Radical Islam has approximately 15 yeas in which to restore and expand their fantasied Caliphate. If they miscalculate, and assuming the Iranian Apocalypse-cult believes what they have been saying such miscalculation is inevitable, the world of Islam will be a very different place which will make their populations long for the days when the infidels traded with them; if they are more cautious, they will be more slowly, but just as surely , destroyed.
The world of Islam is going to split into two fundamentally distinct and divergent communities; we see the outlines of the split forming and the major question of our time is how disastrous and horrendous the times will be until the Islamists complete their "suicide by police".
A number of developments set the outer limits of Islam's window of opportunity at ~15 years. Another set of developments suggest the parameters of a world in which radical Islam's current attempt to re-instate the Caliphate escalate out of the control of those who are attempting to ride the tiger.
There are several reasons that I believe the Caliphate has only, at most, 15 years. In SW's Top 10, I linked to an article by Dinocrat, How does the modern world look when you have done nothing to help create it, and innovation is a threat to cherished beliefs? He pointed out some remarkable statistics:
In 1996, the Saudi Patent Office granted its first patents since its establishment in 1990.
By contrast, the US granted 157,000 patents in 2005, and is up to about 7,000,000 patents overall.
Or take our current bugbear, Iran:
Iran in 2001, had only one patent, whereas U.S. in 1997 had 111805 patents…
Or finally Indonesia, which totalled 30 patents over the last five years. These are Arabs, Persians, and South Asians, different peoples with vastly different histories, but one thing in common among them today: a culture of and belief in submission.
The Arab world, and perhaps the greater Islamic world, produces nothing except the oil which they can extract from the ground using Western technology. Considering that technology tends to accelerate at a geometric rate, with new discoveries paving the way for even more new discoveries, the chance of the (radical) Islamic world entering the technological world, except as parasitic users, is negligible, especially in light of their cultural and religious belief that all knowledge has already been revealed.
Further, as the technology gap increases between the West and Islam, their ability to benefit from the types of asymmetrical warfare that they have perfected diminishes.
Just one example: Unmanned surveillance vehicles have become important tools of our military. They have been armed with missiles and have been quite effective in killing major terrorist opponents. In the world of high tech, everything gets smaller, and cheaper, over time. In 10-15 years, we will have unmanned aerial robots the size of mosquitoes. Supply them with cameras and other sensors, wireless connections, and drop millions of them in an area of interest. By developing a real time picture of everyone in an area, their ability to escape detection vanishes. Now, consider arming our mosquitoes with cyanide or botulism toxin and direct who they "bite." Terrorists will be dead before they know what happened. And if others learn from the experience and live under mosquito netting, use the mosquitoes to direct JDAMS or other larger munitions that will do the job. Pretty soon, hiding in a cave or in the jungle (are you listening, Hugo) won't protect you form the American/Israeli/Australian/English military.
On another front, the utility of the Arab world is likely to vanish as we use our burgeoning technology, especially advances in nanotech, to diminish and end our dependence on the one thing they have always thought was their trump card. High efficiency solar panels and fuel cells are inevitable. Even before they make their appearance, expect our extraction techniques of oil from shale (the Rocky Mountains) and tar sands (Alberta) to increase in ease and decrease in expense. Then there is this, courtesy of Deb Riechmann at My Way News: [HT: The Drudge Report]
"Our nation is on the threshold of new energy technology that I think will startle the American people," Bush said. "We're on the edge of some amazing breakthroughs - breakthroughs all aimed at enhancing our national security and our economic security and the quality of life of the folks who live here in the United States."
The Iranians have said that, as part of their plan to disrupt the West, they would act to increase the price of oil. (Is the unrest in Nigeria a part of their plan as well?) $60 a barrel oil as far as the eye can see guarantees that technology will, in short order, find new ways to supply our energy needs. Once again, the clock on Radical Islam is ticking.
Tomorrow, in Part II, I will explore what the split in Islam will involve and how it will manifest itself.
As far as technology, here are some recent articles about developments that, to paraphrase the famous comment by Arthur Clarke channeling Mark Twain, are "indistinguishable from magic."
Computers that learn:
Meanwhile, research is pushing forward in a branch of machine learning called genetic programming (GP), in which software evolves in a Darwinian fashion. Multiple versions of a program -- often thousands of them generated at random -- set to work on a problem. Most of them do poorly, but evolutionary processes pick two of the best and combine them to produce a better generation of programs. The process continues for hundreds of generations with no human intervention, and the results improve each time.
Another step toward atom by atom control over manufacturing:
Faster technology lets atomic force microscope capture nano movies
Georgia Tech researchers have created a highly sensitive atomic force microscopy (AFM) technology capable of high-speed imaging 100 times faster than current AFM.
New, quick scanners, with the tantalizing promise of much more to come:
NY team confirms UCLA tabletop fusion
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a tabletop accelerator that produces nuclear fusion at room temperature, providing confirmation of an earlier experiment conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), while offering substantial improvements over the original design.
And, for now, let me leave you with this. The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology is devoted to peace and justice:
We want to help create a world in which advanced nanotechnology -- molecular manufacturing -- is widely used for beneficial purposes, and in which the risks are responsibly managed. The ability to manufacture highly advanced nanotech products at an exponentially accelerating pace will have profound and perilous implications for all of society, and our goal is to lay a foundation for handling them wisely.
But though they are politically naive, they understand the implications of nanotechnology:
Our biggest concern is that molecular manufacturing will be a source of immense military power. A medium-sized or larger nation that was the sole possessor of the technology would be a superpower, with a strong likelihood of becoming the superpower if they were sufficiently ruthless. This implies geopolitical instability in the form of accelerating arms races and preemptive strikes. For several reasons, a nanofactory-based arms race looks less stable than the nuclear arms race was.
It would be nice if everyone could agree to only develop the peaceful uses of nanotechnology, but it is pretty much inconceivable (except to those who believe the Iranians are developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes), and since the country(ies) that get there first with all this technology will be in an unassailable position, I would just as soon it be us.
Recent Comments