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explore 2023 technology focus areas

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Emerging technologies are transforming societies, economies, and geopolitics. This moment brings unparalleled promise and novel risks. In every era, technological advances buoy nations that develop and scale them—helping to save lives, win wars, foster greater prosperity, and advance the human condition. At the same time, history is filled with examples where slow-moving governments stifled innovation in ways policymakers never intended, and nefarious actors used technological advances in ways that inventors never imagined. Technology is a tool. It is not inherently good or bad. But its use can amplify human talent or degrade it, uplift societies or repress them, solve vexing challenges or exacerbate them. These effects are sometimes deliberate but often accidental.

The stakes of technological developments today are especially high. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already revolutionizing industries, from music to medicine to the military, and its impact has been likened to the invention of electricity. Yet AI is just one among many technologies that are ushering in profound change. Fields like synthetic biology, materials science, and neuroscience hold potential to vastly improve health care, environmental sustainability, economic growth, and more. We have experienced moments of major technological change before. But we have never experienced the convergence of so many technologies with the potential to change so much, so fast.

 

Stanford Emerging Technology Review 2025 3D render

The Stanford Emerging Technology Review (SETR) is the first product of a major new Stanford technology education initiative for policymakers. Our goal is to help both the public and private sectors better understand the technologies poised to transform our world so that the United States can seize opportunities, mitigate risks, and ensure that the American innovation ecosystem continues to thrive.

Our efforts are guided by four observations: 

  1.   Policymakers need better resources to help them understand technological developments faster, continuously, and more easily.   

  2. America’s global innovation leadership matters.   

  3.  Academia’s role in American innovation is essential yet increasingly at risk.   

  4.  The view from Stanford is unique, important and needed now more than ever.

This report is intended to be a useful “one-stop shopping” primer that covers ten key emerging technology areas: artificial intelligence, biotechnology and synthetic biology, cryptography, materials science, neuroscience, nuclear technologies, robotics, semiconductors, space technologies, and sustainable energy technologies. While this is nowhere near an exhaustive list of technology research areas at Stanford, these ten fields are rapidly shaping American society today and promise to gain importance in the coming years. We did not publish a report in 2024 because production was postponed until a new administration was in office at the start of 2025.

Ensuring American leadership in science and technology requires all of us—academia, industry, government—to keep listening, learning, and working together. We hope the Stanford Emerging Technology Review starts meaningful and lasting conversations about how an innovation ecosystem benefits us all. The promise of emerging technology is boundless if we have the foresight to understand it and the fortitude to embrace the challenges.           
 

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Message from the Co-Directors

2025 TEN TECHNOLOGY FOCUS AREAS

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Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the ability of computers to perform functions associated with the human brain, including perceiving, reasoning, learning, interacting, problem solving, and exercising creativity.

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Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology

Biotechnology partners with biology to create products and services, like engineering skin microbes to fight cancer or brewing medicines from yeast. This industry, already 5 percent of US GDP, is poised for significant growth.

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Cryptography

Cryptography refers to the mathematics of protecting data from being surreptitiously altered or accessed inappropriately. It is essential for most internet activity, including messaging, e-commerce, and banking.

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Lasers

A laser is a light source with three important characteristics. Laser light is monochromatic, meaning the light is highly concentrated around a central wavelength, with very little emitted at other wavelengths.

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Materials Science

From semiconductors in computer chips to plastics in everyday objects, materials are everywhere. Knowing how to synthesize and process them, as well as understanding their structure and properties, has helped to shape the world around us.

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Neuroscience

A brain-machine interface is a device that maps neural impulses from the brain to a computer and vice versa.

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Robotics

In general, robots are human-made physical entities with ways of sensing themselves or the world around them and the ability to create physical effects on that world—beyond this statement, there is no consensus on the defi ning characteristics of a robot.

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Semiconductors

Semiconductors, often in the form of microchips, are crucial components in everything from smartphones and cars to advanced weapons and navigation systems used by the military.

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Space

By definition, space technology is any technology developed for the purpose of conducting or supporting activities beyond the Kármán line (i.e., one hundred kilometers or sixty-two miles above the Earth’s surface).

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Sustainable Energy Technologies

The transition to sustainable energy relies on improving every step of the energy supply chain, from generation to transmission to storage. However, the sheer scale of global energy has two major implications.

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