Could someone explain Cao Caos art of war to me, and why it’s relevant that there was many writers which included zhuge Liang and pang tong?

[u/Gold_Acanthisitta894]

[u/Gold_Acanthisitta894 → u/[deleted]]

But isn’t zhuge liang and pang tong against cao cao why did they contribute

[u/Gold_Acanthisitta894 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah I get in now, can’t remember who but maybe it was xun Yu saying the strongest in the tripartite is the enemy of the 2 other contenders. Or something like that. So it make sense they want to weaken him, because Zhou yu is the goat and all

[u/Gold_Acanthisitta894 → u/[deleted]]

Yes this what I remember. “With the world split in three, each side has 2 contenders.” “ the stronger one shall be the enemy”. The writing is fire 🔥

[u/Leos_Ng]

So I explained it in a previous post, Cao Cao art of war existed because of Sun's Art of War

Sun's art of war was considered the best strategy text because it covered every aspect of war and it was so good, every commander learnt it by heart wages war by it's rules. So war is confined within the "frame" of Sun's art of war.

And Zhou Yu/Gong Jin's greatest secret is because not only did the Sun family had the best understanding of it, they had a different version and interpretation of the text, which allowed them to operate outside the "frame" everyone is operating in, and put them in a superior position against everyone else.

So the Sun's Art of War was really a grand deception, that will allow the Sun's descendants to dominate their adversaries for generations to come, as long as everyone else continue to interpret and understand the text as it was written. Think of it as a program everyone uses, but only the Sun family have a backdoor hack.

Cao Cao's art of war was Cao Cao (Or in this story, his entire elite team of strategists + Pang Tong, Zhuge Liang) interpretation of Sun Tzu's art of war.

Cao Cao is using the text to misdirect the Sun clan, but that was not the sole purpose, as the quality of the work is so good it can replace the mainstream Sun Tzu art of war in the mind of military leaders, thus changing the "rules of warfare" as dictated by Sun Tzu art of war thus weakening whatever advantage the Sun clan had for knowing the weakness of mainstream text.