You don't need to understand intelligence that well to change the world. A little predictive power can go very far.

In the end, it's a bit like playing roulette. A small edge and many bets will make you rich.

> I see no inherent reason why any discoveries regarding intelligence would have bigger consequences than discoveries about charisma.

It was not charisma that cracked Enigma and built the A-bomb. Better brains means better weapons, which means conquering and annihilating stupider tribes. It's the history of Mankind.

Charisma helps uniting tribes. But united tribes of many hunter-gatherers can be slaughtered by a handful of machine guns produced by boring industrialized societies.