To dispose of an enemy, make use of another enemy. Use a second party to deliver the blow yourself. Bide your time.
β The 36 Stratagems, "Kill wit...
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Another good read π
I like how the stories don't feel repetitive even though they're part of the same series. Curious to see what you do with the next stratagem.
Appreciate it π That's actually the hardest part of writing this series β each protagonist thinks differently, so the story has to feel different too. The next one's been a rewrite loop, but I think it's finally clicking. Hope it lives up to the wait π
Loved the storytelling! π The "borrowed knives" metaphor made the whole AI negotiation feel like a crossover between a startup pitch and an ancient strategy game.
My favorite part is how the story shows that in AI, the smartest move isn't always building the biggest modelβsometimes it's borrowing the right strengths at the right moment.
Also, Lena deserves an award for surviving what felt like an AI version of Game of Thrones... except with APIs instead of dragons.
Great readβlooking forward to the next stratagem!
Right? Fellow GoT fan here π (PS: last season doesn't count π«£ β I still haven't forgiven the showrunners for that one). When you brought it up, the theme song instantly started playing in my head π΅ Lena's definitely the "win by any means" type β clean, dirty, she doesn't discriminate. As for what's next... The stratagem is coming.
Haha, I completely agree. π The moment someone mentions GoT, that iconic theme starts playing in my head too.
And yes... I think Lena is exactly the kind of character who doesn't care whether the path is clean or messyβas long as it gets the job done. That unpredictability is what makes her interesting.
Now you've definitely made me curious about the next stratagem. Looking forward to seeing how the story unfolds!
About Lena β I was gonna pick up right where her last story ended, but I think seeing where she came from makes her hit harder. So I've been rewriting the next one. Once the first six solo pieces are out, I'll put together a little prelude to tie them all together. Stay tuned π
The detail that makes this more than a story: DeepCover passed the demo because the demo was the surface. Three happy paths, clean, a whitepaper glossier than the product. The operating layer a template engine with an LLM wrapper that canβt read a SWIFT code only showed up when real data hit it. $12,470 read as $743.60 isnβt a bug, itβs the surface and the system finally disagreeing in public. On your own question, manipulation or leadership I think you put your finger on the line yourself. Lena never changed the facts. She changed which layer people were looking at. Her four-page report was correct and it died, because a correct report is a receipt, and Vince could send a receipt back. The crash was an outcome, and you canβt send an outcome back. She didnβt win by lying. She won by moving the argument to the layer where the truth was already standing. Thatβs not manipulation. Thatβs refusing to argue on the surface someone else picked for you.
This is exactly the dynamic the series tries to get at β the difference between knowing the truth and being able to prove it in someone else's language. Lena could have told the board about the SWIFT parser forty times. Each time Vince would have had a reply ready, because he controlled the vocabulary of the conversation. What she needed wasn't a better argument. She needed the system to produce evidence in a language Vince couldn't talk his way out of: downtime. A crashed production environment is the one document that doesn't need a counter-signature.
"Refusing to argue on the surface someone else picked for you" β that's going in my notes.
βDoesnβt need a counter-signatureβ thatβs it exactly, and itβs a sharper way to say what I was circling. A report is an argument, and arguments live in whoever controls the roomβs vocabulary. A crash isnβt an argument. It doesnβt ask the CFO to agree with anything, it just happened, in front of everyone, at the same time.Thatβs maybe the real definition of an outcome versus a receipt: a receipt still needs someone to interpret it favorably. An outcome doesnβt ask permission. Lena didnβt out-argue Vince she just stopped competing on a field where he owned the ref.
You're right and I think that's exactly the borrowing at work. Lena didn't bring a weapon to the fight β she let the system hand her one. The crash wasn't caused by anything she did. It was always going to happen. She just had her receipt ready when it did. That's the borrowed knife: an outcome that was already on its way, arriving while she was standing there with the only document that still made sense.
The ref-owned-field line hits something deeper that I've been trying to name across all six of these. Every protagonist walks into a room where someone else wrote the rulebook β Mark, Derek, Lena, the next three. The interesting thing is they don't all take the same way out. Mark outplayed the rules. Derek let the rules collapse on themselves. Lena stepped off the board entirely. The series isn't about one winning strategy. It's about reading which game you're in, then deciding what "winning" even means from that seat.
Iβve read the first four in the series, and this is my favorite so far.π₯
Looking forward to the next ones!π
haha right? Lena's my favorite tooπ€£ β her depth is on a completely different level from the other protagonists. You'll see more of herπ
What strikes me is that Lena never lies. She just... rearranges what people see. Is that manipulation or leadership? Genuinely not sure where the line is.
Another banger, once I start reading these stories I can't stop, need to finish them!
Appreciate that man π That's the best compliment you can give a storyteller β when someone can't stop. Got a few more in the pipeline. π
Halfway through the first 6 β 6 protagonists, 6 solo stories, zero crossovers. 3 down, 3 to go. Keeping the keyboard smoking π₯