Photo: Jonathan Juursema, Creative Commons.
“Reducing
barriers to arms manufacturing” is just one of the consequences playing out
from the adoption of revolutionary 3D printers. The price of printers has
come down from half a million dollars to less than $10k, and the expiration
of several key patents is making much more possible.
It has
the power to decentralize production and, powered by robotic factory work,
forever alter the economics of manufacturing.
3D
printing may even have the power to undermine the reach of defense
contractors, who build weapons, tanks, planes and more that reach American
troops, and through foreign aid and weapons transfers, foreign military
forces – friend and foe alike – around the world as well.
Already,
a true next-gen entrepreneur named Cody Wilson has caused a stir with his plastic 3D printed gun
known as the “Liberator.” The blueprint for this legal, lethal do-it-yourself
weapon was downloaded over 100,000 times and can be built from any location
with a consumer-grade 3D printer.
It
became something of a philosophical threat to the establishment. Homeland
Security, the FBI, the ATF, the Joint Regional Intelligence Center and others
took
notice. News outlets like ABC News highlighted it as a threat to
security, labeling the ‘invisible, nearly untraceable’ weapon an “assassin’s
dream”:
Inventor
Cody Wilson, on the otherhand, identified it as a political act of resistance against
the collectivist system:
“That’s a real political act, giving you a magazine,
telling you that it will never be taken away. … That’s real politics. That’s
radical equality. That’s what I believe in. … I’m just resisting.
What am I resisting? I don’t know, the collectivization of manufacture? The
institutionalization of the human psyche? I’m not sure. But I can tell you
one thing: this is a symbol of reversibility. They can never eradicate the
gun from the earth.”
Today,
it is not just individual weapons, but the larger system that has has experts
and analysts paying attention. 3D printing stands to shake up the status quo for defense
contractors, distant military outposts and asymmetrical warfare including
from so-called “terrorist” groups:
This could lead militaries to cut out private defence companies
altogether. And by combining 3D printing with
assembly line robotics, those that remain will be enormously streamlined.
Being able to take printers to a warzone promises a radical shake-up
of combat and the defence industry, says Peter W
Singer, an expert in future warfare at the New America Foundation.
That
sort of disruption carries huge political implications in places like the
United States where defence firms are purposefully spread around the country
and support millions of jobs.
“Defence
contractors want to sell you an item but also want to own the supply chain
for 50 years,” he says.
Consider
a conflict zone like Afghanistan, where the effectiveness of soldiers is
constantly undermined by rough terrain, difficult supply chains and the
cooperation of local tribe leaders.
Plans
for manufacturing goods, textiles, weapons and even food can be downloaded
and enable production anywhere that printers and raw materials are available.
“But
now you’ll have soldiers in an austere outpost in somewhere like Afghanistan
who can pull down the software for a spare part, tweak the design and print
it out.”
For
better or worse, those inside the Heart of Darkness aren’t as cut off any
longer when it comes to the materials that could make or break military
campaigns. That could empower small bands of resistance fighters, too,
including those branded as terrorists.
“Think
of master bombmakers in the Middle East making new designs that look like
everyday products or a lone wolf operator printing a plastic gun he can get
past security at the White House,” says Chausovsky.
Again,
3D printing is a double-edged sword with effects for better and probably also
for worse. Morally neutral technology that is proving more and more likely to
disrupt the established norms.
It may
also have enormous impact on the the effectiveness of sanctions as alternate
means to war-without-war.
As it
stands today, countries like Russia or Iran, who are perceived to be rogue,
hostile or heavy-handed on the international stage can be weakened or
controlled through economic pressure on imports and exports – much as siege
in war cuts of supplies and forces capitulation. But that, too, may change:
“The US
has sanctioned everything from fighter jet spare parts to oil equipment. 3D
printing could turn sanctions — which have been a crucial part of foreign
policy for a generation or more — into an antiquated notion,” says Singer.
Key
patents have now expired, allowing more points of production with
increasingly advanced techniques – potentially anywhere, and everywhere:
•
“fused deposition modelling” using plastics, expired in 2009
•
“selective laser syntering” used in the precise printing of metals such as
aluminium, copper and steel, expired in 2014
All
this makes human labor cheaper than ever, too, with the possible impacts on
the economy far reaching and perhaps crippling. Yet, the freedom to create
components and parts, and eliminating the need to source and ship them, could
also unleash new modes of productivity.
How
will 3D printing change your life? Will it empower an independent and
sovereign lifestyle, or doom the masses to poverty in a collapsed system run
by robots and computers?
It all
just depends…
