Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue

by Ryan Holiday

This is not a pretty image, relentlessly pursuing an adversary until he begins to stumble from exhaustion. But it must be this way. The enemy is weaker when plunged into what the statesman Demosthenes described as a “welter of confusion and folly.” A single attack allows resistance to be concentrated, but two or three or four put the enemy between the horns of a dilemma, choosing between equally subpar options. Or, blindly hoping to avoid one attack, he falls headfirst into the other without even knowing. Nero poisoned a suspicious, paranoid rival not by putting poison in his food, because each dish was tested by an attendant. Instead, he arranged for the man to be served a harmless but very hot bowl of soup. It was in the cold water, requested and poured in by the man himself, that deadly poison was delivered. Without this suppressive cover, the countermove is too obvious: when you know where the enemy is going, you go there and block them.