3D printers are both accessible and affordable in Australia. Effectively, this means that an individual or group has the ability – with minimal investment – to avoid the cumbersome task of purchasing expensive overseas technology and instead print their weapon. A 3D printed drone is legal and possible; weaponizing it would be a matter of accessing ammunition, something that is currently safeguarded by laws which regulate the sale, possession and use of firearms and munitions in Australia. But what happens when the first 3D printed bullets become available?
Although owning a 3D printer and a domestic drone is not illegal, the combination represents a privacy issue and a security threat both in the domestic domain and in international conflict. I am not advocating for the prohibition of civilian drone use or 3D printing. What I am encouraging is security frameworks that can recognise and respond to the threat resulting from the merging of these two technologies.
A recent call for research by the Pentagon’s mad science agency proposes a new program called “Living Foundries.” The idea is to use biology as a manufacturing platform to “enable on-demand production of new and high-value materials, devices and capabilities.”
In other words, let’s engineer life to make stuff we want.
To jumpstart the process, Darpa wants to open the playing field to people from outside the biological sciences, recruiting designers, engineers, manufacturers, computer scientists, academics and anyone else who has an idea. By democratizing the biological design and manufacturing process, they hope to speed up the development of a reliable factory for all sorts of kind-of-living things.