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 Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.
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This conference was sponsored in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 22-24 by the Foresight Institute, co-founded by Eric Drexler, who made the word ÒnanotechnologyÓ widely known in 1986. Though there had been half a dozen or so Foresight Institute conferences before, this one was officially titled ÒThe 1st Conference on Advanced Nanotechnology: Research, Application, and Policy.Ó
Nanotechnological conferences are numerous nowadays. On July 14, I attended one of themÑin the Stanford Research Institute Auditorium in San Francisco. All of my expenses were covered by WorldTribune.com. Coincidentally, on July 1 President Abdul Kalam of India said that molecular nanotechnology would Òrevolutionize the total concept of warÓ and called on the country's scientists Òto make a breakthrough in this cutting-edge technology.Ó
But no such statement has been made in the United States (or Western Europe). Indeed, Saddam Hussein (represented as the world's most dangerous dictator) was said to intend (!) to develop nuclear weapons (which the United States, Soviet Russia, and China tested in 1945, 1949, and 1964, respectively), but he was never suspected of developing molecular nano weapons! Who else or is suspected? Surely not Òthe supreme leadersÓ of China, the most peaceful country in recorded history! So what's the point of Òmaking a breakthroughÓ in molecular nano weaponization?
No wonder the San Francisco conference was all about the COMMERCIALIZATION of nanotechnology (nanobusiness).
One lecturer, wishing to show the global triumph of nanotechnology, said that while in the United States 15% of students study nanotechnology, the figure for China (three cheers!) is 50 percent!
The esteemed professor of nanotechnology did not understand the difference between democracy (which the current Òsupreme leadersÓ of China called Òa blind alleyÓ) and dictatorship (called in China Òsocialism,Ó expected to develop into ÒcommunismÓ). In a big ambitious dictatorship, the dictator or the top oligarchy can allocate in total secrecy any resources for any purpose they want. As it became obvious even to all Western ÒSovietologistsÓ after the Soviet collapse in 1991, all the Soviet official figures of Òdefense spendingÓ were fakes. So are the Chinese official figures of expenses on nanotechnology, for example. Yes, in the United States 15 percent of students are to work in non-military nanotechnology or in the development of nano uniforms protecting soldiers (war is still perceived by the Pentagon as pre-nuclear warfare), while in China 15% of students will work in these fields of nanotechnology, while 35 percent of them will develop molecular nano weapons, superior to nuclear weapons, since they can destroy the Western means of nuclear retaliation, that is, circumvent Mutual Assured Destruction on which world peace has rested.
So after the esteemed professor had ended his hymn to the triumph of nanotechnology all over the world and especially in China (three cheers!), I stood up and said what I wrote above.
The shock defies any description. Imagine that there was no war in 1939 to 1945. Germany was (peacefully!) developing nuclear weapons. And here was a conference of British engineers and scientists working on the commercial uses of nuclear power for electrical stations and submarine motors. Nuclear business! Imagine that my alter ego appears at that conference and declares: nuclear power can be used for bombs so geostrategically effective that two bombs would be enough to force a country like Japan into unconditional surrender. (General noise. Shouts: ÒWho is this madman?Ó). Moreover, Hitler is developing such weapons! (Scornful laughterÑHitler, whom Lloyd George admires, Chamberlain has signed a peace treaty with, and our King Edward VIII was seen giving a Nazi salute!)
Now back to 2004. The esteemed professor of nanotechnology answered me that the United States should maintain friendship with all countries (except fighting the guerrillas in Iraq, of course) and this is how world peace would be preserved and consolidated.
A considerable number of nanotechnologists present responded with a Òthunderous applauseÓ as though the professor uttered something demolishing me, and not a smug, stupid, pacifist clichŽ.
Why this animosity toward a mere mention of the possibility of development of molecular nano weapons? Now back to our scenario, assuming that there was no conventional world war of 1939 to 1945. Imagine those U.S. engineers, scientists, and businessmen of 1939 to 1945 who would have been engaged in the use of nuclear power for peaceful commercial purposes reacting to a mere mention of the possibility of development of nuclear weapons in Germany. The U.S. government would pour a lion's share of nuclear power allocations on the Manhattan Project of development of nuclear weapons. Now, what was the commercial value (profit) of the two nuclear bombs that the government-run Manhattan Project produced? Nil!
