Lunberg (Jan Lundberg, Culture Change, Resisting nanotech, violence and the corporate state They're

coming for you, http://www.culturechange.org/e-letter-they'recoming.html, Accessed November 9 2013, JB) Few people seem to realize that the corporate state is bent on taking everything it can including life itself from the people. Many of us are already painfully aware that corporations and governments use the air, land and water at will for their own destructive purposes. This essay is not about the rape of the Earth; it is about the changing nature of the threats and what needs to be done. When our mutual survival is threatened as never before, it is time for an opposition movement relevant to our times. Force and violence are not the right way in the moral sense, nor is it practical. Mohandas Gandhi and his successful nonviolent movement based on non-cooperation and civil resistance was one of the greatest achievements of humanity, perhaps the most significant of the 20th century. The challenge for us today is to develop a similar approach, but first a little more time must elapse before mass interest is awakened on a big enough scale. As always, the historic context will attract and reveal the prime exponents or leaders. Understanding the changing threat to all people and the Earth's biosphere is progressing, perhaps as fast as the rate of change in the world itself. In seeking profit and control of markets, corporations use the latest technologies, processes and systems. Laws are passed to enable ever greater profits, and the new level of authority (mainly the World Trade Organization) starts to feel like the added oppression it is. But there's more to come, and we are still in the darkest night before the possible dawn. Nanotech: beyond genetic and mechanical engineering With nanotechnology, engineered machine-humans will conceivably be part of the arsenal of control against you and me. Technological applications oftentimes have more than one purpose: peaceful profit and war profit. Besides the military, the plainest extension of society's control and oppression of the masses is the security industry police, prisons, self-defense which is a power unto itself. In the U.S. it already succeeds in incarcerating more people than anywhere in the world in history, on both a numerical and per capita basis. The Land of the Free? With nanotechnology, society's control apparatus and its plans for the population could eventually get set in concrete and living tissues before people know what hit them. Rather than solve society's problems, our masters have locked people up. If you're not a master, you have to watch your step not to see your freedom taken away from you. If you oppose the dominant system or are a leader for liberation, there are tried and true measures to be taken against you by the secret government: slander, libel, prison, assassination. With drugs and other methods, mind control has also been pursued. With nanotech, society could further conceal or add to the aforementioned practices, such that prison and concentration camps might become less essential. Nanotechnology refers to nanoscience's "manipulation of living and non-living matter at the level of the nanometer, one billionth of a meter. It is at this scale that quantum physics takes over from classical physics and the properties of elements change character in novel and unpredictable ways." (- ETC Group)

A major question is whether nanoscience theory for technologies can get beyond mechanical kinds of applications in the human molecular environment, for example. However, billions of dollars of research and armies of scientists are working to rapidly change our world for the sake of profit called progress. "We will cross the threshold of the hardware capacity of the human brain by 2020, and the computers we use then will be deeply embedded in our environment. Computers per se will disappear; they will be in our bodies, in tables, chairs, and everywhere. But we will routinely have enough power to replicate human intelligence in the 2020s." (- Ray Kurzweil) In a new book, Virtual Human, the foreword concludes that It is the nature of machine intelligence that its powers grow exponentially. Currently, machines are doubling their information processing capabilities every year... As we get to the 2040s, even people of biological origin are likely to have the vast majority of their thinking processes taking place in nonbiological substrates. We will all become virtual humans. Maybe, maybe not. But it's up to us here and now. Whose world is it? Nanotechnology's precursor, micro- and biological-engineering, already accomplished having insects used as spies, for example: cockroaches with tiny camera-transmitters that go under doors into meeting rooms. That is an unintrusive application. compared to nanotech programs to be conducted on human bodies that will determine neural and physical behavior. The perceived limits are being lifted. Picture weapons of such hidden power that old rules no longer apply. As a precursor to some of the biosoldier nanotech tools and creations being designed, we have already endured the unthinkable: depleted uranium weapons have been used in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq (1991 and 2003). This has been a kind of nuclear war fait accompli. What's ahead with nanotech compounds today's death technology and is dangerously dismissed as science fiction. The claimed benefits of nanotech are examined by a watchdog group monitoring research at the University of Oregon: We're told that nanotech is already on its way and don't worry we'll love it. Quick fix solutions for our problems; tax-funded research, megaprofits and unprecedented power for the nanotechnologists. This new science threatens to create a sci-fi future ruled by a global super-elite with nanotechnology forced upon the minds, bodies and surroundings of everyone else. Nanotech insider-literature clamors for just that. If we take what they are pushing we will be making a very big mistake. Nanotech is a field in which industrial, medical and military scientists manipulate single molecules or atoms... (for) super-tiny super-computers and a vastly enhanced ability to mesh living and non-living material. The US government predicts that nanotech will be a trillion dollar industry within ten years. Nanopatriarch Richard Smalley calls it "the ultimate level of control." Mihail Roco, chairman of the now $800 million National Initiative on Nanotechnology envisions using nanotech to ramp up the integration of humans and machines to create a "global hive-consciousness" as the next step towards "conquest of nature." (National Science Foundation/US Dept. of Commerce Report) Such aims have raised concerns for people around the world who love freedom from control and unconquered nature. (- Cascadia Media Collective)

