dossier by Patrice Cardot and Bertrand de Montluc
Bertrand de Montluc is a research associate at CERI (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherche Internationales) - Patrice Cardot works for the French General Council of Armament (the views expressed here are those of the author and do not engage the responsibility of the General Council of Armament)
Nanoscience and nanotechnology: accelerated development
Nanoscience and nanotechnology (N&N) constitute new approaches to research and development (R&D), studying phenomena and human manipulation of matter at atomic, molecular and macromolecular level, at which the matter displays very different properties from those observed at larger scales. R&D and innovation in the field of N&N are at the origin of progress in a wide range of sectors. This progress may provide a response to the needs of citizens and make a contribution to the competitiveness and to the sustainable development objectives of the Union, and further a great many of its policies, such as public health, health and safety at work, the information society, energy, transport, security and space.
This is particularly true of an area which is still little-known but emerging at a steady pace, from cross-fertilisation in research carried out in the areas of nanoscience, nanotechnology, biotechnology, life sciences, information technology, communications technology and cognitive science: the scope par excellence of the 'converging technologies', still known as NBIC (the acronym which now denotes the scientific area which involves nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science).
The uncertainties entailed in the exponential development of the scientific activities, innovations and usages involved in this field are now central to long-term international reflection, particularly in the United States and Europe.
"While N&N is bringing about important advantages and benefits for our society that improve our quality of life, some risk is inherent, as for any technology, and this should be openly acknowledged and investigated upfront (...) health, safety and environmental risks that may be associated with products and applications of N&N need to be addressed upfront and throughout their life cycle". (Cf. The Communication COM(2005) 243 of 7 June 2005 of the European Commission to the Council, the European Parliament and the Economic and Social Committee entitled "Towards a European Strategy for Nanotechnology: European Action Plan for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (2005 - 2009)").
With regard more specifically to security defined in terms of the security of people and of heritage- individual and collective- and of fundamental freedoms -public and private- although nanotechnology helps reinforce the means to fight against crime, terrorism and other acute forms of criminality, at the same time it arms those who intend to commit crimes of this kind and/or denials of democracy, seriously infringing fundamental freedoms. However, although the authorities responsible for the protection and controls in this field are able to manage visible processes, they have little power over the invisible or intangible processes, particularly those which could seriously damage fundamental freedoms.
With the coming of N&N generally, therefore, and more specifically with the emergence of converging new technologies working towards a hybridisation between the natural and the artificial, there is also an increased and very real risk (and not just deviance) for security as well as for fundamental freedoms.
The emergence of nanotechnology, and the associated risks and threats, in fact reveals a disharmony, a phase difference between, on the one hand, truth as portrayed by science, keeping the greatest possible distance from ideology and dogma and, on the other, the ideals of progress, development, freedom, equality, solidarity, security and justice, but also of power, born of a collective conscience and a cultural and political dynamic ceaselessly at work.
The coming of the Internet, as a result of electronic microchips and then nanochips, played its part in turning international relations and the instruments of international regulation upside down and, consequently, the foreign and security policies of the States, their mechanisms and their instruments. David Howell (former British Energy and Transport Minister) said: "From the mid-1970s on, a succession of events made the old international agenda obsolete. The Cold War is now a memory even if its traumatic scars linger, and a mosaic of ethnic and nationalistic quarrels has long since replaced its old ideological divide. Power has shifted between capitals but has also been dispersed into internet linkages which have empowered almost half the human race, with still more communications innovations just ahead. These developments have shaken the international institutions of the 20th century to their foundations. The United Nations, the Bretton Woods Institutions, the World Trade Organisation, NATO and the nuclear non-proliferation regime, to name only the most prominent, have all come under intense scrutiny as to their purpose, structure and relevance. Neither the EU nor the political structures within its member states, have escaped the waves of questioning now reaching into almost every corner of human affairs and governance. This massive fluidity in international affairs confronts policymakers and those who would build more secure global structures with a set of entirely new complexities. For the EU, searching for a more focussed global and better co-ordinated role while at the same time trying to settle its own future, the situation presents challenges that are particularly acute". (See his article "How the microchip is changing the face of foreign policy", which is published at http://www.europesworld.org ).
Extremely rapid development in a great many segments of human activity in nanotechnology and its uses, and the rapid development of converging NBIC technologies comes into this new context, symptomatic of the state of the world, and of international relations as things stand and are likely to remain during the first decades of the 21st century.
