Official people of Mikhail Kovalchuk
Speaking to the members of the Federation Council of Russia on September 30, 2015, Mikhail Kovalchuk depicted the gloomy prospects of humanity in large strokes: "Today there is a real technological opportunity [to intervene] in the process of human evolution," said the head of the Kurchatov Institute Research Center. "And the goal is to create a fundamentally new subspecies of Homo sapiens – a service person." An official person has limited self-awareness, his reproduction is under external control, and genetically modified organisms serve him as "cheap food".
According to Kovalchuk, no one can prevent the creation of an official person "anymore, this is the development of science, this is actually happening, and you and I must understand what place we can take in this civilization." A few months later, the concept of a "Convergent Technology Development Strategy" was presented to the Russian Academy of Sciences, which proposes to make the strategic priority of scientific research in Russia exactly those areas that in Kovalchuk's speech opened up the possibility of creating a new human race.
In his speech to the senators, Mikhail Kovalchuk never said directly who and in whose interests is engaged in creating an official person, but quoted the US National Security memorandum, a document from as far back as 1974: "...Population policy is becoming very important to respect the economic interests of the United States. It is necessary to create social and psychological prerequisites for an allegedly spontaneous decrease in the birth rate ..." – and mentioned that he knows "examples of what work the American agency DARPA is doing, for example, in this area, on mind control, on the creation of ethnogenetic systems. If you read only the names, it is enough to understand what the scale of this activity is."
Of the specific methods of turning a reasonable person into an "official person," Kovalchuk called "the absolutization of individual freedom," which, according to the speaker, leads to the destruction of sovereign states, and "the introduction into the mass consciousness of ideas that contradict natural ones," namely families without children and LGBT values.
In short, new, terrible threats have appeared in the modern world: this includes the creation on the basis of nanotechnology of "artificial living systems with specified properties, including those that do not exist in nature," and the development of cognitive research, which, according to Kovalchuk, opens up "an opportunity to influence the psychophysiological sphere of a person, and very easy and simple." In fact, in his speech, Kovalchuk explains that with the help of nano- and biotechnologies (to create artificial organisms) and information and cognitive technologies (for mass impact on the psyche), some hostile forces are ready to create obedient zombies in order to use them, apparently, as slaves.
How can we resist this? Kovalchuk recalls the rivalry between the United States and the USSR in the creation of nuclear weapons, talks about the danger of "unilateral ownership of technology by one country" and suggests setting a new strategic priority for scientific research in Russia – on the basis of "advancing the development of fundamentally new interdisciplinary convergent fundamental research and interdisciplinary education." In other words, if cross-disciplinary research opens up the possibility of creating zombies for the United States, we have no right to lag behind them.
This speech could be considered an incident if it were not for the figure of its author: Mikhail Kovalchuk enjoys the reputation of a man with serious political weight, who managed to concentrate significant financial resources in a controlled organization, the Kurchatov Center, took over several strong scientific institutes, which, finally, influences key decisions in administration and budgeting Russian science.
And indeed, Kovalchuk's words about a new strategic priority in science are again heard in the document "The Concept of the Convergent Technologies Development Strategy", which the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Fortov sent on January 14, 2016 to the heads of departments of the Academy of Sciences (here you can read its full text). The cover letter stated that the text was prepared by an Interdepartmental Working Group of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, but in the text of the document Mikhail Kovalchuk is explicitly indicated as the author of the key elements of the concept.
The main term on which the whole concept is built is NBIC, the collective designation of nano–, bio-, information and cognitive technologies. It was introduced in 2002 by Mikhail Roko and William Bainbridge, two officials from the American National Science Foundation. It was these four technologies, N, B, K and C, that Kovalchuk mentioned in his September speech as the basis for creating a new biological species – a service human. Personally, Mikhail Kovalchuk (this is noted in a footnote to the document) supplemented the NBIC with another letter, "C", adding “socio-humanitarian” to the list of technologies.
