Professor Markram claims he plans to build an electronic human brain ‘within the next ten years’
There are only a handful of scientific revolutions that would really change the world. An immortality pill would be one. A time machine would be another.
Faster-than-light travel, allowing the stars to be explored in a human lifetime, would be on the shortlist, too.
To my mind, however, the creation of an artificial mind would probably trump all of these – a development that would throw up an array of bewildering and complex moral and philosophical quandaries. Amazingly, it might also be within reach.
For while time machines, eternal life potions and Star Trek-style warp drives are as far away as ever, a team of scientists in Switzerland is claiming that a fully-functioning replica of a human brain could be built by 2020.
This isn’t just pie-in-the-sky. The Blue Brain project, led by computer genius Henry Markram – who is also the director of the Centre for Neuroscience & Technology and the Brain Mind Institute – has for the past five years been engineering the mammalian brain, the most complex object known in the Universe, using some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.
And last month, Professor Markram claimed, at a conference in Oxford, that he plans to build an electronic human brain ‘within ten years’.
If he is right, nothing will be the same again. But can such an extraordinary claim be credible? When we think of artificial minds, we inevitably think of the sort of machines that have starred in dozens of sci-fi movies.
Indeed, most scientists – and science fiction writers – have tended to concentrate on the nuts and bolts of robotics: how you make artificial muscles; how you make a machine see and hear; how you give it realistic skin and enough tendons and ligaments underneath that skin to allow it to smile convincingly.
But what tends to be glossed over is by far the most complex problem of all: how you make a machine think.
This problem is one of the central questions of modern philosophy and goes to the very heart of what we know, or rather do not know, about the human mind.
Most of us imagine that the brain is rather like a computer. And in many ways, it is. It processes data and can store quite prodigious amounts of information.
‘They are copying a brain without understanding it’
But in other ways, a brain is quite unlike a computer. For while our computers are brilliant at calculating the weather forecast and modelling the effects of nuclear explosions – tasks most often assigned to the most powerful machines – they still cannot ‘think’.
We cannot be sure this is the case. But no one thinks that the laptop on your desk or even the powerful mainframes used by the Met Office can, in any meaningful sense, have a mind.
So what is it, in that three pounds of grey jelly, that gives rise to the feeling of conscious self-awareness, the thoughts and emotions, the agonies and ecstasies that comprise being a human being?
This is a question that has troubled scientists and philosophers for centuries. The traditional answer was to assume that some sort of ‘soul’ pervades the brain, a mysterious ‘ghost in the machine’ which gives rise to the feeling of self and consciousness.
If this is the case, then computers, being machines not flesh and blood, will never think. We will never be able to build a robot that will feel pain or get angry, and the Blue Brain project will fail.
But very few scientists still subscribe to this traditional ‘dualist’ view – ‘dualist’ because it assumes ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ are two separate things.
Instead, most neuroscientists believe that our feelings of self-awareness, pain, love and so on are simply the result of the countless billions of electrical and chemical impulses that flit between its equally countless billions of neurons.
So if you build something that works exactly like a brain, consciousness, at least in theory, will follow.
In fact, several teams are working to prove this is the case by attempting to build an electronic brain. They are not attempting to build flesh and blood brains like modern-day Dr Frankensteins.
They are using powerful mainframe computers to ‘model’ a brain. But, they say, the result will be just the same.
Two years ago, a team at IBM’s Almaden research lab at Nevada University used a BlueGene/L Supercomputer to model half a mouse brain.
Half a mouse brain consists of about eight million neurons, each of which can form around 8,000 links with neighbouring cells.
Creating a virtual version of this pushes a computer to the limit, even machines which, like the BlueGene, can perform 20trillion calculations a second.
The ‘mouse’ simulation was run for about ten seconds at a speed a tenth as fast as an actual rodent brain operates. Nevertheless, the scientists said they detected tell-tale patterns believed to correspond with the ‘thoughts’ seen by scanners in real-life mouse brains.
It is just possible a fleeting, mousey, ‘consciousness’ emerged in the mind of this machine. But building a thinking, remembering human mind is more difficult. Many neuroscientists claim the human brain is too complicated to copy.
‘Turning it off might be seen as murder’
Markram’s team is undaunted. They are using one of the most powerful computers in the world to replicate the actions of the 100billion neurons in the human brain. It is this approach – essentially copying how a brain works without necessarily understanding all of its actions – that will lead to success, the team hopes. And if so, what then?
Well, a mind, however fleeting and however shorn of the inevitable complexities and nuances that come from being embedded in a body, is still a mind, a ‘person’. We would effectively have created a ‘brain in a vat’. Conscious, aware, capable of feeling, pain, desire. And probably terrified.
And if it were modelled on a human brain, we would then have real ethical dilemmas. If our ‘brain’ – effectively just a piece of extremely impressive computer software – could be said to know it exists, then do we assign it rights?
Would turning it off constitute murder? Would performing experiments upon it constitute torture?
And there are other questions, too, questions at the centre of the nurture versus nature debate. Would this human mind, for example, automatically feel guilt or would it need to be ‘taught’ a sense of morality first? And how would it respond to religion? Indeed, are these questions that a human mind asks of its own accord, or must it be taught to ask them first?
Thankfully, we are probably a long way from having to confront these issues. It is important to stress that not one scientist has provided anything like a convincing explanation for how the brain works, let alone shown for sure that it would be possible to replicate this in a machine.
Not one computer or robot has come near passing the famous ‘Turing Test’, devised by the brilliant Cambridge scientist Alan Turing in 1950, to prove whether a machine could think.
It is a simple test in which someone is asked to communicate, using a screen and keyboard, with a computer trying to mimic a human, and another, real human. If the judge cannot tell the machine from the other person, the computer has ‘passed’ the test. So far, every computer we have built has failed.
Yet, if the Blue Brain project succeeds, in a few decades – perhaps sooner – we will be looking at the creation of a new intelligent lifeform on Earth. And the ethical dilemmas we face when it comes to experimenting on animals in the name of science will pale into insignificance when faced with the potential torments of our new machine mind.
FDA approves microchip implant in a pill: Can brain implants be far behind?
Credits:
Wikimedia – Creative Commons
An August 2, 2012 article at Alex Jones’ website, InfoWars.com, warns that Big Pharma is already working on the technology for microchip brain implants. At the same time, CNNMoney.com reports that the FDA has just granted approval for the first “ingestible sensor”, a microchip inside a pill. So it looks like Jones has been right all along. Prepare yourself. You’re about to be “chipped”.
“They (Big Pharma) are pumping millions of dollars into researching ‘cutting edge’ technologies that will enable implantable microchips to greatly ‘enhance’ our health and our lives.”
Of course, the tremendous benefits of these implants will far outweigh the risks, at least in the eyes of the common man, and once these microchips are introduced, everyone will be begging to be implanted.
