Professor Andrew Meyer

Of course, that's always a concern.

But then there are so many different balls in the air.

There are so many different moving parts.

If your army is intact, but you lose critical terrain that is necessary to the support of your army.

If you've got an army, but you can't supply them anymore.

If you walk into a situation where initially you have the advantage, but all of a sudden the advantage disappears because your enemy makes an advantageous alliance.

that outflanks you.

And there are all of these contingencies that are very, very difficult to keep track of.

So the situation becomes very fraught.

I think that's fair.

And sort of that's one of the reasons that The Art of War by Master Sun has had such, you know, durable influence.

Is that, yes, right?

In other words, a society, an era that's sort of accustomed to total war,

can find interesting things in The Art of War by Master Sun because it was written in that milieu.

It was written in a society that was, in effect, experiencing total war.

And that kind of political strategic formation becomes, in effect, the norm, not just for China, but really for much of East Asia for the next two millennia and a half.

That's one of the remarkable things.

And one of the reasons why I say that this really is a revolution with world...

transforming implications.

That's absolutely correct.