I think you've missed my point. The article writer made a ridiculously strong claim: that no centralized structure ever worked. Only a single counterexample is needed to show that this is a dodgy claim, but counterexamples to this aren't rare, they're abundant. In particular, any time the efficiency costs of centralization are less than the transaction costs of decentralized parts cooperating, centralization is a win. There's a reason we've evolved brains.
Coming up with examples where decentralization beat centralization, on the other hand, proves nothing.
Contrast that with the highly centralized militaries of WW1 - the attempted result wasn't "get bogged down for 4 years while our troops are mass-slaughtered".