Why Did the White House Remove Data Centers, Batteries, and AR From the U.S. National Security Technology List?

Key Takeaways

• The White House reduced the federal technology list from 18 categories to 14 in August 2026.
• Data centers and batteries remain active policy concerns despite disappearing from Appendix A.
• Space, AI, nuclear systems, cybersecurity, quantum, and chips receive sharper strategic emphasis.

A Smaller List With a Narrower National Security Purpose

On August 19, 2026, Tom’s Hardware drew attention to a striking feature of the White House’s new technology strategy: several technologies that had appeared explicitly on the federal Critical and Emerging Technologies list in 2024 no longer appear in its 2026 successor. Advanced cloud services, high-performance data storage and data centers, batteries, grid-integration technologies, advanced gas turbine engines, augmented reality, and virtual reality are among the conspicuous omissions.

The underlying document is the August 2026 National Security Science and Technology Strategy, a 24-page White House strategy that incorporates a revised Critical and Emerging Technologies list as Appendix A. The update reduces the number of top-level technology areas from 18 in 2024 to 14. More significant than the smaller number is the changed purpose assigned to the list.

Appendix A describes Critical and Emerging Technologies, or CETs, as a subset of advanced technologies that are or may become highly important to U.S. national security. It expressly says this is narrower than identifying every technology that is relevant or important to national security. Federal departments and agencies are instructed to maintain dedicated research and development attention on the identified CET areas and, for national-security science and technology activities, to prioritize their application toward national-security objectives.

That language marks a meaningful change from the 2024 Critical and Emerging Technologies List Update, which was submitted to Congress by the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science and Technology Council on February 12, 2024. The 2024 document expressly said that it was not a strategy and should not be interpreted as a priority list for policy development or funding. Agencies could use it when considering research initiatives, technology protection, international cooperation, talent, or other security-related measures, but the document presented itself primarily as an interagency resource.

The 2026 strategy gives its list a stronger operational connection to federal research planning. It says agencies should organize national-security science and technology activities consistently with the strategy and states that the Office of Science and Technology Policy and National Security Council will coordinate more detailed technology-specific strategies or plans for the CET areas in Appendix A.

The change also fits the administration’s Fiscal Year 2028 R&D priorities, issued in July 2026. That memorandum instructs agencies to rebalance research portfolios toward foundational research and fields such as physical sciences, engineering, computer science, and mathematics. It states that the federal government’s comparative advantage lies partly in supporting work with long time horizons or broadly distributed benefits that private firms may have insufficient incentive to fund.

This distinction helps explain why a technology can disappear from Appendix A without becoming economically or strategically unimportant. A mature infrastructure market may remain essential to U.S. security even if federal officials decide that it does not require a dedicated place on a selective national-security R&D list. Conversely, technologies can remain on the list because research, security, supply-chain, defense, or infrastructure problems exist that commercial investment may not solve by itself.

The 2026 list consequently operates less like a catalog of advanced technology and more like a filter for national-security science and technology attention. That makes the deletion of a technology meaningful, but it does not amount to a declaration that the technology has ceased to matter.

What the U.S. National Security Technology List Now Emphasizes

The 2026 list contains 14 technology areas: advanced manufacturing and materials; artificial intelligence and autonomy; biotechnology; communications and networking; directed energy; future computing technologies; hypersonics and advanced missile technologies; information management and cybersecurity; nuclear energy; positioning, navigation, and timing; quantum information technologies; semiconductors and microelectronics; sensing and signature management; and space technologies.

Several broad 2024 categories have been combined, narrowed, redistributed, or replaced. Artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy now sit together, for example, bringing software intelligence, robotics, multi-agent systems, autonomous operations, command and control, interpretability, and AI security into one broad category.

Future computing technologies contain advanced computing architectures, photonic and neuromorphic computing, high-performance supercomputing, tactical edge computing, brain-computer interfaces, high-security computing, hardened consumer operating systems, and advanced spatial computing. Information management and cybersecurity now includes post-quantum cryptography, computing supply-chain assurance, data management and security, AI-enabled cyber capabilities, digital identity, and operational-technology security.

