Originally Posted by
Bavaros
The question was would people be stupid enough to use this energy as a weapon in the future.
We could do. From the discovery of the nucleus to humans being able to split it in nuclear bombs took less than 40 years. When something like this comes along, it becomes a matter of national security for countries to develop. Why? Because if you don't, your neighbour will (and what do you think would happen if your neighbour doesn't like you). Worse, nowadays in this globalised world, every country is our neighbour. In international relations, we call this the 'security dilemma'. It becomes an arms race and whoever develops the tech first wins.
If you look at nuclear weapons, what happened is Western states (since US developed nuclear weapons first) have banded together to prevent other (possibly destabilizing) states from being allowed to have nuclear weapons - We formalised this in an international treaty called the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act (the only states who haven't signed the treaty are Israel, Pakista, India and South Sudan).
This is how we've managed to keep the lid on nuclear warfare since the end of WW2 - Only our side is allowed to have them. If other states attempt to obtain nuclear weapons, they become international pariahs and we enforce heavy economic sanctions on them (like we used to do with Iran (and may do again thanks to Trump)).
If weaponised dark matter eventually became feasible, then you can bet your ass that there'll be a bunch of countries saying 'DO NOT DEVELOP THIS TECH' publicly to one another and then, behind closed doors, be funnelling a fuckload of money into trying to develop the shit out of it. The West would probably win again though, since real smart science types tend to congregate more in democratic countries and places like San Fran, and usually don't like working under duress for dictators/kings.
Also, just as an interesting aside, this process will likely happen with AI too.
Last edited by Ele; Dec 18, 2016 at 05:03 AM.