I think that's a fundamental point of disagreement, then, and worth clarification;  I'm not OK with rule from above by any elite, regardless of their academic credentials :-)  for engineering/design reasons and also for political/ethical reasons I much prefer decentralisation, distribution, redundancy, short supply lines, autarky (technology that can be installed and serviced by locals for local use), direct democracy, and so on.

Mander was writing from the US where it is nearly impossible to separate "military" from the rest of the hyphenated string.  the US military/weapons nexus is about 25+ percent of the US economy and has a presence in almost all big science.  it's hard to be part of the technical elite w/o taking military money, sharing facilities with military projects, etc.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...