“Initially, brain implants will be marketed as ‘revolutionary breakthroughs’ that can cure chronic diseases and that can enable the disabled to live normal lives.”
“Just imagine the hype that will surround these implants when people discover that you can get rid of your extra weight in a matter of days or that you can download an entire college course into your memory in just a matter of hours. The possibilities for this kind of technology are endless, and it is just a matter of time before having microchips implanted into your brain is considered to be quite common.”
“Proteus Digital Health scored a big victory this week when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted approval for the company’s ‘ingestible sensor’ invention. The 1 square millimeter device, roughly the size of a grain of sand, can relay information about your insides to you, and if you choose, to your doctor or nurse.”
Already, Proteus is hyping the benefits of their ingestible microchip. According to Andrew Thompson, the CEO and cofounder of Proteus, the microchip will be a huge boon for those who forget to take medications or need to monitor an ongoing medical condition. The chip simply resides inside your body and transmits signals, wherever you want those signals to go.
The tiny microchip, encased in a pill, is first taken with your regular medication, just like you’d take any other pill. Then, it transmits information through your skin to a stick-on patch. The patch, in turn, will transmit data to a mobile phone application or any other device you authorize, including a monitoring device in your doctor’s office.
Obviously, we can all see a wide variety of health benefits, and according to Alex Jones, that’s exactly what Big Pharma is counting on and the potential for abuse is alarming. Consider:
If the signal from your microchip can be picked up by your doctor’s office, miles and miles away, who else can pick it up?
If the microchip can detect what medications you’re taking and when you’re taking them, what other substances can it detect in your bloodstream?
If you can choose to download an entire college course directly into your brain, what information can be downloaded to you that you’re not even aware of?
As Jones says on his website:
“If you could download thoughts and feelings directly into the brains of your citizens, you could achieve total control and never have to worry that they would turn on you.”
“In fact, you could potentially program these chips to make your citizens feel good all the time. You could have these chips produce a ‘natural high’ that never ends. That would make your citizens incredibly dependent on the chips and they would never want to give them up.
“This kind of technology has the potential to be one of the greatest threats to liberty and freedom in the history of mankind.”
It’s no secret that Big Pharma, and the US government have close ties. In a May 20 interview, Jonathan Emord, author of “The Rise of Tyranny”, has this to say about Big Pharma and the FDA:
“The FDA is dominated by political managers – not scientists or docs – people who’ve made their career in government based on their ability to protect the interests that control this government.
“The process for FDA drug approval costs the sponsor an estimated $1 billion from the initial development of the drug through the final approval. And that’s a low-ball estimate which doesn’t include the payouts for lobbyists, campaign contributions, and salaries paid to retired FDA officials who get hired by the pharmaceutical companies after they leave office.”
“Of that $1 billion, a portion goes to support the clinical trial, a portion goes to the doctors working the trial, and the balance goes to the FDA.”
Talking about microchips like they’re “the Mark of the Beast” might lead you to click away, thinking that this is just another anti-government, conspiracy theorist’s hyped up version of dystopia. But, remember who’s running the show, here.
The FDA and Big Pharma control every aspect of your health. They tell your physician what drugs he’s allowed to prescribe, and even if there’s an experimental drug that will instantly cure cancer they won’t approve it unless the manufacturer can pay the $1 million plus it takes to pay off all the racketeers.
Now, knowing all of this, are you going to buy into the hype that a microchip implanted somewhere in your body is only for your own benefit? Do you really believe the FDA, Big Pharma and Big Government are just going to ignore the potential for profit and abuse?
Synthetic telepathy“Artificial Telepathy” is the art of electronically transfering thought directly to and from a brain. The primary objectives of www.mindcomputers.wordpress.com are to expose technology that can provide point to point communication from one brain to another, to localize unwanted sources of telepathic communication, and to provide evidence that technologically implemented telepathy is possible.
Technology to block unwanted voices is being investigated. A key objective is to prove the existence of criminals who abuse existing synthetic telepathy technology. Further objectives include investigating other computational substrates than brain tissue. www.mindcomputers.wordpress.com is also interested in marketing existing synthetic telepathy technology. For justice and medical purposes only.
Welcome to Mind Computers
The experience of synthetic telepathy or“Artificial Telepathy” is really not that extraordinary. It’s as simple as receiving a cell-phone call in one’s head.
Indeed, most of the technology involved is exactly identical to that of cell-phone technology. Satellites link the sender and the receiver. A computer “multiplexer” routes the voice signal of the sender through microwave towers to a very specifically defined location or cell. The “receiver” is located and tracked with pinpoint accuracy, to within a few feet of actual location. But the receiver is not a cell phone. It’s a human brain.
Out of nowhere, a voice suddenly blooms in the mind of the target. The human skull has no “firewall” and therefore cannot shut the voice out. The receiver can hear the sender’s verbal thoughts. The sender, in turn, can hear all of the target’s thoughts, exactly as if the target’s verbal thoughts had been spoken or broadcast. For this reason, the experience could be called “hearing voices” but is more properly described as “artificial telepathy”.
Now, if artificial telepathy were entirely voluntary, like a conversation between friends sitting across the room from one other, it might be kind of cool. One could talk back and forth with one’s friend, exchanging verbal thoughts exactly as if speaking on the phone, but without ever using one’s voice or mouth. It’s a completely silent, subvocal form of speech. Between lovers, this would be beautiful.
The problem is that artificial telepathy provides the perfect weapon for mental torture and information theft. It provides an extremely powerful means for exploiting, harassing, controlling, and raping the mind of any person on earth. It opens the window to quasi-demonic possession of another person’s soul.
When used as a “nonlethal” weapons system it becomes an ideal means for neutralizing or discrediting a political opponent. Peace protestors, inconvenient journalists and the leaders of vocal opposition groups can be stunned into silence with this weapon.
Artificial telepathy also offers an ideal means for complete invasion of privacy. If all thoughts can be read, then Passwords, PIN numbers, and personal secrets simply cannot be protected. One cannot be alone in the bathroom or shower. Embarrassing private moments cannot be hidden: they are subject to all manner of hurtful comments and remarks. Evidence can be collected for blackmail with tremendous ease: all the wrongs or moral lapses of one’s past are up for review.
Like a perverted phone caller, a hostile person with this technology in hand can call at any time of day, all day long. Sleep can be disrupted. Prayers can be desecrated, religious beliefs mocked. Business meetings can be interrupted, thoughts derailed. Love can be polluted, perverted, twisted, abused. Dreams can be invaded, fond memories trashed.
The attacker cannot be seen or identified, the attack cannot be stopped, and the psychological damage is enormous. But there is no physical damage, not one single mark is left on the body and there is absolutely no proof that any crime or any violation ever took place! Everything that “happens” to the victim happens inside the victim’s head. What physical evidence is there to give the police? Without physical evidence, how can one photograph the “crime scene” or fingerprint the stalker? There are no footprints leading to or from the scene. Indeed, there is no physical scene at all, and no evidence that an attack ever took place.
