John D. Archbold

Rockefeller would lose unlimited money before an enemy profited on one pint

From an old, out-of-print Rockefeller book: Rockefeller and his partner Archbold labeled every independent oilman "enemy" or "friendly." Against enemies, they would lose any amount of money to crush them. Sam compares it to the current AI war.

“And there's language that him and Archibald, his, um, uh, partner, they're talking and they're like, hey, is this person an enemy or a friendly? Like, that's how they would, they would use language like that. And they're like, oh, he's an enemy. Okay. It's important that we lose unlimited amounts of money before, before this person can profit off one more pint of oil. Where it was like, we will burn bridges to crush this person. And that's how they grew.”