Talk:Mature nanotech weapons

From Wise Nano

"machines" built by cells = biotech  by Chris Phoenix, CRN 09:33, 31 Jan 2005 (CST)

This is a discussion of the "Viral machines" section.

The proposed mechanism is to reprogram the body's cells to produce replicating pathogens. But anything that can be produced by a cell is essentially biotech.

So why would you need nanotech to create a biotech pathogen? Or to put it another way, since the initial pathogen would be most easily done with biotech, why are we blaming nanotech for it?

It's not clear whether the "replicating pathogen" stage was meant to spread from person to person, or just to kill an individual. If the former, it's not as controllable as the original author implied. So probably the latter: it's just a way of inducing the body to kill itself. In that case, there are several possible ways that this could be accomplished, that turn the body's cells into "replicating pathogens": starting an autoimmune reaction, inducing cancer... and it may be that an essentially non-biological device might have these effects, and that nanotech could help build such a device. But what would be the difference between that and a chemical weapon?

In any case, if the nano-built trigger is not self-replicating, then a clarification will be desirable to avoid incorrect association with gray goo.