Most people who experience this abusive form of “artificial telepathy” feel as if their mind has been raped. They find themselves hunted, stalked, harassed and abused by a person or persons who refuse to give their names, who defile one’s mind with the most foul and perverse language imaginable, and who refuse to hang up or go away. The caller or callers delight in the perverse and sadistic torture of their targets. Furthermore, they delight in violating the privacy of their targets, reading the target’s mind and commenting on everything the target thinks, in an effort to demonstrate as brutally as possible that the target has no privacy at all.
Imagine what a man might do if he found a ”cell phone” that allowed him to dial into the heads and the private thoughts of anyone on earth. The temptation to choose a target at random and start spying on or abusing that person would be enormous, almost irresistable. It could become a sick and twisted hobby, a guilty pleasure very quickly. Put into the hands of a secret police unit, the potential for abusing such technology is even more chilling.
Synthetic Telepathy system, would be intelligence gathering and interrogation. As a communication system, it would have a limited appeal as any nation with a similar setup could either listen in, or pretend to be the A.I. interface. As such, it raises important ethical and legal questions, especially the question of secrecy given that all major governments would be aware of the system. Given that no law permits this type of interrogation, its secrecy may be more to do with criminal activity on behalf of the security agencies, rather than national security.
Its All About The Transceiver!
To understand how this works, it is best to start with the target, then trace backwards and identify each of the required subsystems. If we look at the last diagram to the left, we can see that the key to this system is its ability to both listen and respond to the electrical activity of the brain implant from satellite.
Now, the natural reaction of a normal and intelligent person who undergoes the horrible experience of mind rape for the first time is to panic and reach for a real phone. They call family, contact their doctor or call police with a bizarre complaint that “someone is beaming voices into my head.”
But if the police are the ones behind the abuse, the victims aren’t going to get much help, are they? And if the police are not the perpetrators, then how are they to make an arrest? It’s much more convenient and easy to believe that the caller is a nutcase.
In short order, the victim of mind rape finds herself or himself undergoing the additional humiliation of being carted off to the psych ward, often being committed involuntarily by a loved one “for one’s own good.”
The more vehement the efforts to prove that the voice or voices in one’s head are “real”, the more smug become the smiles of the medical doctors, who gently insist that such technology does not exist, that the voices cannot possibly be real, and that one must take a powerful, down for a good long rest.
The experience of “hearing voices” — especially voices that give a running stream of negative abuse — will gain one automatic admission to the rubber room. Indeed, hearing voices is a classic example of schizophrenia. If you hear voices, you are, by definition, crazy.
Yet when released from the psych ward with an expensive supply of meds, “voice hearers” often find that the meds are ineffective — exactly as one would expect if their problem had nothing to do with brain chemistry and everything to do with a bio-electronic attack by unseen stalkers.
Voice hearers often puzzle psychiatrists, because many of them don’t fit the classic model of schizophrenia, which usually begins onset in the early twenties. The victims of Synthetic telepathy “artificial telepathy” are often well into their thirties or fourties and many have no prior history of serious mental illness or drug abuse. Many seem to be alert, healthy, and rational even while insisting that they can hear voices. They agree with the psychiatrists that, yes, they are depressed, but who wouldn’t be a bit depressed under such trying circumstances? To be stalked and verbally bullied every waking hour of the day is a form of mental torture.
Victims of mind rape quickly learn not to discuss their “psychological problems” with family and coworkers. It’s embarrassing, it’s bizarre, it gets very little sympathy and only serves to alarm most people. The only way that another person can “help” is to suggest that the mind rape victim see a psychiatrist, who will promptly double one’s dose of psych meds and antidepressants. The result is a very stiff medical bill, which only adds financial pain to the mix. And the verbal harassment continues.
As they learn to endure their daily torture, voice hearers can usually return to mainstream life, where they are able to carry on intelligent, coherent conversations, hold down jobs, and function quite normally. In fact, if they don’t discuss their “problem” they usually can’t be told apart from normal people on the street. Because they are normal people.
The growing number of voice hearers in our society is therefore well masked. Those who continue to insist that there is a “secret society of people beaming voices into our heads” are simply laughed into silence or labelled paranoid schizophrenics. They are completely discredited. In fact, many voice hearers have internalized the idea that they are mentally ill, and they struggle to understand how their “auditory hallucinations” could continue to seem so very, very real.
Naturally, many of these voice hearers are deeply confused. They turn to support groups, including such on-line communities as the Voice Hearers’ support group at Yahoo.com.
Anyone who doubts that “artificial telepathy” exists need only contact such a Voice Hearers community, where they will encounter people who continue to insist that they are being harassed by real people using an unknown or unexplained technology.
Surprisingly, there is a tremendous amount of scientific literature and circumstantial evidence to back up that claim.
In the following posts, we will explore the history of synthetic telepathy and learn the names of the scientists who developed this sinister technology. We will also identify and examine some of the government agencies that are fielding and using this weapon of torture against innocent civilians.
By Magnus Olsson, Mindtech (Sweden)
Brain “Mind”Link Technology
The NSA – Behind The Curtain
Today we will take an in-depth examination of the NSA’s global intelligence gathering network. What you are about to read will come as an eye-opener and represents the current state of the NSA’s capabilities. Some of this will be expected, some of it will come as a shock.
What you will learn is that the technology that underpins this global listening network is a lot more advanced than governments would have you know. Usually wrapped up in basic, generalised, descriptions the general public is kept blind to the current state of technological development.
We will take this examination in three major parts. The first part will examine the core processing system. Once this part is understood, we can then look at how information flows to and from this core and where it is obtained from. Finally, we will examine how this information is used by the NSA.
I will cover as much as possible about this system, but the scope is very large. In general, any use of this data that the reader can observe is most likely already being conducted.
The scope of the NSA’s infrastructure is mind boggling to say the least. Heavily compartmentalised, the entire array of systems is shielded from the average NSA employee as much as it is shielded from the public. That said, once you understand the core of the NSA, you will be in a position to see how information flows in and out of this core.
The NSA is built around a super-computer bound Artificial Intelligence known only as “Mr Computer” in the civilian world. This is not your average A.I., no basic set of responses or a mere dedicated algorithm that can spot patterns. Mr Computer is an entity or being in his own right. A sentient computer s The scope of the NSA’s infrastructure is mind boggling to say the least. Heavily compartmentalised, the entire array of systems is shielded from the average NSA employee as much as it is shielded from the public. That said, once you understand the core of the NSA, you will be in a position to see how information flows in and out of this core.
The scope of the NSA’s infrastructure is mind boggling to say the least. Heavily compartmentalised, the entire array of systems is shielded from the average NSA employee as much as it is shielded from the public. That said, once you understand the core of the NSA, you will be in a position to see how information flows in and out of this core.
