U.S. National Security Science & Technology Strategy

The following is the White House National Security Science and Technology Strategy released earlier this week.

From the report

This document establishes a National Security Science and Technology Strategy (NSSTS) to support and enable the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS). It satisfies the Congressional requirement for a “Strategy…on the nation’s economic security, science, research, and innovation to support the national security strategy” (42 USC 19221; Sec. 10612 of the CHIPS and Science Act, P.L. 117-167) to be submitted by the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) after the transmission of each National Security Strategy.

The NSSTS describes how the United States will leverage its science and technology (S&T) enterprise to support and enable the objectives of the 2025 NSS. In doing so, it highlights and connects directly to many of those objectives. The NSS recognizes the integral role for S&T in achieving the vision it lays out, so much so that S&T leadership is itself a national security objective.

This strategy focuses on S&T competition as it relates to military capabilities, homeland defense and resilience, and other direct intersections with national security. Similarly, this strategy complements and is consistent with National Science and Technology Memorandum 5 (NSTM-5) on Fiscal Year 2028 Administration Research and Development Budget Priorities. NSTM-5 sets Fiscal Year 2028 research and development (R&D) budget priorities; this strategy provides detailed guidance for organizing Federally-funded R&D and S&T efforts to support national security objectives.

Trends and challenges that impact U.S. national security S&T competition

Geopolitical factors reflect a world where foreign states with growing economic power seek to challenge U.S. S&T leadership, military dominance, and homeland defense:

Potential adversaries are investing heavily in advanced technology development and military applications, and actively contesting U.S. leadership in key areas.

Potential adversaries seek asymmetric capabilities to counter U.S. military superiority, and ways to pursue their objectives below our threshold for military response.

Potential adversaries seek means to disrupt and exploit complex, interconnected national and global economies, supply chains, and infrastructure, including by controlling the extraction, refining, export, and manufacturing of critical minerals.

Potential adversaries are attempting to steal U.S. intellectual property, sensitive data, and emerging technologies.

Technology factors underscore the need for the U.S. to move decisively to maintain technological advantage:

Military applications of advanced technologies compress decision timescales and extend the reach of military forces.

Technologies advance rapidly and converge in ways that can provide significant economic potential alongside national security risk, necessitating agile development and acquisition cycles.

Technology and enabling supply chains are diffuse and abilities to influence different portions of the supply chain and S&T sectors vary.

For some rapidly evolving technologies, there remains significant uncertainty about the implications for national security and timelines on which they will materialize.

Legal, policy, and structural factors must be addressed to maximize the options space for U.S. strategy:

Efforts to protect sensitive S&T must protect Americans’ rights and liberties without unduly slowing the pace of innovation.

Excessive regulation and inefficient legacy policies must be changed or eliminated so that they do not inhibit the ability of American industry to contribute to national security needs.

The Federal Government must partner effectively with the private sector, recognizing that the private sector contributes critical capabilities that the government does not possess.

Strategy overview

To achieve U.S. objectives in the face of existing and future challenges, America’s national security S&T posture must be focused, resilient, agile, and secure.

Focused: Focus techno-strategic competition in directions and ways that leverage American strengths to advance our interests.

Resilient: Build technological resilience to reduce risk across critical mission and technology areas.

Agile: Accelerate the pace of innovation, technology adoption, and adaptation within the national security arena.

Secure: Protect national security S&T from foreign theft, diversion, and exploitation.

Federal departments and agencies (agencies) will work together to strengthen and apply the means of implementing our national security S&T strategy.

This will include:

Building our S&T workforce;

Enhancing R&D infrastructure;

Targeting Federal R&D funding;

Fostering partnerships with non-Federal stakeholders, and;

Leveraging ally and partner capabilities.

Download the document here.