The White House National Security Science and Technology Strategy

Area

Key Priorities

Technological Battlefield Advantage

Maintain and advance U.S. technological advantage on the battlefield, including:

• Submarine survivability and anti-submarine warfare.
• Space superiority in technology to detect, characterize, and counter threats in very low-Earth orbit and cislunar space.
• AI and autonomy applications in national security.
• Air superiority.
• Long-range strike capability.
• Command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C5ISR).

Prioritize leadership in and application of key enabling technologies, such as advanced manufacturing and materials; AI and autonomy; communications and networking; nuclear energy; space technologies.

Homeland Defense

Leverage technology to counter strategic threats to the U.S. homeland, including:

• Land, air, and maritime border security.
• Nuclear deterrent forces.
• Missile defense shield (re: Golden Dome Initiative).
• Critical data, network, asset, and infrastructure protections.
• Biological weapon threats.

Technology Competition

Shape technology competition toward areas of U.S. strength, including:

• Embracing novel approaches to national security challenges.
• Seeking optimal combinations of lower cost/low-tech platforms and sophisticated platforms that may shift an adversary’s allocation of resources.
• Avoiding technological competition where it favors adversaries and expends resources without improving U.S. security.
• Pursuing cooperative mutual restraint in areas, such as prohibitions on biological and chemical weapons, while maintaining persistent readiness to deter adversaries that may abandon such restraint.
• Collaborating with partners to shape norms, standards and governance for Critical and Emerging Technologies (CET), including U.S. participation in international standards bodies.

Area

Key Priorities

National Security Challenges and Opportunities

Anticipate national security challenges and emerging opportunities through ongoing, iterative and forward-looking assessments, which include:

• Identifying of technology-based single points of failure.
• Observing technology use and adaptation in combat.
• Anticipating effects of fundamental scientific discovery on the security environment.
• Ensure and expand threat and vulnerability information sharing across agencies and with the private sector.

Transformative Emerging Technologies

Build long-term technology resilience by focusing on transformative emerging technologies, which may include:

• AI and autonomy.
• Biotechnology.
• Quantum information technology.

National Resilience Architecture

Enable the national resilience architecture through modernizing critical infrastructure, “distributing risk through optimal redundancy,” and simplifying/accelerating the U.S. response to adversary attacks and events, in areas such as:

• Nuclear-powered microgrids.
• Weather and Earth-system natural disaster modeling.
• AI-enabled bio-surveillance.
• Biomanufacturing.
• Critical network segmentation.
• Cryptography and cyber infrastructure.
• Cyber-physical threat modeling and AI-driven anomaly detection.
• Novel material substitutions.
• Bio-incident response.

Critical Technology Systems and Supply Chains

Guard against foreign adversary access to critical technology systems and supply chains, through efforts to:

• Prioritize homeshoring and domestic product development.
• Facilitate “reindustrialization” and energy dominance.
• Identify material substitution for critical components.
• Work with trusted partner suppliers.
• Utilize protective authorities (e.g., Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) Covered List).
• Coordinate with ally and partner governments.

Area

Key Priorities

Innovators

Incentivize and enable innovation in all sectors to contribute to national security through various measures, including:

• Rapid R&D funding for CET areas.
• Short-turnaround innovation challenge competitions.
• Rewards for private and academic participants that meet priority mission needs.

Incentivize and empower federally funded researchers to enable new discoveries and rapid learning, including encouraging trial and error efforts, reducing aversion to risk, permitting “fail fast” approaches, and embracing a readiness to pivot to adjacent or complementary research.

Administrative and Regulatory Burdens

Remove “administrative and regulatory burdens” while protecting safety and security, by:

• Updating or removing “burdensome and outdated” federal regulations.
• Streamlining waivers and exemptions for testing and evaluation applications.
• Using advisory boards effectively.
• Accelerating security-clearance processes.

Acquisition Reform

Accelerate acquisition reform by shortening development and acquisition cycles in the defense and broader national security sectors, by:

• Using Other Transaction Authorities (OTA) where appropriate for research, prototype, and production projects.
• Employing milestone-based fixed-cost contracting mechanisms with competition and performance-based down-select.
• Mixing traditional and nontraditional contracting mechanisms.

Area

Key Priorities

Research Security

Strengthen research security in U.S. and international R&D environments through efforts to:

• Establish processes to track federal research funding recipients.
• Restrict research funding for high-risk entities.
• Create risk-based reviews and a repository of sharable information to enhance efficiency.
• Require universal reporting forms.
• Automate vetting and monitoring of proposals.
• Increase counterintelligence and cybersecurity measures.
• Cooperate with allies and partners for research security.

Foreign Investment Screening and Security

Modernize foreign investment screening and security while maintaining an open investment environment by strengthening the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS):

• Monitor “greenfield” investments for national security concerns.
• Bolster CFIUS awareness through information-sharing.
• Focus or ease restrictions on foreign investment “in proportion to an investor’s verifiable distance and independence” from foreign adversaries or threat actors.

Protect against U.S. persons investing in adversary military industrial sectors by implementing and strengthening the Outbound Investment Security Program (Outbound) in areas such as AI, quantum information systems, semiconductors, supercomputers, and hypersonics.

Export Controls and Data Security

Strengthen and streamline export controls and data transfer restrictions, by taking steps to:

• Update export controls to keep pace with emerging risks, evolving technologies, and the broader strategic environment.
• Eliminate identified outdated controls.
• Coordinate export control regimes across agencies.
• Prioritize implementation of the Data Security Program, covering government-related data, as well as bulk genomic, geolocation, biometric, health, financial, and other sensitive personal data.