Mr Computer
The NSA is built around a super-computer bound Artificial Intelligence known only as “Mr Computer” in the civilian world. This is not your average A.I., no basic set of responses or a mere dedicated algorithm that can spot patterns. Mr Computer is an entity or being in his own right. A sentient computer system as complex as any human.
Comparable to VMware in a way, an instance of Mr Computer can be started at a moments notice. Within seconds, a fully fledged virtual intelligence agent, ready to analyse the information that has been piped to him, can be up and running.
Mr Computer is competent enough to handle real-time interaction without human intervention. Mr Computer understands and speaks all modern languages and even a number of dead ones. Able to intelligently converse and express its own opinions, Mr Computer collates information from disparate sources and compiles them into concise reports that do not miss the smallest detail or nuance.
Mr Computer’s capabilities and human-like reasoning cannot be understated.
The NSA is a data center to house a 512 qubit quantum computer capable of learning, reproducing the brain’s cognitive functions, and programming itself.
The National Security Center is building a highly fortified $2 Billion highly top secret complex simply named the “Utah Data Center” which will soon be home to the Hydrogen bomb of cybersecurity – A 512 Qubit Quantum Computer — which will revitalize the the “total information awareness” program originally envisioned by George Bush in 2003.
The news of the data center comes after Department of Defense contractor Lockheed Martin secured a contract with D-Wave for $10 million for a 512 qubit Quantum Computer code-named Vesuvius.
Vesuvius is capable of executing a massive number of computations at once, more than 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is would take millions of years on a standard desktop.
The computer will be able to crack even the most secure encryption and will give the US government a quantum leap into technologies once only dreamed of including the rise of the world’s very first all-knowing omniscient self-teaching artificial intelligence.
The D-Wave Quantum computer boasts of a wide array of features including:
Binary classification – Enables the quantum computer to be fed vast amounts of complex input data, including text, images, and videos and label the material
Quantum Unsupervised Feature Learning QUFL – Enables the computer to learn on its own, as well as create and optimize its own programs to make itself run more efficiently.
Temporal QUFL – Enables the Computer to predict the future based in information it learns through Binary classification and the QUFL feature.
Artificial Intelligence Via Quantum Neural Network – Enables the computer to completely reconstruct the human brain’s cognitive processes and teach itself how to make better decisions and better predict the future based.
D-Wave’s 512-qubit chip, code-named Vesuvius
D-Wave’s 512-qubit chip, code-named Vesuvius. The white square on the right contains the quantum goodness. Photo: D-Wave
Via Wired:
D-Wave Defies World of Critics With ‘First Quantum Cloud’
The quantum computer is the holy grail of tech research. The idea is to build a machine that uses the mind-bending properties of very small particles to perform calculations that are well beyond the capabilities of machines here in the world of classical physics. But it’s still not completely clear that a true quantum computer can actually be built.
[...]
But Rose keeps fighting. In May, D-Wave published a paper in the influential journal Nature that backed up at least some of its claims. And more importantly, it landed a customer. That same month, mega defense contractor Lockheed Martin bought a D-Wave quantum computer and a support contract for $10 million.
The critics have been so vociferous in large part because Rose isn’t shy about promoting his company. But that’s just the way he is. Rose likens D-Wave’s quantum computers to the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest particle accelerator. “They’re the largest programmable quantum systems that have ever been built by a long shot,” he says. And his latest pitch is that D-Wave is on verge of unveiling the world’s first quantum cloud. That’s right, quantum-computing-as-a-service.
[...]
D-Wave’s computer is designed to solve what are called combinatorial optimization problems. The classic example is figuring out the most efficient route for a traveling salesman going to multiple destinations. There’s no mathematical shortcut that computers can take to solve combinatorial optimization problems. They have to use brute force: Simply check all possible combinations. The trouble is, the number of possibilities explodes exponentially with the problem size. For example, if you have six destinations, there are 64 possible combinations. If you have 20 destinations, there are 1,048,576 possible combinations.
D-Wave’s next-generation computer is designed to handle problems with as many as 512 variables. In theory, that lets you solve problems involving two to the 512 possible combinations, and a problem of that size is beyond the reach of any classical computer that could ever be built. “It’s bigger than the number of atoms in the universe,” Rose says. “It doesn’t matter how big a supercomputer you make.”
[...]
He then convinced Lockheed Martin’s management to buy a D-Wave computer and install it in a lab at USC’s Information Sciences Institute. Lockheed Martin and USC split time on the machine, and Lockheed Martin’s access is via a secure network. The machine came online at noon on December 23, and the company now has 50 people working on it.
OK, so quantum computing may sound all very theoretical (and indeed at present a lot of it actually is!). However, practical quantum computing research is now very much under way. Perhaps most notably, back in 2007 a Canadian company called D-Wave announced what it described as “the world’s first commercially viable quantum computer”. This was based on a 16 qubit processor — the Rainer R4.7 — made from the rare metal niobium supercooled into a superconducting state. Back in 2007, D-Wave demonstrated their quantum computer performing several tasks including playing Sudoku and creating a complex seating plan.
Many people at the time were somewhat sceptical of D-Wave’s claims. However, in December 2009, Google revealed that it had been working with D-Wave to develop quantum computing algorithms for image recognition purposes. Experiments had included using a D-Wave quantum computer to recognise cars in photographs faster than possible using any conventional computer in a Google data centre. Around this time, there was also an announcement from IBM that it was rededicating resources to quantum computing research in the “hope that a five-year push [would] produce tangible and profound improvements”.
In 2011, D-Wave launched a fully-commercial, 128-qubit quantum computer. Called the D-Wave One, this is described by the company as a “high performance computing system designed for industrial problems encountered by fortune 500 companies, government and academia”. The D-Wave One‘s super-cooled 128 qubit processor is housed inside a cryogenics system within a 10 square meter shielded room. Just look at the picture here and you will see the sheer size of the thing relative to a human being. At launch, the D-Wave One cost $10 million. The first D-Wave One was sold to US aerospace, security and military giant Lockheed Martin in May 2011.
D-Wave aside, other research teams are also making startling quantum computing advances. For example, in September 2010, the Centre for Quantum Photonics in Bristol in the United Kingdom reported that it had created a new photonic quantum chip. This is able to operate at normal temperatures and pressures, rather than under the extreme conditions required by the D-Wave One and most other quantum computing hardware. According to the guy in charge — Jeremy O’Brien — his team’s new chip may be used as the basis of a quantum computer capable of outperforming a conventional computer “within five years”.
Another significant quantum computing milestone was reported in January 2011 by a team from Oxford University. Here strong magnetic fields and low temperatures were used to link — or “quantumly entangle” — the electrons and nuclei of a great many phosphorous atoms inside a highly purified silicon crystal. Each entangled electron and nucleus was then able to function as a qubit. Most startlingly, ten billion quantumly entangled qubits were created simultaneously. If a way an be found to link these together, the foundation will have been laid for an incredibly powerful computing machine. In comparison to the 128 qubit D-Wave One, a future computer with even a fraction of a 10 billion qubit capacity could clearly possess a quite literally incomprehensible level of processing power.
