The shift in American technology development strategy paved the way for the rise of China in this area, according to Michael Sekora, founding director of the Socrates Project in the Reagan White House.
“China has risen to a superpower faster than any country in the history of mankind. And it wasn’t that the U.S. conscientiously assisted. But … the United States shifted from technology-based planning to finance-based planning. And that shift is what opened the door for China to just accelerate tremendously,” Sekora told the “China in Focus” program on NTD News, The Epoch Times’ sister media.
“China realized that [and] took advantage of that, in order to lull America into a false sense of security. And basically, China had an open door in terms of technology exploitation in the United States and around the world,” he added.
He went on to draw the differences between the two types of planning.
“What the difference is, [that] in finance-based planning, the whole foundation of decision making, is optimizing the funds … maximizing profit,” Sekora said in an interview that aired on Sept. 17.
“And technology-based planning foundation is exploiting the technology more effectively than the competition in order to generate a true competitive advantage, which then dictates the funds, the manpower, the natural resource,” he explained.
Sekora further pointed out the disadvantage of finance-based planning,
“So .. we’re just optimizing the money, which actually decreases your competitive advantage. But if you measure it from a financial perspective, it looks like you’re increasing your competitive advantage.”
Meanwhile, those countries going with technology-based planning, including Russia and Japan, in his words, “were sitting there, adroitly maneuvering the technology.”
Project Socrates
He pointed to Project Socrates—a classified U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency program that he established in 1983 within the Reagan administration.According to Sekora, the project aimed at a two-tier mission.
The first one encompassed using all-source intelligence and other data to determine the true underlying cause of U.S. economic and military decline, which the intelligence officer attributed to the deployment of finance-based planning.
“The second part of our mission was to determine how to reverse the U.S. economic and military decline,” he said.
His team finally decided that the only way to get the country back on track was to “shift it back to technology-based planning.”
“So what we built in the Socrates program was the ability to exploit technology with unprecedented speed, efficiency, and agility. And then it goes to acquisition development and utilization. So sort of long-winded, but that was the Socrates project. And we’re pushing right now to get it reestablished in the country,” Sekora said.
“So we knew if we were going to totally rebuild the U.S. economic health and military mind that would ensure superpower status for generations, we needed to go far beyond what the Soviets were doing.”
The success of the project later served as one of the bargaining chips used with the Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, according to Sekora.
Pushing Back Threat From China
The only way to address China’s threat of acquisition of U.S. technology is by addressing their technology strategy, Sekora contended.Through that, America can identify “where they’re going to generate competitive advantage, how they’re going to generate the competitive edge of technology realization, maneuvers.”
It would help us to know the criticality of that acquisition, he said, and unveil exactly where the targets are, and roughly when they’re going to go after it.
“[Then] we can actually take the initiative to outmaneuver them in the technology very effectively adroitly,” Sekora said.
