Analog Superpowers: A Conversation with Dr. Katherine Epstein

Welcome to “The Past, The Promise, the Presidency,” a podcast about the role of the presidency in American life. This week’s episode features Dr. Katherine Epstein, professor of history at Rutgers-Camden. Dr. Epstein will be with us here at SMU this coming Thursday, March 12, to talk about her new book, Analog Superpowers: How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National-Security State.Analog Superpowers won the 2025 Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Robert H. Ferrell (FERAL) Book Prize as well as the 2025 Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature.

Center for Presidential History Research Assistant, Kennedy Moore, was joined by Associate Director Brian Franklin for a conversation with Dr. Epstein.

Katherine Epstein is associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Camden and the author of Torpedo: Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States and Great Britain. 

Brian Franklin is the Associate Director of the SMU Center for Presidential History and an adjunct lecturer in the Clements Department of History and the University Honors Program. Dr. Franklin’s research focuses on the religious, political, and regional history of the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. His current manuscript America’s Missions explores the role of Protestant mission societies in shaping the early American republic. He teaches courses on Texas History and American History.

Kennedy Moore is a junior at SMU, double majoring in public policy and music with a minor in public policy and international affairs. Kennedy is a President's Scholar, Pre-law Scholar, and Meadows Scholar. At SMU, Kennedy is involved in Hegi Board Fellows, Meadows Chorale, the Tower Center's premier undergraduate research journal The Dialogue, and works at SMU's Center for Presidential History. Kennedy is interested in educational equity and national defense. She aspires to work for a federal agency to research and create policies to protect our education system and recenter citizens' voices in policy.