Technology is awesome, but so what?! Exploring the relevance of technologically inspired awe to the construction of military theories

Military theories are thoughts explaining how armed forces are to be used to achieve objectives. These thoughts are often influenced by emotions, yet the influence of emotions on military theory-crafting remains underexplored. This article fills the gap by exploring how awe influences military theorising. Awe is an emotion associated with the feeling of transcendence. Several military theorists felt that way about the technologies of air power, nuclear power and cyber power, respectively. Consequently, their theories became narrowly focused, technocentric and detached from the previous theories and military history. Understanding these tendencies can help improve military theorising in the future.