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Pearls of Weber

A collection of posts by David Weber containing background information for his stories, collected and generously made available Joe Buckley.

Manpower's optimism in it's covert operations

In conjunction with the immediately previous question, some people have suggested that Manpower has demonstrated an unfailing ability to indulge in undue optimism and overly-complicated plots with a high potential to blow up in their faces. This observation is being made specifically in relation to Manpower's plans for Erewhon pre-Torch. It's also been suggested that Manpower appears to be allowing itself to be overly optimistic over the chances of its being able to retake Torch in the face of Erewhonese naval power, much less that of Manticore and Haven. Do you care to comment?

 

I will simply say that although we've been party, along with Honor and her friends, to Manpower/Mesa plots which have failed (or, at least, not succeeded entirely), the vast majority of their machinations have, in fact, succeeded quite admirably. It's significant that no one in the Star Kingdom or on Haven (or even in the Ballroom) really knows what Manpower has actually been up to for the last couple of centuries. They think they know, but they don't. Moreover, Manpower has been vastly more effective at penetrating both the Star Kingdom and the Republic than either of them has been at penetrating Manpower. In other words, I think it would be a serious mistake for anyone to assume that simply because Manpower's ploys have failed in cases where we've observed them to fail that Manpower is hopelessly inept or has failed to identify and analyze its potential enemies far more effectively than anyone else in the Solarian League's orbit has managed to do.