> I mean, if a small band of hunter-gatherers is led by a single tribal leader with complete power, he can pay them nothing. But that doesn't mean he can make ICBMs for peanuts.

Why not? He captures or pays off someone from US who has the know-how, and if he has an industrial base, natural resources they sure can do it. That is what the soviets did.

A lot of their technology was pirated from the West. The atomic bomb, or most of the computer chips and operating systems (by the late 70s).