Technology is linked to many key phenomena of international relations, including conflict, economics, and culture. Yet it has only recently been effectively incorporated into the study of International Relations (IR). The link between technology and (global) politics has been and remains under-appreciated. For millennia, though, technological evolution has deeply impacted global politics, security, economics, culture and the environment. For example, the diffusion of the stirrup in the Middle Ages allowed for development of mounted shock combat in connection with a feudalistic society revolving around chivalry.[i] Introduction of the Swiss pikemen during the Renaissance initiated an incremental shift towards standing armies, which in turn could only be maintained by modern states with vastly improved administrative and organizational capabilities.[ii]