The theory is based on the idea that the government controls what technological developments are considered important, through DARPA, through media, through partnered science/technology communicators, and through universities.

The claim is that nearly every popular science obsession has been geared toward one set of technical goals, which are: complete control over everything that is in the air at all altitudes and sizes, permenent sky presence, and with it continuous monitoring of land.

Lets face it, not every technical achievement is really that ground breaking or revolutionary for the average human life, but somehow there are a few areas no matter how insubstantial the real benefits, even small improvements are heralded as the definition of human progress. Among them are carbon fiber, drone technology, AI robotics, battery weight, image recognition, 5G communication, liquid hydrogen storage, high resolution photography, streaming video compression algorithms, solar.

Sometimes they will highlight some of the side benefits like carbon fiber helping to make electric vehicles more viable. But there is a lot of other technology that has gone into improving the viability of electric vehicles that doesn't get the same media treatment, and hasn't received the same level of continuous hyping over a long period, Such as improving inverter technology, silicon carbide transistors, motor technology. But those don't get pop-sci'd as much as the elements that are relevant to the government's theorized goal of perpetual flight and with it monitoring.

And sure there are some marginal improvements to our lives. Phones that last a bit longer are nice even though I remember my old school phone back in the day lasting about a week.

But what is never heralded as real technical improvements to the human condition are things that don't connect to that technical goal at all. One that comes to mind is improved agriculture and crop yields using software and weather analysis. American corn farmers now produce the highest calorie yield per hector of land not only in the world but also through history. That's something that has a higher potential for a tangle improvement. Is "crop yeild" the same level of buzz world in Popular Science magazine as carbon fiber is? Every year there are improvements and developments, but humanity doesn't watch with a close eye every effort to chase the bleeding edge of crop yields. It's just as technically important.

To me the frontier of human development is broad. It covers so many topics that to even list them would be more than the human brain could hold. Yet we've been trained to think of a few key technologies that really don't matter that much as being the very measure of human development. I think it is organized. That there are entire propped up industries to act as proxy development spaces similar to how NASA was a proxy development space for nuclear delivery. When you look at what they are you can see what they all combine towards. I think it is interesting that when you look at what technical barriers exist to achieve perpetual controlled flight, especially if you look at what technical barriers existed 5 or 10 years ago, every barrier is something society has been obsessively perusing for the last 10 years. Isn't it convenient that all these developments just happened to intersect in a way where perpetual flight and monitoring are nearly possible. Has humanity been obsessively pursuing and hyping every barrier to absolute food security, or absolute war prevention, or absolute corruption elimination? Anything else that is good humanity meanders its way towards it and improvements happen when they do, and often unnoticed. That's the norm.

Seriously, what actual human benefit comes from liquid hydrogen storage, besides as the highest energy density backup power system for a drone? Why has pop-sci cared so much about it being light? You can do it simply by making a vessel thick enough. If you are transporting by road that's acceptable. But no. For some reason being able to do it lighter would be an "energy game changer," somehow. Verses, IDK, turning back on a few nuclear power plants. If we actually needed an energy game changer we'd have it the second we wanted it.