In this special bonus episode of The New Diplomatist, Garrison interviews Michael Sekora regarding American competitive edge in both the Cold War and the modern era, and his role in directing the Reagan administration's Project Socrates.  Mr. Sekora was the Founding Director of the project: The Socrates Project was initiated to address America's declining economic and military competitiveness. Socrates had a two-fold mission. Utilize all-source intelligence to determine the true underlying cause of U.S. decline, and develop the required solution. Socrates was fully successful in both aspects of its mission. Socrates determined that the underlying cause of the decline was the U.S. shift from technology-based to finance-based planning that began at the end of World War II. To rebuild U.S. competitiveness the country needed to re-adopt technology-based planning. To rebuild U.S. competitiveness that would endure for generations, Socrates developed the means to enable the U.S. to generate and lead the next evolutionary leap of technology-based planning -- the Automated Innovation Revolution. (The most recent previous evolutionary leaps being the scientific revolution, and the industrial revolution). In Automated Innovation the process for developing, acquiring and utilizing technology is executed with unprecedented speed, efficiency and agility. To prove the viability and impact of the Socrates Automated Innovation System, it provided support to various high priority White House initiatives to include: Star Wars, stealth and the dismemberment of the Soviet Union. As a result, President Reagan had an Executive Order drafted establishing a new federal agency with the mandate of deploying the Socrates System as a national asset for use by all U.S. private and public organizations. Before the Executive Order could be pre-coordinated for official coordination and signature, President Reagan's term came to an and. Upon taking office, President Bush defunded Socrates for political reasons. Mr. Sekora is President of Quadrigy systems, and a former member of the intelligence community in various capacities.  He holds a B.S. in Physics from the University of Michigan and a M.S. in Physics from Miami University. Garrison Moratto is the host of The New Diplomatist Podcast; he graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.Sc. in Government: Public Administration from Liberty University, where he is studying for a M.Sc. in International Affairs.   All guest opinions are their own and not that of The New Diplomatist podcast formally.  Please subscribe and leave a review for feedback.  Thank you for listening.