The White House on Tuesday released an updated list of key technology categories that are potentially significant to national security and updates the original list to include subfields of core technologies.
The Critical and Emerging Technologies (CET) list contains 19 advanced technologies and a larger number of subfields that will inform a forthcoming strategy on “U.S. technological competitiveness and national security,” the 11-page document says.
The CET’s include 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, and space technologies and systems.
In the area of hypersonics, the subfields include propulsion, aerodynamics and control, materials, detection, tracking and characterization, and defense.
Space technologies and systems subfields include on-orbit servicing, assembly and manufacturing, commoditized satellite buses, low-cost launch vehicles, sensors for local and wide-field imaging, space propulsion, resilient positioning, navigation and timing, cryogenic fluid management, and entry, descent and landing.
The document is not a priority list for funding or policies, the White House said. Rather, it should inform future efforts to promote U.S. technological leadership and be consulted by agencies when developing research and development initiatives, it said.