Notes on The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Books 1 and 2)

I am currently reading Sun Tzu’s Art of War and, as cliche as it sounds, am finding much wisdom in it. I have been taking notes during my reading and I thought I’d share them in this post. Here I cover Books 1 and 2.

Introduction

I am currently reading Sun Tzu’s Art of War and, as cliche as it sounds, am finding much wisdom in it. I have been taking notes during my reading and I thought I’d share them in this post.

As a brief background, The Art of War is a treatis on military conflict and strategic assessment written by a Chinese general somewhere around 500 B.C. It is an enduring text because the wisdom that it contains generalizes far beyond military conflict. A small sample of the themes in the book include treating conflict as a scientific discipline, strategic advantage through information, and the principles of good leadership.

In this post, I’ll cover the first two “chapters” of the book. I’ll write Sun Tzu’s original text in bold (as translated by Thomas Cleary). My commentary on each point will follow.

Book 1: Strategic Assessments

Military action is important to the nation – it is the ground of death and life, the path of survival and destruction so it is imperative to examine.

• Generalizing “military action” to mean any form of “conflict”, Sun Tzu stresses the importance of prioritizing the skill of navigating conflict. It bears stating that the aftermath of conflict can be incredibly consequential whether that be at the nation-level or the individual-level, and so navigating conflict is a skill that is important to study. Conflict is a discipline and like any discipline, it can be studied scientifically. Here Sun Tzu sets the stage for the rest of the book where he will provide a rigorous, analytical, almost mathematical exploration into the rules and logic of conflict.

Therefore measure in terms of five things, use these assessments to make comparisons, and thus find out what the conditions are. The five things are the way, the weather, the terrain, the leadership, and discipline.

• From the outset, Sun Tzu quantifies the core components one needs to gain an advantage in conflict. There are exactly five things: a quantity. This very first suggestion addresses the act of “assessment”. This will remain a key theme throughout the book. To gain an advantage, one must acquire information and process that information. Gathering intelligence and making rational use of it is the key to victory.

The Way means inducing the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so that they will share death and life, without fear of danger.

• Of the five components one should use to assess themselves and their opponent, it is interesting that the very first involves leadership. According to Sun Tzu, the essence of good leadership is the ability to align the goals of the rank and file with the goals of the organization at large. However, it goes beyond mere “alignment”; the word “share” here feels more intimate. The goals of the organization must be “shared” by the leaders and the rank-and-file alike – that is, they are to be held in common in an essential way. Another lesson so eloquently stated here is that the leaders and the rank and file must share in the consequences of conflict. You cannot have the rank and file lose while the leaders escape unscathed. The leaders and their followers must share in life and death. Any organization for which the leaders don’t share in the consequences are doomed to ineffectiveness and defeat. Lastly, a key aspect to good leadership is that of instilling courage (“without fear of danger”). An organization that is setting out with a bold, risky vision must be courageous if they are to stand any chance at achieving their vision. Good leaders instill that courage into the bones of the organization so that it is shared by all levels within the organization: from the top down.

The weather means the seasons.

• I interpret this to mean that one should pay attention to the cyclical nature of things and assess whether the current moment gives you or your opponent the upper hand. In military operations, this could literally mean the season; for example, an army ill equipped for winter fighting should wait for summer. It could also mean the time of day. In recent military engagements, the U.S. has carried out operations against less technologically advanced opponents (like Al Qaeda) at night when they could rely on their night vision tech to gain an advantage. In business, one might pay attention to the economic cycle or the political climate to assess whether now is a moment of advantage or disadvantage.

The terrain is to be assessed in terms of distance, difficulty or ease of travel, dimension, and safety.

• Sun Tzu further breaks down the concept of “terrain” and assesses it in terms of four characteristics. Again, this emphasizes this theme of scientific examination into the rules of conflict.
• The terrain plays a huge role in modern military operations. Both the Soviet Union and the United States failed to achieve their objectives in their respective occupations of Afghanistan. A huge reason for this is the complex terrain, which was known thoroughly by the locals, but was foreign to the occupying forces.

Leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and sternness.

• These five qualities of good leaders echo some of the major themes of the book. First, a good leader has “intelligence”. A key theme of the book is that of gaining victory by superior use of information. The next two qualities, “trustworthiness” and “humaneness”, preview another major theme of the book: one should not seek violence. Rather, to achieve victory one must also have the upper moral hand. The fourth quality, “courage”, echoes The Way: one must act without fear of death. Only the very last quality, “sternness”, do we have a quality related to dominance or (vaguely) violence.

Discipline means organization, chain of command, and logistics.

• Prior to this point, Sun Tzu has discussed the ingredients of gaining an advantage – namely good leadership (“the Way” and “leadership”) as well as the external conditions (the “weather” and “terrain”); however, he has not addressed how one can translate these advantages into victory. To translate these advantages into victory, one must master the details. That is, one must be organized, have a clear chain of command, and master their logistical operations. So many organizations lack these skills and even if they have many advantages, they are too disorganized to translate those advantages into victory.

Therefore use these assessments for comparison, to find out what the conditions are. That is to say, which political leadership has the Way? Which general has ability? Who has the better climate and terrain? Whose discipline is effective? Whose troops are stronger? Whose officers and soldiers are better trained? Whose system of rewards and punishments is clearer? This is how you can know who will win.

• Sun Tzu lays out a formula for assessing who has the advantage in a conflict, which again emphasizes how the rules of conflict can be broken apart and studied scientifically.
• Interestingly, Sun Tzu suggests that one can know the victor before any conflict occurs. The statement, “This is how you can know who will win” is extremely certain. He does not say “who will probably win.” He says, “who will win.” This is another key theme that will pervade throughout the book: one should use information to assess the situation, arrive at a point of clarity, and strike decisively!

Assess the advantages in taking advice, then structure your forces accordingly, to supplement extraordinary tactics. Forces are to be structured strategically, based on what is advantageous.

• I interpret this piece to mean that one should structure their resources (“forces”) based on the intelligence they receive. One should adapt their strategy to the circumstances. Again, Sun Tzu emphasizes the use of information to gain an advantage.

A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.

• In any conflict, you should not telegraph your abilities to your opponent. This holds in military conflict, but generalizes to conflict as a whole. There are two reasons for this. First, if you telegraph your capabilities, your opponent can use that information to gain the advantage. Second, if you act incompetent, but are actually competent, and your opponent buys this lie, then they will attack when they have the disadvantage. You can thus bait them into a fight they cannot win.

When you are going to attack nearby, make it look as if you are going to go a long way; when you are going to attack far away, make it look as if you are going just a short distance.

• This point emphasizes the importance of destabilizing the information that your opponent receives. Because of how critical information assessment is to gaining an advantage in conflict, it follows that an effective strategy for gaining an advantage is to spoil the information received by your opponent.
• In athletic competition, deception is commonly employed. In baseball, the pitcher throws different types of pitches (e.g., fast balls or curve balls) to throw off the batter. In basketball, the pump fake is very literally the act of “making it look as if you are going to go a long way” when actually going “nearby”. In amateur wrestling, there are many moves that require deceiving your opponent into thinking you are making one move, but really are going for another. Examples abound.

Draw them in with the prospect of gain, take them by confusion.

• Here again, Sun Tzu emphasizes the use of deception, but goes a bit further. Rather than simply deceiving your opponent with false information, here he emphasizes using your opponents emotions against them. That is, you should use your opponent’s greed against them. That is, to bait them. The phrase, “take them by confusion” emphasizes the critical point in time when your opponent realizes that their reality is false. It is in that critical moment of time that you have an advantage and need to strike decisively.

When they are fulfilled, be prepared against them; when they are strong, avoid them.

• Don’t start a fight you can’t finish
• Here Sun Tzu emphasizes the criticality of assessing when you do or don’t have the advantage. If you don’t have the advantage, then you must avoid conflict and work tirelessly to gain the advantage for at that point you are vulnerable.

