Nanotech to put rust to sleep

Maybe this bit of news belongs on my other blog, where I chronicle how economic corrosion is both consuming my home state and creating opportunities to begin anew. But one of many ways nanotech can help communities rise from rotted 20th century infrastructure (both physical and economic) is through new methods of preventing rust.

In the U.S. Department of Defense, the folks in charge of maintaining equipment are well aware of the dangers they face from their invisible, corrosive enemy. A new portal has just been launched, called CorrDefense, to gather and disseminate information on the topic, and on Nov. 13, the Stevens Institute of Technology and NACE International are scheduled to hold a symposium: Nanoscience/Nanotechnology & Corrosion.

I did a little research on rust a couple of years ago when I co-wrote a report for the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) evaluating MEMS and nanotech companies for partnerships in unarmed land vehicles.

Back then, I found out that corrosion of military equipment costs the Defense Department billions of dollars in maintenance and repair every year. So, the Pentagon was placing a priority on funding new technologies to prevent it. For military vehicles, that may mean new, engineered surfaces that protect not only the vehicle, but also the systems that they carry.

Corrosion, of course, is more than skin deep, so the military is seeking new kinds of preservative oil additives that can protect the engine, transmission and drive components during long-term storage.

In the longer term, an ideal coating would not only contain anti-corrosive properties, but also may be embedded with nanoscale sensors that can detect corrosion as it happens, or contain a self-healing coating. While much has been written about this kind of technology, it's not quite ready for prime time.

With the focus of attention and funding these days on "cleantech," maybe some of these applications have progressed further in the past few years.

Related links
CorrDefense
The nanoworld of corrosion

Backgrounder
Nanotech's cleanup crew
NanoLife vs. NanoDeath
'Integration' and 'Vision' at Michigan Small Tech

'Nano Air Vehicle' is one-third mislabeled

I wonder if those who are demanding "nano" labeling standards would want to crack down on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), whose Nano Air Vehicle program involves no actual nanotechnology.

Just like a German company did in the "Magic Nano" con, DARPA is using "nano" as simply a synonym for "small." Any actual nanotechnology provided by Lockheed Martin would be pure coincidence.

Update: My friend Jack Uldrich has the scoop at The Motley Fool.

Backgrounder
Magic Nano' nano? Naahhh
Groups call for moratorium on nano-named products
How low can nano go?

'Dual-use' nano vs. export controls

Those who have been following the debate on nanotech "Weapons of Mass Destruction" should also pay close attention to nano companies' arguments against export controls.

Yes, we live in a global village and collaboration is key to advancing nanotech, plus there's a mint to be made in China for nanotech companies. However, as we've discussed before, many nanotech startups are going for military applications first because that's where the money is. Much of the same basic technology can also be used for peaceful purposes. So, how can you tell a nanotech company not to export to China the same material it developed for the U.S. Department of Defense?

The "dual-use" question is a tough one to answer. But the bottom line is this: The United States is the leader in nanotech development. Nano companies are eager to partner with overseas companies and to sell their products overseas. Many nanotech materials and processes can be incorporated into civilian or military products. If terrorists or rogue nations are going to get their hands on some nanotech-enabled weaponry, the technology is likely to have originated in the United States.

WMD -- Writing of Media Distortion

Hey, Howard,

Do you have any thoughts on the nano-WMD article? Given the length and timing of these columns as well as the detail I try to devote to them, I usually can't write much on nano controversies, most of which are either:

a) brush fires that don't lend themselves well to a detailed 1,000-word analysis weeks to months after the fact,

b) do not yet have enough quantitative data for me to write an analysis-dense story on, or

c) subjects I've already written on.

I tried to write a fairly balanced piece here -- to not be all "nano-WMDs will destroy our brains," but not "anything that might make nanotech look bad is a priori a bad thing." So I'm curious as to how well I succeeded.

In addition to your insights, Howard, I'd be interested in what anyone else in the nanotech community thought of this. Had the possibility of these nano-enabled WMDs occurred yet to any industry or academic nano folks reading this blog? Because it didn't occur to me before I ran across the story.

Charles Q. Choi

Hello, Charles.

Careful what you ask for. You want an honest opinion from the nanotech blogosphere, you're sure to get it from all angles and sides. (Sorry about the headline. Kind of harsh, but I'm not blaming you. As you get more experience and more sources, your nanotech stories will improve. Your letter shows that you possess an intellectual honesty that's rare and precious in our business).

