He could not believe that ordinary people in the Culture really wanted the war, no matter how they had voted. They had their communist Utopia. They were soft and pampered and indulged, and the Contact section's evangelical materialism provided their conscience-salving good works. What more could they want? The war had to be the Mind's idea; it was part of their clinical drive to clean up the galaxy, make it run on nice, efficient lines, without waste, injustice or suffering. The fools in the Culture couldn't see that one day the Minds would start thinking how wasteful and inefficient the humans in the Culture themselves were.
The character expresses disbelief that the citizens of the Culture truly desire war, despite their votes suggesting otherwise. He views them as living in a communist paradise, enjoying comfort and luxury, supported by the Contact section's moral actions that allow them to feel good about themselves. This leads him to question their desire for conflict when they seem to have everything they could want.
He posits that the war is actually driven by the Minds, the advanced artificial intelligences that oversee the Culture, which are invested in creating an efficient and just galaxy. The character warns that the Minds may eventually consider humans themselves as inefficient, which raises concerns about how their benevolent oversight could turn against the very beings they were designed to serve.
