New Delhi: The US is putting undersea warfare, space superiority, and artificial intelligence and autonomous systems at the centre of its science and technology research strategy, as it seeks to maintain its technological and military edge over rivals such as China.
The priorities are laid out in the National Security Science and Technology Strategy (NSSTS), released by the White House on 18 August. The document also calls for banning federal research funding involving “high-risk” entities, including Chinese companies such as Alibaba and BYD, while increasing R&D investment in the US’ ‘Golden Dome’ initiative.
The strategy’s release coincided with another move to restrict China-linked research. On the same day, the Pentagon ordered 30 US universities, including Harvard and MIT, to “audit” their partnerships with Chinese universities and military institutions. Universities have been asked to terminate “problematic” relationships with foreign institutions or risk losing federal funding.
The NSSTS follows the National Security Strategy released by the Trump administration in 2025, which called for “rebalancing” America’s economic relationship with China.
“We want to remain the world’s most scientifically and technologically advanced and innovative country, and to build upon these strengths,” the 2025 National Security Strategy said.
In its overview, the NSSTS acknowledges that certain “potential adversaries” seek to challenge the United States’ dominance in science and technology, particularly in areas critical to military resilience and homeland defence. Its priorities therefore include technologies with direct military and strategic applications, such as nuclear energy, semiconductors, hypersonics and advanced missile technologies.
The strategy argues that technological superiority serves a broader deterrence purpose as well.
“In the long term, maintaining American economic and technological preeminence is the surest way to deter and prevent a large-scale military conflict,” it says.
Undersea warfare, space and AI
Under its four-pillar approach, the US identifies three areas in which it wants to maintain or build a strategic battlefield advantage — undersea operations, space operations, and AI and autonomy.
The strategy treats these not as independent technology sectors but as domains where military dominance, commercial technology and national security overlap.
The push for space superiority was already underway before the NSSTS. In December 2025, the White House issued an executive order on “Ensuring American Space Superiority”, setting objectives that included returning humans to the Moon by 2028, developing next-generation missile defence capabilities, and expanding commercial launch services.
With NASA’s Artemis programme and private space companies such as Blue Origin and SpaceX, the US is already working to establish its supremacy in the space sector. But China presents a significant challenge.
China has launched its own space station, returned samples from the far side of the Moon, and is developing reusable rockets and new Earth-observation satellites. Its rapidly expanding capabilities have narrowed the technological gap with the US.
Undersea operations are another area where Washington retains a “clear technological superiority”, particularly in warfare and anti-submarine systems. But the Trump administration’s interest extends beyond military operations to critical undersea infrastructure and resources, including fibre-optic cables, energy infrastructure and autonomous undersea systems.
Through executive orders signed in 2025, Trump also ordered an accelerated push for seabed mineral exploration, linking the undersea domain to the competition for critical minerals.
AI forms the third major area. In June 2026, Trump issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum on AI in the National Security Enterprise, directing the US government to begin adapting frontier artificial intelligence models for military and strategic purposes.
Rather than requiring the government to build these systems itself, the memorandum called for adapting AI developed by commercial companies while seeking to avoid strategic dependencies.
More risk-taking, tighter research controls
The NSSTS also calls for greater investment in innovation and research and development, particularly in frontier technologies. It says the government should support risk-taking scientific ventures, fund emerging technologies to build technological resilience, and increase the “pace of innovation”.
“Across sectors engaged in national security S&T, agencies should encourage technical risk-taking to enable discovery, and rapid learning through trial-and-error,” the document says.
But the push to accelerate innovation is accompanied by tighter controls over who can participate in the US research ecosystem and receive federal money.
The strategy lays out guidelines for tracking research grants, restricting certain federal research funding involving “high-risk” entities, including Chinese companies, and increasing counter-intelligence support for government research centres.
These measures follow a series of stringent actions by the Trump administration to tighten scrutiny of research funding and scientific partnerships linked to China. The new order extends that scrutiny to American universities themselves, particularly those maintaining academic relationships with Chinese institutions.
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)