The Executive Office of the President, via the National Science and Technology Council, has released an updated list of advanced technologies that are potentially significant to U.S. national security. This list updates and revises the initial critical technologies list identified in the October 2020 report, “National Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technologies.” See Update of October 19, 2020. For the purposes of the national strategy, critical and emerging technologies (CET) are defined as “those technologies that have been identified and assessed by the National Security Council (NSC) to be critical, or to potentially become critical, to the United States’ national security advantage, including military, intelligence, and economic advantages.”
The report identifies the following CET areas:
- Advanced Computing
- Advanced Engineering Materials
- Advanced Gas Turbine Engine Technologies
- Advanced Manufacturing
- Advanced and Networked Sensing and Signature Management
- Advanced Nuclear Energy Technologies
- Artificial Intelligence
- Autonomous Systems and Robotics
- Biotechnologies
- Communication and Networking Technologies
- Directed Energy
- Financial Technologies
- Human-Machine Interfaces
- Hypersonics
- Networked Sensors and Sensing
- Quantum Information Technologies
- Renewable Energy Generation and Storage
- Semiconductors and Microelectronics
- Space Technologies and Systems
Perhaps most importantly for industry review and consideration is that this 2022 updated list expands on the original CET list by identifying subfields under each sector that describe the intended scope in more detail and, where possible, focuses on core technologies rather than on technology application areas or performance characteristics.
This list may be used by the U.S. government for the development of multilateral and unilateral export controls as well as to identify sensitive foreign direct investment. The direct regulatory impact, however, is still to be established.