Anti-Nanotech Group Targets Researchers
A group known as “Individualities Tending Toward Savagery” (ITS) has reportedly claimed responsibility for injuring two Mexican nanotechnology researchers with a parcel bomb, putting scientists around the world on alert. According to an August 21, 2011, Chronicle of Higher Education article, the group has a manifesto that cites Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, as an inspiration and “has been linked to attacks in France, Spain, and Chile, and to a bomb sent earlier this year to a scientist at another Mexican university who specializes in nanotech.” An analyst quoted by the Chronicle also warned that the threats “show signs of someone well-educated who could be affiliated with a college.”
The latest attempt apparently targeted the director of a technology-transfer
center at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, while
an April 2011 bomb was intended for the nanotechnology department at the
Polytechnic University of the Valley of Mexico. In addition, State of Mexico
Attorney General Alfredo Castillo told media sources that the group may have
terrorist ties in other countries, with the Chronicle adding that last month
members of the ELF Switzerland Earth Liberation Front were sentenced for similar plots against a nanotechnology laboratory in Switzerland. “The ITS is a movement that, in accordance with its ideals, opposes any development of neo- or nanotechnology anywhere in the world,” said Castillo, who has since urged Mexican universities to tighten security. See The Associated Press, August 9, 2011; Times Union, August 24, 2011.
