White House S&T strategy calls for new approaches to safeguard US research
The new guidance is a departure from last year’s National Security Strategy.
The Trump administration says the nation’s science and technology research ecosystem needs to embrace “novel security solutions” to ensure the U.S. maintains its global edge, according to a new document publicly released on Monday.
The National Security Science and Technology Strategy published by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy outlines how the U.S. innovation sector should be leveraged and guarded to defend the country. The new document builds off last year’s National Security Strategy, which called, in part, for “protecting the competitiveness of the U.S. economy and bolstering the resilience of the American technology sector.”
To help safeguard the nation’s innovation sector from threats “that could impair U.S. economic and military strength and competitiveness,” the strategy calls for “approaches that protect without inhibiting the productivity and agility of the national security S&T enterprise.”
President Donald Trump previously moved to curtail illicit foreign interference in the nation’s research institutions, most notably through a January 2021 memo that sought to keep adversarial governments from exploiting U.S. science and technology research.
Lawmakers from both parties have also pushed legislation to limit Chinese involvement in federally-funded research projects, and the Pentagon similarly announced on Monday that it called for 30 U.S. academic institutions to review their ties with foreign entities.
But the strategy says research institutions need to take further steps to enhance their threat awareness, including conducting “automated research security vetting” of agency-funded research proposals and performing continuous monitoring of federally-supported projects.
It also calls for “bolstering counter-intelligence support to governmental and non-governmental research centers” — which would give researchers more immediate and timely insights into potential threats—and creating “risk-based review criteria and a repository of sharable information to enhance the efficiency of information collection and sharing among agencies.”
It noted, for instance, that the FBI-led Quantum Information Science and Technology Counterintelligence Protection Team “brings an interagency team of quantum experts and security professionals to fine-tune technology protection and security outreach activities for the quickly evolving quantum R&D community.”
Another section calls for “establishing cybersecurity guidelines for researchers and research institutions,” although it is sparse on the details of what this would look like. The National Science Foundation, for its part, has a research security policy framework that includes some cyber-specific guidance as part of its broader blueprint.
“Given the evolving nature of research security threats, security experts should embrace comprehensive, new, and novel security solutions, particularly where they can be crafted to address unique or nuanced requirements of specific technology fields,” the document said.
The strategy’s implementation section highlights the need to enhance K-12 and higher education training opportunities and bring more skilled talent into the federal workforce—an effort the Trump administration has been undertaking, in part, by prioritizing skills-based hiring over degree requirements.
Notably, however, the strategy references the need to attract more nonimmigrant tech workers to the U.S., which differs from the Trump administration’s prior stance that called for a more restrictive approach.
“The United States will further strengthen its workforce by attracting and retaining top-tier global talent in critical national security S&T fields,” the strategy says. “Agencies will collaborate on using existing authorities to recruit the exquisite talent necessary to ensure the national security S&T Enterprise leads the world in developing and applying these technologies.”
OSTP did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the strategy’s inclusion of the need to attract and retain global talent.
Last year’s National Security Strategy said, in part, that the U.S. “cannot allow meritocracy to be used as a justification to open America’s labor market to the world in the name of finding ‘global talent’ that undercuts American workers.”
Trump issued a proclamation in September 2025 that moved to restrict the number of H-1B visas, saying that the program has harmed American workers. The visas allow U.S. firms to temporarily hire foreign workers, with the tech industry notably using the program to attract nonimmigrant talent. The proclamation attempted to institute a $100,000 H-1B visa fee, although a district court has overturned that mandate.
In addition to calling for the nation’s innovation sector to embrace new security solutions, the strategy said the U.S. needs to speed up its pace of innovation, build up its domestic “technological resilience” and focus its science and technology ecosystem on “maintaining battlefield advantage, countering strategic threats to the homeland, and shaping the competition toward areas of U.S. strength.”
Nextgov/FCW Cyber Reporter David DiMolfetta contributed to this story.
Edward can be securely contacted at Grahed.40 on Signal.
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Facts Only
* The new guidance is a departure from last year’s National Security Strategy.
* The U.S. research ecosystem needs to embrace “novel security solutions” to maintain global edge.
* The strategy outlines how the innovation sector should be leveraged and guarded to defend the country.
* The strategy calls for approaches that protect without inhibiting productivity and agility of the national security S&T enterprise.
* Research institutions must enhance threat awareness, including conducting “automated research security vetting” of agency-funded proposals.
* Institutions must perform continuous monitoring of federally-supported projects.
* The strategy calls for bolstering counter-intelligence support to governmental and non-governmental research centers.
* It mandates creating “risk-based review criteria and a repository of sharable information” for agencies.
* The FBI-led Quantum Information Science and Technology Counterintelligence Protection Team provides interagency expertise.
* The strategy calls for establishing cybersecurity guidelines for researchers and research institutions.
* Implementation requires enhancing K-12 and higher education training and bringing more skilled talent into the federal workforce.
* The strategy calls for attracting and retaining top-tier global talent in critical national security S&T fields.
Executive Summary
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a new National Security Science and Technology Strategy, signaling a shift in approach to safeguarding U.S. research. This new guidance calls for the U.S. innovation sector to adopt "novel security solutions" to maintain global competitive advantage. The strategy builds upon previous goals focused on protecting economic competitiveness and technological sector resilience.
The document outlines specific actions for research institutions, including conducting automated security vetting of agency-funded proposals, continuous monitoring of projects, and bolstering counter-intelligence support for centers. It also emphasizes establishing cybersecurity guidelines for researchers and institutions. Furthermore, the strategy addresses workforce development by calling for enhanced K-12 and higher education training and efforts to attract global talent in critical S&T fields.
The document also touches on broader policy considerations related to international research involvement, noting past actions by the administration to restrict foreign interference in research and existing legislative pushes concerning Chinese involvement in federally funded projects. The strategy explicitly advocates for accelerating innovation, building domestic technological resilience, and focusing the ecosystem on national security objectives.
Full Take
The narrative centers on a strategic pivot from established security measures toward adaptive, technologically nuanced internal controls within the science and technology sector. The shift from broad goals of protecting competitiveness to specific operational mandates—like automated vetting and risk-based information sharing—suggests an increasing focus on granular threat mitigation rather than purely aspirational defense. This creates tension between the stated goal of protecting research productivity and the requirement for intensive monitoring and security oversight.
A significant pattern emerging is the linkage between kinetic security concerns (military strength, strategic threats) and the defense of intangible assets (innovation, talent). The strategy attempts to bridge this by framing the protection of S&T as directly equivalent to maintaining "battlefield advantage," which forces researchers into a security posture that might inherently slow down the speed of innovation.
The call for attracting global talent introduces an interesting structural tension when juxtaposed with past rhetoric against open borders in the labor market. The document signals an evolution where national security imperatives are now explicitly linked to demographic and workforce strategy, moving beyond purely national defense concerns into managing the flow and retention of specific types of human capital. The ambiguity surrounding the details of cybersecurity guidelines suggests that implementation priorities will be determined by which technology domains—quantum, AI, etc.—are prioritized, revealing potential focal points for future resource allocation and where true systemic resilience will be tested.
Bridge Questions: How will the efficiency of automated vetting systems be balanced against the need to maintain research agility? What are the specific protocols for sharing risk-based information across agencies without compromising individual research autonomy? How does the strategy reconcile its focus on attracting global talent with previous concerns regarding labor market impact and worker protections?
Sentinel — Human
The text functions as standard policy reporting, synthesizing official statements and historical context regarding U.S. science and technology security strategy.