This applies broadly: In politics, in markets, in war, in private life, the folks who say less often see more.

Sun Tzu wrote that secrecy is essential to strategy. Shakespeare gave us Iago, a man who manipulated everyone while saying almost nothing of substance. And in Ecclesiastes, the writer warned that "even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise."

Silence - of late - is getting harder to maintain. Speech has been digitized and subsidized. To speak is to participate; to remain silent, increasingly, is to opt out. But that opt-out carries strategic asymmetry: In environments where noise is cheap, silence becomes power.

In ancient Athenian democracy, the act of public speaking was both rare and sacred. It required physical presence, rhetorical skill, even personal risk. To speak was to stake something. But with each layer of technological mediation, the costs of speaking have declined. Now we carry soapboxes in our pockets.

This cost-flattening has democratized speech, yes.

But it has also saturated the environment with noise.

On platforms where opinions are abundant and often performative, attention becomes the scarce resource. And in any scarcity regime, asymmetries arise.

A firm that issues press releases daily about its vision, its roadmap, its commitments may find itself overexposed. Analysts begin to discount the words. The more you say, the more you have to keep saying to maintain attention. Meanwhile, the firm that says little - and that, rarely - can create a mystique. Apple, famously, says next to nothing about unreleased products. This silence does not hurt them; it helps. Speculation fills the vacuum, and attention accumulates. It's like a static charge.

Silence builds optionality. Military commanders withhold positions until necessary. Poker players conceal tells. Negotiators keep their opening positions vague. The silence = leverage.

In the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was Kennedy’s backchannel communications, his restraint, and his silence in the face of Soviet posturing that allowed the deescalation. The ability to project calm while withholding intentions was more stabilizing than any public proclamation ever could have been.

Contrast that with contemporary politics: the expectation of constant communication undermines strategic flexibility. Leaders box themselves into positions they later must abandon or defend. The performative loop of digital discourse rewards hot takes over cool-headed strategy. Over any strategy at all.

Founders, investors, and public intellectuals face the same trade-offs. To speak early is to reveal priors before outcomes are known. To stay silent is to preserve freedom to act later.

AKA: Warren Buffett’s silence on tech investing throughout the 1990s looked like ignorance until it became patience.

The economist George Akerlof showed that in markets with information asymmetry, even small gaps in knowledge can destabilize prices. The classic example is the market for used cars, where buyers cannot distinguish between lemons and gems, and thus discount all cars.

The oversupply of takes / opinions erodes trust in any single one. Everyone’s selling something, but the buyer no longer knows who has signal and who has noise. In that kind of market, the person who withholds becomes more trustworthy, not less.

When everyone keeps talking (and talking, and talking), silence signals selectivity. It implies you have filters. It hints at a hierarchy of thought. People wonder what you’re not saying. A politician who pauses before answering seems more serious than one who rattles off a stump speech. A writer who publishes once a year is more anticipated than one who posts daily.

A word spoken after long silence carries more weight. The silence is part of the message. T.S. Eliot understood this. So did Wittgenstein. What can be said at all can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. He wasn’t advocating for muteness. He was mapping the boundary between meaning and its opposite.

In certain domains, silence acts like a forecast. A central bank that doesn’t comment on inflation expectations may, in fact, be more credible than one that issues constant updates. A VC who passes on a deal without comment sends a clearer message than one who drafts a diplomatic, waffling "no."

That deliberate silence can be a gift. A well-timed pause gives others space. In negotiations, it invites concession. In arguments, it cools escalation. In teaching, it invites reflection.

The Soviet mathematician Israel Gelfand was famous for his long silences. Students would ask him a question, and he would sit, motionless, for minutes. At first they thought he hadn’t heard. But then, eventually, he would speak, and the answer would have a precision and depth that astonished them.

The silence was thinking in action.

To remain silent when you want (more than anything) to speak is an act of restraint. It requires suppressing ego, desire for recognition, fear of being misunderstood. It demands presence.

This is partly why silence has become harder in a performative age. The social web is designed to reduce friction in expression. The write-publish loop is short, and the incentives to be early are strong. If you are silent, someone else will fill the void.

But not every silence needs to be filled. Not every opinion needs rebuttal. Not every provocation deserves engagement.

Speech is essential. Discourse matters. But in systems where expression is frictionless and noise is subsidized, silence is no longer mere absence. It is a positive act.

To choose silence is to choose scarcity. To withhold is to heighten the signal. To pause is to invite attention.

And perhaps more than anything else, to remain silent is to create a space that others cannot predict, manipulate, or fully understand.

In a world of constant speech, silence is asymmetry. Use it well.