Overarching trends The process of losing our freedoms is out of control. People had the most freedom during precivilization, not in 1865, for example, when the U.S. ended overt slavery and enhanced a much vaunted Constitution. Less and less freedom remains when populations grow: violent crimes become more numerous and doors are increasingly locked in industrial countries that are growing in population (the U.S. and the U.K.). The final result is the corporate police state coming after you to round you up into the work force, the military, or a concentration camp. That's the point in time when our masters blatantly would desperately try to stuff death down our throats: toxic exposures, radiation, and state-of-the-art "pain compliance" (torture that accompanies arrest and incarceration). Any nanotech applications will be welcomed by the security industries. Already, militarized police forces behave as unfeeling phalanxes of individual automatons covered with technology, following orders without questioning them. However, if rulers find themselves accelerating the doing in of their exploited drones and slaves, which is counterproductive and terminal, this is when the whole industrial system chokes and comes to a halt that is, if the current state of affairs to continue to that point. There could be a revolt prior to that or at that very point. But before a big revolt, suddenly from off to one side breakdown will come about from a major system-component's failure: Prodigious industrial energy and petroleum-derived materials are counted on for almost everything. The corporate state does not have sustainability for massive energy consumption, and the outlook for licking this looks impossible from where Sustainable Energy Institute sits. The economy is another source of unprecedented instability ahead. Events could derail particular nightmares that technology and more laws can bring. Cultural revolution Violence stops itself when more victims die than intended. Violence has been orderly up to now. Upon collapse it will be self-defensive and disorderly. Building up a huge population has meant contributing to inevitable, terrible violence, as die off will not be pretty. People don't have human enemies today as much as they have an enemy in their head, that Daniel Quinn calls "mother culture" in his books. As long as we are living false myths civilization's constant progress and triumphing over nature we will not take off the yoke of exploitation; we will continue to expect cheap energy and try to live as happy materialists indefinitely. Culture Change essays have predicted and explored oil crash, population crash and a hopeful, historic transformation to a sustainable society. We do not know the timing. Nowadays times are more complicated than a few decades ago. It was predictable that Britain would some day lose control of India. But the nature of today's oppression and the overall threat is considerably more insidious and hard to describe, compared to what millions of exploited Indians had to deal with. One reason for today's confusion and lack of movement for our mutual survival is that a whole cultural mindset is being challenged, reevaluated, and found lacking. Outwardly, denial rules the day. The necessary cultural revolution will be a logical consequence of the inevitable breakdown of both the faceless corporate juggernaut and common greed. Therefore, because we don't know how long current trends will hold, it is wise to pay close attention to the nature of the fascist aspects of society and identify mounting threats genetically modified