Fortunately for nanobusines, the U.S. government in the past decade, including the CIA and the Pentagon, the mainstream media, and the university Sinologists, have been strictly pacifist with respect to China even if warlike with respect to Iraq. Hence the Foresight Institute, co-founded by Drexler, has received no government funds, while the rest of nanotechnology, consisting mostly of nanobusines, receives billions of dollars in the coming years.
Why this scorn for the founder of nanotechnology?
His book of 1986, subtitled ÒThe Coming Era of Nanotechnology,Ó contains Chapter 11: ÒEngines of Destruction.Ó The reduction of everything dead or alive to atomsÑto Ògray goo.Ó As an accident in U.S. research this was described in 2002 in the novel ÒPrey,Ó now being adapted into a movie. Their moral: the American scientists should be forbidden to tinker with such mortally dangerous stuff. We, Americans, are to blame! All technology and no ecology!
But what if this isn't an accident in U.S. research, but the operation of a weapon, developed and used by a large dictatorship wishing to annihilate the United States or make it surrender unconditionally, as did Japan in 1945 after two U.S. nuclear bombs had been dropped on its two cities? Twenty pages (pp. 171-190) of Drexler's book follow to describe molecular nano weapons, developed and used by Òsovereign states.Ó We read (pp. 173-174):
ÒThroughout history, states have developed technologies to extend their military powers, and states will no doubt play a dominant role in developing replication and AI [Artificial Intelligence] systems. States could use replicating assemblers to build arsenals of advanced weapons, swiftly, easily, and in vast quantities. States could use special replicators directly to wage a sort of germ warfareÑone made vastly more practical by programmable, computer-controlled Ògerms.Ó Depending on their skills, AI systems could serve as weapons designers, strategists, or fighters. Military funds [in China?] already support research in both molecular technology and artificial intelligence.
ÒStates could use assemblers or advanced AI systems to achieve sudden, destabilizing breakthroughs. I earlier discussed reasons for expecting that the advent of replicating assemblers will bring relatively sudden changes: Able to replicate swiftly, they could become abundant in a matter of days. Able to make almost anything, they could be programmed to duplicate existing weapons, but made from superior materials. Able to work with standard, well-understood components (atoms), they could suddenly build things designed in anticipation of the assembler breakthrough. These results of design-ahead could include programmable germs and other nasty novelties. For all these reasons, a state that makes the assembler breakthrough could rapidly create a decisive military forceÑif not literally overnight, then at least with unprecedented speed.Ó
For lack of space I stop quoting Drexler. I will quote in conclusion only one more sentence (p. 174), showing that already in 1986, when his book was published and the Chinese Òsupreme leaderÓ founded Project 863 to develop post-nuclear superweapons in 7 fields, Drexler understood the crucial advantage of molecular nano weapons over nuclear bombs: ÒA bomb can only blast things, but nanomachines and AI systems could be used to infiltrate, seize, change, and govern a territory or a world.Ó
Yes, nuclear bombs or missiles cannot destroy enemy means of nuclear retaliation (submerged submarines with nuclear missiles aboard, bombers on duty high up in the air, or sufficiently deep nuclear installations), that is, to circumvent Mutual Assured Destruction on which world peace has rested. But this is what molecular nano weapons can do, according to the sentence I quote above.
If the West surrenders unconditionally, the Òsupreme leadersÓ of China will also be able to ÒgovernÓ the conquered nations, by Ònanomachines and AI systems.Ó Drexler has never mentioned China by name, but China is the biggest dictatorship in world history, and surely it is both willing and able, in Òstrategic partnershipÓ with Russia and borrowing whatever is needed from Western trade and private enterprise, to develop all those nanoweapons Drexler described way back in 1986.
