A Glimmer of Hope in This World of Brutes
April 25, 2006
I left for the countryside to work with a theorist who doesn't have a television. We are therefore almost cut off from news from the outside world. But we can fairly well imagine what may have happened over the past days. Probably another earthquake, or a cyclone, or both at once. Add a few statements from politicians, even more foolish or terrifying than the last.
But here, through the net, we are focused on the Z-machine affair, which apparently no one is discussing in French media, whether scientific or not, even though logically this story about two billion degrees should have made front pages everywhere.
In French press, dated April 28, 2006: an article by Cécile Dumas, without the Nouvel Obs, Science et Avenir.
Here, conversations have been lively. We first tried to reconstruct the history of this affair. Who, for instance, is Gerold Yonas, whom I met at the Sandia Laboratory in New Mexico back in 1976? He has a very full scientific career; he was, for example, one of the principal advisors to Ronald Reagan on the "Star Wars" project. Normal, when you're a master of directed-energy systems. Over time, he became
Director of Science at the Sandia Laboratories,
a position that can be considered the most powerful scientific post in the United States. Indeed, this lab—a vast complex where American thermonuclear weapons were developed—is at the heart of the "military-industrial complex" described by Eisenhower in his
farewell speech.
One could say without risk of error that in the U.S. there is one man who knows about the most sophisticated and secret projects in the country, and that man is Yonas.
In addition, he leads a group called the "Advanced Concepts Group," based right within the Sandia Laboratories themselves. Here is a report dated May 2005:
Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.
SAND 2005-3093C
May 19, 2005
Introduction
In this brief note, we consider future technology-society interactions and the roles they may play with regard to ideological movements and violent conflict. We assert—but do not defend—the following societal assumptions: pluralist, free-market, democratic societies are and will be more stable and less violent than less tolerant, less capitalist, less democratic societies; and interdependent and interconnected societies are less likely to initiate violent conflict with their neighbors. Nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive sciences, collectively known as NBIC1, and sociotechnologies2 will lead technical advances over the next several decades. The most revolutionary resultant changes will arise from the convergence of these technologies and the uses people and societies make of them. Significant violent ideological movements spawned directly by technical advances—or in reaction to them—are possible but not likely in the coming decades.
The indirect effects of technology on ideologies, movements, and political divides will be far more pervasive. Technologies will profoundly alter, strengthen and weaken societies and present disruptive opportunities and threats to individuals, factions, and nations.
We will explore this first through an illustrative worst-case scenario of technology-society interactions. We will note several trends we expect to hold in the coming decades and their implications. We will consider a potential tipping point generated by the ability of emerging technologies to "humanize" and "dehumanize" individuals and societies, depending upon their application.
Finally, we will explore complexity science and the role of systems on the verge of order and chaos in future technical-societal interactions.
A Worst-Case Scenario
In military applications, we envision the remote deployment of swarms of microrobots that are available to locate, track, target and destroy people and machines with little human intervention. For more complex applications, swarms will be guided by groups of people who are enhanced with mental and physical prosthetics and advanced collaboration tools to enable exceptional rapid collective decision making in dynamic, confusing and ambiguous situations.
This human-machine swarming collective will migrate from military applications to peacekeeping and law enforcement and then to other sector applications, such as remote monitoring, security, and maintenance of complex machinery and infrastructure.
Small numbers of terrorists or criminals will be able to inflict massive damage on society, including the use of diseases bio-engineered to resist treatment and affect only target populations.
Information offense and defense will advance rapidly so that attacks on systems could become continuous and widespread, and lead to frequent identity theft, and the destruction of public confidence in government and financial systems.
New missile defense methods will be easily overcome or bypassed with technology and society on the verge of chaos Gerold Yonas Curtis Johnson 2 missiles launched from short distances or with low-signature air-breathing global attack platforms that can deliver WMD to any place on the planet.
Amidst widespread fear of death and destruction, societies will turn to tough, strong protectors as their leaders and will be willing to accept totalitarian states in exchange for the security they promise.
Bloodless combat will also emerge, with energy beams and chemical and biological agents developed to attack or manipulate the brains and nervous systems of individuals or groups with various levels of temporary and permanent damage. This will enable victory without damaging enemy hardware or infrastructure; this is "politics by other means" taken to its logical extreme: changing minds directly.
As we write, people are fretting over their electronic privacy as never before, and yet wiring themselves up with sensors, GPS, and communications and leaving a trail of loosely controlled electronic personal information in their wakes. We expect this ambivalence to continue, and concerns always to be the highest for government-controlled information. Despite civil liberties uproar, the trend is toward the sacrifice of privacy in exchange for convenience and connectivity.
Advances in electronics, computers, and communications will enable the deployment of thousands to millions of networked sensors to track anybody or anything anywhere affordably and covertly.
Such networks will be able to understand emerging situations and initiate appropriate communications and actions. These networks will have universal application, from calling in hypervelocity precision strike weapons to discovering the whereabouts of devious teenagers.
Sensor networks will eliminate anonymity and fundamentally alter public/private boundaries, reducing individuality and creativity and leading to centralized manipulation and control of societies. Armed with precise awareness and new ways to control people with and without their knowledge, dictators will exercise stifling control and will be very difficult to resist or overthrow.
New forms of wearable networked computers will provide personal enhancement, artificial pleasure, information, and instruction. These tech...