Unequal exchange is not primarily about monetary value

Engineering knowledge is, of course, a necessary condition for advanced technology, but it is not a sufficient condition. Instead of assuming that, once invented, these technologies “exist” in some abstract sense and that their material provisioning is another problem, we find that modern technologies in their very essence are means of appropriation and thus distributive phenomena. To apply Marxist terminology, we can say that a nation’s “productive forces” are contingent on global “relations of production”. Indeed, rather than absolving capital from exploitation once it is invested in machinery, we can conclude that technology is capital.

That last part seems difficult to grasp for many who subscribe to the left.