EXCLUSIVE: Race Heats Up for the Key Weapon of the Future

In this next part of our exclusive special series with Michael Sekora, founder and director of the Socrates Project within the Reagan White House, we tackle the question: What is the sole key weapon for the future, if there is one, and China's place in that race?

Sekora said: "If we really look at it, technology and pre-technology is a single continuum. It's all interconnected. But Americans silo it, when we work with somebody like Ford—and we've talked about cross-pollinating with certain technologies out in the aerospace industry. The response is, 'That's aerospace technology, we're not going to use that.' It's technology. But yet, when we've worked with and talked with some of the Asian companies in Japan and Taiwan, it's like, 'Oh, yeah, that makes sense. You know, technology is technology.' Technology is basically blind. So cross-pollinating with aerospace, and then bringing in something from the textile and the entertainment business and looking at those cross-pollinations to generate a competitive advantage, and then later, bringing another one to further increase it was fluid, dynamic, and it's how you operate."

And as an example of strategy, Sekora would play Scarlatti's Sonata in D minor for his class: "It's not picking winners and losers. It's not shopping lists. It's not an R&D footrace. Listen to the music—and the piece I always play is very, very dynamic. The horns come in, and all of a sudden, here comes the flutes around the corner. And it's all this interplay. And every time you think it's quieting down, all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose from the sides or another section. I said, 'This is strategy. It is dynamic. There's the interaction. It's the interplay, it's all coherent.' I said, 'This is strategy.'"

"This is China's technology strategy," he added.