Fog of War

Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz introduced the fog metaphor for uncertainty in war in his posthumously published Vom Kriege (1832), translated as On War in 1873. He wrote that "war is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog." The exact phrase "fog of war" is a later paraphrase, with Sir Lonsdale Hale formally defining it in his 1896 book The Fog of War.