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I'm a pacifist, so obviously I'm for the idea of a nuke free world. But I don't understand how it could be achievable. I mean, is it that hard to build a nuke? The required knowledge has spread globally by now. As a side effect of general progress in science and engineering it will be cheaper, not more expensive, to build nukes. Do people share my pessimism about this?Nukes are expensive to build even if you know how, and expensive to maintain. That puts a bit of a stop on small countries. But those costs will obviously get smaller with time, as this is what technology generally does - makes difficult things easier, expensive things cheaper.
Regardless, things are going to get more dangerous with time, really, simply because from where we stand now, all interesting technologies we can conceive are either directly or indirectly powerful enough to be dangerous. Here are few thoughts.
- Power storage. Destructive capability is tied to power density. Which is the same thing we're trying to improve, as our world needs more energy and more portable energy. The difference between a battery and a grenade now is how rapidly it releases accumulated energy.
- Interplanetary travel. As they say, any drive technology that's powerful enough to be interesting - that is, giving us weeks/months of travel time within the Solar System - is also a weapon of mass destruction. With our current understanding of physics, we'll need to be able to handle in day-to-day usage amounts of energy comparable to nuclear weapons. And that's not even touching the kinetic energy (relative to Earth) stored in asteroids flying around the Sun, that could be unleashed on this world with just a slight nudge at the right time.
- Nanotechnology and biotechnology. They're one in the limit (life itself is nothing but advanced nanotech we didn't create, and don't know how to control yet). They offer unprecedented capabilities all across the board, from healthcare through manufacturing to quality-of-life, and of course, military. If we crack that, we'll be pretty much on fast track to godhood. And yet even today we can see the potential for disasters - from genetically engineered plagues, through precise genetic attacks, gene drives, plastic-eating bacteria, to the well-known grey goo scenario.
- Superhuman AI - if we actually get a self-improving mind working, that's most likely game over for humanity.
I'm not trying to scare people away from science and technology. Hell, I'm looking forward to all things on the above list - I'm just not sure if, as a civilization, we're mature enough not to inflict great suffering on ourselves with such capabilities.