In the Battletech world, you have these huge walking tanks with multi-ton computers, tons of shielding, and relatively primitive communications technologies.
That's because in some previous time period, disruption of electronics became so easy that it destroyed the advantages of high tech approaches to warfare. In particular, the use of electromagnetic pulse attacks could disable armies of drones. This was an even bigger threat to civilian life: an EMP that took out the local nuclear reactor or disabled a jumpship at a critical moment would be a horrific terrorist attack. AI is scary but the local powerplant being used as a bomb to extort money or make a political point is a more immediate worry.
This forced the development of tech that was robust to things like EMPs or hacking. Battletech computers aren't heavy because they are from the 1980s, they're heavy because of all the built-in redundancy and security to keep them from being knocked out.
So fielding an RCT where all the operators are safely in space sitting at workstations just isn't practical. The units on the ground can be easily disabled by fairly primitive means, the communication can be disrupted by fairly primitive means, and the dangers of your force being hacked and turned on itself are too high.