Semiconductors and microelectronics include advanced manufacturing equipment, heterogeneous integration, advanced packaging, specialized AI and optical hardware, novel electronic materials, microelectromechanical systems, nanoelectromechanical systems, and integrated photonics. The inclusion of integrated photonics reflects the growing importance of optical technologies in computing, communications, sensing, and advanced semiconductor systems.

Advanced manufacturing and materials also becomes more specific. High-entropy alloys appear explicitly, alongside digital threads, digital twins, nanomanufacturing, advanced composites, lightweight metals, and AI-assisted materials development. The strategy also calls attention to replacing rare-earth or mineral-dependent alloys with alternatives based on more abundant materials where technically feasible.

The comparison below illustrates several of the most visible changes between the 2024 list and the August 2026 strategy. Some capabilities were deleted as named areas, whereas others were redistributed under new headings.

The pattern is selective rather than uniformly restrictive. Some technologies disappear because the new list is drawn more narrowly. Some survive under different headings, and several new subfields reflect security problems that have become more prominent, including post-quantum protection, secure computing platforms, advanced photonics, and materials tied to supply security.

Counting categories alone therefore misses much of the policy change. The more informative approach is to trace where a capability moved, whether it still appears elsewhere in federal policy, and whether government programs continue to finance, regulate, procure, or protect it.

Why Data Centers Disappeared Without Becoming Less Important

Data centers provide the clearest example of why deletion from Appendix A cannot be interpreted as federal indifference. In July 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on federal permitting for data centers that made rapid development of AI data centers and supporting infrastructure an explicit administration policy.

The order defines a “Data Center Project” as a facility requiring greater than 100 megawatts of new electrical load dedicated to AI inference, training, simulation, or synthetic-data generation. It identifies dependent infrastructure that includes transmission equipment, natural-gas turbines, nuclear power equipment, semiconductors, networking equipment, and data-storage systems.

The same executive order directs the Commerce Department, in consultation with the Office of Science and Technology Policy and other agencies, to pursue financial support for qualifying projects through mechanisms that may include loans, guarantees, grants, tax incentives, and offtake agreements. Data centers therefore remain embedded in federal industrial, energy, permitting, and national-security policy even though the phrase disappears from the 2026 CET list.

The apparent contradiction becomes easier to understand when the government’s intended relationship with private investment is considered. The National Security Science and Technology Strategy says federal R&D should concentrate more heavily on areas where public investment can complement private capital or support work that commercial markets have insufficient incentive to pursue. Later-stage technologies with strong commercial demand are expected to rely more heavily on private industry.

Data centers sit in precisely such a market. Large technology companies, utilities, infrastructure developers, semiconductor manufacturers, and institutional investors have strong commercial incentives to expand computing capacity. Federal policy can influence that expansion through permitting, electricity policy, land access, procurement, trade rules, security requirements, research, and infrastructure programs without identifying the physical data center itself as a dedicated CET research area.

The deletion is incomplete even at the technology level. The 2026 list retains high-performance supercomputing for AI, advanced computing architectures, tactical edge computing, data management and storage security, advanced communications, semiconductors, integrated photonics, and AI itself. Those capabilities constitute much of the technological foundation of advanced computing infrastructure.

This suggests a shift in abstraction. The 2024 list explicitly named infrastructure forms such as cloud services, high-performance storage, and data centers. The 2026 list concentrates more heavily on enabling technologies, security functions, and technological capabilities that can operate in commercial, military, intelligence, and other environments.

There is still a legitimate policy question surrounding the omission. Data-center dependence has implications for military computing, cyber resilience, electricity reliability, semiconductor supply, and domestic industrial capacity. Removing the term can reduce its visibility in a document that federal agencies are now instructed to use when organizing national-security science and technology activities.

Separate federal policies reduce that concern but do not eliminate it. The practical measure of data-center importance will come from budget requests, permitting decisions, energy policy, security requirements, procurement, and investment rather than from Appendix A alone.

