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To act violently to draw out an opponent’s efforts while manoeuvring under cover to destabilize their centre of gravity and resolve the action with minimal confrontation. Making it so an opponent feels intellectually and morally defeated before they are materially defeated. This means conceiving action based on a few basic parameters: what our adversary expects us to do, what we want to achieve, how we make them believe they are in the right, and how we resolve the dilemma of the use of force. It is a constant exercise in Go, the popular and ancient Chinese game cited by Confucius more than 2,500 years ago.
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Francisco Gan Pampols on Sun Tzu's recurring idea of "occultation" or the simultaneous undergoing of several actions to disguise one's true purpose in war
In 'The Art of War', Sun Tzu (with commentary by the Lieutenant General Francisco Gan Pampols) (2025).
Translation is ChatGPT’s & mine.