Nanotechnological solutions to anti-American sentiment

A close variant of this was originally sent to a mailing list on 30/10/2001:
The Bush administration is now enlisting the help of Madison Avenue (the US advertising industry, not the Australian dance-pop act) in a project to win the sympathies of the Arab world. I have my doubts as to how successful that would be, given the mistrust of the US Government in the Middle East. However, a suggestion raised by someone else may work better: namely, developing behaviour-modification nanobots which, when released in resentful third-world countries, penetrate the neurology of the local population and reprogram them to feel loyalty to America and its allies, distrust for radical Islam, or consumerist complacency.

Of course, this is a lot easier said than done; so I was thinking of how such nanobots could possibly work. Some ideas I've had were:

How could the nanobots be delivered? Through USAF airdrops into water and food supplies, by covert insertion through CIA stations (or even compliant corporate sales branches, if the parent company is told they will benefit from improved conditions in the territory), or they could even be made self-assembling, with one or two nanites dropped into an area rich with raw materials to build more.

These were just some ideas I've been thinking about; they'd probably be more useful from a fictional perspective, though those reading this through Echelon may well find practical uses for them...


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