The whole premise seems to be that writing down your thoughts, asking questions, or being transparent in internal emails is somehow a huge self-own. But that’s just how people work—especially when you’re running a massive company and making fast, complex decisions. You write things down, explore ideas, get feedback. Acting like that’s a confession is lazy analysis.
The real problem here is that the author treats normal business strategy—like acquiring a rising competitor—as some kind of criminal mastermind move. Whether or not that should be legal is one debate. But pretending it’s shocking that a company would consider eliminating competitive risk? Come on. That’s what businesses do. If you want to critique the system, critique the system—not the fact that someone used it.
Also, the smug “ha ha, he wrote it down!” attitude is incredibly counterproductive. All it does is teach executives to stop documenting anything real. It punishes transparency and rewards corporate vagueness and CYA behavior. If that’s what we want more of, congrats—we’re on track.
The piece doesn’t offer any actual insight into how companies operate or how antitrust should evolve—it just ridicules someone for not being lawyerly enough in private. That’s not analysis, it’s court fan fiction.