NBIC-type technology itself is therefore becoming a factor of power and of strategic competition, which makes it likely to rear its head in proliferation, whilst the risks and threats that go with it, the nature of which may vary enormously, are not merely a matter for defence and security professionals, but are also of relevance to, more globally, the populations themselves, the species, life and, more broadly, nature in its biodiversity.
Recent progress in the knowledge of human psychic, neuronal and immune processes, together with advances in genomics, prototype weaponry using converging nanotechnologies (or, at the very least, technologies involving either characteristics of nanometrics and biology, or characteristics of nanometrics and information technology) already favour the emergence of new opportunities, whilst at the same time giving rise to fears of the emergence and multiplication of risks and threats of another kind, which could jeopardise the security and defence systems of the States. The prospective development of autonomous military robots sheds much light on these fears.
The ultra-miniaturisation of smart embedded electronic systems already allows the design, development, production and use, under operational conditions, of miniature drones with artificial intelligence- the size of an insect- and intelligent, communicating sensors, meaning that their servers do not need to be physically present in situ, whilst also allowing them to benefit from unparalleled agility and stealth, due to this miniaturisation taken to extremes, allowing high levels of agility, penetration and invulnerability. In addition, synthetic biology will give anyone able to master simulations and the scientific calculation of high-performance (vital) the potential to develop nano-biological threats which are as violent as they are unsuspected, in spite of the treaties in force. When integrated into ultra-mobile systems such as missiles, their effects on peace and security will be 'deterritorialised' (which will mean that everywhere in the world, any individual, any heritage, any sanctuary will be a potential target) and, at the same time, increased to planetary level by proliferation which knows no geographical borders and does not recognise the intangible borders of the restrictions of international law.
These few examples shed some light on a number of future characteristics of the strategic and security environment as could result from a hazardous development of converging technologies; hazardous because insufficiently prepared, accompanied, piloted, mastered, regulated and/or controlled by the international institutions responsible for maintaining international peace and security, NATO (transformation process), and bodies within the European Union dedicated to the development of technological policy, and foreign and security policy- including weaponry capability.
One might go so far as to say we are observing nothing less than the emergence of a new factor in military power and economic domination, equivalent to control over fire, the discovery of iron, the development of sailing ships, the invention of the internal combustion engine, machine-tools, nuclear energy and information and communication technologies in their time. We must now acknowledge that a hegemonic player will never have just one strategy, to go as far as possible and hold everybody else back, at the risk of seriously damaging safety and security.
Given the unprecedented opening-up of a new technology on offer which is as abundant as it is unregulated, a technology which is increasingly available as access to the most revolutionary innovations has become commonplace. Ease of access has become amplified by economic and commercial competition surrounding products with an extremely high technological density. Controlling this access (to say nothing of the problem of equal access), and the issues of its use how this use is controlled are on the table.
Wisdom dictates that one should not allow oneself to be overtaken by the unbridled progress of science and technology pushed by speculative movements of complex causes and uncertain goals, whilst at the same time striving not to open Pandora's box or unchaining Prometheus! However, the collective awareness of all or part of the potential challenges, both in terms of opportunities and of risks or threats, of this kind of technological effervescence is only recent, and has been little diffused within political, administrative, economic, financial, scientific, civilian or military elites. This is starting to develop within certain international organisations and fora (UN, UNESCO, World Health Organisation (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Union, the World Economic Forum in DAVOS).
It remains to be verified whether this awareness has penetrated the fora and other bodies working for the establishment, implementation and monitoring compliance with international conventions on bans or limitations on the design, development, production, use or transfer of certain categories of weapons, goods, materials and technologies which are particularly critical in this regard (particularly in the chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear fields- CBRN) and of the associated legal acts in place. Indeed, the unique properties attached to the physics and chemistry of materials at nanometric scale could bring in case studies of a new type which has not yet been covered, or not covered enough, by the various regimes and treaties in force.
Regulatory stakes in relation to the converging NBIC-type technologies
Today, the issue of whether or not there is a need for rules and regulations is increasingly relevant: the prospects are worrying enough to justify a normative effort, at the risk of a greater or lesser delay in the dissemination of innovations, to limit and/or control access to or the use of these, even though there is by no means unanimous agreement over the need for recourse to a system of governance.
