Someone somewhere once said that business is war without bullets, and I tend to agree.

This is something I heard while listening to the Shoe Dog audiobook, Phil Knight’s biography.

This is an interesting saying, but why? Why is business war without bullets? Is this true? If it is true, what is the reason? This kept looping in my mind until I came to a good conclusion, or at least I think it is a good conclusion.

Here is my thought on this. When you read the history of mankind, at least the part that we have access to, the major points in history are almost always wars. Big empires, big wars. The Greeks, the Iranian (Persian) empire, and the Romans were all at war with each other. For what? To gain access to more resources, which made them more powerful.

You know, if you were living in ancient times and you were ambitious and wanted to become powerful and wealthy, you did not have many options other than joining the army and going to war. The better you fought, the more gold coins you could get from the places you conquered. And if you were really good, you could be promoted to commander, or better yet, become a king. Then you could have it all and live like a god.

This was the name of the game for thousands of years. War was a reality and a part of life. It was accepted. Back in those days, you could see hundreds of wars happening during your lifetime. This is what I would like to call the war rate. The war rate was really high. You could be born into a war, and when you died, the war could still be going on. Why? Because war was business. This was one of the only ways to acquire more resources. There was not much else to do.

But as time passed, the war rate came down. Wars happened less and less, and they took less time when they did happen. In our modern history, major wars have lasted shorter and shorter periods of time. For example, World War II, which is a relatively recent war, lasted about six years. Compare that to the wars between the Roman Empire and the Iranian Empire, which lasted for more than 600 years.

When you look at this real historical data, you realize that we as humans have slowly come to understand that maybe going to war is not the best way to acquire resources and that there are other, more civilized ways of doing it.

This is a point in history when we learned that a more fair way of acquiring those gold coins could be through exchanging goods and services. Meaning, if you have ambition, instead of becoming a general in an army, killing and robbing other people, and taking their money by force, you could sell them things and get their money in return. And this concept is relatively new for making big money.

When you read ancient history, there are names you hear over and over again as symbols of power and wealth: Cyrus the Great, Alexander the Great, Shapur I, and Constantine the Great. These were all conquerors. They conquered to acquire more resources and become more powerful.

And if you read more recent history, again, you will see the names of war heroes, kings, and generals that stand out much more than others. Names like Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, and so on. Again, the common ground, whether they were good or bad depending on who writes the history, is that they were also conquerors in search of more resources and more power. For example, Winston Churchill fought wars far from his home in Britain, in places like India against Indians and in South Africa against the Dutch Boers, who had arrived there before the British to acquire resources.

But as I am writing this in 2026, the most powerful names are no longer war heroes. They are people who are actually doing good things to acquire more resources. Names like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Bill Gates. These are among the wealthiest and most powerful men of our time, but they acquired their wealth and power by making other people’s lives better, by building things and making the world a better place. These are the kings of our time, and their salespeople are the generals and commanders.

Do you see how far we have come? We have gone from a time of conquerors who acquired resources by force to a time when it is more normal to acquire resources by making other people’s lives better. I like this world a lot better.

This is not to say that we do not currently have wars going on. We do have wars going on, but the rate is coming down because, unlike in the old days, this is no longer the default way of acquiring resources and becoming powerful.

So, yes, business is war without bullets, and I like this war a lot better than what we had in the past.