2021.12.22 - 19:40 Status: #bookpage Tags:

OV of the book

(Note: many topics here are surrounded in [[square brackets]] as I had formatted these notes in Obsidian, they are all links to other notes I have.

The online news outlet Gawker picks an unfortunate foe by making public knowledge of Paypal co-founder [[Peter Thiel]]’s being gay. Thiel simmers on this for four YEARS and decides to put a plan into action thanks to one “[[Mr. A]]”.
From here they pick out a lawyer [[Charles Harder]] who starts a law firm dedicated to picking apart Gawker’s history and finding a case that will seal the coffin. A sex tape (unknowingly recorded) of Hulk Hogan is brought forth as the head spear and after years of going back and forth in court, Hogan eventually wins, Gawker goes down.

Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday

The book is told in three parts, the three phases that Machiavelli said a conspiracy will go through: the planning, the doing and the aftermath. p.9

[[Take stock of your situation before committing to action]]

[[Know Thy Enemy]] - “Never fight a battle against someone who buys ink by the barrell.” p.22

Acquire allies to achieve a unified mission

Lawrence Freedman claims, “combining with others often constitutes the most strategic move.” p.51
“In the search for collaborators, hunger is an essential qualification.” p.63
- I enjoyed the sentence “While it’s dangerous to conspire with people who have a lot to lose, you can’t conspire with someone who’s afraid to take a bet on themselves, who isn’t willing to take a big stake on something that very well could fail. Where those two traits overlap there is often a sweet spot: he who has something to prove and something to protect, the strong sense of self-belief coupled with that killer instinct.” but can’t make sense of it now. p.63
[[Hyperlinking]]; this is an interesting example of it. TMZ releases a story about the possibility of a Hulk Hogan sex tape, and because TMZ knows what Gawker readers are looking for, they link Gawker to the story. p.98
- If Gawker releases a story about it, they get views; those views find the link to the original TMZ story, TMZ gets views.
- The same benefit that I look for with linking ideas together, cell activation, is what they achieved as well; except for a shit, shit cause.
- This is allying, no?

Setting up effective organizations

Thiel operated on the [[Plenipotentiary Model]], entrusting competent, trusted people that would fulfill the vision that he dreamed up. p.63

Patience in operations

Fortune certainly favors the brave, but succeeding in your strategy owes as much to visible/explicit forces as it does patience and due diligence. p.65
- This is big; It took four years to think of what actually would be possible in a fight with Gawker. Four years. p.65
- Reminds me of Mycelium, construction sites, where the foundation is laid over long amounts of time, for the last 20% of building to contain 80% of the “visible” accomplishment.

Hidden plans

Mr. A presents offer to Charles Harder of working with his investors p.60
- By having multiple people it would be more difficult to speak to “them” rather than one person (keeping Thiel in the shadows)
- This also gave Mr. A wiggle room if things weren’t going as planned; if he needed time to think on something, “let me talk with the investors”, money is slow, “coordination issues”. He could use the “group” as weight behind his ideas, multiple voices for multiple opinions. This is a crazy handy tool. p.61
- [[Concept handle]] for this?^^ This is really cool.
- Never disclose fully your plans
Those with hidden hands must scorn the obvious. p.67
The straight ahead, Clausewitz bloodbath, brute force attacks ignore the subtlety of exploiting your opponent’s fatal flaw. p.68
p.151 “Hidden like a poison dagger.”
p.169 Nero poisoned a man by going against the obvious; An attendant would test all the food to make sure it wasn’t poisoned, but Nero served an especially hot bowl of soup to his enemy. The enemy would ask for cold water to cool it down, the water being poisoned.

Overwhelming an opponent

p.166 at this point, the conspiracy has a few different attacks going on at the same time; I get the impression that in the sense-making phase there were many opportunities that were discovered, but possibly none that would take down Gawker by itself.
- Once they had found their death sentence (which would’ve taken care of them by itself), they started using the other avenues to distract and weaken so that the death sentence could take hold and successfully take down.
- Kinda like “removing the defender”
p.169 Demosthenes states that a man is severely weakened when going through a “welter of confusion and folly.” Reminds me of school.

Unsorted

Introduction

“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”
- Peter Thiel, p.3
Machiavelli suggests that some situations leave only a single option: Intrigue. To strategize, synchronize, and sustain energy in order to remove someone from their position, to quietly move against a foe, to do what Machiavelli said is the hardest thing in the world to do: To replace current order with something new. “To engage in a conspiracy to change the world.” p.5 ### The Planning
Only a state can afford to go to war with another state, but a conspiracy is available to everyone. Machiavelli says it’s the tool of the people. p.41
Thiel states that Gawker made itself a bigger enemy by pretending to bigger than it actually was. p.44
- Reminds me of Alinsky’s “Perceived threat is more powerful than…”
- Makes sense though, when the action happens there’s no mystery. Things are as big as they are; there’s no two ways the ambiguity could go. Teasing.
Mr. A and Harder have a dance of seduction going on, Mr. A doesn’t want to seem like Mr. Money Bags to be bled dry. On the other hand, Harder works perfectly well just doing his job; compartmentalized. p.61
- Compartmentalization reminds me of what Doc had to say about the two type of people in a workplace; 1. people who want to run things and 2. people who are content doing their jobs.
  - The people who want to run things are fine with the “content with job” types, they’re effectively not in their way of getting to the top.
According to Thiel, a startup is “a small group of people you’ve convinced of a truth that no one else believes in.” p.64
- Point Break, Bodhi’s crew
Maintaining morality doesn’t necessarily help you win a battle, but it does help in keeping the peace. p.70
I like this explanation of Harder’s involvement; the group believes that there is some legal means to defeating Gawker, and Harder’s job is [[Testing (GPP)]] that belief. p.70
- Harder has his lab and is going through the ideations Thiel and Mr. A have come up with [[Working within Constraints]]
- He’s hired as a thrid party to confirm that the group’s inclinations have weight in reality. [[Working within Reality]]
Paraphrasing Machiavelli, the prince who wants to change the world would have to, for the moment, suppress the natural inclination to be kind, forgiving, and empathetic. p. 81
Interesting telling of Sherman having to take out the city of Atlanta, and a quote from The Count of Monte Cristo, “What a fool I was to not tear my heart out on the way when I resolved to avenge myself!” p.89
Real cool quote, “choose your enemies wisely, as you’ll become just like them” p.90