But before I go into my thoughts on your WMD article, let me first tell you that I understand exactly what you're going through as a reporter. As you've already discovered, nanotechnology is still a series of enabling technologies, processes, materials in search of routes inside some real-world products -- no matter whether the product is a weapon or cure. The people who invent these materials might not even know yet how they will eventually find their way into the marketplace.

It was even worse when I started assigning nanotech stories four years ago. Even less of it was on the market, and so what you had were a lot of press releases guessing that someday this nanomaterial or process will be used in medicine, weapons detection or wastewater treatment, or all of the above, or none of the above. So, that leaves the way free for think-tank types to extrapolate, well, pretty much anything they want.

And that brings me to your story. To me, your main source, Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, seems to be another example of a thinker who can take the kernel of what is possible today -- targeted drug delivery -- give it a good shake over the flames and see what issues the Jiffy Pop ... um ... pops up (bad metaphor, but blogging is sometimes stream of consciousness, so I'm not going to backtrack and fix it). That's nothing against theorists, of course -- as regular readers of this blog know, I think theorists play an important role in technology development. However, Pardo-Guerra should have been one of many voices in the story (yes, I do understand time considerations).

Maybe I'm revealing too much of my personal politics here, but frankly I don't even know what is meant by Weapons of Mass Destruction. To me, anything that can kill more than one person is a WMD. And, if you want to get away from theory and delve into current research and products, the biggest developer of WMDs is the U.S. Department of Defense. That is not a political statement. It's simply a statement of fact. You can tag that with your own political ... um ... biomarkers (shit, another bad metaphor), and decide for yourself whether that's good or bad.

The specter of a Dr. Mengele of the nano age turning targeted drug delivery into targeted death delivery (that phrase is for sale, for any headline writer who wants it) is somewhat misleading in that there's no real danger of that happening anytime soon. Chalk that up as somewhere between "buckyballs kill fish" and "gray goo will kill us all."

I'd check out nano-energetics, the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, and some of the scary-sounding stuff on the U.S. Defense budget. These things can be, and are being, developed right now. And nanotech startups in search of funding are going the military route because -- like the criminal Willie Sutton famously said about banks -- that's where the money is.

Howard

Nano World: A new world of weapons

Blogger's Note:UPI's Charles Choi gives us another sneak preview into his latest Nano World column. -- Howard

The next Nano World talks about the potential use of nanotechnology in future weapons of mass destruction. I try to walk the thin line between alarmism and ostrich-headedness to talk about the near-term potential for nanotechnology in enabling new chemical and biological weapons that could prove undetectable under current arms inspection schemes.

Backgrounder
Think globally, act globally
Military Nano Complex
Nano World: Just start me up

Sticker shock and awe

An Army Program to Build a High-Tech Force Hits Cost Snags (The New York Times)

The Army's plan to transform itself into a futuristic high-technology force has become so expensive that some of the military's strongest supporters in Congress are questioning the program's costs and complexity.

Army officials said Saturday that the first phase of the program, called Future Combat Systems, could run to $145 billion. Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman, said the "technological bridge to the future" would equip 15 brigades of roughly 3,000 soldiers, or about one-third of the force the Army plans to field, over a 20-year span.

That price tag, larger than past estimates publicly disclosed by the Army, does not include a projected $25 billion for the communications network needed to connect the future forces. Nor does it fully account for Army plans to provide Future Combat weapons and technologies to forces beyond those first 15 brigades.

Now some of the military's advocates in Congress are asking how to pay the bill. More here (registration required)

NanoBot Backgrounder
'Integration' and 'Vision' at Michigan Small Tech
NanoLife vs. NanoDeath
The nanothin green line

NanoLife vs. NanoDeath

"Nanoenergetics." It's a word that might sound like a new body-enhancement product, but it's really all about the opposite: ripping bodies apart. It's a military euphemism for use of nanosized aluminum to transform a bang into a bang times 10. It's been making the news rounds recently, beginning with this story in Technology Review and it's been blogged by my friend Noah Shachtman at Defense Tech.

The Army-funded Center for NanoEnergetics Research at the University of Minnesota is the lead U.S. institution studying this dangerous branch of nano.

The recent media focus on this subject had me thumbing through an old notebook for an interview I conducted with a nanotech business leader who told me that his company will not go down that road. "The actual building of things used to explode or kill people, this is where we happen to have drawn the line."

