
system. The resulting gases could be cooled and then sorted at a
molecular level, and the molecules could be stored for re-use.
It seems likely that products will be designed and built using
modules that would be somewhat smaller than a human cell. If these
modules are standardized and re-usable, then it might be possible
to pull apart a product and rearrange the modules into a different
product. However, there are practical problems: the modules themselves
may be obsolete, and they would need to be carefully cleaned before
they could be reassembled. It would probably be easier to reduce
them to atoms and start over, since every atom could be contained
and re-used.
WC: That seems likely to take a serious amount of energy
to accomplish thoroughly, am I right? That is, if I toss my cell
phone into an incinerator, different parts will cook at different
temperatures, and there are some components that would require some
fairly high temps to break down. In addition, the nano-incinerator
will need to be able to sort out the various atoms that are emitted
by the burning object. Sounds complex.
This becomes an important issue, because a world where it's really
easy to make stuff but much harder to get rid of it starts to accelerate
some already-serious problems around garbage, especially hazardous
wastes.
CRN: Breaking down a carbon-based product just requires
heating it a bit, then exposing it to oxygen or hydrogen—something
that can combine with the carbon to produce small gas molecules.
This process will likely be exothermic—in other words, being
high in carbon, nano-built products would burn very nicely when
you wanted them to. (Adding small integrated water tanks that were
drained before recycling would prevent premature combustion.)
Constructing a nano-built product requires not only rearranging
a lot of molecular bonds, but computing how to do that, and moving
around a lot of nanoscale machinery. A nanofactory might require
several times the bond energy to accomplish all that. The energy
required to break down a nano-built product should be less than
the energy it took to make it in the first place. And in terms of
product strength per energy invested, nano-built diamond would probably
be many times better than aluminum—a cheap, energy-intensive
commodity.
• • •
WC: We've occasionally written on WC about the increasing
"digitization" of physical objects, whether through
embedded computer chips and sensors or even the introduction of
DRM-style use controls. On the flip side, futurists have for a few
years talked about the possibility of "napster
fabbing"—swapping design files, legally or otherwise,
and/or the development of an open source culture around next-generation
fabrication tools like nanofactories.
What do you see as the key intellectual property issues emerging
from the rise of nanomanufacturing?
CRN: Because molecular manufacturing will be a general-purpose
technology, we can expect that it will raise many of the issues
that exist today in many different domains. Many issues will be
the same as for software and entertainment, but the stakes will
be far higher. The issues we see in medicine, with controversies
over whether affordable pharmaceuticals should be provided to developing
nations, will also apply to humanitarian applications of nanofactory
products.
WC:To tease that point out for a minute, you're suggesting
that the issue won't be with the difficulty or expense of making
the materials, but the expense of the time necessary to come up
with the design in the first place. Big pharma argues that the majority
of their work is actually in dead ends, and that the high fees they
charge for the drugs that do work are to make up for the time they
take with the stuff that doesn't work. Would the nanofactory world—at
least the early days of it—parallel this?
CRN: It's not an exact parallel. Some percentage of pharmaceutical
development costs go to preliminary testing, another percentage
to clinical trials—which are hugely expensive due to regulation
and liability—and a third percentage to advertising and incentives
for doctors to prescribe the new medicine. Of these three, probably
only the first will apply to early nanofactory products.
We do expect design time to be a large component of the cost of
a product. But the Open Source software movement shows that significant
design time can be contributed without adding to product price.
WC: So you see Open Source as an aspect of the nanofactory
future?
CRN: Whether or not open source approaches will be allowed
to develop nanofactory products is the single biggest intellectual
property question. Open source software has been astonishingly creative
and innovative, and open source products could be a rich source
of innovation as well as humanitarian designs. Even businesses could
benefit, since open source usually doesn't put a final polish on
its products, so commercial interests can repackage them and sell
at a good profit.
However, the business interests that will want a monopoly, and
the security institutions that will be uncomfortable with unrestricted
fabbing, will probably oppose open source products. It would be
easy to criminalize unrestricted fabbing, though far more difficult
to prevent it. Prevention of private innovation, through simply
not allowing private ownership of nanofactories, would have to be
rigorously enforced worldwide—likely impossible, and certainly
oppressive. Criminalization without prevention would almost certainly
be bad policy, but it will probably be tried.
WC: We see early parallels to this in the issue of open
source and "digital rights management" routines. The idea
of outlawing Open Source (because it can't be locked down) even
gets kicked around from time to time. It seems likely that an open
source that could result in new weapons might be even more likely
to trigger this kind of response.
CRN: Historically, Open Source has been a huge source of
innovation. Open source applied to molecular manufacturing could
result in new weapons, but also in new defenses. Shutting down Open
Source might not reduce the weapons much, but it probably would
reduce the development of defenses. We should think very carefully
before we reduced our capacity to design new defenses. That said,
you may well be right that a combination of government and corporate
interests would work together to successfully eliminate Open Source-type
development.
• • •
WC: What would you say are your top concerns about how nanofactory
technology might develop?
CRN: Our biggest concern is that molecular manufacturing
will be a source of immense military power. A medium-sized or larger
nation that was the sole possessor of the technology would be a
superpower, with a strong likelihood of becoming the superpower
if they were sufficiently ruthless. This implies geopolitical instability
in the form of accelerating arms races and preemptive strikes. For
several reasons, a nanofactory-based arms race looks less stable
than the nuclear arms race was.
