This theory is absurd. They're unjustifiably generalizing from a single system--biological evolution on Earth[1]. There are literally no other places in our solar system even that are rapidly evolving to more complexity. Lots of dead rocks, hot and cold, and a bunch of boiling gas balls. Incidentally, none of these are turning into Cybertron. As it turns out, the chemistry that we know to be necessary for self-replicating things just doesn't work there. (Maybe there are other chemistries that will work, we don't know). So this specific chemistry and this specific set of conditions to kick off and indeed allow self-replication to continue are pretty damn important to understanding how it works.

A "new force of nature"? It's just so pretentious. Some interesting biases of a selection process driven by copious excess energy doesn't make for a new force of nature. Otherwise we'd be positing all kinds of absurdities that are not directly explained by particle physics are woo woo a new force of nature--fashion choices (hey, copy, select, mutate there too).

[1] And no, I don't think that the computer simulations of evolution they carry out are any additional evidence. So you made a computer program with a copy/select/mutate loop in it. Big deal. I can make a computer simulation about anything.