I think a key point of the article is that The Art of War is actually way more literal and immediate than most people think it is. So if Sun Tzu wasn't talking in strategic generalities, but actually giving practical advice for the realities of his time (social, technological, etc) it's mistaken to "untether" it from its milieu, and also mistaken to consider it as a template for modern-day advice.
Like "print" really means to make hardcopy output on paper, and not some generalities about output that can go anywhere. We shouldn't cacsually untether that from the original context and use it in a terminal emulator, let alone for generating part of a web page.
People tend to consider philosophy/strategy in way more generalizable terms than tech words like "print". But what if Sun Tzu wasn't really all that generalizable?
What if he was literally telling you how to put an arrow through the eye of the enemy general? How do you write a self-help book "based on The Art of War" out of that? (You can still derive general meaning that wasn't put there by Sun Tzu, but it's a lot harder!)