Details About The NSA Quantum Computer Spy Center
The National Security Center’s massive $2 Billion Dollar highly fortified top secret data center
Watch: Quantum Computers – The Hydrogen Bomb of Cyber Warfare
Watch: Inside The 128 Bit Quantum Computer
Here is a recap of the work the NSA is doing followed by recent technology breakthroughs in quantum physics and detailed overview of what quantum computing.
Well, it has been the $64,000 question for a couple of decades: Can NSA break something like PGP?
While there might be other black world technologies that could be up to the task (there’s no way to know), what we do know is that a practical quantum computing capability would be, for all intents and purposes, the master key.
I’m pretty confident that NSA has this capability and here’s why: IBM Breakthrough May Make Practical Quantum Computer 15 Years Away Instead of 50. There is no hard constant that one can point to when considering how much more advanced black world technologies are than what we think of as state of the art, but if IBM is 15 years away from building a useful quantum computer, it’s not a stretch to assume NSA has that capability already, or is close to having it.
Bamford lays out a narrative below about the “enormous breakthrough,” but, at the end of the day, it’s conventional computers. There’s no mention quantum computers, or even the far less “out there” photonic systems.
Is Bamford’s piece a limited hangout?
Maybe, but it makes for interesting reading in any event.
Note: For some reason, Bamford refers to Mark Klein as, “A whistle-blower,” without naming him. Because of Mark Klein, we know, for sure, that the mass intercepts are happening, how NSA is doing it, the equipment involved, etc. So, thanks, Mark Klein. Heroes have names on Cryptogon.
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.
But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
…
In the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it’s all being done in secret. To those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever.
…
The data stored in Bluffdale will naturally go far beyond the world’s billions of public web pages. The NSA is more interested in the so-called invisible web, also known as the deep web or deepnet—data beyond the reach of the public. This includes password-protected data, US and foreign government communications, and noncommercial file-sharing between trusted peers. “The deep web contains government reports, databases, and other sources of information of high value to DOD and the intelligence community,” according to a 2010 Defense Science Board report. “Alternative tools are needed to find and index data in the deep web … Stealing the classified secrets of a potential adversary is where the [intelligence] community is most comfortable.” With its new Utah Data Center, the NSA will at last have the technical capability to store, and rummage through, all those stolen secrets. The question, of course, is how the agency defines who is, and who is not, “a potential adversary.”
…
According to Binney—who has maintained close contact with agency employees until a few years ago—the taps in the secret rooms dotting the country are actually powered by highly sophisticated software programs that conduct “deep packet inspection,” examining Internet traffic as it passes through the 10-gigabit-per-second cables at the speed of light.
The software, created by a company called Narus that’s now part of Boeing, is controlled remotely from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland and searches US sources for target addresses, locations, countries, and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email. Any communication that arouses suspicion, especially those to or from the million or so people on agency watch lists, are automatically copied or recorded and then transmitted to the NSA.
The scope of surveillance expands from there, Binney says. Once a name is entered into the Narus database, all phone calls and other communications to and from that person are automatically routed to the NSA’s recorders. “Anybody you want, route to a recorder,” Binney says. “If your number’s in there? Routed and gets recorded.” He adds, “The Narus device allows you to take it all.” And when Bluffdale is completed, whatever is collected will be routed there for storage and analysis.
According to Binney, one of the deepest secrets of the Stellar Wind program—again, never confirmed until now—was that the NSA gained warrantless access to AT&T’s vast trove of domestic and international billing records, detailed information about who called whom in the US and around the world. As of 2007, AT&T had more than 2.8 trillion records housed in a database at its Florham Park, New Jersey, complex.
Verizon was also part of the program, Binney says, and that greatly expanded the volume of calls subject to the agency’s domestic eavesdropping. “That multiplies the call rate by at least a factor of five,” he says. “So you’re over a billion and a half calls a day.” (Spokespeople for Verizon and AT&T said their companies would not comment on matters of national security.)
After he left the NSA, Binney suggested a system for monitoring people’s communications according to how closely they are connected to an initial target. The further away from the target—say you’re just an acquaintance of a friend of the target—the less the surveillance. But the agency rejected the idea, and, given the massive new storage facility in Utah, Binney suspects that it now simply collects everything. “The whole idea was, how do you manage 20 terabytes of intercept a minute?” he says. “The way we proposed was to distinguish between things you want and things you don’t want.” Instead, he adds, “they’re storing everything they gather.” And the agency is gathering as much as it can.
Once the communications are intercepted and stored, the data-mining begins. “You can watch everybody all the time with data- mining,” Binney says. Everything a person does becomes charted on a graph, “financial transactions or travel or anything,” he says. Thus, as data like bookstore receipts, bank statements, and commuter toll records flow in, the NSA is able to paint a more and more detailed picture of someone’s life.
The NSA also has the ability to eavesdrop on phone calls directly and in real time. According to Adrienne J. Kinne, who worked both before and after 9/11 as a voice interceptor at the NSA facility in Georgia, in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks “basically all rules were thrown out the window, and they would use any excuse to justify a waiver to spy on Americans.” Even journalists calling home from overseas were included. “A lot of time you could tell they were calling their families,” she says, “incredibly intimate, personal conversations.” Kinne found the act of eavesdropping on innocent fellow citizens personally distressing. “It’s almost like going through and finding somebody’s diary,” she says.
…
Sitting in a restaurant not far from NSA headquarters, the place where he spent nearly 40 years of his life, Binney held his thumb and forefinger close together. “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state,” he says.
…
Meanwhile, over in Building 5300, the NSA succeeded in building an even faster supercomputer. “They made a big breakthrough,” says another former senior intelligence official, who helped oversee the program. The NSA’s machine was likely similar to the unclassified Jaguar, but it was much faster out of the gate, modified specifically for cryptanalysis and targeted against one or more specific algorithms, like the AES. In other words, they were moving from the research and development phase to actually attacking extremely difficult encryption systems. The code-breaking effort was up and running.
The breakthrough was enormous, says the former official, and soon afterward the agency pulled the shade down tight on the project, even within the intelligence community and Congress. “Only the chairman and vice chairman and the two staff directors of each intelligence committee were told about it,” he says. The reason? “They were thinking that this computing breakthrough was going to give them the ability to crack current public encryption.”
Cyrptome further quotes the 4 paged wired article.
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
By James Bamford
March 15, 2012
[Excerpts of excellent NSA overview to focus on the MRF decryption facility.]
When Barack Obama took office, Binney hoped the new administration might be open to reforming the program to address his constitutional concerns. He and another former senior NSA analyst, J. Kirk Wiebe, tried to bring the idea of an automated warrant-approval system to the attention of the Department of Justice’s inspector general. They were given the brush-off. “They said, oh, OK, we can’t comment,” Binney says.
