Paradigm shifts in science and revolutionary leaps in technology are frequently coterminous with political and military upheavals. The dust usually requires three centuries to settle. Such seismic waves and tectonic shifts occurred between the 12th and 14th centuries AD, again starting with the 15th and ending in the 17th century AD, and, most recently, commencing in the 19th century and still very much unfolding.

These quakes portend the emergence of new organizing principles and novel threats. Power shifts from one set of players and agents to another. And the scope and impact of the cataclysm increases until it peaks with the last vestiges of the cycle.

Thus, in the current round (19th-21st centuries AD), polities shifted from Empires to Nation-states and economies from colonialism-mercantilism to capitalism: a new order founded on new systems and principles. Industrialized warfare and networked terrorism emerged as the latest threats. Ochlocracies and democracies supplanted the rule of various elites and crowds of laymen lay siege to the hitherto unchallenged superiority and leadership of experts. Finally, starting in the late 19th century, globalization replaced localization everywhere.

Why this confluence of scientific-technological phase transitions and political-military tumults?

There are three possible explanations:

(I) Scientific and technological innovations presage political and military realignments, rather as prequakes forewarn of full-fledged earthquakes. Thus, at the beginning of the twentieth century, physical theories, such as Relativity and Quantum Mechanics reflected a gathering political and military storm in an increasingly uncertain and kaleidoscopic world. Or ...

(II) Scientific and technological innovations cause political and military realignments

Still, many technologies - from the GPS to the Internet and from antibiotics to plastics - were hatched in state-owned laboratories and numerous scientific advances were spurred on and financed by the military-industrial complex.

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