White House cuts data centers, batteries, and AR from the US critical technology list — post-quantum cryptography, integrated photonics, high entropy alloys among new additions

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has published its renewed National Security Science & Technology Strategy, and Appendix A of the 24-page document rewrites the federal Critical and Emerging Technologies (CET) list for the first time since February 2024, shrinking it from 18 categories to 14. Advanced cloud services, high-performance data storage and data centers, batteries, grid integration, gas turbine engines, and augmented and virtual reality have all gotten the chop, while post-quantum cryptography, integrated photonics, high entropy alloys, and "hardened operating systems for consumer use" have been added.

Federal agencies use the CET list when they write export control rules, screen foreign investment through CFIUS, vet federally funded research proposals, and set R&D budget priorities, so additions and deletions carry serious weight.

Advanced gas turbine engine technologies, which in 2024 covered aerospace and industrial engine production plus full-authority digital engine control, have no successor anywhere in the new list. Human-machine interfaces are also gone, taking augmented reality, virtual reality, and human-machine teaming with it; neurotechnologies moved into biotechnology, and brain-computer interfaces reappeared under future computing. Clean energy generation and storage were replaced by a nuclear-only category covering advanced fission, fusion, space nuclear power and propulsion, and high-temperature radiation-resistant materials.

The advanced computing category of 2024 was renamed future computing technologies and lost advanced cloud services, high-performance data storage and data centers, advanced modeling and simulation, and data processing techniques. In their place sit edge computing for tactical environments, photonic and neuromorphic modalities, and advanced spatial computing. Data centers dropped off the federal critical technology list in the middle of the largest datacenter buildout in the industry's history, which fits the strategy's funding guidance telling agencies to spend "where they can best complement rather than compete with private sector investment." With hyperscalers building the capacity, Washington no longer counts it as a research priority.

"Technologies for improving AI safety, trust, security, and responsible use" and "AI assurance and assessment techniques" were both deleted from the AI category and replaced by "interpretability and control" and "adversarial robustness and AI security." Meanwhile, AI and autonomy absorbed the old robotics and uncrewed systems category and gained multi-agent systems and swarm intelligence, autonomous agent identification and authentication, continual learning, distributed and privacy-preserving machine learning, and world systems as a named class of foundation model.

Post-quantum cryptography appears for the first time, alongside operational technology and industrial control system security, and AI-enabled autonomous cyber capabilities. Integrated photonics is a new semiconductor subfield, and where the 2024 list said only "novel materials for advanced microelectronics," the 2026 version names 2D materials as an example. Advanced manufacturing picked up high-entropy alloys, advanced composites and lightweight metals, digital threads and digital twins, and substitution of rare-earth and critical-minerals alloys with earth-abundant minerals.

Integrated photonics and 2D materials are the only additions to the semiconductor category, and non-Von Neumann architectures moved across to future computing. Design automation, process technology and equipment, beyond-CMOS, heterogeneous integration and advanced packaging, MEMS and NEMS all carry over unchanged from 2024.

Appendix B maps each technology area against seven national security needs, and the semiconductor row ticks six of them, representing broader coverage than nearly anything else on the list. The one column it's blank in is "lead in transformative emerging technology," which only AI and autonomy, biotechnology, and quantum satisfy. The funding section points the same way, telling agencies to rely on the private sector for later-stage work in advanced manufacturing, advanced communications, future computing, and PNT, categories that between them cover much of the chip supply chain. Chips are treated throughout the document as infrastructure to secure rather than a frontier to push.

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