If insect-sized mechanical devices meant for surveillance, sabotage and conducting military operations were leaked for societal use, it could have drastic consequences, an ASU scientist said Wednesday.
The national Consortium on Emerging Technologies, Military Operations and National Security, which ASU researchers began planning in January, is looking at ethical, legal, governance and social implications of emerging military technologies.
Brad Allenby, founding chair of the consortium and a professor at ASU, said most nations interested in becoming world powers are exploring nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, information and communication technology, and cognitive science for use in military operations. The consortium was established to study these emerging technologies by asking questions about what effects they would have on society.
One of the major technologies being explored by the military is a dragonfly-sized mechanical device that can act as a spy.
“In a military context, particularly a counter-insurgency environment like Afghanistan, that is a very useful technology,” Allenby said.
“[But] if you think about it on the civilian side, you essentially have no privacy.”
He said another example of what could be turned into technological warfare is all too common in the lives of Americans: the Internet.
“If I can penetrate [the U.S.’s] Internet security, I can do things like cause power stations to self-destruct, bring airline traffic in the U.S. to a halt, [or] break down the financial system,” he said. “There are clearly indications that some nations are trying to develop that capability.”
The goal of the four-pronged consortium, which operates four centers including one at ASU, is to explore questions rarely answered by government or private agencies when they develop these technologies, he said.
Peter French, director of the ASU Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, said the consortium was officially established in October.
The three other centers participating in the consortium are the Inamori International Center for Ethics and Excellence at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, the Center for Ethics and Technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
Representatives from each center met in Cleveland earlier this month to discuss research and goals, French said.
“The line between science fiction and technological fact is shrinking,” he said, adding that technologies that are emerging through research are extremely revolutionary, and sometimes even scary.
Technology developed for military use can have a spillover effect into society, French said.
“People have not been paying a lot of attention to what the impacts [of the spillover] are,” he said.
An example of a technology that could have potentially drastic side effects is the technology to remove war memories from soldiers who come back with post-traumatic stress disorder, French said.
Potential negative consequences have not been explored with this technology, he said, and researchers at the consortium are doing just that.
Teams of faculty at ASU, each with its own expertise, are working independently in different areas concerning these issues. Professors of law, public policy and several other areas joined the consortium this year.
Gary Marchant, an ASU Lincoln professor of Emerging Technologies, Law and Ethics, said he comes from an ethical and safety perspective when it comes to the legal aspects of emerging technologies like this.
Regulation has a critical role in emerging technologies, said Marchant, who specializes in studying robots.
Robots can have the ability to kill humans, Marchant said, but his team aims to come up with legal guidelines when dealing with robots and other technologies that have the ability to take away human life.
“[The legal team is] going to be looking at international legal mechanisms for the oversight of military robotics and ensure they are used in appropriate [ways],” Marchant said.
Reach the reporter at ndgilber@asu.edu.
