Växẍ Säbbäth (vaxxsabbath@poa.st)'s status on Monday, 03-Jun-2024 10:55:12 JST

@BowsacNoodle @epictittus @thefinn @Jewpacabra @wingedhussar @SK1ZM @Escoffier well, think about it:

there's tons of people working on "how to make a 3D-printed gun"

and there are lots of designs, many of which are very good

however, all of those designs are essentially rocks until you add the critically-needed component, which is "ammunition", which in turn has a critical component that is easily-throttled: "smokeless gunpowder", i.e. nitrocellulose

in other words, in order to have a functional weapon, your logistics chain terminates in "whoever can nitrate cellulose at scale safely" - and there's not that many sources of that, and all of them are heavily scrutinized

there's tons of people working on "how to make a lethal autonomous drone"

and there are lots of designs, many of which are very good

however, all of those designs are essentially toys until you add the critically-needed component, which is "a grenade", which in turn has a critical component that is easily-throttled: "industrially-produced energetic compounds"

in other words, in order to turn that drone into a functional weapon, your logistics chain terminates in "whoever can nitrate various other organic feedstocks at scale safely" - and there are not many sources of those either, all of which are heavily scrutinized

the problem is that most of the pathways to producing those sorts of things have been well-mapped and the feedstocks for them monitored, diversions from which are deterred scrupulously; to get anywhere without diversion, you have to go all the way back to the Haber and Ostwald processes, which are most economic at scale and which are, if not difficult to implement, at least inconvenient (owing to lack of "democratization", so to speak)

the person who comes up with a design for a quiet, MASINT-resistant, economically-constructable small-scale Haber-Ostwald generator that sucks in natural gas or hydrogen in one end and shits ammonia and nitric acid out the other is the one who changes a very big portion of this game