Talk:Is there a superweapon?
From Wise Nano
Defining Superweapon by Selenite 01:56, 24 Oct 2004 (CDT)
I think you need to define "superweapon" better. An ICBM is clearly superior to an AK-47. Didn't let the USA beat North Viet Nam. Longbows beat knights, but England didn't conquer France. I can iterate this back to some guy with the first flint spearhead getting punched from behind by someone good at hiding in bushes.
A better question may be "Will a nation with advanced MNT be able to: 1. Resist all attacks from non-MNT equipped enemies? 2. Destroy non-MNT equipped states? 3. Occupy a population without MNT against their will?"
Number 1 provides the incentive to compete in an arms race. Number 2 is the incentive to keep someone else from winning. And number 3 may be an issue for all of us if things go badly.
superweapons and "the ultimate weapon" by Mgb 23:41, 25 Oct 2004 (CDT)
Given advanced nanotechnology, you can come up with lots of superweapon concepts. This is a useful exercise. It will be useful to have a library of superweapon concepts, any hard statements or numbers pertaining to them, and scenarios of their use, countermeasures, net assessments, etc.
As selenite indicated, the more significant questions are those that pertain to the options available to states and the choices they are likely to make. One can ask whether there is likely to be realized some capability that allows an aggressor (initiator of warfare) to win in a given situation. Regional conflicts are one kind of situation we might consider. Global or superpower peer competitor conflicts are another. We can ask whether under any realistic scenario the US is likely to attain an ability to impose virtual occupation or a regime of coercive arms control on a North Korea, say, or China or Russia or Europe. We can ask whether under any realistic scenario another power is likely to attain an ability to attack and defeat the United States.
The concept of the ultimate weapon is a bit more than this. It is a recurrent theme, idea, meme, mirus, whatever you like to call these things, but it has such a long history that it seems to be something that comes naturally to the human mind rather than just an idea that gets repeated. This is the notion that there is some thing, some ring of power, some Holy Grail, some magic sword, some secret, ultimate weapon that will make its bearer invincible in combat and enable him to take over the world. Sometimes it is too dangerous and must be destroyed, but in all cases it is something of terrible and transcending importance, which justifies all manner of incivilities and costs to get it or to keep the bad guys from getting it. Thus the entire war effort depends on Frodo tossing that Ring into the pit. On Blechley Park getting that code machine, on the Heroes of Telemark dynamiting Vemork. On the world's most brilliant scientists gathering in the desert to summon forth the gods of doom. On developing the first assembler in a freedom-loving nation. Etc.
I've described this as a classic fallacy, repeated again and again in history. The Ultimate Weapon looms as a threat and opportunity; its potency and imminence rule out any thought of relinquishment, of seeking cooperation, openness, arms control. No time for such nonsense! Only the most naive fool could possibly trust them with such power, with so much at stake. Within months the enemy (and if they aren't the enemy now, they will be) will have the widget, and then all will be lost! We must get the widget first, and we must use it, wisely, to ensure that no one can challenge us.
What happens, again and again, in modern history, is that technological advances occur more or less simultaneously in a number of world centers. The Ultimate Weapon turns out to be just another superweapon, just another increment in power which at first only continues existing capabilities. Thus out of scores of cities massacred and burned to the ground in World War II, only two of them were nuclear targets. The "Atom Bomb", called "the winning weapon" at the time, in fact only allowed the US to stalemate Stalin, but did not give it the ability to overrun and occupy Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Four years later, the Soviets had the Bomb. Again and again the lure and fear of the Ultimate Weapon entices and compels us to pursue it, and again and again the result is simply an arms race and a new, higher level of insecurity. This is because the initial gains in power due to developing the weapon are not great enough, and the technological lead of the initiator is not long enough, to translate the vision of unrivaled power into real victory.
Semantics and philosophy? by RFScheer 14:31, 27 Oct 2004 (CDT)
I am hoping we can avoid a preoccupation with the semantics and philosophy of superweapons. Let's see what they look like before getting all tied up in knots.
Collar not a superweapon? by 68.2.106.58 17:20, 31 Oct 2004 (CST)
I want to disagree with the "countermeasures" for the Collar, but don't want to modify that myself.
