The thinkers you spoke with are resident in a military culture that has at it's disposal a few percent of the cash shoveled into the pentagon's dumpster.
Perhaps budgetary hunger stimulates the brain.

I believe that there is a window of opportunity to redeploy the military industrial complex to a different campaign - ie the survival of the planet - and that the enabling factor is pervasive direct instantaneous communication.

That's a pretty provocative statement, Chris. I agree the potential to do great things would be there with a redirected military/industrial machine humming down the green highway, but--given this "pervasive instantaneous communication"-- then what? The military I know so well will think, first, how the enemy can jam it, then how to censor it, then how dissidents might use it to foment ---insurgencies.

Capitalism searches out the darkest corners of human potential, and mainlines them.