Chuck Brooks is the president of Brooks Consulting International and one of Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Experts.
The White House’s strategy prioritizes science and technology for national security. US success will depend on its ability to translate advances in AI, quantum computing, biotechnology, space and other critical fields into resilient, deployable capabilities faster than its competitors.
New Age of Tech-Driven National Security
Technological leadership is increasingly linked to national security in the US. AI, quantum computing, biotechnology, advanced semiconductors, autonomous systems, space technologies and advanced materials are changing military operations, economic competition, intelligence gathering and critical infrastructure protection. In the coming decades, nations that develop, integrate, secure and deploy these capabilities will have strategic advantages.
The August release of the 2026 National Security Science & Technology Strategy, or NSSTS, is a major development in American technology policy. The document, the first standalone White House strategy since 1995, aligns federal science and technology investments with the 2025 National Security Strategy. It addresses a key reality of geopolitical competition: technological advances are rapidly moving from commercial research to military, intelligence and national security applications.
The strategy goes beyond research priorities. It defines science and technology leadership as a national security objective with implications for military advantage, homeland defense, economic resilience and deterring increasingly sophisticated adversaries. Four strategic pillars of the White House are focusing on technological competition, building technological resilience, accelerating innovation and protecting the national security science and technology enterprise. These pillars provide a framework for a national innovation ecosystem rather than isolated research programs.
In my writing on emerging technology and national security, I have stressed that innovation’s strategic importance goes beyond any single breakthrough. Converging technologies, institutions that can integrate them and the speed at which discoveries become operational capabilities are the real advantages. That perspective applies to NSSTS especially. Its value will depend on whether the US can turn its scientific strengths into a lasting advantage in defense, intelligence, cybersecurity and critical infrastructure, not just the technologies it finds.
As the White House’s new National Security Science & Technology Strategy elevates homeland defense, critical infrastructure resilience and AI-enabled cyber defense, the Potomac Officers Club’s 2026 Homeland Security Summit on Nov. 10 will bring DHS leaders and industry together to discuss putting emerging technology to work. Save your seat now!
Four National Technology Advantage Pillars
The strategy’s four pillars address complementary national security issues.
The first, technological competition, devotes resources to battlefield superiority, homeland defense and American strengths. The strategy emphasizes space, undersea capabilities and AI-enabled autonomy for military advantage, while semiconductors, advanced materials, communications, sensing, cybersecurity and future computing enable it.
The second pillar, building technological resilience, recognizes that technological leadership is insufficient if critical systems are vulnerable to disruption, supply-chain dependencies, or capability loss. Redundancy, trusted suppliers, modern infrastructure and the ability to maintain essential functions during system attacks or failures are needed for resilience.
Accelerating innovation, the third pillar, addresses a longstanding government challenge: moving discoveries and prototypes through acquisition and into commercial use quickly. The strategy calls for more agile research and development, shorter development and acquisition cycles and stronger engagement with private-sector and academic innovators.
The fourth pillar, protecting national security science and technology, combats intellectual property theft, research exploitation, technology diversion and foreign investment and supply chain vulnerabilities. America’s innovation base should be protected without limiting openness and collaboration, which boost productivity.
These priorities recognize that innovation, resilience, speed and security are interconnected policy issues. A breakthrough that cannot be mass-produced, integrated into operational systems, or protected may have less strategic value than initially thought.
Federal R&D Roadmap: 14 Critical Technology Areas
A key feature of the NSSTS is its alignment with an updated federal list of 14 critical and emerging national security technology areas. The list aims to prioritize research and identify technological capabilities crucial to American security and competitiveness.
The 14 areas are:
- Advanced manufacturing and materials — enabling more resilient production, next-generation platforms and strategically important material substitutes.
- Super intelligence and autonomy — advancing highly capable AI systems and autonomous operations.
- Biotechnology — supporting health security, biomanufacturing, biological threat detection and other dual-use capabilities.
- Communications and networking — providing secure, resilient connectivity for military, government and critical infrastructure systems.
- Directed energy — developing new defensive and offensive capabilities, including potential applications against drones and other threats.
- Future computing technologies — exploring new computational architectures and capabilities beyond conventional systems.
- Hypersonics and advanced missile technologies — supporting advanced strike, defense and detection capabilities.
- Information management and cybersecurity — protecting sensitive information, digital infrastructure and mission-critical networks.
- Nuclear energy — strengthening energy security and supporting demanding national security missions.
