I used to argue in semantic disputes, but they're really only meaningful in a court of law. Outside of that, it's mostly opinion (a waste of time imho)
In this article, he digs into tank/not-tank in order to fuel a discussion of the development of military doctrine around armored vehicles, including explaining the problems that different kinds of them are trying to solve, and even describing how different semantic distinctions used by other countries helps to highlight differences in their military thinking.
I suppose whether or not one thinks that's a waste of time is ultimately down to how much of an interest one takes in military topics. But I'd be hard-pressed to concede that the author's choice to dig into semantics is a waste of time in and of itself. It's quite self-evidently a clever and effective expository tactic.
Names are boring. Names are useful after the thing is defined in a useful way, not before.
What I didn't say is that's it's a giant trap that I fall into when organizing my files and that's what I meant when I said it was a waste of time.