The continued, largely unregulated development of dual-use (bio)technologies is antithetical to the hope that people might enjoy ever enjoy the right of freedom from fear. We should ban all existing dual use technologies, and slowly phase in bans on existing dual use technologies—including those we take for granted like GPS.
How many technologies are you aware of that don’t have a harmful potential application? I mean, (electronic) computers were invented for military purposes and can enable all kinds of mischief on the Internet. Refrigeration makes military logistics a lot easier. Hell, internal combustion drives tanks and other military vehicles. GPS makes cruise missiles easier, but pre-GPS ICBMs just used inertial targeting; that’s close enough for thermonuclear bombs.
In HPMOR, Harry figures out a large number of ways to make weapons out of the materials present in a low-tech classroom. I doubt anything short of reducing the world to subsistence farming (and no more than that) is sufficient to bring about a state in which
″… no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor”
Subsistence farmers waged bloody wars throughout history. Either a 1% product surplus or simple robbery can provide the keepup of an armed force. The force might be small, a band of a few hundred or thousand men, but it can pillage the countryside unopposed until it meets a bigger army.
The continued, largely unregulated development of dual-use (bio)technologies is antithetical to the hope that people might enjoy ever enjoy the right of freedom from fear. We should ban all existing dual use technologies, and slowly phase in bans on existing dual use technologies—including those we take for granted like GPS.
How many technologies are you aware of that don’t have a harmful potential application? I mean, (electronic) computers were invented for military purposes and can enable all kinds of mischief on the Internet. Refrigeration makes military logistics a lot easier. Hell, internal combustion drives tanks and other military vehicles. GPS makes cruise missiles easier, but pre-GPS ICBMs just used inertial targeting; that’s close enough for thermonuclear bombs.
In HPMOR, Harry figures out a large number of ways to make weapons out of the materials present in a low-tech classroom. I doubt anything short of reducing the world to subsistence farming (and no more than that) is sufficient to bring about a state in which
Subsistence farmers waged bloody wars throughout history. Either a 1% product surplus or simple robbery can provide the keepup of an armed force. The force might be small, a band of a few hundred or thousand men, but it can pillage the countryside unopposed until it meets a bigger army.
In New York city workmen get send into prison for pocketknives they carry for work purposes. Dual use exists for a lot of very useful technologies.
Such a right sounds pretty Orwellian to me.
The swift response to trying to ban another nation’s Dual-use technologies will come from single-use technologies: Guns and warheads.