The Art of Attack

Chapter 8Attack Strategy

Before we get into the meat of attack strategy, I want to take a moment to round up the mindset. The Attacker Mindset is formed by cognitive skills applied to four laws. The mark of a good attacker is the ability to come into contact with information, weaponize the valuable information and disregard the rest, and then leverage it in an attack. Sometimes the information will come to you already weaponized; other times, you will have to mold and shape it into something to be leveraged. Notably, you do not need the skills to understand the laws. You do not need to know or care about the laws to have or use the skills. It is, however, the use of both in tandem that forms the mindset.

The skills you need are curiosity and persistence, which are interdependent, since one will not pay off without the other. The other skills are information processing, mental agility, and self-awareness. Mental agility is a fancy way of saying you must be able to adapt the information to the situation in which you find yourself. Applying your self-awareness as an attacker results in leaving someone feeling a certain way, which is most often accomplished by your demeanor, your choice of words, your body language, and your general way of being. All in all, it's knowing what you have and how to leverage it for the objective. It's knowing when to push and when to pull when evaluating your own strengths and deficiencies.

The laws that these skills are applied to are as follows: