The Downside

In additions to the changes our society will have to make to cope with this new technology, there will come the most ominous spectre of all: war more dangerous and devastating than it has ever been. This new technology will also make war between states more likely in our present world system.

The weapons of MNT (Molecular Nano Techmology) will be on such a small scale that they will be invisible, smaller by far than their biological and chemical counterparts, and more precise because they will be programmable. This means that they can evade defenses and strike predetermined targets much as cruise missiles do, though invisibly. Even worse, with the new technology it becomes useless to strike traditional targets such as weapons and factories because they could be restored overnight by the the advanced manufacturing of nanotechnology. Raze a factory one day, it will grow back soon thereafter. So the target will become the ultimate target: people. Military planners will seek a target that cannot be easily replaced and that is large enought to find and hit, and that only leaves the civilian population.

MNT also makes war between states inevitable because by it's very nature it creates a general equality in destructive capacity. As MNT spreads, so does the ability to create powerful and deadly weapons and the ability to rebuild an industrial base in a very short time. So each state becomes more of a threat to it's neighbors by making it more deadly due to the weapons and more difficult to defeat due the the rebuilding capabilities.

MNT promises to be a destabilizing influence on the world system as we know it.