Sitting in a restaurant not far from NSA headquarters, the place where he spent nearly 40 years of his life, Binney held his thumb and forefinger close together. “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state,” he says.
There is still one technology preventing untrammeled government access to private digital data: strong encryption. Anyone—from terrorists and weapons dealers to corporations, financial institutions, and ordinary email senders—can use it to seal their messages, plans, photos, and documents in hardened data shells. For years, one of the hardest shells has been the Advanced Encryption Standard, one of several algorithms used by much of the world to encrypt data. Available in three different strengths—128 bits, 192 bits, and 256 bits—it’s incorporated in most commercial email programs and web browsers and is considered so strong that the NSA has even approved its use for top-secret US government communications. Most experts say that a so-called brute-force computer attack on the algorithm—trying one combination after another to unlock the encryption—would likely take longer than the age of the universe. For a 128-bit cipher, the number of trial-and-error attempts would be 340 undecillion (1036).
Breaking into those complex mathematical shells like the AES is one of the key reasons for the construction going on in Bluffdale. That kind of cryptanalysis requires two major ingredients: super-fast computers to conduct brute-force attacks on encrypted messages and a massive number of those messages for the computers to analyze. The more messages from a given target, the more likely it is for the computers to detect telltale patterns, and Bluffdale will be able to hold a great many messages. “We questioned it one time,” says another source, a senior intelligence manager who was also involved with the planning. “Why were we building this NSA facility? And, boy, they rolled out all the old guys—the crypto guys.” According to the official, these experts told then-director of national intelligence Dennis Blair, “You’ve got to build this thing because we just don’t have the capability of doing the code-breaking.” It was a candid admission. In the long war between the code breakers and the code makers—the tens of thousands of cryptographers in the worldwide computer security industry—the code breakers were admitting defeat.
So the agency had one major ingredient—a massive data storage facility—under way. Meanwhile, across the country in Tennessee, the government was working in utmost secrecy on the other vital element: the most powerful computer the world has ever known.
The plan was launched in 2004 as a modern-day Manhattan Project. Dubbed the High Productivity Computing Systems program, its goal was to advance computer speed a thousandfold, creating a machine that could execute a quadrillion (1015) operations a second, known as a petaflop—the computer equivalent of breaking the land speed record. And as with the Manhattan Project, the venue chosen for the supercomputing program was the town of Oak Ridge in eastern Tennessee, a rural area where sharp ridges give way to low, scattered hills, and the southwestward-flowing Clinch River bends sharply to the southeast. About 25 miles from Knoxville, it is the “secret city” where uranium- 235 was extracted for the first atomic bomb. A sign near the exit read: what you see here, what you do here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here. Today, not far from where that sign stood, Oak Ridge is home to the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and it’s engaged in a new secret war. But this time, instead of a bomb of almost unimaginable power, the weapon is a computer of almost unimaginable speed.
In 2004, as part of the supercomputing program, the Department of Energy established its Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility for multiple agencies to join forces on the project. But in reality there would be two tracks, one unclassified, in which all of the scientific work would be public, and another top-secret, in which the NSA could pursue its own computer covertly. “For our purposes, they had to create a separate facility,” says a former senior NSA computer expert who worked on the project and is still associated with the agency. (He is one of three sources who described the program.) It was an expensive undertaking, but one the NSA was desperate to launch.
Known as the Multiprogram Research Facility, or Building 5300, the $41 million, five-story, 214,000-square-foot structure was built on a plot of land on the lab’s East Campus and completed in 2006. Behind the brick walls and green-tinted windows, 318 scientists, computer engineers, and other staff work in secret on the cryptanalytic applications of high-speed computing and other classified projects. The supercomputer center was named in honor of George R. Cotter, the NSA’s now-retired chief scientist and head of its information technology program. Not that you’d know it. “There’s no sign on the door,” says the ex-NSA computer expert.
At the DOE’s unclassified center at Oak Ridge, work progressed at a furious pace, although it was a one-way street when it came to cooperation with the closemouthed people in Building 5300. Nevertheless, the unclassified team had its Cray XT4 supercomputer upgraded to a warehouse-sized XT5. Named Jaguar for its speed, it clocked in at 1.75 petaflops, officially becoming the world’s fastest computer in 2009.
1 Geostationary satellites
Four satellites positioned around the globe monitor frequencies carrying everything from walkie-talkies and cell phones in Libya to radar systems in North Korea. Onboard software acts as the first filter in the collection process, targeting only key regions, countries, cities, and phone numbers or email.
2 Aerospace Data Facility, Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado
Intelligence collected from the geostationary satellites, as well as signals from other spacecraft and overseas listening posts, is relayed to this facility outside Denver. About 850 NSA employees track the satellites, transmit target information, and download the intelligence haul.
3 NSA Georgia, Fort Gordon, Augusta, Georgia
Focuses on intercepts from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Codenamed Sweet Tea, the facility has been massively expanded and now consists of a 604,000-square-foot operations building for up to 4,000 intercept operators, analysts, and other specialists.
4 NSA Texas, Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio
Focuses on intercepts from Latin America and, since 9/11, the Middle East and Europe. Some 2,000 workers staff the operation. The NSA recently completed a $100 million renovation on a mega-data center here—a backup storage facility for the Utah Data Center.
5 NSA Hawaii, Oahu
Focuses on intercepts from Asia. Built to house an aircraft assembly plant during World War II, the 250,000-square-foot bunker is nicknamed the Hole. Like the other NSA operations centers, it has since been expanded: Its 2,700 employees now do their work aboveground from a new 234,000-square-foot facility.
6 Domestic listening posts
The NSA has long been free to eavesdrop on international satellite communications. But after 9/11, it installed taps in US telecom “switches,” gaining access to domestic traffic. An ex-NSA official says there are 10 to 20 such installations.
7 Overseas listening posts
According to a knowledgeable intelligence source, the NSA has installed taps on at least a dozen of the major overseas communications links, each capable of eavesdropping on information passing by at a high data rate.
8 Utah Data Center, Bluffdale, Utah
At a million square feet, this $2 billion digital storage facility outside Salt Lake City will be the centerpiece of the NSA’s cloud-based data strategy and essential in its plans for decrypting previously uncrackable documents.
9 Multiprogram Research Facility, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Some 300 scientists and computer engineers with top security clearance toil away here, building the world’s fastest supercomputers and working on cryptanalytic applications and other secret projects.
10 NSA headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland
Analysts here will access material stored at Bluffdale to prepare reports and recommendations that are sent to policymakers. To handle the increased data load, the NSA is also building an $896 million supercomputer here.
Overview of Camp Williams site before the construction works began. UDC will be located on the west side of the highway, on what was previously an airfield (Image from http://www.publicintelligence.net)
The biggest-ever data complex, to be completed in Utah in 2013, may take American citizens into a completely new reality where their emails, phone calls, online shopping lists and virtually entire lives will be stored and reviewed.
