[extropy-chat] Hazard a guess?

[Dan Clemmensen]

Mark Walker wrote:

>A point sometimes made (probably not enough) is that trying to stop emerging
>technologies is no easy task. It is certainly not like trying to stop the
>proliferation of nuclear weapons technology. Nuclear technology leaves a big
>footprint in terms of industrial infrastructure,
>
This is a common misconception. Unfortunately, it fails to account for
emerging technologies that can be applied to building nuclear weapons.
Example: There are new ways to create lasers that are tuned to extremely 
precise
frequencies (google femtosecond comb) and ways to amplify such lasers to 
moderate
power (google EDFA.) A sufficiently precise laser will ionize one 
isotope preferentially,
and ionized molecules are trivially easy to separate from un-ionized 
molecules. None of this
has the "big industrial footprint" of centrifuges or a diffusion plant.

This isn't really even an "emerging" technology. The technologies have 
already emerged
and are just waiting for someone to apply them to isotope separation.

If you want to worry about emerging technologies, think about applying 
nanotech
to isotope separation. Of course, nanotech would already have altered 
civilization
unimaginably by the time was a problem.