Strategy of Technology The Strategy of Technology doctrine involves a country using its advantage in technology to create and deploy weapons of sufficient power and numbers so as to overawe or beggar its opponents , forcing them to spend their limited resources on developing hi - tech countermeasures and straining their economy . In 1983 , The US Defense Intelligence Agency established a classified program , Project Socrates , to develop a national technology strategy policy . This program was designed to maintain the US military strength relative to the Soviet Union , while also maintaining the economic and military strength required to keep the US as a superpower . The Strategy of Technology is described in the eponymous book written by Stefan T . Possony , Jerry Pournelle and Francis X . Kane ( Col . , USAF , and ret . ) in 1970 . This was required reading in the U . S . service academies , the Air War College , and the National War College during the latter half of the Cold War . Cold War . The classic example of the successful deployment of this strategy was the nuclear build - up between the U . S . and U . S . S . R . during the Cold War . Some observers believe that the Vietnam War was a necessary attritive component to this war — Soviet industrial capacity was diverted to conventional arms in North Vietnam , rather than development of new weapons and nuclear weapons — but evidence would need to be found that the then - current administration of the US saw it thus . Current consensus and evidence holds that it was but a failed defensive move in the Cold War , in the context of the Domino Doctrine . The coup - de - grace is variously opined to be Stealth technology especially as embodied in the cruise missile , which would have required an unattainable number of installations to secure the Soviet border ; the Gulf War , which proved stealth and easily overcame Soviet - doctrine Iraqi forces ; or Ronald Reagan ' s Strategic Defense Initiative , a clear attempt to obsolesce the Soviet nuclear arsenal , creating an immense expense for the Soviets to maintain parity . Opposing views and controversies . It is argued that the strategy was not a great success in the Cold War ; that the Soviet Union did little to try to keep up with the SDI system , and that the War in Afghanistan caused a far greater drain on Soviet resources . However , the Soviets spent a colossal amount of money on their " Buran " space shuttle in an attempt to compete with a perceived military threat from the American Space Shuttle program , which was to be used in the SDI . There is a further consideration . It is not seriously in doubt that despite the excellent education and training of Soviet technologists and scientists , it was the nations of Europe and North America , in particular the United States , which made most of the running in technical development . The Soviet Union did have some extraordinary technical breakthroughs of their own . For example : the 15 % efficiency advantage of Soviet rocket engines which used exhaust gases to power the fuel pumps , or of the Squall supersonic cavitation torpedo . It was also able to use both its superlative espionage arm and the inherent ability of central planning to concentrate resources to great effect . But the United States found a way to use its opponent ' s strengths for its own purposes . In the late 1990s , it emerged that many stolen technological secrets were funnelled by an arm of American intelligence to the Soviet Union . The documents were real . They were of versions of the product which contained a critical but not obvious flaw . Such was the complexity and depth of the stolen secrets that to check them , would have required an effort almost as great as developing a similar product from scratch . Such an effort was possible in nations of the West because the cost could be defrayed by commercial sales . In Soviet states this was not an option . This sort of technological jiu - jitsu may set the pattern of future engagements .