- Positioning, navigation and timing, or PNT — sustaining reliable navigation and synchronization when conventional signals are degraded or denied.
- Quantum information technologies — advancing quantum computing, sensing, communications and related security applications.
- Semiconductors and microelectronics — strengthening access to essential chips and the technologies that underpin modern digital and defense systems.
- Sensing and signature management — improving detection, situational awareness and the ability to reduce the observability of important assets.
- Space technologies — protecting and expanding capabilities in orbit and supporting national security operations across the space domain.
These priorities are extensive. AI, quantum computing, semiconductors, biotechnology and space are not different investment categories. They are increasingly interconnected in a technological ecosystem. Advanced semiconductors enable AI workloads; AI accelerates scientific discovery and intelligence analysis; quantum research could change sensing, communications and computing; biotechnology offers new biological threat detection and response methods; and space systems provide communications, navigation, surveillance and missile-warning capabilities.
This convergence changes commercial innovation and national security. Technology developed for civilian markets can quickly become strategic, while defense needs can spur economic innovations. The US needs a research and development strategy that recognizes these fields’ interconnectedness rather than treating them separately.
Prioritization matters because resources are limited. Federal funding should supplement private investment, fill innovation gaps and support capabilities with strategic value that commercial markets may not fully capture. Making deliberate choices without closing research pathways that could lead to unexpected breakthroughs is difficult.
AI from Productivity Tool to Strategic Infrastructure
Artificial intelligence is crucial to the strategy because it can boost nearly every technology area. AI enables intelligence analysis, cyber defense, logistics, predictive maintenance, autonomous systems, scientific research and military decision support.
Its potential goes beyond automation. AI can help scientists find patterns in large datasets, form hypotheses, optimize experiments and develop new materials and biological applications faster. In defense environments, it can process distributed sensor data, identify new threats, and aid decision-making in complex operational settings.
In my GovConWire analysis, “Innovation Velocity Is Now a National Security Imperative,” I examined how robotics, autonomous systems, AI, quantum computing and space technologies are advancing simultaneously and converging. America must develop, integrate and deploy these technologies quickly to maintain its advantage.
AI also poses serious risks. It helps adversaries improve reconnaissance, automate cyber operations, spread convincing disinformation and find critical system weaknesses. Since autonomous AI agents can interact with applications, access data and take actions without human intervention, governance issues arise.
Thus, AI leadership must include secure development, testing, evaluation, monitoring and accountability for national security. Test high-consequence systems for reliability, data integrity, adversarial manipulation and the consequences of incorrect or unauthorized actions. Decisions with major operational or human impacts require meaningful human oversight.
The strategic goal should be to create capable, trustworthy, resilient and mission-aligned AI. Speed without security creates vulnerabilities; security without speed gives competitors the lead.
Quantum Computing & Preparation for Q-Day
Another priority with national security implications is quantum information technologies. Quantum sensing and communications research may improve navigation, detection, timing and secure information exchange, while quantum computing may solve some classical computer problems.
The pace and scope of these advances are unknown. Preparation should not be delayed due to uncertainty. In my Forbes article, “The Quantum Frontier: How Quantum Computing Is Reshaping Our Future,” I examined how quantum technologies are becoming commercial platforms and research applications.
Pay special attention to cybersecurity. A quantum computer with enough power could break public-key cryptographic algorithms. Adversaries may collect encrypted data to decrypt later—a risk called “harvest now, decrypt later.”
Government agencies, defense contractors, financial institutions, healthcare organizations and critical infrastructure operators should prepare before such a capability becomes practical. Inventorying cryptographic assets, identifying vulnerable algorithm systems, prioritizing sensitive information with long confidentiality requirements and planning for post-quantum cryptography are all necessary.
As I wrote in my September Forbes article, “Quantum and Cybersecurity: A Dual Imperative of Threat and Opportunity,” quantum technology presents both security and opportunity. United States should pursue quantum research and strengthen the cryptographic foundations of digital infrastructure. Across the NSSTS, future technologies must be assessed for their capabilities and new dependencies, vulnerabilities and strategic risks.
Semiconductors, Advanced Materials & Technological Sovereignty
AI and quantum computing are popular, but their development uses less obvious methods. National security systems increasingly require semiconductors, advanced materials, manufacturing capacity, energy and specialized components.
A nation can design an advanced platform but be vulnerable if it cannot reliably obtain chips, materials, equipment, or manufacturing services. Commercial disruptions can become national security issues due to concentrated supply chains, potentially hostile suppliers and limited domestic production capacity.
