An analogy might be made in terms of escape velocity. For the longest time, we hurled stones at targets in trees and towers. However, in the times leading up to WWII, we (Germans, mostly) began to sense that we could launch objects at the Moon or Mars with plausibly incremental improvements. A tipping or inflection point is reached where things go all zoomy and nonlinear.

70 years later, we might be entering that era for intelligence. These sorts of things are not easily rejected by looking at historical trajectories.