When it became clear that Drexler was the Einstein of nanotechnlogy, Admiral David Jeremiah, Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Drexler, and in 1995 the Admiral spoke on ÒNanotechnology and Global SecurityÓ at ÒThe 4th [!] Foresight Institute Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology.Ó
No wonder Drexler has been so respected by the Chinese nanotechnologists, developing molecular nano weapons for the Òsupreme leadersÓ of China. Alas, he is no longer respected by the U.S. political-military establishment, as he was by Admiral Jeremiah in the early 1990s. While the Chinese sovereigns intend to nano-annihilate or enslave the democratic West, whose independent existence is subversive to any dictatorship and should be suppressed (recall the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989), the U.S. presidents have been in unrequited love with China, and Drexler was an obstacle to this love.
Late last year I published the column: ÒWill Eric Drexler Save the West from Nano Annihilation?Ó (see NewsMax.com, Dec. 19, 2003).
How can the West be saved by Drexler? First, the message of his 1986 book should at last become known to the current U.S. president and the Congress, and they should allocate the money, now spent on Iraq, for the nano ÒManhattan ProjectÓ in the United States. World peace will henceforth rest on Mutual Assured (nano) Destruction.
So I was going to the Foresight Institute Conference to meet a possible savior of the West in the flesh and perhaps to interview him. I was also looking forward to meeting those members of the Foresight Institute who read my Internet columns, such as Adam Keiper. He sent me on Sept. 15 (ÒSubject: China nano threatÓ) an e-mail that began:
ÒI am a long-time reader of both NewsMax and the WorldTribune, and have followed your writings with interest over the last few years. I certainly share many of your concerns about China's ambitions.Ó
NewsMax.com and WorldTribune.com paid (half and half) all of my expenses, and here I was at the Foresight Institute conference in the morning of Oct. 22.
But bad premonitions had assailed me even before I arrived. Rosa Wang, Drexler's assistant, had been reading my Internet columns and commented on then in her e-mails to Isak Baldwin, manager of our Center for the Survival of Western Democracies, Inc. So, when the Conference had been announced, I e-mailed to Rosa Wang to propose my half-hour lecture at the conference about the development of molecular nano weapons in China. If what I wrote on the subject was of interest to Adam Keiper and Rosa Wang, surely this would be of interest to all those present at the Foresight Institute's Ò1st Conference on Advanced Nanotechnology: Research, Applications, and Policy.Ó
Well, Rosa Wang disappeared. Though I announced my name as I spoke at the conference and walked about with an obligatory press label on my chest, she never approached me to say hello, nor could I find her. I was now a political leper, heretic, provocateur, saying what Drexler and the Foresight Institute had been saying, but did not want to hear any longer. They could not prevent my attendance of the conference because I came as a NewsMax.com and WorldTribune.com correspondent, and surely a public conference on nanotechnology cannot keep off correspondents because they remember what the Foresight Institute had been saying at its conferences before its Ò1stÓ conference.
Whatever has happened to Drexler and the Foresight Institute?
Evidently, Drexler got sick and tired of being poor as a truth sayer usually is (Rosa Wang wrote to us that he had no salary). How to become a bourgeois, such as an Ivy League university professor with a good salary? It was necessary to throw overboard the molecular nano weapons warnings, for which Drexler was baited by government-funded nanotechnology and nanobusiness as for a militaristic fantasy Òto scare children.Ó
I learned on arrival that he is no longer the president of the Foresight Institute he had co-founded. Thus he has liberated the Foresight Institute from his past molecular nano weapons warnings. The Ò1stÓ conference of the Foresight Institute was to show that it was free from the molecular nano weapons warnings of old, and could well begin to receive funds from the government and Congress.
Drexler's study of 1986 deserves a Nobel PrizeÑeven without his molecular nano weapons warnings. With them, his study was worth more than all Nobel Prizes put together, for ere long the Nobel Prize Committee may be reduced to atoms, or the entire West to a Chinese colony, where no one will remember any Nobel Prizes. How long could Drexler be humiliated? It was time for him and the Foresight Institute to become PC (Politically Correct) and at least benefit from government and Congress allocations.
In other words, I came to the performance of a three-day play about how goody-goody or PC Drexler and the Foresight Institute are (in terms of the Western conformity, willfully blind to the mortal China danger) and hence deserving government-Congress allocations. Commensurate not with $225 billion, the cost of Iraq, but with one hundred-thousandth of that sum.
