According to historian Vaclav Smil, the destructive energy of military weapons has increased by sixteen orders of magnitude over the past five thousand years. The exploitation of inanimate energy sources has also resulted in the increased technical specialization of men-at-arms, with corresponding changes in the relationships between industry, the state, and military forces. Conquests were once limited by the availability of food for the pillaging troops; naval exploits were at the mercy of the winds, tides, and aggregate human energy of rowing crews. The discovery and subsequent harnessing of ever more efficient sources of energy unshackled the militaries of the Western world, but forced soldiers, sailors, and civilians to reexamine and redefine the place of the military in larger society. By the late nineteenth century, Western militaries were highly industrialized and bureaucratized institutions with intricate divisions of labor. Scientific enterprises...