The NSSTS balances innovation and technological resilience. Understanding where critical components come from, identifying single points of failure, developing trusted suppliers and investing in alternatives when dependence is risky is resilience. It also requires government, manufacturers, research institutions and allied economies to work together.
Advanced manufacturing and materials research could improve production methods, develop substitutes for strategically important materials and shorten laboratory-to-industry time. Semiconductor innovation requires attention to manufacturing capacity, packaging, equipment, intellectual property and supply chain security.
Technological independence should not be pursued at all costs. No nation can efficiently produce all contemporary technology ecosystem components. A more practical goal is strategic interdependence: domestic capabilities in essential areas, diversified supply sources and trusted partnerships with allies that reduce the likelihood of an adversary exploiting a critical dependency.
Space & Biotechnology: Expanding National Security Frontier
Biotechnology and space technologies show how national security is expanding beyond military platforms. Biotechnology improves public health, biological threat detection, medical countermeasures and domestic biomanufacturing. It may also improve diagnostics, treatment and performance. However, scientific progress can be used to create biological threats. Early detection, biosurveillance, responsible research and coordinated incident response become more important as biological tools become more accessible and automated.
Biotechnology’s role in homeland defense, including biological weapons defense, is recognized by the NSSTS. National security agencies, public health institutions, academic labs and biotechnology companies must collaborate for implementation. Security must safeguard sensitive research without hindering scientific progress.
Equally important: space. Satellites aid communications, navigation, weather forecasting, intelligence, missile warning and military operations. Space-based services are increasingly used by civilian infrastructure and defense systems, making them vulnerable to jamming, cyberattacks, physical interference and orbital disruptions.
In my GovConWire article, “Securing the High Frontier: The White House & the Space Force’s Priorities for Exploration & Defense in a Contested Domain,” I examined AI, quantum technologies, cybersecurity and the evolving space domain.
Space resilience requires more than satellite protection. Secure ground infrastructure, robust communications, reliable positioning and timing, rapid recovery and closer government-commercial coordination are needed. AI can detect anomalies and analyze threats, advanced materials and manufacturing can strengthen platforms and improved sensing can increase orbital awareness.
Integration will increasingly determine these technologies’ strategic value. Satellites depend on networks, software, ground stations, supply chains and operational processes to safely complete their missions.
Testing the Strategy With Critical Infrastructure
Protecting the homeland and strengthening technological resilience are key NSSTS implications. National security depends on military capability and the reliability of American society and the economy’s infrastructure. Telecommunications, energy, water, transportation, healthcare, financial services and industrial control systems are increasingly connected. Connectivity promotes efficiency and innovation but also spreads cyberattacks, supply-chain compromises, software failures and physical disruptions.
Legacy operational technology is difficult. Industrial control systems can run for decades, using availability and safety requirements that make traditional IT security insufficient. Thus, modernization must consider operational realities like legacy equipment, safety constraints and continuous service.
Modernizing vulnerable infrastructure, improving network segmentation, applying AI-enabled anomaly detection, updating cryptography and developing tools to verify critical component provenance are among the NSSTS’s resilience-boosting recommendations. It emphasizes redundancy and resilience rather than assuming every system can be protected from attack.
This distinction matters. Resilience goes beyond prevention. It prevents a national crisis from an attack, component failure, natural disaster, or communications outage. Federal agencies and critical infrastructure operators need risk-based investment, continuous monitoring, tested recovery plans, trusted technology suppliers and cross-sector coordination. AI can improve detection and response, but it needs protection. Long-term infrastructure planning must include quantum readiness. Space-based services must have backups for critical operations. NSSTS results will only be meaningful if its high-level priorities lead to practical improvements in the country’s critical systems and facilities.
Innovating Faster: Bridging Discovery & Deployment
US universities, federal laboratories, startups, established technology companies, venture capital and the defense industrial base form a remarkable innovation ecosystem. However, scientific leadership does not guarantee operational advantage.
Government acquisition processes can be slow, funding fragmented and promising technologies can get stuck between prototype and large-scale deployment. Commercial technology advances quickly, and strategic competitors are investing heavily in capabilities that could challenge American advantages.
The NSSTS calls for faster R&D, better public-private partnerships and acquisition reforms to get promising technologies to national security users faster. In my GovConWire analysis of defense innovation, “The New Innovation Ecosystem at the Department of War: From Technology Silos to a National Security Engine,” I argued that government, academia, commercial innovators, investors and operational users are seeing the most significant breakthroughs. A faster and more adaptive national innovation model requires connecting these participants.
