A curious misapprehension

When grading math exams one finds mistakes, of course, but those type of mistakes quickly become familiar. Being retired, I no longer grade exams, but recently came across a curious misapprehension that I had never noticed before. It is from an article (*) on geopolitics, containing no mathematics except for one brief analogy, copied below with my emphases.
The USA may seem awfully powerful, in static enumerations of economic or military mass, but applied power -- actual power out in the world -- is something quite different. It is more like the measurement of kinetic energy, which is calculated with the formula 1/2 mv^2. The value of mass is halved. The value of velocity is squared. In statecraft, competence is velocity.
As the reader will have noticed, the author is perceiving that the 1/2 is attached specifically to m in the way that the square is attached specifically to v. But this is not the notational convention: the 1/2 modifies the whole phrase mv^2 .

Now I am certainly not seeking to criticize the distinguished author on this trivial point of exposition -- the article is otherwise perfectly lucid. It is more a reminder that, when reading or writing outside our own discipline, we too are at risk of some similar misapprehension.

(*) The Atrophy of American Statecraft: How to Restore Capacity for an Age of Crisis by Philip Zelikow. Foreign Affairs, January/February 2024.