I think war may be more similar to business than you think it is. And it may not be very much like the war you imagine in your head.
You think there is singularity of purpose in war? Every general, every battalion, every captain, every soldier has their own interests at play. It's a miracle of leadership that those can be put aside long enough to fight side by side.
Crushing the competition sounds like the right move in war. But then why have so many armies failed to subdue and control the local populace? Could it be that treating the conquered with respect, as partners, as humans, might be more effective than sheer domination?
And how sustainable is war? It depends. In WW1, soldiers at the front lines for more than a few days often suffered shell shock from the severe tension, nonstop terror, and unbelievable pounding that must have felt like it came from the bowels of the Earth. In other wars, there is no traditional front line, and soldiers are deployed for months or years. And they're not in 100% fight mode the entire time either.
War and business are not the same. But they may be closer than you think.
I would say that you are conflating two things: war done to destroy the enemy, and then taking political power of another nation by force, and ensuring safety and continuance of government. Soldiers do the first job, and police do the second. In the Global War on Terror, the line has gotten blurry, (even Vietnam was called a "police action") but even the lowest intensity conflict has life and death sacrifices for the mission and the imposition of political will over a populace through threat of violence that are completely unknown in a modern tech business. You could make the argument that lawsuits would be the equivalent to direct action, and I might agree with that, except there is no violence and it's done entirely within a set of rules (the legal system).
I would agree that businesses and militaries do share similarities, and solve for the same problems. For instance, employee surveys came out of troop morale studies in WWI, and there is a lot of cross contamination of ideas, like the book, "Team of Teams".
Finally, there are cases where businesses actual do go to war, think Blackwater, circa 2006, where the services provided directly support one side in an armed conflict. To me, that's what a business going to war looks like!
I don't really think he is conflating the two. OP make references to different types of conflicts. "Handling" occupied territories is something that can be a struggle both in standard all out nation state wars and in cases where you are fighting against gurellia warriors.
You think there is singularity of purpose in war? Every general, every battalion, every captain, every soldier has their own interests at play. It's a miracle of leadership that those can be put aside long enough to fight side by side.
Crushing the competition sounds like the right move in war. But then why have so many armies failed to subdue and control the local populace? Could it be that treating the conquered with respect, as partners, as humans, might be more effective than sheer domination?
And how sustainable is war? It depends. In WW1, soldiers at the front lines for more than a few days often suffered shell shock from the severe tension, nonstop terror, and unbelievable pounding that must have felt like it came from the bowels of the Earth. In other wars, there is no traditional front line, and soldiers are deployed for months or years. And they're not in 100% fight mode the entire time either.
War and business are not the same. But they may be closer than you think.