organisms, nanotechnology, and water privatization, to name a few. Fortunately, there is much coverage of scary assaults on our rights, health, and environment. The alternative press and the Internet have almost all the information anyone would need on issues to fight. This does not mean it is possible to remain personally unfrustrated and able to continue to assimilate vital information that is on the whole so negative. A kind of war has been going on as people continue to resist losing their land or health, but generally industry gets more and more of what it wants. As long as that is the case, and the corporate industrial state takes more control over our lives and over life itself, we are headed for cataclysmic consequences. It's as if the machines are winning a war against people and nature. What we don't know is whether the outcome has been decided by now, after so much destruction and loss. The nonviolent cultural revolution that can perhaps deliver us to a sustainable way of living, or later assume its role after collapse of today's industrial civilization, could necessarily feature a new belief system against technology as used today. A true alternative to destroying the Earth may have to be largely anti-technology. This view fits in well with Gandhi's approach to technology as needing to be simple and decentralized. A Gandhian revival If we are headed for a massive rebellion, hopefully it will be meaningful (timely enough) and will present an alternative to the paradigm of violence. In elucidating and leading a mass movement based on noncooperation and active, civil resistance, Gandhi maintained, "All exploitation is based on cooperation, willing or forced, of the exploited... there would be no exploitation if people refused to obey the exploiter. Exploitation of the poor can be extinguished not by effecting the destruction of a few millionaires but by removing the ignorance of the poor and teaching them to non-cooperate with their exploiters... By the nonviolent method, we seek not to destroy the capitalist; we seek to destroy capitalism... " Regarding violence as a tactic for revolution or reform: "Those who talk about class war as being inevitable have not understood the implications of nonviolence or have understood them only skindeep... There are those who seek to destroy men rather than manners, adopt the latter and become worse than those whom they destroy under the mistaken belief that the manners will die with the men. They do not know the root of the evil..." Gandhi's vision was based on compassion and respecting the practical reality of satisfying hunger placed ahead of attainting dignity. But he saw and utilized ways of elevating personal and political consciousness such that human rights and an equitable approach to changing society and the individual could assure no more degrading hunger for the masses. What have we learned and taken from Gandhi's success which meant the defeat of the British and their lackeys in India? The answer is not encouraging, except for notable historic events such as the achievement of some social justice for African Americans. Yet, the legacy of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. remains and can provide guidance today. There are many areas to seek lessons: A few decades after India's independence, Vietnam defeated the United States despite every indignity and atrocity being dumped on that small, once pristine country. But what did the U.S. learn from that? It ignored the world, as it is doing today regarding its Iraq atrocity. The rage that some felt about U.S. genocide in

Southeast Asia resulted in dozens of bombings within the U.S. by the Weather Underground. But that tactic and the whole period of history was shunted aside by a self-absorbed, corrupted and betrayed nation and its alter ego, the rising global commercial interests. (Vietnam was later partially conquered by the latter.) We find ourselves today still struggling with the same issues of many decades ago, aggravated by continued population growth, mass production and applications of technology. It is no wonder that a total rejection of the system and a vow to create a new culture resonates with more and more disaffected citizens who pay attention to world opinion and threats such as global warming. Yet, the mass movement underway is too small to be a viable opposition to the present ruling structure. This may be because the depth and breadth of change at hand will be so profound and sweeping that present structures are becoming relics of irrelevance. In conclusion Modern society is a complete mess that is growing in a finite space. People are animals being increasingly caged and killed off. This will happen as long as there are too many of us. There is no fair way to bring about a reasonable sized population quickly. We will all therefore do it the hard way, because no rational debate-process or responsible leadership is dealing with problems such as water shortage and the loss of healthy agricultural capacity. Meanwhile, although a doomed society that refuses to wake up is an offering of bullshit at best unless one is outside the BS culture we have an option: The alternative at this point, absent a Gandhian movement in the streets, prior to the advent of a sustainable society and its equitable characteristics, is to enjoy what there is to appreciate, even in this Babylon every damn day. To your health and freedom!

It takes 90 minutes for nanotech replication to consume the earth.

Kurzweil 6 (Ray, Technology pioneer, entrepreneur, and futurist Nanotechnology Dangers and Defenses http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0653.html) How long would it take an out-of-control replicating nanobot to destroy the Earth's biomass? The biomass
has on the order of 1045 carbon atoms. A reasonable estimate of the number of carbon atoms in a single replicating nanobot is about 106. (Note that this analysis is not very sensitive to the accuracy of these figures, only to the approximate order of magnitude.) This malevolent nanobot would need to create on the order of 1034 copies of itself to replace the biomass, which could be accomplished with 113 replications (each of which would potentially double the destroyed biomass). Rob Freitas has estimated a minimum replication time of approximately 100 seconds, so 113 replication cycles would require about three hours.2 However, the actual rate of destruction would be slower because biomass is not "efficiently" laid out. The limiting factor would be the actual movement of the front of destruction. Nanobots

cannot travel very quickly because of their small size. It's likely to take weeks for such a destructive process to circle the globe. Based on this observation we can envision a more insidious possibility. In a two-phased attack, the nanobots take several weeks to
spread throughout the biomass but use up an insignificant portion of the carbon atoms, say one out of every thousand trillion (1015). At this extremely low level of concentration, the nanobots would be as stealthy as possible. Then ,

at an "optimal" point, the second phase would begin with the seed nanobots expanding rapidly in place to destroy the biomass . For each seed nanobot to multiply itself a thousand trillionfold would require only about 50 binary replications, or about 90 minutes. With the nanobots having already spread out in position

throughout the biomass, movement of the destructive wave front would no longer be a limiting factor.

