Written by people more or less knowledgeable about the subject and about the history of technology, these accounts tend to focus on the unusual and the spectacular, be it people or lines of research, and they often cede to the self-evaluation of their subjects.
This is a sentence excerpted from a history article by Michael S. Mahoney, "The History of Computing in the History of Technology."
What I cannot understand is the part of "be it people or lines of research". I know that 'be' and 'it' are inverted and that there is an ellipsis, but I don't know why and what is omitted.