Why Battery Removal Is More Debatable

Batteries present a different case because the 2024 CET framework included a broad “Clean Energy Generation and Storage” category. Its listed subfields included renewable generation, nuclear systems, fusion, energy storage, electric and hybrid engines, batteries, grid-integration technologies, energy efficiency, and carbon management.

The 2026 strategy eliminates that broad category and creates a narrower nuclear-energy category containing advanced fission reactors, fusion energy, space nuclear power and propulsion, and high-temperature radiation-resistant materials. Batteries, general energy storage, and grid-integration technologies are no longer named in Appendix A.

Yet federal activity in 2026 demonstrates that battery supply chains remain connected to national security and industrial policy. On March 13, 2026, the U.S. Department of Energy announced up to $500 million for U.S. mineral and materials processing, battery manufacturing, and recycling. The program explicitly links domestic battery supply chains with defense, grid resilience, transportation, and manufacturing.

The funding opportunity covers processing, recycling, and manufacturing involving materials that can include lithium, graphite, nickel, copper, and aluminum. It represents the third round of funding under federal battery-materials processing and battery-manufacturing programs.

Battery deletion therefore does not indicate that Washington has abandoned domestic battery manufacturing. Instead, it changes where batteries sit inside the federal policy structure. Supply-chain and manufacturing concerns remain active through Department of Energy programs, industrial policy, mineral policy, defense demand, transportation programs, and resilience initiatives.

Nuclear technology receives more explicit treatment inside the national-security science and technology list. The FY 2028 R&D memorandum identifies nuclear fission and fusion among administration technology priorities and directs agencies toward a larger share of foundational and earlier-stage research.

One explanation again involves commercial maturity. Lithium-ion batteries, electric vehicles, stationary storage, mineral processing, and recycling have established commercial markets. Federal policy can influence these markets through manufacturing support, procurement, trade measures, mineral programs, and research without placing batteries on the narrower CET list.

The argument for keeping batteries on the list remains substantial. Military platforms, unmanned systems, communications equipment, mobile electronics, backup power, and resilient electricity infrastructure depend on energy storage. Supply chains for battery minerals, components, processing, and manufacturing can create strategic dependencies even when the underlying technology is commercially mature.

The Department of Energy’s own 2026 funding language reinforces that point by connecting battery manufacturing to defense and grid resilience. Appendix A may have become narrower, but the security problems associated with battery supply have not disappeared.

What Happened to AR, VR, Human-Machine Systems, and Gas Turbines

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) disappeared as named subfields because the 2026 list removes the standalone Human-Machine Interfaces category. The 2024 list placed AR, VR, human-machine teaming, and neurotechnologies within that category. Its cybersecurity section also referred specifically to security and privacy technologies for AR and VR.

The 2026 structure redistributes related capabilities rather than abandoning all of them. Advanced spatial computing appears under future computing technologies. Brain-computer interfaces sit in the same category, neurotechnologies move into biotechnology, and AI and autonomy absorbs robotics, embodied intelligence, autonomous command and control, and multi-agent systems.

The result is a reorganization around computing, biology, autonomy, and security rather than a distinct interface category. A company developing spatial-computing systems for military training, maintenance, visualization, autonomous-system control, or other government applications could still align with several listed technology areas even if its commercial product is commonly described as AR or VR.

Named inclusion can still matter. Technology lists influence how government organizations describe research priorities and can affect the language used in planning documents, solicitations, and strategic assessments. Companies and researchers may consequently need to map their capabilities to the terminology used by the new federal framework rather than relying on older product categories.

Gas turbine engines represent a clearer deletion. The 2024 list gave Advanced Gas Turbine Engine Technologies an independent category covering aerospace, maritime, and industrial technologies, full-authority digital engine controls, hot-section manufacturing, and related capabilities. The 2026 Appendix A contains no comparable standalone category.

Related technologies remain. Hypersonic propulsion, advanced manufacturing, materials, sensing, AI, and other listed fields can contribute to turbine development. Active defense and commercial engine programs continue outside the CET framework.

The administration’s data-center policy also demonstrates that turbines remain relevant elsewhere. The July 2025 data-center executive order specifically includes natural-gas turbines among the power equipment that may support qualifying data-center projects.

