“Thus the expert in battle moves the enemy, and is not moved by him.”
The master strategist is the cause of events, not the effect of them. By creating situations the other side must respond to, you keep the initiative and your own freedom of action. Reacting all day means someone else owns your time.
In Chapter 6’s catalogue of initiative, this is the cleanest statement: the expert in battle moves the enemy and is not moved by him. The surrounding verses give the mechanics — appear where he must hurry to defend, refuse battle where he wants it — but the principle is attention itself. Whoever reacts spends his forces answering the other side’s questions instead of posing his own.
A product team ships on its own quarterly rhythm; a rival ships "response" features weeks later, always one news cycle behind, always answering someone else’s roadmap. Nothing the reactive team releases is bad — but every release is positioned by the competitor’s last move, so the market perceives the follower as the follower, quarter after quarter. Being moved is a strategy, silently chosen.
Not being moved is not stubbornness. Sun Tzu elsewhere insists on adaptation as fluid as water — moving with the ground, not against it. The discipline is about who initiates engagements, not about ignoring new information. React to facts; never let a rival’s theatre schedule your army.