Mastering Advanced Killing Technologies First
In military terms, a destructive weapon system possessed by only one side of a conflict is known as an asymmetric capability, as it is nearly impossible for the opponent to counter.
In 1916, Great Britain devised a mechanical monster known as the “tank.” From that moment on, war drifted further away from the romanticized notion of brave charges to defend one’s honor. To charge bravely was now simply to die bravely. Humanity began to accept the reality of trench warfare, a grueling stalemate where both sides dug in, and focused their energy on the tactics, technical operations, and the systemic infrastructure required to sustain it.
National pride, the duty of alliances, and imperial expansion were the many justifications. Yet, there is one overlooked element: the powerful and practical incentive of preempting data on how to operate “advanced killing technologies.”
The Paradox of High-Minded Rhetoric
Suppose there is a fictional Nation A, which has long existed as the most powerful state. While everyone else is embroiled in war, Nation A refuses to learn these “advanced killing technologies.” Instead, it spends its time sending diplomatic letters to every combatant, pleading for an end to the violence.
Naturally, the warring nations pay no heed. Eventually, the war will end. There will be international agreements on how to regulate and use these new killing technologies. But for Nation A, which failed to accumulate data by operating the technology firsthand, terms like “permissible fire range” or “weight limits for tracked vehicles” have become an alien language.
For Nation A:
It does not know which specific technologies are fatal to its own security.
It cannot detect “poison pill” clauses designed to hide an opponent’s asymmetric power.
Ultimately, it lacks the evidentiary basis (the data) to judge what needs to be regulated to serve its own interests.
In other words, the once-mighty Nation A will inevitably lose its power. The rhetoric of peace, uttered in total ignorance of technical reality, becomes mere prey for the sophisticated logic of nations that hold technical superiority. It won’t take even a decade for nobility to transform into frailty. Of that, I can assure you.
The Protoss Fallacy: We Are Not Linked by the Khala
The “Protoss” from the classic sci-fi game StarCraft are fundamentally different from modern humanity. As the “Firstborn” of the creators (the Xel’naga), they are beings who have completely escaped the cycle of “competitive exclusion” that plagues mankind.
At their core is the Khala, a sacred psychic network. Through the Khala, all Protoss share their emotions, thoughts, and memories in real-time. They are many individuals, yet simultaneously one.
This is not a mere communication tool. For those whose boundaries between “self” and “other” have collapsed, the zero-sum logic of needing to kill the other and seize their data to survive simply does not apply. They resolve conflict through harmonious resonance rather than exhausting competition. While humanity obsesses over perfecting killing techniques by gathering data on a tank’s destructive power, the Protoss have already reached a realm of higher intelligence where killing is unnecessary, achieved through spiritual unity.
The tragedy of Nation A is that it tried to act like the Protoss when it is not. Humanity is not linked by the Khala. We still perceive each other as “others.” We live in a world of “a war of all against all,” where the data of killing techniques you fail to accumulate will inevitably return as the barrel of an opponent’s gun pointed at you.
Individual “Selves” cannot be shared in certain domains, especially when it comes to things that are scarce.