The result is another separation between inclusion on the CET list and active policy demand. A technology can disappear from Appendix A yet remain important to infrastructure development, military procurement, manufacturing, energy security, or commercial markets.

Companies therefore need to read the CET list alongside procurement programs, industrial-base initiatives, sector regulations, grants, export controls, and agency technology plans. Whether a familiar label survived the rewrite is less informative than whether the underlying capability still corresponds to funded government missions.

Space Moves Deeper Into the National Security Core

Space technologies remain among the 14 CET areas and retain a direct connection to national-security objectives. The 2026 list identifies cost-effective on-demand and reusable launch, advanced spacecraft power generation and propulsion, thermal management, access to cislunar space and novel orbits, in-space aggregation and assembly, biotechnologies for space applications, and crewed-spaceflight enablers.

Space nuclear power and propulsion appear separately under nuclear energy. That placement illustrates how the new framework treats space as dependent on technologies distributed across multiple categories rather than as a self-contained industry.

The 2026 space entry is narrower than the 2024 space category in several respects. The older list explicitly included sensors and data-analysis tools for space observations, resilient space communications and ground stations, launch-range technologies, and launch safety. Those phrases no longer appear within the space heading, although sensing, communications, data management, semiconductors, positioning and timing, autonomy, cybersecurity, and other technologies remain independent CET categories with direct space applications.

That structure is consistent with the December 18, 2025 Ensuring American Space Superiority executive order. It calls for U.S. ability to detect, characterize, and counter threats to American space interests from very low Earth orbit through cislunar space. The order also directs the creation of a responsive national-security space architecture that incorporates acquisition reform, commercial capabilities, new market entrants, and allied participation.

The same executive order sets policy objectives for returning Americans to the Moon through the Artemis program by 2028, establishing initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030, attracting at least $50 billion in additional investment in American space markets by 2028, and preparing a lunar surface nuclear reactor for launch by 2030. As of August 19, 2026, these remain policy targets rather than completed outcomes.

The executive order also directs establishment of a National Initiative for American Space Nuclear Power and calls for space traffic management, orbital-debris mitigation and remediation, terrestrial and cislunar positioning and timing, and infrastructure supporting an American space industrial base.

For the space economy, the interaction among technology categories may matter more than the space heading itself. Reusable launch depends on advanced manufacturing, materials, sensing, software, and semiconductors. Cislunar operations depend on communications, navigation, autonomy, power, thermal management, and radiation-tolerant electronics.

Space-based defense systems can combine sensing, AI, communications, directed energy, microelectronics, nuclear technology, and advanced computing. Companies several tiers removed from spacecraft manufacturing can therefore participate in national-security space programs through components, software, materials, services, or infrastructure.

New Space Economy’s analysis of the 2026 national-security technology strategy places space within this wider industrial and security framework. Its coverage explains how federally supported research, acquisition reform, supply security, private investment, and commercial space capability can interact under the strategy.

The relationship is broader than military spacecraft alone. New Space Economy’s examination of space and national security describes the dependence of defense missions on communications, navigation, intelligence, surveillance, missile warning, and other space capabilities. Its detailed treatment of cislunar space provides additional context for the Earth-Moon operating region now explicitly incorporated into U.S. technology and security policy.

Commercial procurement is another part of this relationship. New Space Economy’s 2026 military space market analysis examines how established defense contractors, newer space companies, commercial service providers, and specialized technology suppliers are participating in military space programs.

Federal research policy could favor parts of the space sector because many space technologies combine lengthy development cycles with specialized national-security requirements and limited commercial demand. The National Security Science and Technology Strategy tells agencies to shoulder more of the research burden where private incentives are weak and encourages public-private partnerships for early- and mid-stage development in fields including space, AI, nuclear energy, quantum technology, advanced communications, and positioning, navigation, and timing.

Later-stage development is expected to rely more heavily on private industry where commercial markets can sustain it. That approach resembles models already used in launch services, satellite communications, Earth observation, and other space markets where government can serve as a research sponsor, anchor customer, or purchaser rather than owning every element of the production chain.

