Sarah Paine

Having only wisdom and talent is the lowest tier of usefulness.

So much for Silicon Valley.

For a warrior, there is nothing other than thinking of his master.

And so back in the day, it's thinking of your feudal lord.

In more recent times, it's prioritizing your company over family.

In China, it's the reverse priority.

It's family over company.

And it's different cultures, different priorities.

All right, there are strategic implications.

If this is your value system, this is what arises from it.

First of all, you're looking at damage limitation, damage control, not in terms of the physical cost of losing lives, having property blown up, but in terms of honor.

Also, there's a tendency to equate operational with strategic success.

Operational success is I win this battle here and now.

Strategic success is, okay, we're in a war for some reason.

What is the reason you're in the war?

Japan's reasons for being in China had to do with containing communist expansion and also stabilizing the place so that they could make money out of business.

So that's your strategic objective.

It's not your operational one, but the Japanese samurai are equating the two saying, if I take this hill, somehow it's automatically going to deliver the strategic objective.

And in fact, they won most of the battles in China, but they lost that war.

Also, there's this focus on what constitutes an honorable death.