Related to the military concern is a tangle of security concerns.
If molecular manufacturing proliferates, it will become relatively
easy to build a wide range of high-tech automated weaponry. Accountability
may decrease even as destructive power increases. The Internet,
with its viruses, spam, spyware, and phishing, provides a partial
preview of what we might expect. It could be very difficult to police
such a society without substantial weakening of civil rights and
even human rights.
Economic disruption is a likely consequence of widespread use of
molecular manufacturing. On the one hand, we would have an abundance
of production capacity able to build high-performance products at
minimal expense. On the other hand, this could threaten a lot of
today's jobs, from manufacturing to transportation to mineral extraction.
Environmental damage could result from widespread use of inexpensive
products. Although products filling today's purposes could be made
more efficient with molecular manufacturing, future applications
such as supersonic and ballistic transport may demand far more energy
than we use today.
Another major risk associated with molecular manufacturing comes
from not using it for positive purposes. Artificial scarcities—legal
restrictions—have been applied to lifesaving medicines. Similar
restrictions on molecular manufacturing, whether in the form of
military classification, unnecessary safety regulations, or explicit
intellectual property regulation, could allow millions of people
to die unnecessarily.
WC: We know from the digital restrictions/"piracy"
debate that technical limitations on copying, etc., do an adequate
job of preventing regular folks from duplicating movies, software
and such, whether for illicit reasons (passing a copy to a friend)
or otherwise (making a backup or other "fair use"), while
doing little to prevent real IP pirates from duping off thousands
of copies to sell on the street in Shanghai or the like.
In short, there's every reason to believe that top-down efforts
to stymie the illegal/illicit/irresponsible use of nanofactories
will be only marginally-effective, at best, while driving the worst
stuff deep underground and preventing regular citizens from using
their nanofactories in ways that would be beneficial and not significantly
harmful.
CRN: It would be premature to dismiss all top-down regulation
as ineffective. At the same time, the reduction in humanitarian
and other benefits from excessive regulation is one of CRN's primary
concerns. It is certainly true that regulation will impose a significant
cost in lost opportunities. However, because there are so many different
types of harm that could be done with a nanofactory, we are not
ready to say that all regulation would be undesirable.
It will be difficult to apply "fine-grained relinquishment"
(Kurzweil's term) to a general-purpose technology like nanofactories.
However, we will probably have to achieve this, because both blanket
permissiveness and blanket restrictions will impose extremely high
costs and risks.
As we have said before, there will be no simple solutions. We will
need a combination of both top-down and emergent approaches.
WC: I've been a pretty vocal advocate of openness
as a tool for countering dangerous uses. It's a bit counter-intuitive,
I admit, but there's real precedent for its value. Most experts
see free/open source software, for example, as being more secure
than closed, proprietary code. And the treatment for SARS (to cite
a non-computer example) emerged
directly from open global access to the virus genome.
In both cases, the key is the widespread availability of the underlying
"code" to both professional and interested amateurs. The
potential increase in possible harmful use of that knowledge is,
at least so far, demonstrably outweighed by the preventative use.
What do you think of an open approach to nanotechnology as a means
of heading off disasters?
CRN: In a false dichotomy between totally closed and totally
open, the open approach would seem to increase the dangers posed
by hobbyists and criminals. A totally closed approach, assuming
no one in power was insanely stupid, probably would not lead to
certain kinds of danger such as hobbyist-built free-range self-replicators,
the so-called grey goo.
I don't think we can count on no one in power being insanely stupid,
however. Realistically, even a totally closed, locked-down, planet-wide
dictator approach would not be safe.
A partially closed approach, where Open Source was criminalized
but bootleg or independent nanofactories were available, would be
prone to danger from criminals and rebellious hobbyists—and
by the way, the world still needs a lot more research to determine
just how extreme that danger is. An open approach probably would
not increase the danger much versus a partially closed approach,
and would certainly increase our ability to deal with the danger.
Remember Ben Franklin's adage: Three can keep a secret, if two
are dead. There would be a substantial danger of disastrous abuse
even with a mere one thousand people or groups having access to
the technology (and the rest of the six billion at their mercy).
It's not certain that the danger would be very much worse with a
million or even a billion people empowered.
• • •
WC: Closing on a more positive note, what would you say
are your biggest hopes about how this kind of technology might be
applied? In other words, what does a world of responsible nanotechnology
look like?
CRN: We would like to see a world in which security and
geopolitical concerns are addressed proactively and skillfully,
in order to maximize liberty without allowing any devastating uses.
We would like to see a world in which the ubiquity of tradeoffs
is recognized, and where consequences are neither dismissed nor
exaggerated. Regulation should be appropriate to the extent of the
various risks. The drawbacks of inaction should be considered along
with the risks and problems of action.
We would like to see a world in which everyone has access to at
least a minimal molecular manufacturing capacity. The computer revolution
has shown that inventiveness is maximized by a combination of commercial
and open source development, and open source is a good generator
of free basic products when the cost of production is tiny.
© 2006 Jamais Cascio. Reprinted with permission.
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