The play was performed in Washington, D.C. Imagine the additional expenses incurred to travel from California, the seat of the Foresight Institute, to Washington, D.C. Obviously, Drexler and the Foresight Institute had meant to attract the attention of the government and Congress. Actually, the conference was attendedÑno, not by one Representative (DøCal.), but by one member of his staff, who did not say publicly one word in three days.
Naturally, I did not attend lectures useful for nanobusiness. Nor am I a nanotechnologist (by one of my educational backgrounds I am an Òenergy engineerÓ). I am a socio-political thinker concerned with the destiny of mankind, and I attended only the lectures that could shed some light, however dim and indirect, on the molecular nano weapons, a mortal danger to the democratic West, as Drexler described it way back in 1986.
The first lecture I attended, between 2 and 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 22, was given by Ari Requicha, originally from Portugal, and entitled ÒNanoassembly and Nanorobots.
He began by saying that ÒWashingtonÓ doesn't like these words. When he finished I asked him (oh, my, what ÒWashingtonÓ would say?) what he thought about the development of molecular nano weapons in China. He answered that China does not need such weapons since it can use anthrax.
This was like saying in 1939 that Germany did not need nuclear weapons, since it could use nitroglycerine. Such would have been my answer, but the vigilant young man in charge would not let me continue, on the plea that there were other questions from the audience.
The next half-hour lecture I attended between 4:30 and 5 p.m. was Eric Drexler's ÒA Roadmap to Productive [not Destructive!] Molecular Machine Systems.Ó
After he finished, I began with compliments to him or rather his former self. While the Nobel Prize Committee, the U.S. political establishment, and PC (Politically Correct) nanotechnologists have been so ungenerous to him, at least I told him that, having read his study of 1986, I began to worship him.
ÒWhat is your question?Ó he asked. ÒDo you still believe that mortally dangerous global molecular nano superweapons can be developedÑin China, for example?Ó
I had read his answer beforeÑin Rosa Wang's e-mails. This is the gist of it. The development of nanotechnology is like the Industrial Revolution. The countries that went through the Industrial Revolution became the most powerful. Similarly, after the nanotechnological revolution the weapons will be as powerful, compared with today's weapons, as artillery, tanks, aircraft, etc., once were, compared with swords, spears, and arrows.
It is the same as if Einstein had said in 1939: there is no need for the Manhattan Project, for in 10, 50, or 100 years the weapons will be as powerful as artillery, tanks, aircraft, etc., were after the Industrial Revolution as compared with swords, spears, and arrows.
The savior of the West has become one of hundreds of millions of Westerners who are its grave-diggers. A collective suicide of a civilization.
On the second day, Saturday, I attended, between 2:00 and 2:30 p.m., Calvin Shipbaugh's lecture. He was introduced in two words: Òformerly RAND.Ó He spoke at a terrific speed and beyond his time so that no questions could be asked. The title of his lecture resembled what Drexler used to say before his (Political Correctness) conversion: ÒMolecular Manufacturing: International Competitiveness and National Security.Ó
Well, what country is a nano competitor, endangering the U.S. national security? China? You must be crazy or have a criminal mind! The former RAND scholar mentioned and displayed on the screen many countries (e.g., the Netherlands), but not China! In China, they must have never heard of nanotechnology since this is how the U.S. political establishment wants it to be.
As I was writing this, I received by e-mail a report from East-Asia-Intel.com, an Internet publication launched by WorldTribune a year ago. The report begins, ÒNorth Korea has recently succeeded in making a scanning tunneling microscope, essential to developing nanotechnology. . . .Ó North Korea is forging ahead in the field Òwith help from its ally China.Ó
At a dinner that started at 6:15 p.m. in a Spanish restaurant nearby, my neighbor on the right was Howard Lovy of ÒHoward Lovy's Nanobot,Ó which brilliantly defended Drexler when he was viciously attacked by conformists for his proposition, dating from 1986, that molecular nano superweapons are possible. Lovy said that he had published my Internet column. He also said to me that I am a voice in the wilderness because I have no incontrovertible evidence that China wants to annihilate the West or force it into unconditional surrender by means of post-nuclear superweapons such as molecular nano superweapons. To listen to him, if I had such evidence, my telephone would keep ringing: members of the U.S. government and Congress, the CIA, the Pentagon, the universities, and, last but not least, the mainstream media, would keep inviting me to speak confidentially or for the entire West to hear. It would be as it was in the 1970s and the 1980s, when I lectured all over the West about Òthe Soviet danger,Ó met with Ronald Regan, and a CIA team came to our house to interview me.
