No army would charge into battle without understanding the battlefront. It would be mass suicide. Yet, many of us do this daily with our work.

The prudent leader “dreads and reflects on everything that can happen to him but is bold when he is in the thick of action.” Xerxes listens patiently, but objects that “if you were to take account of everything . . . , you would never do anything. It is better to have a brave heart and endure one half of the terrors we dread than to [calculate] all

Heroics drain you. Offensives slow as supply lines lengthen. Retreats invite counterattack. Russia is big and its winters are cold. Dogs that catch cars never know what to do with them. Why, then, did Napoleon forget what most fools remember? Perhaps because common sense is indeed like oxygen: the higher you go, the thinner it gets. As each triumph

Both Napoleon and George W. Bush fell victim to the alignment problem. Their short-term military goals were misaligned with their countries’ long-term geopolitical goals. We can understand the whole of Clausewitz’s On War as a warning that “maximizing victory” is as shortsighted a goal as “maximizing user engagement.” According to the Clausewitzian