What Companies, Researchers, and Investors Should Read From the Rewrite

Appendix A is a strategic federal document, not a self-executing law or funding award. It does not itself issue contracts, appropriate money, impose export controls, approve foreign investment, or guarantee research funding.

The National Security Science and Technology Strategy says the Office of Science and Technology Policy and National Security Council will coordinate technology-specific strategies or plans for CET areas. It also states that the administration will engage Congress on appropriations, authorization, and legislation needed to implement the strategy.

Those later decisions will reveal how much practical weight individual technologies receive. Budget requests, agency R&D plans, procurement programs, grants, solicitations, laboratory priorities, export rules, investment reviews, and congressional appropriations provides stronger evidence than list membership alone.

Companies should examine how their technical capabilities map to the new categories. A business commonly described as a data-center supplier may also operate in semiconductors, integrated photonics, high-performance computing, communications, cybersecurity, AI, power systems, or advanced manufacturing. A battery company may intersect with defense supply chains, materials processing, autonomous systems, manufacturing, or energy resilience. A spatial-computing company may align with future computing, AI, sensing, or human-performance research.

Researchers face a comparable change in terminology. The FY 2028 R&D memorandum tells federal agencies to emphasize foundational research and fields such as physical sciences, engineering, computer science, and mathematics. It specifically identifies AI, quantum information science, semiconductors, advanced communications, robotics, advanced manufacturing, nuclear fission and fusion, and space systems among administration technology priorities.

Research proposals connected to those missions may therefore fit the new federal direction even when a particular commercial application is absent from Appendix A. The narrower list does not define the outer boundary of federally supported science.

Investors also need to separate CET designation from commercial attractiveness. Inclusion does not guarantee a large addressable market, government contract, profitable business model, or technological breakthrough. Some listed technologies have large commercial markets, whereas others involve long development periods, government-dominated demand, specialized infrastructure, or substantial technical uncertainty.

Exclusion carries the opposite warning. Data centers and batteries demonstrate that a technology can disappear from Appendix A yet continue to receive extensive policy attention, private investment, government support, and national-security scrutiny.

Regulatory interpretation requires similar caution. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States reviews certain transactions involving foreign investment for national-security concerns under its governing authorities. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security separately administers significant portions of U.S. export controls.

The CET list can inform broader government thinking about technology risks, research security, supply chains, investment security, and international competition, but Appendix A does not automatically amend another legal regime. Companies dealing with export controls, investment screening, classified work, or controlled technical information still need to evaluate the governing statutes and regulations applicable to their specific technology and transaction.

The clearest commercial message in the 2026 strategy may be its intended division of labor between government and industry. Federal R&D is directed toward fields where long time horizons, security requirements, public benefits, or weak private incentives justify government participation. Commercial capital and procurement are expected to carry a larger share of development where workable private markets already exist.

For companies seeking government research support, this places greater emphasis on identifying the unresolved technical, security, infrastructure, or mission problem that warrants federal participation. A proposal becomes harder to justify as federally supported development if ordinary commercial investment would probably fund the same work.

The Deletions Matter Less Than the New Boundary Around Federal R&D

The most consequential change between 2024 and 2026 may be conceptual rather than numerical. The 2024 list cast a broad net and explicitly warned against treating itself as a funding-priority document. The 2026 strategy narrows the technology set, links it directly to national-security objectives, directs agencies to devote R&D attention to listed areas, and places the CET list inside a broader framework covering research, acquisition, infrastructure, partnerships, workforce, and technology protection.

That difference helps reconcile several apparent contradictions. Data centers have enormous economic and security significance, but private companies have strong incentives to finance them and the federal government has a separate permitting and infrastructure policy. Batteries remain connected to defense and grid resilience, yet the Department of Energy is addressing their manufacturing and supply chains through dedicated industrial programs.

AR and VR disappear as labels, but spatial computing, neurotechnology, AI, autonomy, and brain-computer interfaces remain. Gas turbines lose their standalone category, even though turbine technology continues to appear in infrastructure policy and remains relevant to aviation, maritime applications, electricity generation, and defense.