Possibly, Lovy did not know what John Stuart Mill said about a conformity that may disregard everything contradicting it, no matter what evidence.
But let us ask Lovy what is incontrovertible evidence of the Chinese development of molecular nano superweapons, apart from post-nuclear superweapons in six other fields?
In a democracy every decision of the government and/or Congress is or at least must be documented. But in a dictatorship, the dictator's decision need not be. The Russian historians are still looking in vain for a document that would prove that Stalin wanted to invade Germany or Western Europe as a whole, but Hitler Òpreempted his preemption.Ó There is no such document. The decision could be taken inside Stalin's brain and could be annulled at any moment. The document was Stalin's brain, provided it could be stolen, brought to the West, and its thoughts be Òread.Ó
Stalin did not believe that Hitler would Òpreempt his preemptionÓ because he understood that ÒBarbarossaÓ and all the other hard evidence could only be Hitler's ploy. The paranoically suspicious Stalin was insufficiently suspicious, alert, vigilant in this caseÑand nearly perished.
When I told Lovy that I have an article taken from the Chinese press about Project 863, he said that what the Chinese press says is no document. Only the brain of the Òsupreme leaderÓ of China is?
The vigilance, the alertnessÑthe suspicion that the Òsupreme leadersÓ of China want to annihilate the democratic West or make it surrender unconditionallyÑmust follow not from incontrovertible evidence like the purloined and ÒreadÓ brain of the current Òsupreme leader,Ó but from socio-political analysis according to which this is what the biggest dictatorship in world history intends to do to the democratic West because the latter subverts the dictators' absolute power by the very fact of its existence. The annihilation of the democratic West and the annihilation of the Tiananmen Square gathering differ only in scale.
Published in 1999 by the People's Liberation Army Publishing House (and obviously with the blessing of the Òsupreme leadersÓ) was the book ÒUnrestricted Warfare,Ó written by ÒSenior ColonelÓ Qiao Liang and ÒSenior ColonelÓ Wang Xiangsui. The message of this study is simple. All war rules, restrictions, and conventions are so many Western prejudices. The United States should be attacked suddenly and without any cause. If the two senior colonels had published their study in 2004, they would have added: Ò. . . just as the United States and its allies attacked Iraq to establish 'democracy,' except that established in the West should be not 'democracy' (a 'blind alley,' as the Òsupreme leaderÓ said), but the socialism of Marx-Lenin-Mao. The world outside China should be LIBERATED.
Lovy may say that a document published by two senior colonels is not enoughÑit should have been signed by Òthe supreme leaderÓ personally, and the signed manuscript be available in the West in the original. I would say something else. Insufficiant as the evidence of ÒUnrestricted WarfareÓ may be in a Western court of justice to sentence Òthe supreme leaderÓ of China (without whose blessing the book could never have been published) and the two senior colonels (or perhaps the entire People's LIBERATION Army?), this evidence should have been mentioned, however briefly, by the mainstream media, if not by the U.S. government and Congress, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the universities.
Actually, the book was not even published by any prestigious U.S. publishing house. In English it was publishedÑin Panama (!), and I received a copy from NewsMax.com as though it were samizdat (Òself-publishingÓ) in Soviet Russia. True, I was not arrested for the reading of samizdat (long live democracy!), but I am not nationally visible or audible as a thinker was in the West half a century ago, and in the 19th or 18th century.
When a powerful literary agent called me a couple of months ago to sell my book, it was in vain that I tried to assure him that the obstacles to the publication of my book by a prestigious publishing house, and not just online, as it is available now (www.levnavrozov.com), is not any lack of evidence in my possession, but the unwillingness of all nationally visible and/or audible Americans to see any evidence, and none are more blind than those who do not want to see.
