White House Prioritizes Undersea, Space and AI in New Science‑and‑Technology Strategy

Overview

• The White House released the National Security Science & Technology Strategy, and the document, published on 18 August 2026, names undersea warfare, space superiority, and AI and autonomy as the three top priorities for U.S. battlefield dominance.
• The strategy codifies a four-tier taxonomy that places the three priority domains at the top, lists airpower, long-range strike and C5ISR as critical supporting areas, and identifies semiconductors, hypersonics and advanced manufacturing as key enablers.
• It endorses a modernized hi‑lo acquisition approach that pairs many lower-cost, attritable systems with a smaller number of high-end platforms and urges faster, risk-tolerant R&D to speed deployment of new capabilities.
• The plan expands grant tracking and counterintelligence and calls for banning federal research funding involving 'high-risk' entities, explicitly citing Chinese firms such as Alibaba and BYD and prompting Pentagon-directed audits of university partnerships.
• Officials signaled longer-term vigilance for transformative fields such as biotechnology, quantum and artificial general intelligence, and allied plans show growing coordination on defense R&D and industrial policy.