The international community must show great vigilance and, by means of national legislation and international law, prevent, without disproportionately hindering the functioning of international commerce and the transfer of technologies which is vital to a globalised economy, the design, development, production, sales and transfer of articles, matter, substances, goods and technologies which may be used to create technologies which give rise to fears of proliferation, as is currently the case in the registers.
As Alain Joxe said in his publication entitled "La globalisation stratégique": "The erosion of all nation-States by the assaults of neo-liberal deregulation leaves the interdependence of the bulk violence of the new armaments and the mathematicised economy exposed. A new anthropology of the interaction of collective identities within conflictual, economic and military relations is needed" (our translation).
The French President Nicolas Sarkozy has on several occasions stressed the need and the urgency to carry out a full renovation of the global system of governance with regard to the overall objectives laid down by the political decision-makers regarding international governance and regulation: "what is radically new about our time is that in spite of our different traditions and cultures, in spite of the reaffirmations of individual identities, the world has created its unity, our humanity is now one. The threats it is faced with are global. The responses will be global. The questions being put to the leaders of our time are weighty ones: will we, collectively, be able to give the responses needed to avoid the declines which would be fatal and continue humanity's march onward (...). We can no longer accept that programmes paid for by some are effectively dismantled by the decisions of others, due to a lack of coordination, or even disagreement, over the objectives" (our translation). (Conference of the ambassadors of 26 August 2009).
This need and this urgency are keenly felt in the field of new nanometric technologies, as regards considerations which affect both security and defence issues. The objective of regulating the converging technologies is to create conditions in order to inspire "sustainable confidence" regarding the general safety of research and innovation activities in this sector, whose outlines are as fluid as they are extensive, and regarding the safety of derivative products and usages which could potentially feature in the fields of security and defence. This confidence is vital, not only to allow the international research and innovation movement to continue- a sine qua non condition for the creation of new knowledge and new sources of progress, growth, development and the economic and commercial competitiveness of goods and services with high levels of added value- but also for the credibility of the security strategies and systems deployed by the States.
We have also to agree on the fields which may be covered by regulation of this kind, which must, of necessity, vary between the States and regions of the world.
However, we must note that ideas are opposed to the terms and conditions of regulation of this kind, from the most restricted to the most permissive, and including self-regulation. Some countries will be more inclined to use laws and regulations, others prefer standards, others again will be open to proposals of international governance from institutions following the ranges of activities and finally, yet other, more "liberal" countries, will go no further than to implement codes of conduct and similar formulae, which are not, by their nature, legally binding.
To this end, it has become vital to seek initially to create the conditions for the most realistic possible bottom line in terms of the 'risks' and 'benefits' of this development of the world, based around the coming nanometric dimension and, secondly, the conditions for regulation in line with the security and defence objectives previously laid down at the various relevant levels (international/multilateral, regional/European, national).
Details of the anticipated regulation
It is via a range of mechanisms- to create incentives, binding ones or even repressive ones- that the various planks of the extremely vast field of converging NBIC-type technologies should be regulated/controlled/governed, with the "normative" level of intervention to be situated at international level, at the level of the sovereign States or at regional level.
The challenges to security and defence brought about by NBIC-type technologies call for initiatives which are both global enough and specific enough to allow the various types of operators, national and international, public and private, involved in the processes of developing NBICs to maintain their action capacities under all possible sets of circumstances. Each of the agents involved in all or some of these activities must take the measure of the need to work to reinforce the overall coherence, effectiveness and efficiency of their regulatory activities, of their operational programming, dispute settlement, risk assessment and management activities, by such means as:
a better appreciation of the risk factors weighing on the performance of the financial, legal, scientific, technological and industrial policies implemented by (according to cooperative or competitive modes, governed by the conflicting nature of their individual interests) the various strategic players at global or regional level, the "technological States" and/or the "emerging" ones, and also the multinational companies and other international fund-providers which lead, abound and support the dynamics dedicated to the development of N&N (and of NBIC);
a re-examination of the treaties, conventions, regimes and other regulatory instruments in terms of laws or standards dedicated to security and safety concerns, particularly those raised above, whilst above all not jeopardising them;
a systematic review of programmes underway, such as programmes being developed to assess the potential impact of introducing NBIC-type technologies into the systems, equipment, goods and technologies they produce, again taking care not to jeopardise them;
an analysis of the international, multilateral and regional regulatory frameworks of a sectorial nature (WTO, OECD, G8/G20, Economic Forum of Davos, etc.) which could have an impact on the regulatory processes more specifically dedicated, horizontally or sectorially, to the stakes of safety and security;
and recourse to more effective forms of cooperation, coordination and exchanges of information, in order to guarantee better management of the information needed for the tracing/marking of these risk factors in their proliferation throughout the entire length of the value chain, and also to ensure the adequate prevention and management in the event of a crisis involving NBIC technologies.
