February 27, 2007
MUCH INK has been spilt extolling the latest progress made in recognizing the
second- and third-most serious threats facing mankind and the planet.
The recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has forced
even the recalcitrant Bush administration to back down in the face of agreement
between the scientific and political communities, prodded by a citizenry
frightened by disturbing weather patterns.
Meanwhile, the effort to control the world's current supply of fissile material,
and limit the future manufacture of more of it by rogue states, has picked up
steam, fueled by scientists' warnings and by public appeals from respected
former officials. Again, an engaged public that knows of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
endorses this expenditure of resources.
Yet there is an even more urgent danger. Besides chemical and biological
weapons, we are now seeing advances in the fields of genetics, nanotechnology,
and robotics (so-called GNR technologies ) that threaten destruction even more
horrific than that of atomic devices or climate change.
These technologies, often self-replicating, don't need the massive industrial
infrastructure required to manufacture nuclear devices, and have the potential
to kill tens or hundreds of millions of people in relatively short order.
Ray Kurzweil -- a scientist, futurist, and Old Testament prophet of sorts -- has
warned of the dangers. An inductee into the Invention Hall of Fame, Kurzweil was
the principal developer of the first print-to-speech reading machine for the
blind, and the first text-to-speech synthesizer. His warnings have been echoed
by Bill Joy, co founder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems.
Their concern is so acute that they teamed up in October 2005 to criticize as
"extremely foolish" the government's release of the reconstructed genome of the
1918 pandemic flu virus. "The genome is essentially the design of a weapon of
mass destruction," they warned. "It would be easier to create and release this
virus than an atomic bomb, as you don't need rare raw materials. . . . Release
of the material would be far worse than an atomic bomb."
Joy as long ago as 2000 warned that nanotechnology could "destroy the biosphere
on which all life depends. . . . It is most of all the power of destructive
self-replication in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics that should give us
pause. We have had in hand for years clear warnings of the dangers inherent in
widespread knowledge of GNR technologies, of the possibility of knowledge alone
enabling mass destruction. But these warnings haven't been widely publicized."
Why has so little attention been paid?
The answer is partly resources, partly generational difference in conceptual
frameworks, and partly the emotionally destabilizing and unthinkable nature of
the threat. Our most credible political figures continue to focus on the old
technology, the nuclear bomb (age: about 62).
A recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by George Schultz, William Perry, Henry
Kissinger, and Sam Nunn (average age: 80) and endorsed by 17 other major public
figures emphasized the primacy of the atomic threat. It was further endorsed a
few weeks later by former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in the same paper.
Nunn's Nuclear Threat Initiative, backed up by the Doomsday Clock created in
1947 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, usefully continues to beat this
admittedly important drum.
But the drumbeat is inadequate to the task and threat at hand, and is likely
partly responsible for the scientific community's inability to focus public
opinion -- the driving force behind political action in any democracy -- on the
unthinkable dangers lying in the not-too-distant future.
Before our best scientific minds can be heard, they will have to be joined by a
new generation of political leaders.
Only then can these more potent threats to mankind's existence become the focus
of our efforts and resources. None of those resources will be allocated until
public opinion becomes as engaged on threats from genetics, nanotechnology, and
robotics as on nuclear proliferation and climate change.
The next generation of threats is an unpleasant prospect. But ducking from
reality is no answer. We have marshaled the nation's intellectual and other
resources to solve many a vexing problem. This is neither the time nor the issue
to duck.
Ralph Kaplan is a managing member of Penbrook Management LLC. Harvey Silverglate
is a Cambridge lawyer and writer.
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