Nanotechnology arms race leads to Grey Goo

CRN 08
Dangers of Molecular Manufacturing, Results of Our Ongoing Research, http://www.crnano.org/dangers.htm#environmental)(jimmy) Uncontrolled availability of nanofactory technology can result from either insufficient or overzealous regulation.

Inadequate regulation would make it easy to obtain and use an unrestricted nanofactory . Overzealous regulation would create a pent-up demand for nanotech products, which if it gets strong enough, would fund espionage, cracking of restricted technology, or independent development, and eventually create a black market beyond the control of central authorities (nanofactories are very smugglable). Note that sufficiently abusive or restrictive regulation can motivate internal espionage; at least one atomic spy in the US was idealistically motivated. Uncontrolled availability of molecular manufacturing greatly increases many of the dangers cited above. The existence of multiple programs to develop molecular manufacturing greatly increases some of the risks listed above. Each program provides a separate opportunity for the technology to be stolen or otherwise released from restriction. Each nation with an independent program is potentially a separate player in a nanotech arms race. The reduced opportunity for control may make restrictions harder to enforce, but this may lead to greater efforts to impose harsher restrictions. Reduced control also makes it less likely that a non-disruptive economic solution can develop.

Abuses of nanotech will always outweigh its advantages Drexler 91

(Erik, K. Chris, Gayle, Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Modeling, and the Chairman of the Foresight Institute. Peterson, Executive Director of the Foresight Institute, and Permagit, Unbounding the future: the nanotechnology revolution page. 226-227)

Increasing affluence based on molecular manufacturing wont end economic pro blems any more than past increases in affluence have. Wilderness can still be destroyed; people can be oppressed; financial markets can be unstable; trade wars can be waged; inflation can soar; individuals, companies, and nations can go into debt; bureaucracy can stifle innovation; tax levels can become crippling; wars and terrorism can rage none of these will automatically be stopped by advanced technology. What is more, the potential benefits of new technologies arent automatic. Nanotechnology could be used to restore the environment, to spread wealth, and to cure most illness. But will it? This depends on human action, working within the limits set by the real world.

Future destructive accidents will involve nanotechnology Drexler 91

(Erik, K. Chris, Gayle, Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Modeling, and the Chairman of the Foresight Institute. Peterson, Executive Director of the Foresight Institute, and Permagit, Unbounding the future: the nanotechnology revolution page. 226-227) Some truisms: Almost any technology is subject to

use, misuse, abuse, and accidents. The more powerful a technology is when properly used, the worse it is likely to be when abused . Any powerful technology in human hands can be the subject of accidents. Nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing will be no exception. Indeed, if molecular manufacturing replaces modern industry, and if its nanotechnological products replace most modern technologies, then most future accidents will have to involve nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology can easily be abused for evil purposes Drexler 91

(Erik, K. Chris, Gayle, Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Modeling, and the Chairman of the Foresight Institute. Peterson, Executive Director of the Foresight Institute, and Permagit, Unbounding the future: the nanotechnology revolution page. 226-227)

The chief danger of nanotechnology isn't accidents, but abuse. The safety benefits of nanotechnology, when used with normal care, will free some of our attention to grapple with this far more difficult problem. As Lester Milbrath observes, "Nanotechnologies have such great power that they could be used for evil or environmentally destructive purposes as easily as they
could be used for good and environmentally nourishing purposes. This great danger will require a level of political control far beyond that which most nations know how to exercise. We have a prodigious social learning task that we must face." Thus far, we've focused on how increased abilities can serve constructive ends. Not surprisingly, the potential consequenceswith the huge exception of social and economic disruptionare overwhelmingly positive. Inherently clean, well-controlled, inexpensive, superior technologies, when applied with care, can yield far better results than inherently dirty, messy, costly, inferior technologies. This should come as no surprise, but it is only half of the story. The other half is the application of those same superior technologies to destructive ends. Readers feeling that all this may be too good to be true can breathe a sigh of relief. This problem looks tough.

