One of our old nanotech favourites, rabid sinophobe Lev Nazorov returns this week with a classic illustration of what happens when you read a bit of Drexler and let your imagination run wild.

Nazorov is rather obsessed with the Chinese threat to the US and contends that “China’s ultimate plan would involve the use of “molecular nano assemblers,” which are small self-replicating machines capable of moving through the ocean and destroying the US’s nuclear submarines. At that point America’s ability for “Mutual Assured Destruction” through nuclear weapons would be lost and China could either destroy the US with further nano-weapons or enforce an unconditional surrender.”

The proposed solution to this coming holocaust seems to be to produce a film to frighten people (and inspired by Al Gore, maybe get a Nobel Peace Prize instead of an Oscar)…

Let me now take a specific post-nuclear science or technology as an example. In 1986, Eric Drexler published his book, subtitled “The Coming Era of Nanotechnology,” and founded, with his wife, The Foresight Institute for nano research. I learned that the U.S. Congress refused, even in the 2000s, to allocate a dollar for this research. In the United States, Drexler, the American scientist of genius, was represented, due to the influence of producers of commercial nano goods, as a charlatan or an idiot.

In China, Drexler’s book was published on the Internet in English, with Chinese explanations of what some Chinese may find difficult to understand in English.

Today, more than 20 years after the publication of Drexler’s book, the Foresight Institute has ousted him: The Institute is without its founder and president. Some Americans tell me that there are other nanotechnological institutes in the United States, but I simply do not know about them because they are secret.

Yes, but who in the United States knows how far the development of nano weapons has advanced in China?

In 1945, Japan was a militarized country, complete with powerful intelligence/espionage. Yet the U.S. atomic bomb was such a surprise for Japan that it surrendered immediately and unconditionally.

The development of the atom bombs had been going on at many points in the United States and rumors about government secrets circulated freely in this free country.

Compare it to China, with its super-secret laboratories in craggy mountains, so that no one could drill a hole through the basement and install an instrument that would show what the lab is researching.

President Bush has never uttered a word about this secrecy. In the United States and the free West in general, the wages and salaries cannot be reduced by the government, while in China they can be reduced to the maintenance of a slave level. Hence, as a depression develops in the free West, many Westerners become financially linked with China and prefer to keep silent about China’s preparations to annihilate the free West.

Should an enlightening book on the subject be published, a tiny minority will read it. The major media believe that more money can be made by entertainment rather than by discussing China’s preparations to annihilate the free countries.

The way out is to produce a film worth its subject: the abyss ahead, facing the free world.