The really impactful inventions throughout history are boring, mundane, and not terribly flashy. The most important things strategically are logistics and organization. If you really have an interest in the history of military technology or warfare, you’ll acknowledge that these are the overriding truths since time immemorial- it wasn’t single tanks, single guns, single planes that really changed the course of history- it was trains, petrol cans, smokeless powder, radio.
People get so lost in the almost… feverish worship of the tools of war or the people who conduct it that they lose sight of what war is- it is mundane, boring, and tragic.
You have to ground yourself, you have to remember these things, you must not get caught up in the mythology and the flash and the idolatry that makes people all too willing to accept narratives that turn them into willing participants in unspeakable horror.
I’ve seen what it can do to people. And staring down that basilisk is part and parcel of taking any of this remotely seriously.