The Doing

p.132 Deposition acting as a “fact gathering” stage
- This is part of the process of sense-making
p.133 I like the idea of letting the op win a couple battles to get their confidence up and their guards down (getting shut down a few times in the Federal cases)
- I think there was a chess player who did this, maybe a psychologist?
p.144 “Everyone is a person who settles unless they show you over time that they are not someone who is going to settle.”
p.157 There’s a strategic concept of playing along with the enemy’s plans (while you know what it is they’re doing); effectively lulling them into sleep by having them think that “I can set it and forget it; another textbook case” and when they finally let their guard down, you strike. They played into this by making official statements of financial hardship, etc.
- There’s an element of losing respect, taking their eyes off you.
- WWII and the Enigma
- Con artists who played the part of “bumpkins” who sold land for oil
p.169 Freedman says, “Combining with others often constitutes the most strategic move”… and continues… “for the same reason, preventing others from doing the same can be just as valuable.”
- Reminds me of [[Destruction and Creation]]. Making groups can be good for an aligning goal.
  - If you want to prevent your opponent from making a group, add solvents to their system; deceit. Add points of info that make it impossible to make a cohesive group, and then they can’t form one.
    - Disinformation (removal, of a formation)
    - “They’re unable to connect the dots”
p.175 Confusem est, quidquid usque in pulverem sectum est – break anything into small pieces and it becomes a mass of confusion.
p.178 Links are popping up all over the place; Just as the plans of a conspiracy need to be guarded, the links that hold it together need to be secret as well. Note: Thiel isn’t revealed by choice.
p.180 “Creeds, like streams, gather strength as they narrow, thriving on bigotry.” -William Manchester
p.198 Churchill had an analogy of an offensive front; A bucket of water is thrown across a floor, “It rushes forward, then soaks forward, and it finally stops altogether until a new bucket can be brought.”
- The cycles/rhythm of war
p.206 Napoleon on the general nature of war; War is when two forces charge at each other and upon clashing are thrown into disarray and confusion. The side that wins is the one who can reorganize (link!) first and fight again (reiteration).
p.221 “The terrible thing about people like you is that decent people have to become so much like you in order to stop you – in order to survive.” -Sweet Smell of Success

The Aftermath

p.238 Fredrick the Great said the great sin of a leader is not being defeated, but being surprised.
p.245 Tagging onto the above quote; Denton seems to be continually surprised in the legal proceedings. He also never seems to fully grasp the true consequences of the trial.
- There’s a bit of me in this statement; my unwillingness to fully look at the danger present.
p.248 “Caution had relaxed to confidence, which turned to carelessness.”
- Reminds me of the “becoming comfortable with the camel” parable.
- Habituation = “Fearing a situation less as it becomes more familiar, or habit-like.”
p.250 Machiavelli on overconfidence and going too far, “it causes them to go beyond their marks” (This is totally me when I don’t have a goal post when studying) “…to lose the opportunity of possessing a certain good by hoping to attain a better one that is uncertain.”
- Holiday clarifies, “perfect is the enemy of good (or good enough.)”
p.254 The Berlin Wall comes down and suddenly the Cold War’s efforts seem silly; Nukes dropped on Japan give a silence that asks, “why were we fighting?” This reminds me of Tim Ferriss’ idea of taking care of projects that make the other objects on your list obsolete.
p.255 MN; If anything, needing to be backed by a billionaire to have your case won raises the question of how expensive justice is.
p.276 MN; Thiel notes the response of the jurors in Florida and their disgust with the “elite”, wanting to vote for the underdog. This is [[Disruption]], Not voting for “the best”. Seeing this undercurrent gives him the idea and confidence to look further into Trump
- Harder also had the humility to accept taking the back stage
p.278 At the RNC for Trump Thiel shares the stage with personalities that very much embody the characteristics he wanted to remove from public culture. He became the enemy he fought against.
p.281 RH “The weapons invented at the end of the previous war become the dominant killers in the next.”
p.282 Sophocles “He who traffics with a tyrant becomes a slave, though he comes to him as a free man.”
p.290 Thiel “To believe in conspiracies is an effective truth. To not believe in them is the same.”
- “As a man thinketh, so he is”?
p.291 Robert Caro advises writers to not only spend time with those who wield the sword, but also those who faced it.