It is quite clear that the anticipated reinforcement will be achieved first of all by the rapid plugging, at international, multilateral and regional level, of the gaps in regimes, treaties, authorities, methods, definitions, lists, etc which exist today, by acting in such a way as to ensure that the characteristics of the NBIC-type technologies (of their access, of their uses) are covered or that, in the event that this is not possible, additional specific measures, including vital conservatory measures, are taken.
The same is also true of all acts, positions, definitions, instruments, lists etc established by the European Union as regards the issue of nuclear safety and security, radiological, nuclear, biological and chemical security, and in terms of the transfer of goods and dual technologies, particularly in the framework of its strategy to fight the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
It can also be achieved by greater efforts to seek coherence in decisions adopted by the major international and multilateral regulatory institutes whose job it is to take account of the impact on the world's society of global risks of a technological nature, and their more or less close correlations with other types of risks: geopolitical, economic or environmental (with regard to this, see, amongst others, the work of the Global Risks Network). This implies the need to design, at the level of States and regional institutions, appropriate organisations capable of reconciling each and every one of these imperatives throughout the entire value chain, from the prospective stage (exploratory and normative) to public decisions on regulation.
Lastly, it can be achieved by observing major principles in favour of a responsible use of nanotechnologies, identified in Germany, the United Kingdom and France, etc, and in the framework of international dialogue, particularly when it comes to risk assessment and management.
Even so, tackling regulatory activities surrounding NBICs from the point of view of risk alone is not in itself enough to establish the need for regulation in a variety of its objectives, conditions and details.
We must look at the issue from three points of view:
globally, identifying all the challenges (exposure) making up the possible interconnections of the risks and threats of a nanotechnological nature to biosecurity, cybersecurity, etc, with other types of vulnerabilities;
cybernetically, by carrying out a systematic analysis of the interactions between governing systems and governed systems, a dimension which returns us to the concerns of co-ownership, accountability, impact, social acceptability and the phenomenon of resilience;
and, lastly, dynamically, when trying to anticipate the dynamics by keeping an eye on the future and reflecting on which paths are more favourable to the improvements which must be made to the current legal, institutional and political corpus so that the European Union and its Member States have the weight they need in international debate on this issue.
We can already argue realistically that, certain exceptions aside (protecting the species as a species, human cloning, various issues of synthetic biology and advanced life engineering, the marketing of certain non-inert nanotechnological vectors and potential dynamics), it is neither conceivable to recommend recourse to the absolute primacy of a Malthusian principle of precaution, nor reasonable to think of a coherent body of universal and binding rules. It is, on the other hand, vital to adopt a full range of piloting methods: an "accelerator" (implying innovation in terms of funding, as in any cycle of economic growth); leadership capacity, to avoid the pitfalls; an emergency plan to ensure the capacity to develop legitimate constraints. By making sure that these instruments are developed and implemented at the right level, within the correct frameworks and by the best possible players.
Initiatives underway
Preparing a new action plan for the period 2010-2013, the European Commission is striving to consolidate the political, legal, organisational and programmatic basis of the strategic framework of the European Union for nanotechnologies in the extension of the strategy adopted by the Union in 2004 and the accompanying action plan for the period 2005-2009:
the United States is working to set in place a new strategy in the field of science and technology to offer a new strategic framework for the design, development, sharing and use of new technologies, particularly in the field of nanotechnologies;
several European States (Germany and the United Kingdom in particular) are undertaking to implement a raft of measures mostly designed to bring about the responsible use of nanotechnologies. At the same time, France is launching a broad national public debate on nanotechnologies, having decided on its national strategy in the field of research and innovation;
the United States and the European Commission are carrying out joint reflection on a potential transatlantic cooperation dimension for the regulatory dynamic (see the recent document by Chatham House, "Securing the Promise of Nanotechnologies", September 2009, proposing, amongst other things, the creation of scientific 'building blocks' for the assessment of risks, the setting up of budgets for 'risk assessment', the institutional international governance mechanisms including the developing countries, without retaining the possibility of bringing in a new and binding legal regime).
