As part of its rotating presidency of the United Nations Security Council, Estonia will hold the first-ever formal meeting on cyber security on Tuesday, June 29.

When new technologies cross from industry to the battlefield, calls arise to slow the process and consider international implications of using these weapons. Louis A. Del Monte’s Nanoweapons is one of those calls. A physicist and former executive at IBM and Honeywell, Del Monte led advancements in microelectronics and sensors. His work is a serious attempt to use publicly available information to address the development and use of nanotechnology as weapons. The author brings together ideas normally relegated to science fiction (e.g., laser weapons, artificial intelligence, and self-replicating nanorobots) and uses his technical background to inform the reader as to what is science fact. While his most alarming predictions for humanity’s survival project to the year 2050 and beyond, he argues that his concerns are timely. He indicates that while revolutionary military nanotechnologies (e.g., stealth aircraft) may take decades to field, they are none­theless currently being developed. Now, according to the author, is the time to discuss the dangers of nanoweapons.