Extinction

Jurgen Altmann, professor of experimental physics at the University of Dortmund, Germany, International Handbook on Regulation Nanotechnologies, Ch. 17, Military Applications: Special Conditions for Regulation, 2010, pg. 380-382

There are also military uses of nanotechnology which are mostly specific and which would not be developed for a civilian market. Some of these, however, once developed in a military context and made cheap by mass production, may find their way into civilian society and have negative impacts there, for example, by being used by non-state actors for illegal activity. Variable camouflage would not pose a big problem if it were used in the civilian context. However, many uses of nanotechnology for specific military application may pose serious security risks if they became available to civilians. For example, small, cheap sensors to be scattered over the battlefield could also be used for private or economic espionage, or smaller conventional weapons with highly precise guidance systems, in particular very small missiles, could be used for terrorist attacks. The same applies for firearms and munitions using nanofibre composites, which, without any metal, would be difficult to detect at security checkpoints. Soldier systems for monitoring body status from the outside, forming compresses and administering therapeutic agents if needed. are not problematic. However, implants or other body manipulation, such as a brain-machine interface or modification of the human biochemistry, may create problems for civilian society. Here the military could act as a door-opener, preempting a broad societal debate about the acceptability of non-therapeutic body modification.

Uninhabited vehicles (for air, water or land) will profit from nanotechnology in materials, energy storage, sensors and computers. Some could be reduced to a few centimetres in size or below, maybe moving like insects. Alternatively, the military could take real insects as a basis for hybrid systems. Transferred to civilian society, small systems could be used for eavesdropping or terrorist attacks.

The use by terrorist groups of new biochemical weapons made feasible by nanotechnological advances in biomedicine should also be feared. The use of nanotechnology here may include nanocapsules to ferry agents through the blood-brain barrier, agents which bind to specific cell types, and agents that release a toxin only if a certain DNA or protein pattern is present, thus acting selectively only on very specific target subjects. New biochemical agents would endanger the existing conventions, but of course here the needed prohibitions are already in place. Dangers for existing arms-control treaties can ensue also with uninhabited vehicles some types could undermine the CFE Treaty (Altmann 2009) - while small satellites for anti-satellite attack would counteract the space-weapons ban, which the overwhelming majority of countries have demanded for decades.

Arms racing and proliferation can follow from nearly all specific military applications mentioned. Exaggerated expectations, such as those evoked by the Presidents of India and Israel. will tend to aggravate the problem: the same applies for secrecy together with misrepresentations of military aims for nanotechnology, as in a US publication about alleged Chinese plans for 'ant robots’ (Altmann and Gubrud. 2004).

Problems for the stability between potential military opponents are to be feared most with uninhabited weapons systems, in particular if they will be capable of autonomous firing decision, when such systems would travel at short mutual distance (along a border, in international territory), survival may require faster reaction than possible with remote control by a human. In a crisis, when both systems would eagerly observe the other for indications of attack, a mistaken sun reflex or another error could lead to a shooting and thus unleash war by uncontrolled feedback cycles. Destabilization can work up to the level of nuclear war: if mass attack against strategic weapons and command systems using swarms of small uninhabited aircraft or missiles becomes plausible. Nervousness and pressure for early launch of one's own nuclear weapons would drastically increase. Small satellites capable of fast attacks against important satellites of an opponent would endanger stability. A particularly frightening scenario has very small mobile enemy robots covertly intruding into one’s own military systems in peacetime where they would sit, possibly for years, ready to suddenly disrupt the electronics at any time.