US government agencies are growing less patient with their own country with every month. First, paying with cash, shielding your laptop screen and a whole list of other commonplace habits was proclaimed to be suspicious – and if you see something you are prompted to say something. Then, reports emerged that drones are being fetched for police forces. Now, the state of Utah seems to be making way in a bid to host the largest-ever cyber shield in the history of American intelligence. Or is it a cyber-pool?
Utah sprang to media attention when the Camp Williams military base near the town of Bluffdale sprouted a vast, 240-acre construction site. American outlets say that what’s hiding under the modest plate of a Utah Data Complex is a prospective intelligence facility ordered by the National Security Agency.
Cyber-security vs. Total awareness
The NSA maintains that the data center, to be completed by September 2013, is a component of the Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative. The facility is to provide technical assistance to the Department of Homeland Security, collect intelligence on cyber threats and carry out cyber-security objectives, reported Reuters.
But both ordinary Americans and their intelligence community were quick to dub it “a spy center.”
The Utah Data Center will be built on a 240-acre site near Camp Williams, Utah. Once completed in September 2013, it will be twice as large as the US Capitol. The center will provide 100,000 square feet of computer space, out of a total one million square feet. The project, launched in 2010, is to cost the National Security Agency up to $2 billion
The highly-classified project will be responsible for intercepting, storing and analyzing intelligence data as it zips through both domestic and international networks. The data may come in all forms: private e-mails, cell phone calls, Google searches – even parking lot tickets or shop purchases.
“This is more than just a data center,” an official source close to the project told the online magazine Wired.com. The source says the center will actually focus on deciphering the accumulated data, essentially code-breaking.
This means not only exposing Facebook activities or Wikipedia requests, but compromising “the invisible” Internet, or the “deepnet.” Legal and business deals, financial transactions, password-protected files and inter-governmental communications will all become vulnerable.
Once communication data is stored, a process known as data-mining will begin. Everything a person does – from traveling to buying groceries – is to be displayed on a graph, allowing the NSA to paint a detailed picture of any given individual’s life.
With this in mind, the agency now indeed looks to be “the most covert and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever,” as Wired.com puts it.
William Binney, NSA’s former senior mathematician-gone-whistleblower, holds his thumb and forefinger close together and tells the on-line magazine:
“We are that far from a turnkey totalitarian state.”
‘Everybody is a target’
Before the data can be stored it has to be collected. This task is already a matter of the past, as the NSA created a net of secret monitoring rooms in major US telecom facilities – a practice that was exposed by people like William Binney in 2006.
The program allowed the monitoring of millions of American phone calls and emails every day. In 2008, the Congress granted almost impecible legal immunity to telecom companies cooperating with the government on national security issues.
By this time, the NSA network has long outgrown a single room in the AT&T building in San Francisco, says Binney:
“I think there are ten to twenty of them. This is not just San Francisco; they have them in the middle of the country and also on the East Coast.”
Binney suspects the new center in Utah will simply collect all the data there is to be collected. Virtually, no one can escape the new surveillance, created in the US for the War on Terror.
Some data, of course, would be crucial in the anti-terrorism battle: exposing potential adversaries. The question is how the NSA defines who is and who is not a potential adversary.
“Everybody is a target; everybody with communication is a target,” remarks another source close to the Utah project.
Breaking the unbreakable
Now, the last hurdle in the NSA’s path seems to be the Advanced Encryption Standard cipher algorithm, which guards financial transactions, corporate mail, business deals, and diplomatic exchanges globally. It is so effective that the National Security Agency even recommended it for the US government.
Here, the Utah data complex may come in handy for two reasons. First: what cannot be broken today can be stored for tomorrow. Second: a system to break the AES should consist of a super-fast computer coupled with a vast storage capabilities to save as many instances for analysis as possible.
The data storage in Utah, with its 1 million square feet of enclosed space, is virtually bottomless, given that a terabyte can now be stored on a tiny flash drive. Wired.com argues that the US plan to break the AES is the sole reason behind the construction of the Utah Data Center.
The eavesdropping issue has been rocking the US since the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, when domestic spying was eventually outlawed. Nowadays, a lot of questions are still being asked about the secret activities of the US government and whether it could be using the Patriot Act and other national security legislation to justify potentially illegal actions. The NSA’s former employees, who decided to go public, wonder whether the agency – which is to spend up to $2 billion on the heavily fortified facility in Utah – will be able to restrict itself to eavesdropping only on international communications.
Computers that read minds are being developed by Intel
New technology could allow people to dictate letters and search the internet simply by thinking, according to researchers at Intel who are behind the project.
Computers that can read minds are being developed by Intel. Photo: ALAMY
Unlike current brain-controlled computers, which require users to imagine making physical movements to control a cursor on a screen, the new technology will be capable of directly interpreting words as they are thought.
Intel’s scientists are creating detailed maps of the activity in the brain for individual words which can then be matched against the brain activity of someone using the computer, allowing the machine to determine the word they are thinking.
Preliminary tests of the system have shown that the computer can work out words by looking at similar brain patterns and looking for key differences that suggest what the word might be.
Dean Pomerleau, a senior researcher at Intel Laboratories, said that currently, the devices required to get sufficient detail of brain activity were bulky, expensive magnetic resonance scanners, like those used in hospitals.
But he said work was under way to produce smaller pieces of equipment that can be worn as headsets and that can produce the same level of detail.
He said: “The computer uses a form of 20 questions to narrow down what the word is.
“So a noun with a physical property such as spade, which you dig with, produces activity in the motor cortex of the brain, as this is the area that controls physical movements.
“A food related word like apple, however, produces activity in those parts of the brain related to hunger. So the computer can infer attributes to each word being thought about and this lets the computer zero down on what the word is pretty quickly.
“We are currently mapping out the activity that an average brain produces when thinking about different words. It means you’ll be able to write letters, open emails or do Google searches just by thinking”.
Intel already have a working prototype that can detect words such as “screwdriver”, “house” and “barn”, by measuring around 20,000 points in the brain.
But as brain scanning technology becomes more sophisticated the computer’s ability to distinguish thoughts will improve.
Justin Ratner, director of Intel Laboratories and the company’s chief technology officer, said: “Mind reading is the ultimate user interface. There will be concerns about privacy with this sort of thing and we will have to overcome them.
“What is clear though is that humans are not restricted any more to just using keyboards and mice”.
From cosmetics to cars, many products we use on a daily basis already utilise nanotechnology – but are you aware of the implications? Penny Sarchet and David Adam explain all you need to know
Nanotechnology is technology that operates on the nanoscale, about one billionth of a metre. If a living cell were a large city, then a nanometre would be about the size of a car. Nanotechnology is the art of engineering down at this hard-to-fathom scale.
The idea started in 1959 when famous physicist Richard Feynman suggested we could manipulate individual atoms and use them to build tiny machines. However, the term “nanotechnology” was not coined until the 1980s and lumps together different and varied ideas.