The tone of the concept is much more restrained than Mikhail Kovalchuk's September speech. In short, it is about the importance of concentrating state resources on scientific research that lies at the junction of various fields of science, primarily those included in the NBICS list. There are reasonable words in the text: about the economy based on high-tech industries, about the exhaustion of the "resource portfolio", about alternative energy, about healthcare reform. But it is proposed to solve the urgent problems with the help of "convergence of technologies", a vague concept of mixing nano-, bio-, information, cognitive and even socio-humanitarian technologies, for each of which, according to the concept, Russia "has real groundwork at the world level." There is not a single concrete example of what kind of scientific or technical results the notorious convergence should lead to in the text. On the other hand, it is argued that the concept of convergent technologies "has been widely used in the field of expert developments in various countries since the 2000s, and on its basis, a policy for the introduction of this paradigm as a whole was subsequently formulated in many states."
According to the authors of the concept, NBICS and convergent technologies should be included as a key priority in all strategic documents describing the structure of Russian science and its financing. As for the budgeting of the proposed program, the wording here is somewhat vague, but it is obvious that the financing of convergent technologies should amount to 5-10 percent of all government spending on civil science, that is, tens of billions of rubles, and we are not talking about allocating an additional budget, but about redistributing existing items in favor of a new direction.
As several representatives of the scientific community told Radio Liberty, it was expected that the concept would be presented at a meeting of the Council for Science and Education under the President of the Russian Federation on January 21. However, this issue was not on the agenda, according to one version – because of negative reviews on the concept, which several branches of the Academy of Sciences managed to submit to the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Nevertheless, the word "convergence" was heard three times at the meeting – from the mouth of Alexander Dynkin, director of the Primakov Institute of World Economy and International Relations, in a speech by Andrei Dutov, head of the Zhukovsky Institute, and, unexpectedly, in a speech by Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage. The latter started talking about Oriental studies and stated that "we have a science, a scientific discipline called Oriental studies, which corresponds to the XXI century and the convergence of sciences, which Mikhail Valentinovich Kovalchuk often tells us about at our meetings. And such synthetic science is very important today – in the age of conflict and confrontation." It is easy to imagine that Russian Oriental studies would gladly be included in the abbreviation NBICS as part of the last letter.
Some Russian scientists fear that Mikhail Kovalchuk will nevertheless be able, using his hardware weight, to push through the concept of "convergent technologies" and take away the budgets of the few remaining effective scientific organizations and groups in Russia. "Phraseology, which has been issued for several years at the expense of combining all kinds of sciences and technologies into something like one in my opinion, it is essentially nothing, an attempt to trade air. This is speculation for people who do not understand how science works and how technology works. Speculation is based on the quite obvious idea that all kinds of news are sometimes created at the intersection of sciences. Yes, they are being created. But nothing viable happens from trying to arrange a mating of a hedgehog with a frog," commented Mikhail Feigelman, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Deputy director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics, on the text of the concept. – Especially if it requires enormous resources, which in the current conditions should simply be taken away, apparently, from those who are still trying to do some kind of science here, this is an attempt to snatch a fat piece of themselves in any way in the conditions of the developing crisis.”
But maybe the authors of the concept in general and Mikhail Kovalchuk in particular are right, and the ideas of "convergent technologies" and "NBIK(S)" are really a successful trend of organizing science in other countries, as the text of the concept states? Radio Liberty asked Alexey Grinbaum, researcher at the Laboratory of Philosophy of Science of the Commissariat for Atomic Energy and Alternative Energy Sources of France, coordinator of the European Observatory of Nanotechnology, to read the document and comment on it. In the early 2000s, Greenbaum participated in the discussion of the policy of the development of nanotechnology and "convergent technologies" at the European and international level.
– Was the rhetoric of "convergent technologies" and "NBIC" really used when making decisions on prioritization, financing of scientific and technological research in Europe and the USA?– It is always necessary to distinguish between the scientific and political component of all these processes.
