[topkai22]

From the title, I thought this article was going to be about how Hannibal won an incredible number of victories in the Second Punic War, but Carthage still lost the war and had to take devasting terms of surrender.

It's about how Rome was defeated at Cannae due their overconfidence and inability to adapt, but doesn't examine how Rome ended up winning in the end. It is interesting how dependent on framing case studies are.

[hodgesrm]

It's also worth noting that some of the Roman commanders were simply bad, and Hannibal himself was not without flaws.

The best example of the former is Gaius Flaminius, who was defeated by Hannibal at Lake Trasimene. [0] Livy memorably describes Flaminius as "not sufficiently fearful of the authority of senate and laws, and even of the gods themselves." Hannibal took advantage of his rashness to lure Flaminius into an ambush in which he and his entire army were annihilated.

Furthermore you could argue--and may still do--that Hannibal didn't even completely win Cannae, because he failed to attack Rome after his victory. His commander of cavalry remarked at the time, "You, Hannibal, know how to gain a victory; you do not know how to use it." [1] I'm personally inclined to think Maharbal was correct, but that's the advantage of hindsight.

These accounts are both based on Livy, who didn't let facts to get in the way of a good story.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Trasimene

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae#Aftermath

[acjohnson55]

Coincidentally, the excellent podcast, Tides of History, is currently doing a miniseries on the Punic Wars, and just covered why Cannae didn't end the war.

https://wondery.com/shows/tides-of-history/season/5/?epPage=...

[whakim]

The Romans were actually quite smart after Cannae; they had lost a bunch of pitched battles, so they decided to shadow Hannibal's army to make his foraging logistics much more complicated (and forcing him to stay close to Southern Italy where he could easily resupply). The logistics of attacking Rome were therefore challenging at best, and the Romans used this as a delaying tactic to score wins on other fronts (since they enjoyed an overall manpower advantage).

[BeFlatXIII]

One of my favorite anecdotes my history teacher shared was of Hannibal marching to the undefended Rome, throwing a spear at the gates, and walking away under the logic that if Rome could just throw away that many soldiers at Cannae, just how many more did they leave back home to defend the city?

[csunbird]

They had two dedicated legions garrisoned in Rome, who did not participate in Cannae, from what I read (not sure)

[ithkuil]

Also, Rome defeated Carthage when Hannibal was no longer a player

[ithkuil]

perhaps "defeated" is a confusing word. Both romans and carthaginian armies suffered defeats multiple times. But there wouldn't have been a third punic war if carthage had been thoroughly defeated in the second as it was in the third.

[dijksterhuis]

hehe, and here i was thinking it was gonna be some scottish variant of the scunthorpe problem.

(cannae = cannot)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary_of_Scottish...

[zahlman]

>but doesn't examine how Rome ended up winning in the end

There's quite a bit about Fabius' tactics in TFA, actually.

[belmont_sup]

Unless the writing changed after you post this, but the writer certainly explains how Rome won after Fabius’s new strategy of attrition and “cowardly” tactics.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"Blockbuster vs. Netflix: Blockbuster's leadership couldn't break free from their retail store mental model."

Silicon Valley cannot break free from its surveillance, data collection and online advertising mental model of the internet.

"It's that their past successes created the conditions for these mistakes. Their expertise became their vulnerability. Their conventional wisdom became the instrument of their downfall."

Ad services have been highly profitable in the absence of meaningful competition or regulation. But how long will those conditions last. Silicon Valley's "conventional wisdom" comprises "products" and "services" priced at zero dollars, "normalised" anti-competitive conduct, relentless data collection and surveillance and finally, the sale of online advertising services as a "business model".

"Disruptors and innovators intuitively understand the Cannae Problem. They specifically look for gaps between established organizations' mental models and reality. These gaps represent enormous opportunities."

The established "tech" organisations' mental models are so weak they were never able to find a business model. They had to resort to internet intermediation for the purpose of surveillance and advertising services.

[makingstuffs]

I thought it was to do with the Scottish pronunciation of ‘cannot’ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[AStonesThrow]

Yeah, this is what Chief Engineer Scotty said every time Captain Kirk asked for the impossible: "I cannae give ye' any more, sir!" So I just thought we were going to max out the laws of physics again.

[jkmcf]

Rome only recovered because Hannibal didn't march on Rome.

[cwmma]

Rome recovered because if its literally unmatched in the ancient world ability to recruit armies and put orders of magnitude more men in the field as a portion of their population.

Hannibal never marched on Rome because he knew he could never take it. Doing a siege in the area most loyal to Rome would have been suicidal for his force.

[csunbird]

Hannibal was basically in a hostile land, without proper logistics support. There was no way that he can stay still and lay siege, only way he was able to survive so far was his ability to stay mobile and live off the land.

In case of siege, the Romans would not need to fight, they could simply wait until his army slowly died from attrition.

[z3phyr]

Hannibal determined that Rome received strength through the Socii, the allied city states of Rome. He wanted to isolate Rome and bring terms.

However, he 1) Failed to turn most of the socii to his side. 2) Ignored the western roman allies who were slowly eating away at Iberia.

[vondur]

I thought that was due to him not having the equipment needed to carry out a successful siege. His strategy was to defeat the Roman Army in the field and then peel away their allies in the peninsula.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"It is interesting how dependent on framing case studies are."

She fails to consider specifically that so-called "tech" companies also operate via "orthodoxy". There are enormous "gaps" in their "mental models and reality". As such, there are similarly-sized opportunities for "disruption" and "innovation". But as we have seen through documentary evidence, sworn testimony, and Hail Mary tactics like deliberately destroying evidence and giving false testimony in federal court, these companies rely on anti-competitive conduct. This is not merely an "inability to adapt", it is an inability to compete on the merits. One could argue the ability to effortlessly raise capital coupled with the large cash reserves of these companies results in a certain "overconfidence".

This is of course not the frame she chooses to adopt.