They specifically talk about Dark Tech. So if you have a friend in an important position within a telco you can get certain things done irrespective of what the law or the govt or anyone else says. Replace telco with bank, port, govt dept etc.
So anyone can come up with a tech solution but if there is someone sitting in a telco/bank/military/intel agency/industry body/political party/religious org/foreign govt who doesn't like you they can screw with the plan. They don't even have to coordinate. All the counter reactions across all those spaces, to whatever you try to do will create an ever growing obstacle.
And therefore the lesson is you can't really pull anything major unless you have made friends everywhere.
And history is full of technologists and financial engineers who get carried away by they own individual success, and start hallucinating about how many friends they actually have.