Finally, I promised Lovy to e-mail him my one-page proposal to literary agents and print publishers, explaining that my mission is not to bring the brain of Òthe supreme leaderÓ of China to the West and ÒreadÓ it, but to critique the Western conformity, making Westerners blind to any evidence or any socio-political discourse on the subject.
My nanotechnological neighbor on my left at the dinner table contributed to the debate by paying $20 for me when the money was collected from all diners at the table. I ordered Spanish beef and Spanish wine, both of which were excellent. There were about a score and a half of us, Òattendees,Ó at the table, and when it was the time for the next lecture, I stood up and announced it. But the nano technologists seemed to be determined to make a night of it, and only my neighbor on the left escorted me to the conference auditorium.
On the third day, Sunday, Robert Haak of ÒAsian Technology Information ProgramÓ spoke between 10 and 10:30 a.m. on ÒNanotechnology in Asia.Ó When he finished, he sat down next to me in the hall, and I wrote on my pad the following question for him:
ÒDo you have any information about the development of molecular nano weapons in China?Ó He read the question and answered, ÒNo.Ó China as a threat seems to have been expelled even from Asia.
Between 11:30 a.m. and 12 m. Adam Keiper (who had sent me that e-mail about my Internet columns) spoke on ÒThe Importance of Nanotech Politics.Ó How to establish friendship with the political establishment? I can say how. The Foresight Institute must be PC, that is, forget its former discourses about the mortal danger of development of molecular nano superweapons in China. But Keiper seemed never to have read my Internet columns. He was another PC actor in a PC play called a conference.
Between 2 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., Howard Lovy spoke on ÒNanotech Goals and Conflicts.Ó Yet another PC actor in the same PC play.
When I raised my hand to speak, he muttered audibly: ÒWe are in trouble now!Ó It was a semi-joke: he had been listening to me at the dinner the day before. Still, his semi-joke seemed to hint that it was ÒweÓ against Òhim,Ó damaging ÒourÓ PC play.
Of course, privately, he and many other ÒattendeesÓ were different. Mark Avrum Gubrud, of the Physics Department of the University of Maryland, handed me his 4-1/2øpage comments. He cites the following quotationÑat odds with what the PC conference had been all about:
ÒWe're already beginning to hear alarms raised about Chinese interest in military nanotechnology, and China is already third in the world in nanotechnology patent applications. [What about secret military inventions deceptions?] It is, no doubt, as hard for American and European mandarins to imagine being conquered by Chinese troops equipped with superior weaponry as it was for Chinese Mandarins to imagine the reverse, two hundred years ago.Ó
Six other ÒattendeesÓ gave me their calling cards and told me they would read my Internet columns, in addition to those ÒattendeesÓ already reading them.
Two ÒattendeesÓ struck me as curiosities. One asked me why the United States should be saved. Surely the United States deserves annihilation. I told him that I am a ruthless critic of the democratic West. But I remember Churchill's adage: ÒDemocracy is the worst form of governmentÑexcept all others.Ó If he is destined to live in a Chinese colony, he will recall Churchill's maxim.
The other attendee was 26 years old, but had the face of a 6-year-old child. He said with charming innocence that all my warnings were groundless, since technological innovations can originate only the United States. I had to remind him that both the compass and firearms, owing to which Columbus reached America and began to conquer it, had been invented centuries earlier in China.
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For more information about Drexler's Foresight Institute and its lobbying in Congress, see www.foresight.org
To learn more about the Chris Phoenix report, suggesting a Ònano Manhattan Project,Ó go to crnano.org.
For information about the Center for the Survival of Western Democracies, Inc., including how you can help, please e-mail me at navlev@cloud9.net.
The link to my book online is www.levnavrozov.com. You can also request our webmaster@levnavrozov.com to send you by e-mail my outline of my book.
It is my pleasant duty to express gratitude to the Rev. Alan Freed, a Lutheran pastor by occupation before his retirement and a thinker by vocation, for his help in the writing of this column.
Lev Navrozov's (navlev@cloud9.net] new book is available on-line at www.levnavrozov.com. To request an outline of the book, send an e-mail to webmaster@levnavrozov.com.