UNESCO's World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology has called for the "development, extension, or even the revision of the established ethical principles which today govern science, in the light of new circumstances and new challenges arising from issues which have only recently been recognised as relevant by the international community, or which have arisen from scientific and technological progress which appears to threaten or destabilise the ethical principles or mechanisms (for example, nanoscience and the various nanotechnologies, particularly those related to other sectors of scientific and technological development, particularly life sciences)" (our translation);
the International Dialogue on Responsible Development of Nanoscience and Nanotechnologies, also known as the "Alexandria Process", for which the European Commission has received a general mandate from the European Council, has experienced significant success, leading it to hold its fourth session in Russia in February 2010.
All of these initiatives come on the eve of the- highly probable- implementation of the Treaty of Lisbon, and at a time when, simultaneously:
France and the United Kingdom are entering the operational base of the implementation of their new national security strategies, which call for increased integration between the military, civilian-military and civilian elements, implementing an 'intelligent and flexible' concept of power (seeking to express the new concept of "smart power");
the European Commission is adopting a raft of measures on chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear safety, the result of broad consultation reflecting a consensus on the part of all stakeholders to protect the citizens of the EU from CBRN threats; the principal measure consists of an EU action plan in this area (prevention, detection, preparation and reaction);
the Council of the European Union is taking a number of decisions in the framework of CFSP relating, amongst other things, to support for the activities of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), in the fields of chemical weaponry and of biological security and safety in laboratories respectively, in the framework of the European Union's strategy to fight the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and to support EU activities aiming to promote controls on exports of weapons in third countries and the principles and criteria of the EU's code of conduct on exporting weaponry.
A Europe-wide recommendation, amongst others
In Europe, the multiplicity of legal acts, communications, studies, instruments, reports and other recommendations has not been enough to hide the methodological gaps regarding the problem of regulating the entire raft of activities within the field of NBIC-type converging technologies in the fields of security and defence- as the European Union has not yet made a commitment in favour of a dynamic in this area which is both voluntary and genuinely global, unlike the United States, for example. However, the European agenda on nanotechnologies will do much to favour the due account being taken of the overlapping stakes of security, defence and international responsibility in the field of converging NBIC-type technologies, to the extent that the 2005-2009 action plan is likely to be renewed for the period 2010-2013, with some possible changes.
Among all of the recommendations which feature in a report we wrote on this subject for the French Ministry of Defence, there is one which seems to us to illustrate the nature of the initiatives which must be taken as soon as possible in order to ensure that the various communities of parties, within the European Union - interested in questions raised by the need for the overlapping stakes of security, defence and international responsibility in the field of converging NBIC-type technologies to be taken into account - may collectively, and within the framework which has been designed to this effect, embrace all of these factors and try to bring to them, by means of dialogue, cooperation, coordination or any other appropriate means, common European responses, with a view to the strategic decisions which the Union will be called upon to take over the coming years.
It appears judicious that the European Commission should take the initiative to launch a preparatory action from 2010, which will be dedicated to the converging technologies and to synthetic biology, this latter field still requiring substantial investigation at Community level, particularly with regard to the overlapping factors of security, defence and international responsibility, beyond the issues of toxicity and eco-toxicity. An initiative of this kind could be based on the precedent of preparatory action on security research, premise for subsequent important European decisions in this area.
We believe that preparatory action of this kind should have the objective of initiating, within the Union, and extending those already in place for the benefit of nanoscience, nanotechnologies and new materials, a global dynamic which is capable of understanding, upstream and downstream, all of the challenges brought about by the emergence of converging NBIC-type technologies and synthetic biology, and to agree upon strategic orientations for: - research and innovation in these fields; - the characterisation of the objectives at stake (definition, measure, etc); - marketing; - analysis (identification, characterisation, assessment, tracing) and management of risks and threats - direct or indirect- these bring with them; - regulation at national, European, multilateral and international levels, and possible re-examination of existing regimes; - and the policies of the Union (competition, international trade, internal market, industrial policy, foreign policy, security policy, etc.).
There is no doubt that the prior publication of an appropriate communication by the European Commission, or even a White Paper, would do much to help set in place an initiative of this kind. This would require the broadest possible involvement of the Directorates General of the European Commission, the European Defence Agency and Community agencies with competency in security matters.