The additions fit the same logic. Post-quantum cryptography addresses the long-term security of digital information against advances in quantum computing. Integrated photonics connects semiconductor manufacturing with optical communications, computing, and sensing. High-entropy alloys represent a specialized materials field relevant to demanding environments. Hardened consumer operating systems recognize that widely deployed commercial computing platforms can have security implications extending well beyond traditional military hardware.

Implementation will determine whether these distinctions endure. The strategy says technology-specific plans should take competitor actions and countermoves into account. Changes in foreign capabilities, military use, supply-chain concentration, domestic industrial capacity, technical maturity, or commercial investment could alter how the United States evaluates an individual technology in later revisions.

A technology omitted in 2026 could return if its security profile changes. A listed technology could eventually migrate toward ordinary industrial or commercial policy if private markets become capable of carrying most development costs.

Budget execution provides a clearer test. The FY 2028 research memorandum directs agencies to identify how their proposed portfolios shift toward foundational and earlier-stage research. Agencies proposing substantial later-stage development are instructed to explain why that work would not occur without federal support.

Congress still controls appropriations, and individual agencies retain their statutory missions and program authorities. Companies and research institutions should consequently watch agency budget requests, congressional appropriations, technology strategies, procurement notices, research solicitations, laboratory programs, test infrastructure, and partnership opportunities rather than treating Appendix A as an investment checklist.

For space companies, this distinction is particularly consequential. Space remains explicitly listed, but many technologies required for modern space systems reside in other categories, including communications, positioning and timing, semiconductors, AI, sensing, cybersecurity, advanced materials, nuclear energy, and future computing.

The 2026 framework therefore encourages a more integrated interpretation of national-security technology. A semiconductor manufacturer, cybersecurity company, optical communications provider, nuclear engineering company, AI developer, or advanced-materials supplier can participate in a space program without describing itself primarily as a space company.

The smaller list does not necessarily represent a smaller technology policy. It represents a different boundary around the areas the White House wants federal agencies to treat as dedicated national-security science and technology priorities.

Summary

The August 2026 National Security Science and Technology Strategy reduces the federal Critical and Emerging Technologies list from 18 categories to 14, but the category count is less informative than the changed purpose attached to the list. Appendix A now defines a narrower subset of technologies and tells federal agencies to give those areas dedicated attention within R&D activities and national-security science and technology planning.

That differs from the 2024 list, which explicitly cautioned that it should not be interpreted as a policy or funding priority ranking. The 2026 strategy connects its list much more directly with federal planning, technology-specific strategies, security objectives, and the administration’s broader research philosophy.

Data centers, batteries, AR, VR, and gas turbine engines disappear as explicit entries for different reasons and with different implications. Data centers remain a federal infrastructure priority through a separate executive order. Battery manufacturing and materials continue to receive federal support tied to defense, manufacturing, supply security, and grid resilience. Human-machine capabilities have been redistributed across spatial computing, biotechnology, AI, autonomy, and brain-computer interfaces.

Gas turbines have the clearest standalone categorical disappearance, although turbine technology remains relevant to aerospace, defense, industry, and data-center energy infrastructure. None of these deletions, by itself, demonstrates that the federal government considers the underlying technology unimportant.

The revised framework gives greater visibility to post-quantum cryptography, integrated photonics, advanced materials, secure computing, nuclear technology, AI and autonomy, quantum systems, semiconductors, cybersecurity, and space. It also reflects a federal research philosophy that assigns government a larger burden where private incentives are insufficient and expects commercial investment to carry more of the later-stage development burden where markets are already strong.

As of August 19, 2026, implementation remains the more important question. Technology-specific plans, the FY 2028 budget process, congressional appropriations, agency solicitations, investment-security decisions, export controls, procurement programs, and research priorities will determine how the revised technology categories translate into actual spending and market demand.

Appendix A establishes a direction for U.S. national-security science and technology policy. Budgets, contracts, regulations, research programs, and agency implementation will determine how much economic weight that direction eventually carries.