There's likely some interesting history there, but Britain's empire was already crumbling during the interwar years, it had been sustained just fine with telegraphic technology in Victorian times - so the takeaway is "the realist interpretation of the atmosphere?"

Is there some other interpretation engineers use?

What makes this interesting is that it's an example of someone writing in the language of the humanities - metaphors, frames, relationships and implications - about a technical subject.

If you understand the technology and have some insight into the politics you're left with something that looks like a dead fish halfway up a mountain - it's worth looking at out of curiosity, but you're not quite sure how it got there, and you have even less of a clue whether it's significant or just plain random.