He had requested that his comments not be "on the record," which explains why I've let it sit in my notebook for so long without doing anything with it. So, this week I went directly to the top of this same company, Zyvex founder James Von Ehr, and asked if he would expand on his company's policy when it comes to death by nano. Here's what he wrote:

It's certainly our intent to develop technology for positive ends. One gets into gray areas with things that have dual uses (making our fighter jets better serves defensive and offensive purposes), but I want nano to be known as a good thing, so want to be thoughtful about the things we work on. We're pretty interested in developing better armor for our troops, so they don't get blown apart by the bad guys. We're not very interested in making better projectiles that could penetrate such armor. When the public starts to hear about nano, I want it to be a positive story about nano doing something good, not a nano weapon story. That said, if the bad guys continue to romp about and kill our guys, and our government asks us to help, we probably would do so.

The nanoenergetics story has an upside as well - better rocket fuel that makes rockets go faster. Great if you're NASA or launching a satellite. Not so great if you're on the wrong end of the rocket. Nano-explosives 10x more powerful would be good for industrial apps, but are a bad idea when used by crazed human bombs. I'm happier to work on things like better armor, and the greatly improved prosthetics we're conceptualizing now.

NanoBot Backgrounder
The nanothin green line
Shape-shifting wings closer to flight?
Military Nano Complex

Military Nano Complex

Researching the weapons of the future: ‘micro-fusion’ weapons (Jane's)

Nanotechnology ... has the potential to produce further miniaturisation of weapons. ... Assembler-based NT has implications far beyond the Pentagon’s current vision of a ‘revolution in military affairs’, although its applications to advanced weaponry are certainly fertile ground for fantasy. Proponents of ‘micro-fusion’ nuclear weapons insist that they are the only types of warheads capable of retaining relatively high yields of energy through the process of miniaturisation. More (abstract only)

Pentagon Looks to Directed-Energy Weapons (Associated Press)

A few months from now, Peter Anthony Schlesinger hopes to zap a laser beam at a couple of chickens or other animals in a cage a few dozen yards away. If all goes as planned, the chickens will be frozen in mid-cluck, their leg and wing muscles paralyzed by an electrical charge created by the beam, even as their heart and lungs function normally. More

The Arms Race Has Begun (Responsible Nanotechnology)

Yesterday Mike posted an article on "Nanotech Arms Races". How prophetic. Today, India's new President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam called for India to develop nanotechnology -- including nanobots -- because it will revolutionize warfare. More

US Army orders weapons supercomputer (NewScientist.com)

The US army has commissioned a new supercomputer to simulate complex weapons systems. Once built, it will rank as one of the top 20 most powerful computers on the planet.

Charles Nietubicz, director of ARL MSRC, says Stryker will be used to model the behaviour of materials used in the development of new weapons. “The more closely we can represent the physics [underlying weapons systems], the more we know our predictions will be accurate,” he told New Scientist. More

NanoBot Backgrounder
An Army of Nano
The Princess or the Dragon

Related Resources
Defense Tech
Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies

An Army of Nano

Future Warrior Exhibits Super Powers (Defense Link)

The Army's future soldier will resemble something out of a science fiction movie, members of Congress witnessed at a demonstration on Capitol Hill July 23.

... The second uniform system, the Vision 2020 Future Warrior concept, will follow the 2010 Future Force Warrior with more advanced nanotechnology. Nanotechnology deals with the creation of incredibly small materials, devices or systems with a scaled-down size of 100 nanometers or less. A nanometer is a metric measurement equivalent to one billionth of a meter.

... "If we were in Detroit, the 2020 Future Warrior system would be the concept car. It leverages a lot of the nano-work being done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," (Jean-Louis "Dutch") DeGay, (a Soldier Systems Center representative) said, noting the Army just awarded MIT a five- year, $50 million program to establish the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies. More here

NanoBot Backgrounder
This blog will self-destruct in 5 seconds
Military, Media and Mishpucha
'Integration' and 'Vision' at Michigan Small Tech

'Integration' and 'Vision' at Michigan Small Tech

An extremely successful Michigan Small Tech event today. It will take me a little while to sort through all my notes, but here are a few initial impressions. Well, first, let me try out an opening joke that completely bombed during the panel discussion I moderated on defense and homeland security.

Thank you, and welcome to our breakout session on defense and security. All of you might feel a slight tingling sensation as our swarms of microscopic smart dust surround you. Don't panic. They're merely taking DNA samples. They're perfectly harmless ... unless you put up a fight.

Silence.

No sounds but the mid-March Motown snowstorm raging outside.

I got a couple of pity chuckles when I added. "That was supposed to be a joke."

Yet another reason why I'm a PRINT journalist.

