The Reagan-Era Strategy That Could Reignite America’s Technological Power | Michael Sekora
American Thought Leaders
The Epoch Times
4.9 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
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Summary
As early as 1989, intelligence officers in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) recognized China as the next threat, says former DIA officer and physicist Michael Sekora.
“We identified what [China] was doing to become a superpower faster than any country in history, and we were on track to containment,” Sekora says.
Back in the 1980s, he led a classified Defense Intelligence Agency program called “Project Socrates” that was created under the Reagan administration to determine the cause of U.S. economic and military decline, find a way to reverse it, and outcompete Moscow. Later they turned their sights to Beijing.
“It was very obvious what was going on: China was executing a national technology strategy, which basically was playing ... a very adroit game of worldwide offensive, defensive, technology exploitation chess,” Sekora says. “What we had in Socrates could have easily contained China.”
The project was defunded by the Bush administration, and the United States went the opposite route, allowing many key technologies to be handed over to Beijing over the course of several decades.
In this episode, he breaks down why he believes the United States has lost its edge in technological innovation and how this can be turned around.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | China was executing a national technology strategy playing a very adroit game of worldwide |
| 0:06.2 | offensive defensive technology exploitation chess. And what are we doing? Putting our blinders on. |
| 0:13.2 | Michael Sikora is the director and founder of the Socrates project, a classified U.S. |
| 0:18.5 | Defense Intelligence Agency initiative under the Reagan administration. |
| 0:22.6 | In 1989, within the Socrates Project, we identified China as a threat. |
| 0:28.6 | We identified what they were doing to become a superpower faster than any country in history. |
| 0:33.6 | And we were on track to contain them. |
| 0:36.6 | So what happened to the Socrates project |
| 0:40.3 | and what could we learn from its approach to American innovation today? |
| 0:44.3 | We saw that the cause of the U.S. decline |
| 0:48.3 | was because we switched from technology-based to finance based plan. |
| 0:51.3 | If we're going to make America great, i.e. ensure America's |
| 0:56.1 | status as a super-profit generation, you've got to reinstate the Socrates Project. |
| 1:01.8 | This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Kellick. |
| 1:07.5 | Michael Socorah, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. |
| 1:12.3 | It's my pleasure and honor. So while you worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency, your job was to prevent the flow |
| 1:19.0 | of technology to the Soviet Union. Correct. |
| 1:21.7 | How is it that we seem to have had the opposite approach to communist China? |
| 1:29.3 | Well, because everybody thought that if we were nice enough to them and they gave all the |
| 1:33.9 | signals that they were going to become a democratic country, that if we just supported them, |
| 1:40.6 | that that's what happened. Nobody expected that they were a threat back then and would ever become a threat. |
| 1:47.9 | And so, I mean, literally, your job would have been mothballed, right? |
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