It’s necessary to step outside of the mentality of “catching up.”

We are indoctrinated to view the world according to linear metrics of progress, and trying to progress according to these metrics reinforces the dominance of those on top.

In a one on one fight, one fighter may be bigger and more muscular, but have less speed and endurance. This means the smaller fighter is fast enough to avoid getting knocked out, and can dodge blows until his opponent is exhausted and then move in for the knockout.

It’s not a matter of trying to get on equal footing, but rather of knowing the enemy and knowing yourself so that your strengths can be leveraged to exploit the enemy’s weaknesses.

Trying to directly compete technologically in this day and age will strengthen the enemy.

For example, even using cars and trucks means that you will need tires. To manufacture tires, you need access either to rubber plantations or advanced petrochemical industry, both of which are completely under the control of the kuffar.

So trying to “catch up” strengthens the enemy. And yes, there are blessings in the forelocks of horses until the Day of Resurrection.

The flipside of this is that if the Muslims opt out of the liberal industrial order, it will not be necessary to “catch up.”

Western technological supremacy has grown roughly in tandem to the expansion of their political and economic domination of Muslim lands.

This is not only because of the cheap resources and labor they obtain by subjugating Muslim countries, but also due to market access.

In other words, the level of development of their arms industry is dependent on Muslim countries buying their weapons. This means that if Muslims regain control of the Muslim lands and resume open hostilities with the kuffar, it will be a severe blow to their arms industries.

So we shouldn’t think of development as a linear process where we have to reach the same point as them.

Not only will our technology likely have a very different character than theirs, their technological production will be crippled by losing a dominant market position.

The focus should be as much on reducing their technological capacity as on expanding our own.

The weakness of the industrial-system of the West is that like most very large systems, it’s highly centralized, meaning it has multiple critical vulnerabilities.

Decentralized systems, by contrast, are much more resilient but usually smaller.

One of the biggest weaknesses of the Western industrial order is its dependence on regional specialization and trade.

To be economically viable, it requires access to a huge range of different resources and specialized production facilities. Every disruption of major ocean trade routes will strain the economic viability of the entire system.

Eventually, a breakdown in the supply of one or two constituent components could lead to a cascading chain reaction where more industries are forced to shut down or become much less productive, in turn affecting other sectors of the economy.

It’s not far fetched to say that if ocean piracy became as prevalent today as it was 300 years ago, it could cause a return to a level of technological capacity similar to that of 300 years ago.