Hadrian Automation’s CEO wants to defy history and revitalize American industry

Chris Power, founder and CEO of industrial automation startup Hadrian, is a student of history. And in his studies, he observed that history repeats itself: in particular, the cycle of empires ascending and descending, nearly all of them outsourcing core industries to lower-cost countries and paying for it in internal stagnation and, eventually, decline. "Never before in history has a declining empire beaten a rising empire, ever," he said in a recent interview. He foresaw the same cycle threatening to repeat itself in the present. So it was that in 2019, with $6,000 dollars in his pocket and a single…