When a new keyword, a new term, appears, this term always has two functions. On the one hand, it summarizes some progress in scientific and technical terms. On the other hand, these buzzwords, as they say in English, play the role of a kind of motor for obtaining new funding, opening new budget items for the further development of scientific activities. And since 1999, the term "convergent technologies" and then the term NBIC have been used in the United States, but rather at the political level, in order to justify the creation of the so-called National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). This was, perhaps, the main political merit of this whole convergent technology movement. Well, in Europe, this term has never been practically used. For some time back in the 2000s, there was such a department in the European Commission - a group on convergent technologies, but that was the end of it, this group has long been gone, and there has never been any talk of convergent technologies in the way Europe structures and finances scientific research.
– But surely the idea that research at the junction of various scientific disciplines can be productive is quite natural?– As I have already said, political rhetoric does not always coincide with scientific reality.
Indeed, if we talk about the development of a certain final product, we can talk about convergence, about the fact that different disciplines contribute to it. Convergence in this sense is not an initial premise, not an a priori requirement for how science should be developed, it occurs de facto when a specific product is created – well, for example, a robot that interacts with a person. Such a product should include certain results in information technology, and cognitive science, if you use the NBIC division, and so on. In fact, there are hundreds of such examples of convergence, but they are always associated with a specific product, a specific task. Metaphysical convergence, the idea that now all sciences will merge into one or all technologies will somehow come together, is, of course, political rhetoric and has nothing to do with scientific reality.
– Nevertheless, within the framework of this political rhetoric that existed in the 2000s in the USA, were any products really created?– It ultimately came down to the fact that a National Nanotechnology Initiative was created, in which almost no cognitive and information technologies were presented, but nanotechnology and biotechnology were presented.
Practically, NNI is an agency for grant financing of scientific research. Another thing is that this agency has received an additional budget compared to what it would have been if all this political rhetoric had not developed. That is, the real result of all these talks about convergent technologies is the allocation of a significant additional budget for the development of science. You can directly look at how the budget of the National Nanotechnology Initiative grew in the 2000s against the background of the rhetoric of convergent technologies, but these times ended more than five years ago, today the rhetoric has changed, and the budgets are different.
– Why has the interest in using these buzzwords disappeared?– Political rhetoric always runs out of steam sooner or later, and the same thing happened with "convergent technologies".
There was no particularly deep background, no scientific basis for this rhetoric. If you ask scientists today, as well as 10 years ago, where there is a convergence of different technologies in your work, I think they would be surprised by such a statement of the question, because a person works in a certain field and there is no direct convergence in his activities. This does not mean that there is no interdisciplinarity, but disciplines retain their identity and do not merge together. In a political sense, convergent technologies played a role in the early 2000s, and then another rhetoric just started. The National Nanotechnology Initiative still exists, it is another research funding agency in the United States, along with, for example, the National Institutes of Health.
– In the text of the concept "Strategy for the development of convergent technologies" there are references to the works of transhumanists and futurologists. In the USA, the rhetoric of convergent technologies was also close to the ideas of transhumanists?– Let's look at the text of the concept.
There is both political rhetoric and scientific, and, in general, it would be interesting to talk about each of these aspects separately. As for political rhetoric, it repeats almost verbatim what was written around 2000 by two American authors, Mikhail Roko and William Bainbridge. The text of the concept refers to the allegedly unfolding scientific revolution in the world. Interestingly, the word "revolution" is first in quotation marks, but on page 6 of the document the quotation marks disappear, and we are already talking about the revolution observed today in the field of nanotechnology. Such revolutionary rhetoric, the assertion that we live at some particularly important moment in the history of science, is in its purest form a borrowing from the report of Roko and Bainbridge, the link to which is given on page 9. The very concept of "convergent technologies" is borrowed from there.
