Apple filed a lawsuit against HTC, the maker of Google's Nexus One Android Phone. This in an interesting example of what Sun Tzu calls a "fire attack," but which we describe more generically in the Warrior's Rule Book as an attack based on an environmental vulnerability ([node:content/strategic-principle-day-90-most-dangerous-attacks-established-positions-are-environment-atta link]).

The introduction of Google's new phone, the Nexus One, sets up a classical positioning problem (4.6.6 Sensitive Positions). Google's existing position as a software supplier to phone makers is endangered by their advance to a position competing with those same phone makers. In an earlier news item, we discussed how well positioned Google's Android operating system was to become the Windows of portable computing.

The recent financial crisis in Dubai is a perfect illustration of the illusion of control and how it generates the illusion of power. Sun Tzu wrote his book to dispel the notion that success arose from the amount of resources we control. Sun Tzu's strategy is about adapting to reality, not pretending we control it.