Aligned Swords and Cold Wars

I started reading Smart Things, or How Many Magic Swords Are There? by Rick Stump over at Don't Split the Party, which analyzes how common magic swords are in AD&D. Rick uncovers some surprises based on the random treasure tables, like...

"Holy Moley, over 1.2% of all magic items are talking swords! That means, if you use the random treasure charts, talking swords are almost exactly as common as Potions of Healing."

Sure, it's a relic.
But why bother with just this...

It's a great read if you're interested in 1e AD&D magic item distribution and answering why everybody and their duck has a magic sword.

I read something in the alignment section, and my mind took an offramp. Based on the treasure tables, 75% of magic swords with alignments are either Lawful Good (25%), Neutral Good (20%), True Neutral (20%), or Chaotic Neutral (10%). If you just look at the Good alignments, 50% of aligned magic swords are good. And the obvious conclusion follows:

"Advantage - the good guys. Implication - most aligned swords are made by/for good guys."

And I asked myself, "Why?"

Why do an overwhelming majority of intelligent magic swords play for the good guys' team?

• Are good guys simply that much better at magical enchantment?
• Have the good guys been systematically destroying evil artifacts faster than the bad guys make them?
• Do the bad guys always try to build all-powerful doomsday weapons instead of mundane magic swords?

Or, and here's where the Cold War angle comes in...

• Do the bad guys not need the best technology because their endless horde of volunteers can eventually overwhelm any force?
• Do they know that evil lurks in everyone's heart, so they only need to tap into that to convert people to their cause?
• Would a misinformation campaign have a higher return on investment toward ruling the world than the effort required to forge an intelligent sword?

Disclaimer: Granted, we're talking about alignment in the AD&D absolutist sense, which I don't use much, although Detect Evil (aka Paladin Radar) has caused some entertaining scenes in the past. And we're talking about AD&D random treasure tables, which spawned from very few creative minds without much analysis. And let's not even mention that a magic sword usually proves most effective in the hands of a Hero, a solo specialist on a specific and lonely path to do good outside of society - a description which screams Chaotic Good to me, but they only make up 5% of aligned magic swords.

...when you could get volunteers
enough for several armies?

ANYway.

What if the bad guys have conceded the arms race voluntarily in favor of capturing the hearts and minds of the commoners? What if proselytizing rhetoricians could sway people into logically supporting the bad guys without all that fancy and expensive technological investment in magical artifacts? What flavor would that impart to your game world?

How would your heroes need to adapt to fight an ideological conflict rather than relying on tactical superiority, technological equipment advantages, and optimized damage output? Would the subtlety of this campaign work?

Would you have fun playing in a world like this?

Thanks for reading!