Anyway, things went much better after that. My panelists were Paul Decker of the U.S Tank Automotive Research and Development Center (TARDEC), Rao Boggavarapu of General Dynamics Land Systems, Uwe Michalak of Sensicore Inc. and Fred Grasman of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

Among the many topics we discussed was the U.S. Army's Future Combat Systems program that will completely transform the U.S. fighting force, from the vehicles they drive to the clothing they wear. Along the way, there are opportunities, through Small Business Innovation Research grants, for small tech companies to get in on the military spending spree. By the time the project is scheduled to end in 2015, companies that make nanomaterials, biothreat detectors and other small tech products will have had a piece of the action.

The technology isn't all there yet. The military is looking for a few good companies to supply them with nanomaterials and to help them catch up with the Japanese in robotics.

One audience member brought up an excellent point -- and one that I've heard many times in relation to the nanotech and other industries. Everybody is working on their own, proprietary technologies, but they are giving little thought to how they will work in tandem with one another. The government is not providing any guidelines or standards on how these devices to be used in the battlefield will talk to one another.

For example, a soldier's portable bioagent detector may pick up traces of anthrax, but then the data needs to be quickly, wirelessly transmitted to battlefield commanders who can make decisions based on that information. Instant detection of biohazards or point-of-care diagnostics of injured soldiers are not adequate if there is no real-time transmission of the data, a smart, distributed network of sensors to span large spaces, a power source to keep the juice flowing for weeks of possible isolation, etc.

Companies and researchers are now competing fiercely to provide the military with these necessary tools. But, like their counterparts in consumer electronics, these companies are largely working within their own closed, proprietary systems.

Competing companies are not necessarily thinking of how their applications can interact with another company's proprietary applications. Right now, who has the birds-eye view of the battlefield? Who is going to set the standards? It's possible that it's too early for that. Perhaps it's organizations like TARDEC that can set those standards after the companies compete with one another just to get to the test battlefield.

A great deal more was discussed on the panel, but I'll save it for later.

One more point on birds-eye view, though. During the keynote by Louis Ross of the Global Emerging Technology Institute, one audience member asked what nanotechnology's "focus" is right now. Comparisons had been made earlier to the way Sputnik had forced the U.S. government to focus its own space program on putting a man on the moon. Joe Giachino of the Center for Wireless Integrated Microsystems asked, "What do you see as the focus of nanotechnology" that would be comparable to the moon challenge?

Ross hit on the NASA theme and mentioned that the space agency does need to reduce weight on spacecraft using nanomaterials. Then, he added: "I think that's a question that can't be answered. You can see how it applies to industries and then you can just take it from there."

Giachino (and, no, I didn't put him up to this), tried again: "I think the thing that captured the public's imagination was the 'man on the moon.' We know what gets Allen Greenspan excited, but what is the thing that will get everybody else excited?"

Ross replied that the answer right now is simply "education." The public doesn't really know what it wants out of nanotechnology because it does not yet know what nanotechnology can do. "People have to be educated," Ross said. "Small Times magazine is educating people. I think that once they understand it, they'll change."

He went on to say that a few years ago, it was hard to convince mobile phone makers in the United States that customers would want to listen to music on their cell phones. Today, the trend is catching on.

"They just didn't have the devices. If they had the devices, they'd say, 'Wow. I want that.' "

Both Ross and Giachino brought up excellent points. I'm with Giachino on the "moon shot" for nano idea, as I've written on this site before. But, as Ross indicated, perhaps an overriding government vision would be confusing for an industry that is still too young and an American public still too unaware.

Discuss

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Warplanes of the Future

Technology Management : Applications to Corporate Markets and Military Missions

The Precision Revolution: GPS and the Future of Aerial Warfare

Swords into nanoshares

It's rare that my current focus on nanotech actually melds with my previous incarnation as the managing editor of a wire service that covers issues relating to Judaism and Israel, but today, through some kind of kabbalistic convergence of the molecular and the mystic, we have this announcement that former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres will give the keynote address at the World Nano-Economic Conference Sept. 8-10.

I think this announcement illustrates, among other things, how amazingly fast the world can change in one person's lifetime. Peres was born in Poland during the 1920s, an era that scarcely could have imagined a world where nanotech was possible. It was a time when innovative new technologies were being developed that could save lives … or snuff them out, efficiently, by the millions.

Maybe the world hasn't changed so much since then.

Peres, a Nobel laureate, as long been an advocate of the peace process with the Palestinians in part because when it comes to world opinion, the conflict overshadows all of Israel's scientific achievements. Also, quite simply, Israel is using much of its financial and human resources to maintain a security state, rather than developing the science and technology needed to compete in the global marketplace.

For the other reasons why he's a big nanotech advocate, I'll leave it to Peres himself to explain: "Shimon Peres: Nanotechnology holds a key to Israel's future."

Discuss