Disaster Prediction: Do Trends continue Without Limit?

In NewsdayJames Pinkerton predicts that the trend towards increasingly lethal weapons will lead to loss of freedom.

But the continuing advance of technology has brought a new dilemma: Increasingly, any single individual or small group can wield great destructive power. If one were to draw a line over the course of history, from the first tomahawk, through the invention of gunpowder, all the way to the A-bomb, one would see a steeply upsloping curve.

Searching for ways of better expressing this phenomenon, one is reminded of "PyrE," the universe-destroying substance described by Alfred Bester in his 1956 sci-fi classic, "The Stars My Destination." So we have the "PyrE Curve," which rises up from the first killing device in prehistory to the last killing device at the end of history.
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Thus, the "suitcase nuke" that we fear today could be superseded by future mass-killers that fit inside a thimble - or a single strand of DNA.
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We can sum up the situation this way: the PyrE Curve keeps rising, and yet the physical size of the Earth remains static. More destruction relative to the same creation: Something has to give.

And what will "give," almost certainly, is freedom. After a sufficient number of tragedies and catastrophes, the survival instinct will assert itself, and the source of the problem will be eliminated, or we will die trying. There's plenty of precedent for such coercive danger-pre-emption: the banning of machine guns, for example, and "cop killer" bullets. Similarly, when home computers have 100 times the power of today's supercomputers - well, then, such future computers won't be allowed in the home.

Thus, the human prospect here on Earth: an all-knowing and all-powerful government. Not much room for dissent there.

Let’s pause a minute before we give in to panic.

One of the basic assumptions of technological forecasting is that present trends will continue. One of the realities is that present trends don’t continue. If I plant a maple seed, measure it growth over the first summer and do a straight line extrapolation and then announce that it will be 100 feet tall in two years, I will be reminded that

“Trees don’t grow to the sky.

Pinkerton is correct in his assessment that the lethality of weapons has grown over the past several millennia. There is no reason to expect that this growth trend be the exception and continue unabated.

The trend, at least as measured over the past fifty years, has already slowed down. During the early years of the cold war, Soviet, US, British and French engineers raced with one another to build bigger weapons. Defense intellectuals coldly discussed megaton weapons and megadeaths. The trend towards larger and more lethal weapons changed with the introduction of microelectronics and precision-guided munitions.

Weapons of Mass Destruction, contrary to popular impression, are not easily designed, engineered, manufactured and field-tested. WMD development has always required massive investment and support of a nation state possessing a large and capable industrial infrastructure. Programs like this are not easily hidden. In today’s world of global trade and interdependent economies, no country would lightly undertake such a program.

Pinkerton assumes that a small group of terrorists would be able to undertake such a development without needing the engineering investment necessary. He could be right, but the trend line towards ever more lethal weapons assumed increasingly large development programs as well.

The trend, over the last 25 years has been for fewer and less lethal wars, Click here and here for more discussion of the decline of war.

I understand Pinkerton’s concern. The danger of a terrorist attack, is even more frightening because it is unfamiliar. The human mind tends to fear the unknown even more than understandable and greater dangers – such as automobile accidents, drugs, and smoking. I was tempted to compare Pinkerton’s column to this children’s story. Given the serious of his concern, that would be unfair. We do, however, need a little perspective. We face greater dangers and more certain dangers every day. Let’s not go into a panic mode over a trend that is unlikely to continue.

NOTE: this post linked to Beltway Traffic Jam for 01/06/2006