The West has de-industrialized to a large extent, but it also has financial instruments which it uses to extract superprofits from its neocolonies in the Global South. That "money" that exists in databases and spreadsheets allows them to underdevelop the rest of the world, control the primary production of raw resources, and restrict the movement of advanced technology outside the West.

Although the murder machines definitely help turn those financial instruments into real tools of underdevelopment.