Use anger to throw them into disarray.

• In a previous point, Sun Tzu suggested using your opponent’s greed against them (“Draw them in with the prospect of gain”) Here he suggests also using their anger against them. Altogether, he emphasizes a comprehensive strategy of not just deceiving your opponents with false information (“a military operation involves deception”), but also toying with their emotions. Our tendency to get carried away by emotion is an inherent vulnerability within all people. Just as we should take advantage of this vulnerability in others, so too must we guard against it within ourselves. That is, we should seek to regulate our emotional responses and assess situations logically. The more you are carried away by emotion, the worse your decision making will be, and a clever, more rational opponent will use this to gain an advantage over you.

Use humility to make them haughty.

• Again, this follows the theme of using your opponents emotions against them
• A haughty opponent is likely to be more careless and less prepared. This advice pairs well with the previous advice, “Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent”. Overall the three emotions that Sun Tzu says can be used against your opponent are greed, anger, and arrogance. Consequently, if you possess these emotions yourself, you are vulnerable!

Tire them by flight.

• For me, the book title, “The Art of War”, suggested that it will be about fighting and force, but in fact, it is all about gaining an advantage over your opponent before you actually fight the battle. So far in the book, Sun Tzu has taught us that this advantage can be gained by 1) Good leadership and internal organization, 2) Gathering and assessment of intelligence, 3) Information warfare and deception, 4) manipulating your opponent’s emotions and now, 4) wearing your opponent down by being faster than them!

Cause division among them.

• This plays into the theme of emotional warfare – that is, toying with your enemies emotions. Whereas prior advice was directed at the individual (e.g., anger is felt individually), here the emotional warfare is directed at the interpersonal. That is, to destroy the opponent’s structural unity by breaking down the relationships between people.
• This follows logically from an earlier piece of advice on The Way. That is, Sun Tzu taught that “The Way means inducing the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so that they will share death and life, without fear of danger.” The logical consequence is that one should seek to destroy The Way among one’s opponents.

Attack when they are unprepared, make your move when they do not expect it.

• Essentially this boils down to using the “element of surprise.” The use of surprise attacks is a somewhat well-known, tired trope, but here is given a much richer context by Sun Tzu’s other advice. The use of surprise is another example of assessing your opponent’s mentality and using it against them.

The formation and procedure used by the military should not be divulged beforehand

• This harkens to the prior advice of not divulging one’s capabilities, “Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective”. Here, this is extended not just to capabilities, but to tactics as well. Don’t reveal your hand.

The one who figures on victory at headquarters before even doing battle is the one who has the most strategic factors on his side. The one who figures on inability to prevail at headquarters before doing battle is the one who has the least strategic factors on his side. The one with many strategic factors in his favor wins, the one with few strategic factors in his favor loses – how much the more so for one with no strategic factors in his favor. Observing the matter this way, I can see who will win and who will lose.

• This final concluding piece emphasizes not only the importance of gaining the strategic advantage before the fighting starts, but also on the mere fact that it is actually possible to discern who will win and lose. Conflict is a science, and through mastery of that science, one can learn when to fight and when not to fight.

Book 2: Doing Battle

When you do battle, even if you are winning, if you continue for a long time it will dull your forces and blunt your edge; if you besiege a citadel, your strength will be exhausted. If you keep your armies out in the field for a long time, your supplies will be insufficient.

• A central theme of this second chapter is the notion that one should avoid a long and drawn out conflict. This ties into the themes of the first chapter around using strategic planning prior to conflict in that if you successfully prepare for the conflict, and through that preparation learn that you have the advantage, then the conflict itself should not last long because you have prepared a strategy and can execute it quickly.

When your forces are dulled, your edge is blunted, your strength is exhausted, and your supplies are gone, then others will take advantage of your debility and rise up. Then even if you have wise advisers you cannot make things turn out well in the end.

• Not only should one consider the current conflict at hand, but should always keep in mind the conflicts yet to come. If you waste your resources on the current problem, you will be ill prepared for the next problem. This also touches the idea of “pacing oneself”. When running a long distance race, one needs to conserve their energy for the later miles. So too, when facing a problem, one should consider the future problems that will demand future resources. Said more succinctly, one should always remain future minded.
• A further generalization of this advice is to not be too narrowly focused on the problem at hand, but rather, one should stay aware of their surroundings and keep an eye on other issues that may crop up. If your full concentration is on the current problem, then other problems can catch you unaware. Said more succinctly, one should always remain aware of their surroundings.
• Sun Tzu mentions “wise advisors” here, which harkens to the prior theme of using information effectively. Here Sun Tzu says that if you have exhausted your resources, no amount of planning will help you! Thus, in order to use information effectively and form a strategy you need to make sure you have the resources to execute that strategy.

Therefore I have heard of military operations that were clumsy but swift, but I have never seen one that was skillful and lasted a long time. It is never beneficial to a nation to have a military operation continue for a long time.

• One can translate this advice into a mathematical axiom: if conflict is long and drawn out, then it is not effective. This axiom provides a nice rule of thumb for ruling out certain strategies: any strategy that will require a long, drawn out conflict is not a viable option.
• It is interesting how even in this modern day, governments have not learned this lesson! The United States wasted so many precious resources – lives, money, and time – on its operation in Afghanistan. When we invaded Afghanistan, we did not adequately ensure that the conflict would be swift and effective. We had no end state in mind! Because of this, most would consider our decades long war in Afghanistan a failure.

Therefore, those who are not thoroughly aware of the disadvantages in the use of arms cannot be thoroughly aware of the advantages in the use of arms.

• I interpret this to mean that one should understand that engaging in a conflict risks that conflict becoming a quagmire. Without understanding this risk, one has not adequately prepared and does not truly have a sound strategy to be effective. The United States did not prepare adequately for this outcome when they invaded Afghanistan.
• A more general interpretation of this advice is that if one does not know the disadvantages of the use of force, then fundamentally, one cannot yield force effectively because they do not understand its true nature. The use of force is a dangerous and serious affair. A lack of respect for it shows a general lack of understanding of it and thus, an amateurish mentality.

Those who use the military skillfully do not raise troops twice and do not provide food three times.

• If you have a problem, deal with it once and deal with it thoroughly.
• This ties into Sun Tzu’s prior advice on planning strategically. You should plan a strategy that completely solves your problem. You don’t want your incompletely solved problem to keep cropping up over and over again because you failed to deal with it the first time.
• More generally, don’t “half ass” your work. Finish it completely and finish it well.

By taking equipment from your own country but feeding off the enemy you can be sufficient in both arms and provisions.

• I interpret “feeding off the enemy” to mean taking food provisions from the enemy so that you don’t have to bring them yourself. There is an element of ruthlessness to this advice. When it comes to a fight, you should not hold back from taking what you need from your opponent. To win you must be ruthless. You cannot hold back. This relates to the prior advice, “Those who use the military effectively do not raise troops twice.” Deal with the enemy once and ruthlessly.
• There is a lesson here in regards to planning; one should not make unnecessary preparations. Here, Sun Tzu is saying that you should not prepare food because you can simply take food from your enemy when you defeat them. It is an unnecessary preparation. Thus, one should discern between resources one needs versus resources that can be acquired later. Energy shouldn’t be expended on unnecessary preparations.
• There is an adage in software engineering attributed to Donal Knuth: “Premature optimization is the root of all evil”. Sun Tzu teaches a similar lesson here: prematurely optimizing (i.e., preparing resources that are not yet needed) is an ineffective allocation of energy and should be avoided at all costs.
• Relying on feeding your troops with your enemy’s provisions implies that you will defeat them. Thus, Sun Tzu is so certain of victory that he is willing to risk starvation. This ties in to prior advice on strategic assessment prior to conflict and the importance of knowing whether you have the advantage, “Therefore use these assessments for comparison, to find out what the conditions are…This is how you can know who will win”. That is, if you prepare adequately and know that you will win, you can depend on that victory for your next steps (e.g., to “feed off the enemy”).

When a country is impoverished by military operations, it is because of transporting supplies to a distant place. Transport supplies to a distant place, and the populace will be impoverished.

• Here again, Sun Tzu emphasizes building a proper organizational foundation before starting a conflict. Generalizing this beyond conflict, it is critical to set up the proper logistics and organization foundation before embarking on a challenge.

Those who are near the army sell at high prices. Because of high prices the wealth of the common people is exhausted.

• A theme highlighted here is that of unintended consequences. Sun Tzu warns of the unintended economic consequences that result from war.
• Another theme that begins to emerge in the book is compassion for common people. He is not only focused on the success of the military campaign, but also on the well being of the country as a whole. We too should always keep in mind the consequences our actions have on others. We should not be too focused on our goals that we neglect the well being of others.

When resources are exhausted, then levies are made under pressure. When power and resources are exhausted, then the homeland is drained. The common people are deprived of seventy percent of their budget, while the government’s expenses for equipment amount to sixty percent of its budget.

• Two recurring themes are echoed in this point. First, we see Sun Tzu’s analytical and quantitative approach towards strategic assessment. Second, we see again his emphasis on looking out for the well-being of society and considering unintended consequences of one’s actions on others.

Therefore a wise general strives to feed off the enemy. Each pound of food taken from the enemy is equivalent to twenty pounds you provide by yourself.

Again, Sun Tzu here is taking a quantitative approach to strategic assessment. He very literally quantifies the benefit of “feeding off the enemy” versus preparing provisions.

So what kills the enemy is anger, what gets the enemy’s goods is reward.

• In prior points (e.g., “Use anger to throw them into disarray”), Sun Tzu had stressed the importance of manipulating the enemy’s emotions and using their impulsive, emotional responses against them. Here, in contrast, he emphasizes utilizing the emotions of one’s own troops and direct reports.
• Emotions are an extremely powerful force and should be leveraged to one’s strategic advantage whether that be leveraging the emotions of the opposition or of one’s own allies.

Therefore in a chariot battle, reward the first to capture at least ten chariots.

• Sun Tzu emphasizes the importance of using reward to motivate. Interestingly, he does not mention the use of punishment. The emphasis on using reward instead of punishment is, in fact, a fairly recent development in both parenting and in training animals. Scientifically, it has been shown that reward is more effective than punishment in inducing a target behavior. It is interesting to see Sun Tzu identify this truth so long ago.
• Here is another example of the use of quantitative analysis (he subscribes the reward to be exactly ten chariots).

Change their colors, use them mixed in with your own. Treat the soldiers well, take care of them.

• Turning one’s enemies into allies is a better strategy than defeating them. There is this repeated core idea of achieving victory, but avoiding violence. One should seek persuasion rather than conflict.
• After turning enemies into allies one should must also treat them well. One should avoid holding grudges.
• Sun Tzu’s use of the term “mixed in with your own” seems to suggest the importance of enabling these enemies-turned-allies to retain their original identity. Sun Tzu does not seem to be saying that they should be “converted” or transformed into one’s own identity nor should they be separated from one’s own group.

This is called overcoming your opponent and increasing your strength to boot.

• Turning one’s enemies into allies is a way to not only claim victory, but also to strengthen one’s position simultaneously. In contrast, a direct conflict requires resources and will inevitably weaken you.

So the important thing in a military operation is victory, not persistence.

• Victory must be achieved quickly and decisively. A long drawn out campaign will lead to defeat
• An alternative interpretation is that what matters is not effort, but outcome. It does not matter how hard you try, it only matters whether or not you succeed. I believe a common trap that many people fall victim to is that what matters most is hard work. Sadly, that isn’t true.

Hence, we know that the leader of the army is in charge of the lives of the people and the safety of the nation.

• This is a re-emphasis on a leader’s responsibility to not only achieve their target goal, but to also tend to the well being of their people. It can be also be interpreted as a re-echo of a common theme I see woven throughout the book: consideration for the wider society.