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2024 Critical and Emerging Technologies List - U.S.

In February 2024, the National Science and Technology Council, within the Executive Office of the President of the United States, published a document titled, Critical and Emerging Technologies List Update. The document overview notes:

The 2022 National Security Strategy identifies three national security interests: protect the security of the American people, expand economic prosperity and opportunity, and realize and defend the democratic values at the heart of the American way of life. The NSTC established this Fast Track Action Subcommittee in 2020 to identify critical and emerging technologies to inform national security-related activities. This list identifies CETs with the potential to further these interests and builds on the October 2020 National Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technologies, which contains an initial list of priority CETs. This updated document expands upon that original CET list and the February 2022 update by identifying subfields for each CET with a focus, where possible, on core technologies that continue to emerge and modernize, while remaining critical to a free, open, secure, and prosperous world.

The interagency process included U.S. government subject matter experts from 18 departments, agencies, and Executive Office of the President, who identified subfields which may be critical to U.S. national security.

Critical and Emerging Technologies List 

The following critical and emerging technology areas are of particular importance to the national security of the United States: 

  • Advanced supercomputing, including for AI applications 
  • Edge computing and devices 
  • Advanced cloud services 
  • High-performance data storage and data centers
  • Advanced computing architectures
  • Advanced modeling and simulation
  • Data processing and analysis techniques
  • Spatial computing
  • Materials by design and material genomics
  • Materials with novel properties to include substantial improvements to existing properties
  • Novel and emerging techniques for material property characterization and lifecycle assessment
  • Aerospace, maritime, and industrial development and production technologies
  • Full-authority digital engine control, hot-section manufacturing, and associated technologies
  • Payloads, sensors, and instruments
  • Sensor processing and data fusion
  • Adaptive optics
  • Remote sensing of the Earth
  • Geophysical sensing
  • Signature management
  • Detection and characterization of pathogens and of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons and materials
  • Transportation-sector sensing
  • Security-sector sensing
  • Health-sector sensing
  • Energy-sector sensing
  • Manufacturing-sector sensing
  • Building-sector sensing
  • Environmental-sector sensing
  • Advanced additive manufacturing
  • Advanced manufacturing technologies and techniques including those supporting clean, sustainable, and smart manufacturing, nanomanufacturing, lightweight metal manufacturing, and product and material recovery
  • Reinforcement learning
  • Sensory perception and recognition
  • AI assurance and assessment techniques
  • Foundation models
  • Generative AI systems, multimodal and large language models
  • Synthetic data approaches for training, tuning, and testing
  • Planning, reasoning, and decision making
  • Technologies for improving AI safety, trust, security, and responsible use
  • Novel synthetic biology including nucleic acid, genome, epigenome, and protein synthesis and engineering, including design tools
  • Multi-omics and other biometrology, bioinformatics, computational biology, predictive modeling, and analytical tools for functional phenotypes
  • Engineering of sub-cellular, multicellular, and multi-scale systems
  • Cell-free systems and technologies
  • Engineering of viral and viral delivery systems
  • Biotic/abiotic interfaces
  • Biomanufacturing and bioprocessing technologies
  • Renewable generation
  • Renewable and sustainable chemistries, fuels, and feedstocks
  • Nuclear energy systems
  • Fusion energy
  • Energy storage
  • Electric and hybrid engines
  • Batteries
  • Grid integration technologies
  • Energy-efficiency technologies
  • Carbon management technologies
  • Distributed ledger technologies
  • Digital assets
  • Digital payment technologies
  • Digital identity technologies, biometrics, and associated infrastructure
  • Communications and network security
  • Privacy-enhancing technologies
  • Technologies for data fusion and improving data interoperability, privacy, and security 
  • Distributed confidential computing
  • Computing supply chain security
  • Security and privacy technologies in augmented reality/virtual reality
  • Lasers
  • High-power microwaves
  • Particle beams
  • Surface
  • Air
  • Maritime
  • Space
  • Supporting digital infrastructure, including High Definition (HD) maps
  • Autonomous command and control
  • Augmented reality
  • Virtual reality
  • Human-machine teaming
  • Neurotechnologies
  • Propulsion
  • Aerodynamics and control
  • Materials, structures, and manufacturing
  • Detection, tracking, characterization, and defense
  • Testing
  • Radio-frequency (RF) and mixed-signal circuits, antennas, filters, and components
  • Spectrum management and sensing technologies
  • Future generation wireless networks
  • Optical links and fiber technologies
  • Terrestrial/undersea cables
  • Satellite-based and stratospheric communications
  • Delay-tolerant networking
  • Mesh networks/infrastructure independent communication technologies
  • Software-defined networking and radios
  • Modern data exchange techniques
  • Adaptive network controls
  • Resilient and adaptive waveforms
  • Diversified PNT-enabling technologies for users and systems in airborne, space-based, terrestrial, subterranean, and underwater settings
  • Interference, jamming, and spoofing detection technologies, algorithms, analytics, and networked monitoring systems
  • Disruption/denial-resisting and hardening technologies
  • Quantum computing
  • Materials, isotopes, and fabrication techniques for quantum devices
  • Quantum sensing
  • Quantum communications and networking
  • Supporting systems
  • Design and electronic design automation tools
  • Manufacturing process technologies and manufacturing equipment
  • Beyond complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology
  • Heterogeneous integration and advanced packaging
  • Specialized/tailored hardware components for artificial intelligence, natural and hostile radiation environments, RF and optical components, high-power devices, and other critical applications
  • Novel materials for advanced microelectronics
  • Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and Nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS)
  • Novel architectures for non-Von Neumann computing
  • In-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing as well as enabling technologies
  • Technology enablers for cost-effective on-demand, and reusable space launch systems
  • Technologies that enable access to and use of cislunar space and/or novel orbits
  • Sensors and data analysis tools for space-based observations
  • Space propulsion
  • Advanced space vehicle power generation
  • Novel space vehicle thermal management
  • Crewed spaceflight enablers
  • Resilient and path-diverse space communication systems, networks, and ground stations
  • Space launch, range, and safety technologies
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