Runaway Replication Shell

Runaway nanotech is comparatively worse than other impacts Howard 2
Sean Howard, British political scientist and editor of Disarmament Diplomacy, 2002. Nanotechnology and Mass Destruction: The Need for an Inner Space Treaty, Disarmament Diplomacy, Issue 65 Processes of self-replication, self-repair and self-assembly are an important goal of mainstream

nanotechnological research. Either accidentally or by design, precisely such processes could act to rapidly and drastically alter environments, structures and living beings from within. In extremis, such alteration could develop into a 'doomsday scenario', the nanotechnological equivalent of a nuclear chain-reaction - an uncontrollable, exponential, self-replicating proliferation of 'nanodevices' chewing up the atmosphere, poisoning the oceans, etc. While accidental mass-destruction, even global destruction, is generally
regarded as unlikely -equivalent to fears that a nuclear explosion could ignite the atmosphere, a prospect seriously investigated during the Manhattan Project - a deliberately malicious programming of nanosystems, with devastating results, seems hard to rule out. As Ray Kurzweil points out, if the potential for atomic self-replication is a pipedream, so is nanotechnology, but if the potential is real, so is the risk: "Without

self-replication, nanotechnology is neither practical nor economically feasible . And therein lies the rub. What happens if a
little software problem (inadvertent or otherwise) fails to halt the self-replication? We may have more nanobots than we want. They could eat up everything in sight. ... I believe that it will be possible to engineer self-replicating nanobots in such a way that an inadvertent, undesired population explosion would be unlikely. ... But the bigger danger is the intentional hostile use of nanotechnology. Once the basic technology is available, it would not be difficult to adapt it as an instrument of war or terrorism. ... Nuclear weapons, for all their destructive potential,

are at least relatively local in their effects. The self-replicating nature of nanotechnology makes it a far greater danger."15

Turns Case
Unregulated nanotech is bad for human and environmental health also turns their disease and water scarcity impacts Davidson 5
Keay Davidson scientific writer for San Francisco Chronicles, 11/20/05 Nanotechnology may hold risks, scientists warn, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/20/MNGREFB1S71.DTL

The U.S. government should spend more money investigating potential health and environmental hazards of nanotechnology, a leading environmental group says. New types of materials and chemicals that are invisibly small -- i.e., with diameters
measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter -- have many possible valuable uses in medicine, environmental cleanups, water treatment, energy production, technology and other areas, representatives of the Washington-based group Environmental Defense acknowledged at a news conference Wednesday. However, uncertainties

linger over the possible harm of nanomaterials and nanoparticles on human health and the environment, they cautioned. For example, nanoparticles used as anti-tumor
agents are so small that they might slip inside the human brain and perhaps damage it. Likewise, if leaked from a factory, the

particles might destroy river bacteria, which lie at the base of much of the food chain. Because the toxic aspects of nanotechnology remain a frontier subject of research, "our traditional ways of thinking about hazardous materials are going to have to broaden a bit," said Dr. John Balbus, the organization's health program director. He and three
colleagues wrote an article about the potential downsides of nanotechnology for a recent issue of the journal Issues in Science and Technology, a joint publication of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the University of Texas.

AT Wouldnt Make Self Replicating

Their argument doesnt assume terrorists Jaconstein 6
Neil Jacobstein, Chairman of the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, 4/06. Foresight Guidelines for Responsible Nanotechnology Development, Foresight Institute, http://www.foresight.org/guidelines/ForesightGuidelinesV6.pdf It is important to note that molecular nanotechnology not specifically developed for manufacturing could be implemented as non autonomous replicating systems that have many layers of security controls and designed-in physical limitations. This class of system could potentially be used under controlled circumstances for nanomedicine, environmental monitoring, and specialized security applications. There are good reasons to believe that when designed and operated by responsible organizations with the appropriate quality control, these non autonomous systems could be made arbitrarily safe to operate. However, a determined and sophisticated group of terrorists or non state

entities could potentially, with considerable difficulty, specifically engineer systems to become autonomous replicators able to proliferate in the natural environment, either as a nuisance, a specifically targeted weapon, or in the worst case, a weapon
of mass destruction. Both conventional nanoscale technology and manufacturing enabled by productive nanosystems can be implemented by responsible parties quite effectively without these risks, but as with other technologies, the risk of abuse must be considered

seriously. Thus, in addition to the need for professional ethics and multiple layers of embedded industrial controls, there will also be a need
for thoughtful regulation, monitoring, and potentially the development of immune responses to external threats.

