“But they are still not winning the war.”
“???”
I think the “they” he’s referring to is the high-tech weaponry and gadgetry, not the American military.
There's a different between the cathedral top down approach evident in Western bureaucracies and the collaborative bottom up approach used by insurgent factions. Its basically a race to see who can get the upper hand faster. We need to do rethinking in that an approach designed for the Cold War does not work as well for the kind of decentralized warfare we're faced with now.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus