The Three Faces of Sun Tzu

Book excerpt: "Sun Tzu's Art of War is widely regarded as the most influential military & strategic classic of all time. Through "reverse engineering" of the text structured around 14 Sun Tzu "themes," this rigorous analysis furnishes a thorough picture of what the text actually says, drawing on Chinese-language analyses, historical, philological, & archaeological sources, traditional commentaries, computational ideas, and strategic & logistics perspectives. Building on this anchoring, the book provides a unique roadmap of Sun Tzu's military and intelligence insights and their applications to strategic competitions in many times and places worldwide, from Warring States China to contemporary US/China strategic competition and other 21st century competitions involving cyber warfare, computing, other hi-tech conflict, espionage, and more. Simultaneously, the analysis offers a window into Sun Tzu's limitations and blind spots relevant to managing 21st century strategic competitions with Sun-Tzu-inspired adversaries or rivals"--