Lev Navrozov
Friday, Aug. 6, 2004

There are two questions that my readers ask especially often. Let me confront the first of these two questions by the question asked in 1900, 1941, and even 2004: How does nuclear power work?

Pyotr Kapitsa, the favorite disciple of Rutherford, the founder (in England) of nuclear physics, went to a conference in 1934 in Stalin’s Russia, whereupon he was told that since he was a “Soviet citizen,” he would not be allowed to return to England and his laboratory would be bought from Rutherford and brought to Russia.

So, already in 1934, Stalin understood the importance of nuclear weapons. In 1941, Pravda carried Kapitsa’s speech describing a weapon able to destroy a city, while an ordinary bomb or shell can destroy only a building. That was all.

Stalin, Roosevelt and Hitler knew no more, since none of them had studied in school nuclear physics, which was introduced into school curricula after 1945. Without nuclear physics at least at the public school level, it is impossible to understand anything about nuclear weapons except that one nuclear bomb or missile can destroy a city.

Hitler and Stalin could not develop nuclear weapons during the conventional war, which consumed all their resources, but they understood their geostrategic importance very well. Thus, Hitler said that the advent of nuclear weapons would be equivalent to the advent of firearms in the epoch of spears and bows.

Even today, those who studied nuclear physics in school can rarely go, in their understanding of nuclear weapons, beyond the sketchy rudiments of the atomic structure and desultory terms such as “chain reaction.” Yet this has not prevented them from understanding the military importance of nuclear weapons in the past 65 years or so.

In contrast to nuclear physics, molecular nanotechnology is not in the school curricula of any country (except China). But this does not prevent the understanding that molecular nanoweapons will be superior in their destructive power to nuclear weapons just as the latter were superior to conventional firearms. Molecular nanoweapons are expected to be able to destroy enemy means of nuclear retaliation, needed for Mutual Assured Destruction: submarines with nuclear missiles aboard, bombers with nuclear bombs high in the air, and nuclear missiles deep underground.

In other words, the side that falls far behind in the molecular nanoweapons race faces annihilation or unconditional surrender, as did Japan in 1945 due to U.S. nuclear weapons, which Japan did not have.

Those wishing to study the theory of operation of molecular nanoweapons may go to the specialized literature on the subject, such as indicated in www.foresight.org.

Why Does the U.S. Trail China in Molecular Nanotechnology?

This brings us to the second most frequent question my readers ask me in their e-mail. Thus, on July 29, Gene Essman wrote in his e-mail to me:

“I read all of your articles concerning nanotechnology. You continue to make the arguments that we, the USA, are not doing anything substantial and serious concerning R&D in this technology. I read an article on Wired.com. ...”

Gene supplied the article. Indeed, it says, in a sense, the opposite of what I have been saying.

First of all, the article makes no distinction between geostrategic molecular nanoweapons research and civilian nanotechnology – nanobusiness. The author speaks of nanotechnology as a single entity. In his opinion, nanotechnology is not ready for massive business investment, but American businessmen are so enterprising that

“more than $1 billion venture capitalists and corporations have sunk into startups since 1999. Or [recall] the $4.6 billion the federal government has authorized for both R&D and programs of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office. This level of financial attention to an emerging market is usually a sign that something big is afoot.”

So, how on earth can China be ahead of the United States in nanotechnology if U.S. businessmen have been racing ahead of nanotechnology itself?

The trouble with this vision is that in commercial peaceful, or civilian, nanotechnology U.S. business may be claimed, in principle and without any proof, to be racing ahead of China – and of nanotechnology itself! But geostrategic molecular nanotechnology might be at zero in the United States because businessmen did not invest in the nuclear Manhattan Project of 1942-45 and would not invest in the nano Manhattan Project, while the U.S. government and Congress late last year cut the allocations for molecular nano research in their famous act financing nanotechnology in the next four years.

The tragic irony of the situation is that, according to Chris Phoenix – an associate of Eric Drexler, the founder of nanotechnology – the nano Manhattan Project may require only $5 billion, that is, a fraction of what the nuclear Manhattan Project consumed if the investment were recounted in U.S. dollars of today! Nor will the duration of the project be essentially longer than was that of the nuclear Manhattan Project.

The tragedy is that the relevant investment and duration apply not only to the United States, but to China as well. For China, $5 billion for a project as a result of which the “supreme leaders” of China will gain world domination is chicken feed.

Tragic Western Blindness

Actually, the Wired.com article is yet another example of the general tragic Western blindness: The author’s world is a utopia, a fool’s paradise, a world without China as a military power.

Indeed, the Western oblivion of China as a military power has reached its highest peak. The Chinese newspaper People’s Daily noted on July 23 that during their election struggle Clinton accused George H.W. Bush “of trying to be on good terms with China,” and George W. Bush “attacked Clinton on his appeasement of a ‘strategic rival.’”

The present electioneering is the first case in which neither presidential candidate has attempted to accuse his rival of a pro-China stand. China as a military power has disappeared even from the presidential electoral struggle. Both presidential candidates are impeccably pro-Chinese.

No wonder that in its survey of nanotechnology, the Wired.com article forgets that there is a country named China – the biggest dictatorship in history – and that this dictatorship is developing geostrategic molecular nanoweapons, just as Roosevelt, Hitler and Stalin were developing nuclear weapons – for different purposes. Hitler wanted to help his conventional war for world domination, Roosevelt did not want Hitler to develop nuclear weapons ahead of the democratic West, and Stalin wanted to keep Eastern Europe against the Western opposition.

The “supreme leaders” of China want to prevent the democratic West from subverting their absolutism by the very fact of existence of the democratic West. Hence the latter has to be crushed, as was the Tiananmen Square gathering that displayed an effigy of the Statue of Liberty. And a way to crush the West is by molecular nanotechnology, able to circumvent Mutual Assured Destruction by destroying Western means of nuclear retaliation.

For more information about Drexler’s Foresight Institute and its lobbying in Congress, see www.foresight.org

To learn more about the Chris Phoenix report, suggesting a “nano Manhattan Project,” go to crnano.org.

For information about the Center for the Survival of Western Democracies, Inc., including how you can help, please e-mail me at navlev@cloud9.net

The link to my book online is www.levnavrozov.com. You can also request our webmaster@levnavrozov.com to send you by e-mail my outline of my book.