AT Replication Impossible
Skeptics of self-replication are wrong they assume manipulation of individual atoms, which is not necessary for self-replication Drexler 3
K. Eric Drexler, PhD - Molecular Nanotechnology, MIT, 3/20/03. If atomic precision is unfeasible, so is life, NATURE, VOL 422, correspondence, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v422/n6929/full/422257c.html Sir Your Editorial article Nanotech is not so scary (Nature421,299; 2003) attributes to me the idea of building devices that replicate by manipulating atoms one at a time, and points out that several leading figures in nanotechnology research argue that this is unfeasible. As well they might. My proposal is, and has always been (see Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 78,52755278; 1981), to build atomically precise

structures by using molecular machinery to direct conventional chemical reaction events with sub- nanometre positional control. If this is fundamentally unfeasible, then so is life. Thus, these critics are mistaking atomic precision for atom-by-atom manipulation, while failing to address the actual concepts analysed in the technical literature. These misdirected arguments have needlessly confused the discussion of genuine long-term safety concerns.

No fat finger syndrome nanobots can be assembled without controlling individual atoms Drexler 1
K. Eric Drexler et al, PhD - Molecular Nanotechnology, MIT, 2001. On Physics, Fundamentals, and Nanorobots:A Rebuttal to Smalleys Assertion that Self-Replicating Mechanical Nanorobots Are Simply Not Possible, Institute for Molecular Manufacturing. http://www.imm.org/publications/sciamdebate2/smalley/ As noted elsewhere [4], if steric constraints near the tool tip make it unexpectedly difficult to manipulate particular individual atoms or small molecules with sufficient reliability, a simple alternative is to rely upon conventional solution or gas phase chemistry for

the bulk synthesis of nanoparts consisting of 10-100 atoms. These much larger nanoparts can then be bound to a positional device and assembled into larger (molecularly precise) structures without further significant steric constraints. This is the approach taken by the ribosome in the synthesis of proteins. Individual amino acids are sequentially assembled into an atomically precise
polypeptide without the need to manipulate individual atoms. Atomically precise is a description of the precision of the final product, not a description of the manufacturing method. Complete control of every aspect of a chemical reaction is not actually

required to build a nanorobot. Effective control that delivers a precise product is what is necessary. The fat fingers problem is not a fundamental barrier to the development of molecular assemblers or the nanorobots they enable .

Nanotech Universe Collapse

Self-replicating nanotech destroys the entire universe outweighs all other extinction impacts Rheingold 92
Howard Rheingold, (Appointed lecturer at Stanford, Editor Emeritus of Whole Earth Review, Utne Magazine Independent Press Award, widely recognized as a leading authority on social implications of technology), Fall, 1992, Whole Earth Review, www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1510/is_n76/ai_12635777 It looks as if something even more powerful than thermonuclear weaponry is emanating from that same, strangely fated corner of New Mexico where nuclear physicists first knew sin. Those who follow the progress of artificial-life research know that the effects of messing with the engines of evolution might lead to forces even more regrettable than the demons unleashed at Alamogordo. At least nuclear weaponry and biocidal technologies only threaten life on Earth , and don't threaten to contaminate the rest of the universe. That's the larger ethical problem of a-life. The technology of self-replicating machines that could emerge in future decades from today's a-life research might escape from human or even terrestrial control, infest the solar system, and, given time,

break out into the galaxy. If there are other intelligent species out there, they might not react benevolently to evidence that humans
have dispersed interstellar strip-mining robots that breed, multiply, and evolve. If there are no other intelligent species in existence, maybe we will end up creating God, or the Devil, depending on how our minds' children evolve a billion years from now. The entire story of life on earth thus far might be just the wetware prologue to a longer, larger, drier tale, etched in silicon rather than carbon, and blasted to the stars -purposive spores programmed to seek, grow, evolve, expand. That's what a few people think they are on the verge of inventing. Scenarios

like that make the potential for global thermonuclear war or destruction of the biosphere look like a relatively local problem. Biocide of a few hundred thousand species (including ourselves) is one kind of ethical problem; turning something like the Alien loose on the cosmos is a whole new level of ethical lapse.