 Nanotechnology in Warfare: Serious Implications
Nanotechnology is an expected future manufacturing technology that will make most products lighter, stronger, cleaner, less expensive and more precise.
"Not only does nanotechnology continue to attract considerable public interest and growing business investments, but more than 30 countries worldwide have launched public R&D programmes in the field. Such initiatives go a long way towards increasing the resources available to research, but do they go far enough to ensure that the full social and economic potential of nanotechnology is exploited?
Indeed, nanotechnology is likely to have a major economic impact in the years ahead. In the IT sector, it could help further miniaturise memory and logic devices as well as boost data processing and storage capacities, long after existing technologies reach their fundamental limits. Nanoelectronics, based on the exploitation of quantum effects that occur at a very small scale, could provide a way of surmounting these limits by allowing computations based on individual electrons or strands of DNA. Already, researchers are working on memory devices with approximately 40 times the storage capacity of current hard drives." Scaling-up nanotechnology Emmanuel Hassan and Jerry Sheehan
Of course, it could be used in developing countries concerning health care and possible energy investments. However that;s not the focus of the thread.
"An amazing revolution is taking place on the battlefield, starting to change not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself. This upheaval is already afoot -- remote-controlled drones take out terrorists in Afghanistan, while the number of unmanned systems on the ground in Iraq has gone from zero to 12,000 over the last five years. But it is only the start. Military officers quietly acknowledge that new prototypes will soon make human fighter pilots obsolete, while the Pentagon researches tiny robots the size of flies to carry out reconnaissance work now handled by elite Special Forces troops." Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and 21st Century Conflict P.W. Singer
"The use of nanotechnology within chemical warfare is the most ominous of all issues surrounding this new technology. And while nano-designed chemicals for warfare have been banned in most countries, the rogue few who continue in their development pose a genuine threat to the rest of the world. The use of nano-particles to manufacture these agents requires a small supply of materials making it more difficult to monitor the amounts being imported by dissident countries. Manufacturing would take place in small, low-level production facilities that would also be harder to locate. Once compiled, the release of minuscule amounts of an agent on the battlefield may have the ability to attack specific organs and systems within the body." Nanotechnology in Warfare | eHow.com
What could this possibly mean? Could this be more devastating than the A-Bomb, H-Bomb, etc? How would Nanotechnology in warfare affect international and domestic policy?
More questions than answers. Hopefully y'all can illuminate much more on this matter.
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