I also spent a few months deployed in Helmand and Farah provinces in 2008. My platoon didn't go to Kajaki Dam in particular.. we saw a few little signs of what this article talks about everywhere. The guys in the line company that served in Lashkar Gah and Kajaki remarked about how bizarre the history was. I'm blown away.

The whole concept of "Technocracy" interests me to no end. Eisenhower warned not just of the Military Industrial Complex in his famous speech at the end of his presidency - he also warned of the repercussions of state-sponsored research and of those who were conducting it, and for what purposes (check out page 10): http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents...

"..there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties."

Eisenhower knew that we were learning so, so much about the world. Our ability to reason was, and is, unlocking so many secrets to the nature of nature itself, that there was a never-ending pressure for top-down, ambitious projects - especially just following the dropping of the bomb and the ending of WWII.