Modern militarized science and technology are presented in this book as a moral catastrophe associated with the use of the resources of the human mind to cause people the greatest suffering. Over the past century, scientists and engineers have found many ways to have a detrimental effect on people. Specialists, with the financial support of states, continue to invent increasingly effective ways to destroy people and their environment. At the same time, the human mind itself has become a new type of battlefield, an extremely vulnerable target, in many ways more important for a 21st century war than factories or military installations, and a weapon, because the fear and anger caused by propaganda can cause very real socio-economic and political damage.

The author realizes that there is no simple way to reorient scientific knowledge and direct it exclusively to achieving the good of humanity, but a clear understanding and formulation of the problem is the first step to solving it.

Awards and prizes
The book was included in the long list of the 3rd season of the Dmitry Zimin Prize (included in the register of foreign agents) "Enlightener. Translation".

"First came gunpowder. It was invented in China as an alchemical curiosity, perhaps as early as the 9th century, most likely during the Taoist quest for immortality."

"...the Indians quickly came to favor flintlocks. They paid more for them and preferred not to buy matchlocks. Matchlocks produced a burning smell that could give away a man hiding behind a tree or sneaking under the cover of a cliff."

"The 1914-1918 war was the only world military conflict in which all sides regularly used chemical weapons. Chemists promised that chemical weapons would be a way out of the stalemate, but this did not happen, and all parties began to use chemical weapons on a large scale."