The White House has published a new National Security Science and Technology strategy. It names 15 critical technology areas the United States intends to lead. Artificial intelligence and autonomy is one of them, with 12 subfields listed underneath. Open-weight AI is not among them. Neither open weights nor open-source software development appears anywhere in the 24-page document.
The strategy is dated August 2026 and comes from the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. It meets a congressional requirement written into the CHIPS and Science Act. That law obliges OSTP to submit a science and innovation strategy after each National Security Strategy. This one supports the 2025 NSS, and its appendix updates the official OSTP list of critical and emerging technologies.
What the strategy prioritises
The document sets three priorities for battlefield dominance: undersea, space, and AI and autonomy. It ties those to deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. Twelve enabling technologies follow, running from directed energy and hypersonics to semiconductors and nuclear energy.
On how to fight, it leans towards mass and cheapness. The United States will seek “optimal combinations of lower-cost (and sometimes lower-tech or attritable) platforms” that can be fielded in larger numbers, the strategy says. It also pushes Pentagon buyers towards other transaction authorities and milestone-based contracts.
