Actually it was a terrible critique of nanotechnology, which doesn’t try to make things the same way as biology. But a good overview of the funkiness which comes part and parcel with life’s microbiology.
Because of Richard Smalley that money went towards material science and chemical research instead of the molecular manufacturing it was promised for. Even though, as you point out, in terms of fact the critique only applied to life-like bionanotechnology.
The history of this is laid out pretty well—with a surprisingly minimal amount of sour grapes—in Drexler‘s book Radical Abundance.