Bainbridge is a sociologist and a fairly well–known member of the transhumanist movement in the past, but since writing a report on convergent technologies, he has no longer appeared on the political horizon. And Mikhail Roko is still present, but he has long since abandoned the transhumanist discourse of the early 2000s. At the time when the original American report was written, few people had heard about transhumanism and its influence on the ideas of Roko and Bainbridge was absolutely direct. Since then, transhumanism has not exactly gone out of fashion, but in the United States it has been clearly separated from the decision-making processes about how science is organized and funded. In the early 2000s, indeed, there was a certain mixture of transhumanist ideology and political processes in Washington, but it ended, and quite a long time ago. Mikhail Roko, I've known him for many years, has never said a word in support of transhumanists anywhere.
Moreover, a few years ago he wrote a new report about how we overcame the old concept of convergent technologies, that now we have a world after convergent technologies. He no longer has an executive role in the financing of American science, but is an adviser to the National Nanotechnology Initiative, but even in this capacity he strongly disavows transhumanism. Serious scientists explained to politicians quite a long time ago that ideology and some such illusions about the new world that we will build are one thing, but another thing is real science, what really happens in laboratories.
As for Europe, the situation here is slightly different. The report of Roko and Bainbridge on NBIC was read, the European Commission created a group of experts who wrote an alternative European report, the so-called CTEKS (Converging technologies for the European Knowledge Society), which, by the way, is also referenced in the text of the concept. And this CTEKS report was, relatively speaking, put on the table. In Europe, transhumanist rhetoric has never had much influence on how science is funded and organized. Even an alternative, much softer report, which is somewhat similar, by the way, to this concept, did not lead to reformatting the entire structure and organization of funding for European science. European science today is being built in the Horizon 2020 program on completely different principles, around the so-called big public challenges, around the so-called key enabling technologies, key technologies, and all this is a completely different structure. To summarize, in Europe, the influence of transhumanism on political structures, in fact, has never been, and in the States it ended about ten years ago.
– That is, we can say that Mikhail Kovalchuk has now picked up a long-gone trend and is trying to portray that it still affects the adoption of some decisions.– Yes, in political terms, undoubtedly.
In political terms, what is discussed in the concept of "Convergent Technology Development Strategy" was discussed in the United States 10-15 years ago, and in Europe there has simply never been a serious discussion on this matter. But there is also a scientific aspect in the text of the concept. If we read this document in detail, we will see that there is some confusion of political rhetoric from 10-15 years ago with some specific scientific ideas that are really being implemented all over the world today, both in Europe and in the United States.
Well, here are some examples. Towards the end of the concept, in the list of more or less concrete actions, we will find a conversation about the development of "design, engineering of systems that combine living and inanimate nature into unified systems." This is undoubtedly happening in today's science. On page 11, synthetic biology, information chemistry are mentioned, and we are talking about the construction of clusters or technological platforms. All these words are really present in today's structuring of European and American science. Of course, the NBIC report in 2000 could not even talk about synthetic biology – then no one talked about it.
Therefore, we see that this concept not only repeats verbatim the document of 15 years ago, but also contains a certain share of modern understanding of how funding for priority scientific research is built. The same synthetic biology, bioinformatics in some countries are priority scientific areas. For example, in the UK, synthetic biology is a priority of financing in the field of biotechnology in general. Therefore, the last, say, one and a half or two pages of the document are already moving away from the political rhetoric of 15 years ago and are starting to talk about some more relevant things.
– If you listen to the report of Mikhail Kovalchuk, which he read in the Federation Council at the end of September last year, it seems that he sees a potential threat to Russia's national security in these scientific areas. Do you think such a threat really exists?– No, it seems to be part of the political rhetoric.
I have not heard this report and therefore cannot comment on specific expressions, but, undoubtedly, when political rhetoric is being built, it uses scientific reality only as a starting point, as a base, and then adds various futuristic forecasts there.
– If such a concept was proposed now, for example, in France, would it be taken seriously?– If such a document in exactly this form would have been received by any of the ministries or departments involved in French scientific policy, then, of course, hardly anyone would have gone beyond the first page, because the definitions given there simply raise a lot of questions.
But if this had happened 15 years ago, then yes, this document would have had a chance to be read in its entirety. Today, the way it is written, the political rhetoric that it uses, would have no chance of being heard either in Europe or in the United States.