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Appendix A
National Critical Technologies List
The section provides the definition of critical technologies
and then discusses the structure of the list. The complete
list is presented in Table A.2.
What Is a "Critical Technology"?
The precedence for identifying select goods as "critical"
arose in the 1920s when dependence on foreign imports of
certain materials was judged to be a vulnerability for the
U.S. military. Accordingly, Congress required that the U.S.
maintain a strategic reserve of such "critical materials" in
order to ensure readiness in case of military conflict. An
extension of the same idea, i.e., that some technologies are
critical for military readiness but also as fuel for economic
growth, informed the Congress's use of the term in PL 101-
189. In this legislation mandating a critical technologies
report, Congress defined "critical technologies" as
"essential for the United States to develop to further the
long-term national security or economic prosperity of the
United States."[1] The phrase "critical
technologies" as used in the legislation implies that some
technologies are so fundamental to national security or so
highly enabling of economic growth that the capability to
produce these technologies must be retained or developed in
the United States.
Since the requirement for a National Critical Technologies
report was established in the 1990 Defense Appropriations
Act, several critical technologies lists have come into
existence. Various departments and agencies of the Federal
government have carried out or publish critical technology
assessments, including the Department of Defense, the
Department of Commerce, and the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration. Additionally, a number of private
sector lists have been generated. Other industrialized
countries have also identified national critical
technologies. For example, both Germany and Japan engage in
a formal Delphi process involving government, industry and
academia to evaluate the importance and status of a broad set
of technologies.
This list-making activity should not be seen as redundant.
Different lists are generated for different purposes, and the
technologies on these lists are selected for their potential
to aid in achieving specific goals. That is, the
technologies on different lists are "critical" for different
reasons. In the case of the critical technologies activities
of the Department of Defense, for example, technologies are
examined in relation to five Future Joint Warfighting
Capabilities most needed by the U.S. Combatant Commands. The
Commerce Department's emerging technologies list, published
in 1990, was based on market potential dictated by the
department's mission to promote and improve commerce.
Differing criteria, purposes and legislative references
aside, many observers have noted strong similarities between
the critical technology lists.[2] In a
highly interdependent economy with substantial overlap
between civilian and defense applications, this similarity is
not surprising. Integrating various critical technologies
lists and capturing the similarities--which reveal complex
relationships within the economy and between sets of national
and sub-national goals--in a consistently aggregated,
rationally organized way was the first important task in
producing this report.
Because the U.S. economy is broad and technologically
advanced, many technologies are important to some aspect of
economic prosperity or national security. Choosing those
that are "critical" on the national level requires some
careful thinking about definitions. The first necessary
definition is that of "technologies" since "critical
technologies" are a subset of the larger group. Technology
involves knowledge. In order to differentiate technology
from other forms of knowledge, this report defines technology
as knowledge that has the following characteristics:
- Systematized and practical, based on experimentation
and/or scientific theory
- May involve new discoveries, current knowledge, or a
combination of both
- Directed toward application or achieving a goal rather
than only toward understanding
- Involves direct manipulation of materials or biological
systems, or the implementation of mathematical algorithms
- Is reproducible and transferable
This definition excludes much basic science which is directed
at pure understanding of natural phenomena. However, the
definition is broad enough to include knowledge built on
scientific understanding and knowledge acquired through
experimentation or accident.
Once the realm of "technologies" is defined, it is necessary
to define what we mean by "critical." The definition in this
National Critical Technologies report assumes that the
criticality of a technology is determined by the importance
of the application to which the technology is put. That
is,
criticality is derived from the importance of the outputs of
the system of which the technology is a constituent part, as
well as from the significance the technology has for enabling
that system
This definition explicitly answers the question "Critical for
what?" thereby helping to link policy objectives to choices
of technologies. For example, since improvements in
education at all levels are considered essential to the
future economic prosperity and national security of the
United States, education and training software which enables
advanced education and training methods and systems is a
critical technology that meets the definition above.
Classification and Aggregation Methodology
The National Critical Technologies Report defines
"criticality" in the broadest possible way--to "develop and
further the long-term national security or economic
prosperity of the United States." Thus, this list must be
integrative in a fundamental sense, incorporating the
diverse concerns and objectives which comprise ideas of
security and prosperity and which drive much of the other
list-making activity. It must also identify areas not
captured in extant lists because they span the concerns or
responsibilities of several different agencies or groups.
The 1995 National Critical Technologies list was created
through a process of input from multiple constituencies in a
traceable and reproducible manner, described in greater
detail in Appendix B. The process began with a candidate
list which included technologies appearing in the first
Report of the National Critical Technologies Panel (March
1991), as well as the lists published by the Department of
Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Energy and by
NASA. A four-level hierarchical structure was used to
integrate lists based on different organizational schemes and
levels of aggregation. Sample or illustrative applications
to which the technologies contributed were also included,
although the list of applications was not expected to be
exhaustive. Technology experts were utilized to include
knowledge of specific technologies and applications where
existing lists did not contain a sufficient level of detail.
In addition, the candidate list indicated whether each
specific technology contributed primarily to economic
prosperity, national security, or both.
The six major technology categories in the 1991 list[3] were changed to seven. The descriptions
of the seven categories are shown in Table A.1. The
candidate list classified technologies according to the
nature of the skills and problems involved in their
development, not by the technologies' applications. This
focus on underlying technologies rather than applications
streamlined the list. Many technologies support multiple
applications, so an application-based taxonomy complicates a
technology list by forcing the same technology to be placed
in multiple categories. Technology focus was also deemed to
be more helpful to users because it allowed them to see the
breadth of influence of a technology and to determine whether
a technology meets their requirements for criticality based
on applications it supports.
Table A.2
National Critical Technologies List
Energy
Energy Efficiency
Energy Storage, Conditioning, Distribution and
Transmission
Improved Generation
EP = Economic Prosperity; NS = National Security.
Environmental Quality
Monitoring and Assessment
Pollution Control
Remediation and Restoration
Information and Communications
Components
Communications
Computer Systems
Information Management
Intelligent Complex Adaptive Systems
Sensors
Software and Toolkits
EP = Economic Prosperity; NS = National Security.
Living Systems
Biotechnology
Medical Technologies
Agriculture and Food Technologies
Human Systems
EP = Economic Prosperity; NS = National Security.
Manufacturing
Discrete Product Manufacturing
Continuous Process Manufacturing
Micro/Nano Fabrication and Machining
EP = Economic Prosperity; NS = National Security.
Materials
Materials
Structures
EP = Economic Prosperity; NS = National Security.
Transportation
Aerodynamics
Avionics and Controls
Propulsion and Power
Systems Integration
Human Interface
EP = Economic Prosperity; NS = National Security.
[1] US Code, Title 42, Section 6683.
[2] Comparisons of various critical
technology lists may be found in Mogee, Mary Ellen,
Technology Policy and Critical Technologies: A Summary of
Recent Reports, The Manufacturing Forum, National Academy
Press, Washington, D.C., December 1991 and in Knezo,
Genevieve J., Critical Technologies: Legislative and
Executive Branch Activities, Congressional Research Service
93-734 SPR, Washington, D.C., 5 August 1993.
[3] The 1993 Panel did not re-write or
alter the 1991 list.
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