I was watching Carl Sagan’s explanation of how the Greeks knew that the earth was spherical and how Eratosthenes (then head librarian of Alexandria) calculated the circumference of the Earth without even leaving his home country. It’s a brilliant one worth watching:
Brilliant men in the past would have mastered astronomy, geometry, and mathematics and played the role of military strategists. The ability to make observations in nature and draw interpretations were essential to determine the approach on the battlefield.
Yet, today, with technologies supporting the interpretation of observations and supplying multitude of information to leaders, there’s less of a need for the ‘strategist’. Rather, the tasks of looking and interpreting the various information is decentralised and the information comes together already processed for decision-making.
In such a world, we use resources to displace thinking. Eratosthenes will have to pit his wits against the rocket ships, satellites and scientists with funds for expedition who will say that his calculation yields a figure which is ~2.5% off the mark.
The role of strategic thinking has diminished in importance in the societies which are highly developed and well-resourced. Every now and then, someone comes from seemingly nowhere and overcome an incumbent with all the position, and the resources. A David and Goliath story. In many ways, DeepSeek is an example of that; especially when put in contrast with Sam Altman’s response to a question from an audience at a talk where he said that any worthy competitor to OpenAI will have to invest massive resources and datasets to train another LLM to achieve the prowess of ChatGPT.
I think we need to go back to a culture that appreciates strategic thinking and this sort of brilliance. And believe once again that it isn’t just about resources and overwhelming others with abundance. For those who feels limited by their resources, let the ability to think strategically provide a channel and means to defeat the giants.