All that unites these different technologies is that they use nano-sized building blocks. While other technologies make machines out of bulk materials – microchips out of silicon, wires out of copper, cars out of steel – nanotechnology makes machines out of large, complex molecules. Because nanotechnology works at such an extreme and unexplored scale, it opens up a world of new possibilities. Many nanomaterials possess special properties, such as great strength or high ability to conduct electricity.
Scientists working in the field of nanotechnology often look to nature to provide ideas for “smart” ways to solve complex problems. For example, spider silk and lotus leaves have both been studied in order to replicate their special properties, ie their tensile strength or ability to repel water, in engineered materials.
Why should I care about nanotechnology?
Nanotechnology is not just one technology, it is a whole new toolkit. It has the potential to change almost everything, from unimaginably small computer chips to tiny machines that find and fix damaged arteries inside our bodies. Nanotechnology could make our energy cleaner, our lives longer, and all of our existing technologies better.
This is not just a distant, science fiction-like dream – nanomaterials are already present in more than 1,000 consumer products, from cosmetics to cars. However, because nanotechnology works on such a new scale, it can be difficult to assess its dangers.
Everyday examples
Nanotechnology is a powerful tool for answering some of our most difficult questions. Scientists say we cannot afford to ignore the new medical, agricultural and environmental technologies it could provide as we search for solutions to an expanding global population.
Potential risks
Consumers will face different risks than the workers who manufacture these products, as they are the ones exposed to high doses. Various agencies are involved in making sure protection measures are adequate for both groups.
Where is nanotechnology used?
Nanotechnology is used in every sector you can think of, from the cars we drive to the clothes we wear.
It is easy to see why ultra-lightweight materials with special electrical properties are useful, in electronics and computing for example, but nanomaterials are also present in scratch-resistant car bumpers, self-cleaning glass and anti-odour socks. Nanotech materials are being added to health and fitness products, from anti-ageing creams to skis.
Silver is a powerful anti-microbial agent and more than 300 products use nanoscale silver to make anti-bacterial surfaces, clothing and even condoms.
Nanotechnology can also address environmental concerns. Nanotech catalytic converters and water filters remove environmental pollutants from our exhaust fumes and waste water. Wind turbines with nanomaterials are more efficient and cheaper, nanocrystal solar panels are just around the corner. Nanotechnology is already providing fresh solutions wherever it is applied.
Everyday example
The first use of nanomedicine was approved back in 1995 to treat cancer; since then researchers have continued to find new ways for nanotechnology to combat diseases.
Potential risks
Nanosilver, if over-used in consumer products that have a short lifespan, might cause harm to the environment.
How could it be used in the future?
Today, many of our products are improved by nanomaterials. In the future, however, nanotechnology aims to use these nanomaterials to construct tiny nano-engineered machines, computers and medicines.
In energy research, we may see a shift from using nanomaterials to improve existing technologies to using nanotechnology to develop entirely new ways of harnessing energy and, in the future, cars might be powered cleanly by hydrogen, stored safely in a solid form thanks to nanotechnology.
One day, nanotechnology may allow us to build any kind of structure we want from atomic building blocks to construct powerful computers, capable of processing as much information as a DNA molecule.
Everyday example
Researchers are already developing nanomedicines that target the proteins that accumulate in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, and nanoparticles that bind to tumour cells and treat them with antibodies. The big step will be using them to treat human diseases.
Potential risks
As with the adoption of all technologies, it is important to understand the motivation for doing so (eg money, public benefit) and its impacts, particularly risks.
Should nanoproducts be labelled?
In November 2009, the European Union passed a law that will soon force manufacturers of cosmetics to state on the label if their products contain nanoparticles.
Will more products follow? The issue of labelling has divided campaigners and politicians, just as it has with whether foods should be labelled as containing genetically modified ingredients.
Supporters of labels on nanotech say they will encourage consumer choice. Opponents say they will be meaningless without extra information on whether the nano-ingredients pose any risk. Without context, such labels could be misinterpreted as warnings, they say.
Everyday examples
Lipsticks and face creams that contain nanoparticles will soon be labelled as such. Perhaps “nano-free” could then start to appear on products too?
Potential risks
Labels might be a shortcut for industry to appear “transparent” without really informing the public.
Is the use of nanomaterials in food safe?
The food industry has been slow to exploit nanotechnology, perhaps because of public attitudes towards “non-natural” foods. But there are numerous ways the technology could be used, from stronger plastic films to keep sandwiches fresh for longer, to adding flavours to foods.
In most cases, the development of such techniques has proceeded faster than the safety checks that are needed to make sure they are safe – could nanoparticles escape from plastic wrapping to enter a ham baguette? Would that packaging need to be disposed of differently and could it be recycled?
The European Food Standards Authority is keeping a close watch on developments.
Everyday examples
Nanoparticles could indicate the presence of harmful bacteria in foods.
Potential risks
The safety of nanomaterials used in food and food packaging must be fully assessed to avoid unwanted side effects.
What is the real added value of nanotech?
Nanotechnology is such a broad term that it is difficult to generalise about the value it could bring.
There will be clear social value, in the form of cleaner energy and improved medicines; and individual value in that nanotechnology used in sporting equipment, for example, would improve an individual’s performance. On the other hand, having hundreds of products that are anti-bacterial most likely will not bring many additional benefits to society.
Value, to a certain extent, is in the eye of the user of the technology. A patient who can benefit from one type of tiny particle injected into their bloodstream to test for heart disease and so avoid surgery, for example, would probably see more added value than an average tennis player who started playing with a racket made and improved by using nanomaterials. A mis-hit still goes into the net after all, nanotech racket or not.
Everyday examples
Nanotechnology is being used as a marketing tag to sell everything from socks and t-shirts to sports equipment. The true benefit comes from the way it is used by the consumer.
Do nanoproducts require special disposal?
One of the concerns over the widespread use of nanotechnology is that tiny particles could escape from where they are intended to be used and end up polluting the wider environment.
This is not a problem confined to nanotechnology of course, and a number of chemicals that we know to be toxic are used in everyday products such as light bulbs and batteries. Consumers are asked to dispose of these products carefully, but there is no way to be sure that they will do so. And some escapes are impossible to prevent – for example, much of the mercury in the atmosphere comes from the cremation of dead people with dental fillings.
The effects of nanoparticles on the wider environment are largely unknown, so perhaps a cautious approach is the best one?
Everyday examples
Factories and research laboratories could release nanoparticles in their waste streams. Many international bodies are looking at ways in which accidental release of nanoparticles can be monitored and prevented.
Potential risks
Toxic particles could pollute the natural environment and kill wildlife.
The National Security Center’s massive $2 Billion Dollar highly fortified top secret data center![[Image]](http://cryptome.org/2012-info/nsa-mrf/pict17.jpg)
