>before we're positioned to drop the hammer on these bastards?
More happening at different "orders of magnitude" than apparent. Established formulae for integration of natural world with world edifice break down as new technologies developed, revealing flaws with previous theories. Manufactured crisis designed to focus your attention while changes are made at different levels.
It's not that simple. We desire to set the world in order, that those we love can be protected. Yet we lack perfect knowledge of the world, and so everything we create in this effort is naturally imperfect. The attempt to create systems which anticipate the future break down over time as our predictions diverge from the actual reality of the world.
This is the nature of Forethought, and why it eventually destroys the world it created itself.