Is the Collar a superweapon? I think a superweapon is one that has a reasonably good chance to give a small group or even an individual power over the lives of a much larger group - whether that means killing them or enslaving them. Atom bombs are superweapons. The Collar functions to build up - at a fairly rapid pace - a network of human slave-warriors. It makes use of geometric growth principles - 2 collared slaves becomes 4 by the second day, 1024 by the 10th, 1 million by the 20th maybe a billion within a month - and that's assuming all new slaves collect just two new slaves each. Combined with its covert nature and the victim's uncertainty of just how smart the monitoring AI is - and whether anyone they might try to get to help them might be another collared slave - I fear it might be fairly effective. If a nation wanted to collar it's own citizens, defending against it might be difficult.
I deliberately left the "small-AI" vague - it might just be a pre-processor to detect potential disobedience - detecting brainwaves or voice stress indicative of attempts to deceive, catching concentration on fine motor skills the might indicate they are writing a HELP! note. Video and audio could be relayed to another collared slave with a command for them to decide whether the first slave is trying to break free or alert authorities. The weapon controlling organization would do spot checks, and sometimes gather crowds of collar slaves to witness an execution, telling them that the victim was caught in a spot check or more often by a "loyal monitoring collared". The slave would never be sure what they could get away with.
Regarding the counter-measure of lasering the flying collar - in the timeframe considered, small flying sensor devices may be fairly common, including defensive systems such as Jack's "defensive cloud". Visual pattern recognition might not be able to pick the collar out from innocent devices, especially if the device is tied to a human labelled as "trusted". I tried to imply this part with the description of Jack's defensive cloud failing to do it's job because he made the "error" of trusting someone. (Even the destruction of trust and resulting human isolation this would create rates the Collar as a harmful superweapon in my mind.) Given today's ever compounding problem of spyware and adware on our PCs, I thought it was a reasonable extension.
Countermeasures - one countermeasure might be a "poison pill" defense - I wear a device that I can't turn off, that broadcasts to potential "Collar-ers" that it will immediately broadcast a visual record of the event to the police - revealing the source of the collar. If I am collared in any case, it will record any interactions with other Collared slaves and broadcast their images to the police as well. By destroying the covert nature of the attack, the weapon would be largely countered, though it might cause some deaths in the meantime. But no one is going to wear a poison pill defense unless Collaring has already become a real threat.
Again - I don't want to remove someone else's countermeasure proposal, but I will add the "poison pill" defense.
Self-Replication? by 143.182.124.3 18:53, 2 Nov 2004 (CST)
All the superweapon scenarios seem to assume self-replication and massive production capacity - but none seem to use that as a key component of the weapon itself. Perhaps this is due to an aversion to the over-hyped "gray goo" scenario?
Some possible reasons early-nano replication might not be included in weapons:
- perhaps there is little advantage to producing weapons close to the enemy?
- perhaps the nano-factory is fragile, unsuitable for a weapon?
- perhaps replicating a nano-factory is more difficult (much slower) than replicating simpler weapons?
- perhaps the nano-factory is unable to create objects that unfold or otherwise self-assemble to be as large as itself - i.e. requiring "final assembly of parts" assistance to replicate?
- perhaps replication times will be very slow, requiring stealthy amassing of large quantities of weapons prior to an attack?
- perhaps nano production will take large amounts of power?
Some possible counters to these issues:
- covert insertion of a few self-replicators might go undetected by a nation looking for a massive attack across their borders.
- a fragile nano-factory, well defended or hidden, could churn out weapons closer to the enemy, for a greater surprise factor
- is there any reason to believe complex objects will take longer to assemble?
- a large nano-factory "mother ship" could churn out smaller attack units
- since self-replication is assumed, the first thing able to be mass replicated would be massive quantities of nano-factories. So while other designs still have to be tested out, something relying mostly on the power of self-replication might be able to be rushed into production - especially critical if an enemy is believed to also be about to achieve nanotech.
- The weapon might be able to seek out and tap into enemy power lines, perhaps using the power line insulation as a source of carbon, or simply drawing CO2 out of the air. The electricity drain might be covert at first, then suddenly shut down power everywhere in the country just as the weapons move to attack. (The weapons could be disguised as pairs of old tennis shoes... :-)
Is there a superweapon? by Nanomatrix 16:45, 3 Nov 2004 (CST)
This is another version of the search for a Universal Solvent. The obvious problem is the "Container"... or lack thereof. The same problem is true for the "Superweapon". It is a hypothetical technology because there is no way to contain it.
All of the models discussed assume volume production but the greater the volume the higher the probability that the creator would become a victim of his own creation... because of the lack of effective containment.
Eventually the weapon will no longer be "Super" because too may people have copies.
…nanomatrix