This requires process and culture changes. Researchers must clarify operational needs. Program managers need ways to test promising technologies without committing to expensive, unflexible programs. Acquisition officials need ways to scale successful prototypes. Operations staff must evaluate technologies in realistic conditions and provide feedback to inform development.
This process needs genuine private sector participation. Commercial companies have advanced AI, cloud computing, cybersecurity, robotics, biotechnology and semiconductor design capabilities that would cost and take time to replicate for the government. Government mission requirements, research support, test environments and demand signals can help promising technologies mature.
Success should be measured by outcomes, not announcements: how quickly an agency moves from identifying a mission need to testing a solution, how well it incorporates trial lessons, how reliably it deploys capabilities at scale and whether those capabilities improve security and operational effectiveness. Innovation velocity is strategic. In an environment where technologies converge and adversaries adapt, learning and fielding solutions quickly may be as important as the invention.
Innovation Protection Without Undermining It
A national strategy to accelerate technological development must protect innovation-enabling research. Intellectual property theft, foreign research exploitation, sensitive technology transfers, and investment and supply chain vulnerabilities are addressed by the NSSTS.
These are valid concerns. Research breakthroughs can have strategic implications as advanced technology becomes more civilian and military. Universities, labs, startups and tech companies need secure data, research partnerships, IP and critical infrastructure.
However, security must be calibrated. Overregulation can slow research, discourage collaboration, raise compliance costs and weaken the innovation ecosystem the strategy seeks to strengthen. Risk-based protection should distinguish sensitive technologies and activities from open scientific exchange.
That balance is crucial in emerging fields where interdisciplinary research and international scientific collaboration drive progress. National security and scientific dynamism can be protected by strong research security, clear rules, transparent expectations and proportionate controls.
The same balance applies to international partnerships. Work with trusted allies to increase research capacity, diversify supply chains and strengthen standards. Coordinated technology protection can also reduce adversaries’ ability to exploit national policy differences.
American leadership will last longer when it combines technological strength with trusted partnerships and a research environment that attracts talent, investment and scientific achievement.
What Success Should Look Like
Strategic direction is set by the NSSTS, but implementation determines its legacy. Four priorities are important. Federal funding and acquisition decisions should start with clear national security goals. Technology investments need goals, milestones and an operational adoption path. Research should be ambitious and relevant to national issues.
Second, the government should require cybersecurity and resilience throughout technology lifecycles. AI systems, quantum infrastructure, autonomous platforms, space systems, biotechnology supply chains and advanced manufacturing networks must be designed for security and recovery, not remediation.
Third, agencies need better collaboration and technology transition mechanisms. Research-to-deployment time can be reduced by shared test environments, rapid experimentation, flexible contracting and structured engagement with commercial innovators. Federal labs and universities need better ways to apply promising discoveries.
Fourth, invest in workforce development. Emerging technologies require computer science, engineering, physics, biology, cybersecurity, data governance and national security expertise. The US must train technical talent to help policymakers, acquisition professionals, military personnel and senior leaders make informed decisions about rapidly evolving technologies.
Also important are congressional oversight and transparent performance measures. The strategy’s priorities should guide budgets, programs, procurement and national security readiness. Regular assessments should show where investments are working, where challenges remain and where changing technology requires a new approach. These steps would help the NSSTS become more than a policy. They would make it feasible to align research, industry and government around long-term national security goals.
Strategic Imperative: Lead, Integrate, Adapt
The 2026 National Security Science & Technology Strategy is crucial. Major powers increasingly compete on military strength, advanced technology, supply chain control, intellectual property protection and scientific discovery.
AI, quantum computing, semiconductors, biotechnology, advanced materials, space systems and other critical technologies will evolve in unpredictable ways. Their interactions may be more important than any breakthrough. The US must create an innovation ecosystem that recognizes opportunities, manages risks and turns progress into reliable capabilities.
That requires sustained research investment, effective public-private partnerships, a skilled workforce, secure supply chains and a willingness to modernize acquisition and deployment processes. Understanding that technological leadership is not a national asset is also necessary. It must be earned through innovation, adaptation and execution.
That goal is supported by the NSSTS. Recognizing science and technology as integral to national security planning may be its greatest contribution. They’re essential. The next era of national security will depend on who can integrate, secure, scale and adapt advanced technology. The US must turn scientific leadership into long-term national security.
