While I was in graduate school I took a course in Theory of Games, which is a mathematical discipline dealing with conflict situations. Given the matrix of possible actions by each of the two competitors, and the payoffs for each combination of actions, the theory will tell you what is the best strategy to play.
It occurred to me that if the two players had differing information about the payoffs, each could think he is winning, but both are actually losing. It took me several years to do anything with the idea, but eventually I wrote it into a story and sold it to ANALOG science fiction (spaceships, interstellar war, etc.).
As it happened, the story was published during the Vietnam war. A reviewer insisted that it was an anti-Vietnam story, mirroring the "no-win" war being fought there.
Now, who knows more about what the story was about -- the author or the reviewer?
In graduate school I once suggested that we use capitalism as part of critical literary analysis. It did not go over well.