Follow-up to SURPRISE IS AN EVENT THAT OCCURS IN THE MIND OF AN ENEMY COMMANDER

A while back I had a post on the quote:

surprise is an event that occurs in the mind of an enemy commander

This week, Jerry Pournelle wrote in to tell me:

Message: The maxim that surprise is an event that occurs in the mind of an enemy commander comes from the chapter SURPRISE in The Strategy of Technology by Stefan Possony and Jerry Pournelle

JEP

Thanks for the update! The Strategy of Technology is a book co-authored by the late Stefan Possony, Francis X. Kane (uncredited at the time of publication) and Pournelle. Here is an except from the preface, available at the link above:

STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY was a textbook in the Service Academies for several years, and off and on has been a textbook in the Air and National Defense War Colleges. We have reason to believe that its arguments were useful in bringing about adoption of a high tech strategy for the US Armed Forces. That such a strategy was adopted is self evident from the victory in Iraq and the collapse of the Soviet empire. How much was due to this book can be debated, but we can at least claim that this book explains the principles of technological strategy.

If you are interested, head over to Jerry Pournelle's website for a read. You can get a PDF copy by becoming a subscriber on his site, and become a patron of the arts to boot!