The White House has rewritten its federal critical technologies list, cutting several commercial fields while adding new national security priorities for federal agencies.
The Office of Science and Technology Policy published the renewed National Security Science & Technology Strategy on Monday. Appendix A cuts the Critical and Emerging Technologies list from 18 categories to 14, marking its first rewrite since 2024.
Federal agencies use the list when setting research budgets, writing export controls, reviewing foreign investment and protecting strategically important technologies. It also helps officials decide which fields require greater government support.
The federal government has formally maintained a government wide strategy for critical and emerging technologies since 2020, when the first Trump administration created the framework to identify technologies considered important to US economic and national security. The effort grew partly from concerns that rapid commercial innovation and advances by strategic competitors, particularly China, could erode longstanding American technological advantages.
The list has never been intended as a permanent catalogue. Instead, Washington periodically revises it as technologies mature, new capabilities emerge and national security priorities change. That means removing a technology does not necessarily mean the government considers it unimportant. In some cases, commercial investment may have grown enough that federal officials no longer consider government led research and development necessary.
Among the biggest deletions are advanced cloud services, high performance data storage, data centers, batteries, grid integration and advanced gas turbine engines. Human machine interfaces also disappeared entirely.
Consequently, augmented and virtual reality no longer appear as named priorities, while neurotechnologies moved into biotechnology. Brain computer interfaces now sit under future computing technologies.
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AI now includes robotics and uncrewed systems
The broader clean energy generation and storage category was replaced with one focused entirely on nuclear technology. It covers advanced fission, fusion, space nuclear power and propulsion, and radiation resistant materials.
Meanwhile, advanced computing became future computing technologies and lost several technologies tied to large centralized computing systems. Officials removed cloud services, data centers, advanced modeling and simulation, and general data processing techniques.
In their place, the list adds edge computing for tactical environments, photonic and neuromorphic computing, and advanced spatial computing. The change comes during a massive private sector expansion of artificial intelligence data centers across the United States.
However, the strategy tells agencies to direct federal money where it complements private investment rather than competing with it. Washington increasingly appears to view data center construction as a commercial undertaking rather than a federal research priority.
Artificial intelligence also received a substantial rewrite. The new AI and autonomy category absorbs robotics and uncrewed systems while adding multi-agent systems and swarm intelligence.
Additionally, it includes autonomous agent identification, continual learning, privacy preserving machine learning and world systems as a named foundation model class. The organization removed references to responsible AI technologies and AI assurance and assessment techniques.
Instead, the government now names interpretability and control, adversarial robustness and AI security as priorities. The changes give the category a more specific national security focus.
Cybersecurity gained several technologies as well. Post quantum cryptography appears for the first time alongside security for operational technology and industrial control systems.
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Semiconductor chips given one of the broadest security roles
Furthermore, the list adds AI enabled autonomous cyber capabilities and hardened operating systems for consumer use. Post-quantum cryptography aims to protect information from future quantum computers capable of defeating encryption methods widely used today.
Semiconductors remain a major federal priority, although that category received fewer changes than several others. Integrated photonics joins the list.
Meanwhile, officials now specifically name two dimensional materials as an example of novel materials for advanced microelectronics. Non Von Neumann computer architectures moved from semiconductors into future computing.
Design automation, advanced packaging, process technology, microelectromechanical systems and nanoelectromechanical systems all carry over from 2024. Those technologies cover important parts of semiconductor design and manufacturing.
Advanced manufacturing also gained high entropy alloys, advanced composites, lightweight metals, digital twins and digital threads. In addition, the category includes replacing rare earth and critical mineral alloys with alternatives based on more abundant minerals.
Appendix B maps each technology category against seven national security needs. Semiconductors are linked to six, giving chips one of the broadest security roles in the document.
However, semiconductors do not receive the designation for leading transformative emerging technology. Only AI and autonomy, biotechnology and quantum science receive that designation.
The funding guidance also directs agencies toward earlier stage research where private investment may prove insufficient. Later stage development in manufacturing, communications, future computing and positioning technologies should rely more heavily on private industry.
Consequently, chips are treated largely as infrastructure to secure rather than a technological frontier for government to push.
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