Accelerate America’s Quantum Technology Leadership

• As the U.S.-China competition for quantum technology leadership continues to intensify, the Trump administration should prioritize both advancing and protecting the country’s quantum lead.
• By supporting the transition of quantum sensors, the administration can equip the armed services with highly precise and resilient navigation and timing capabilities within a few years.
• Reauthorizing the first Trump administration’s 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act would advance the country’s cutting-edge research and grow the talent base.
• To prevent misappropriation of U.S. investments and ingenuity, the administration should also address gaps in quantum technology export controls and research security.

Securing America’s quantum leadership is a national security imperative. This emerging technology field is expected to bring unprecedented industrial capabilities from agriculture to drug discovery, but also to break the encryption protocols safeguarding U.S. digital infrastructure and to provide new advantages in the battlefield.¹ The quantum technology competition with China is intensifying, and U.S. dominance is not guaranteed. Indeed, China leads in quantum communications and is inching close behind the United States on quantum computing and sensing.²

The Trump administration should seize the opportunity to consolidate the legacy of its landmark National Quantum Initiative, which has yielded years of leading research and bolstered the budding U.S. quantum industry.³ These recommendations provide an initial pathway for the administration to advance and protect America’s hard-earned quantum lead.

Accelerate the transition of quantum sensors to address America’s Global Positioning System (GPS) vulnerabilities. GPS’s vulnerability to disruptions, including adversaries’ rising jamming and spoofing attacks, poses a serious threat to U.S. military operations and critical infrastructure, as President Trump’s 2020 Executive Order 13905 highlighted.⁴ Quantum clocks and sensors can address this national security challenge by offering highly precise positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) capabilities without relying on frequent GPS synchronization. These technologies recently have been demonstrated in aircraft, at sea, and in space, but their deployment requires greater integration, ruggedization, and reductions in size and cost.⁵

The Trump administration is positioned to field quantum sensors for the armed services within a few years. To ensure this, the administration should:

Urge Congress to prioritize funding the Department of Defense's (DoD) Quantum Transition Acceleration program. This collaboration between the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and the Defense Innovation Unit can rapidly advance mission-critical quantum sensing solutions for the armed services for approximately $70 million annually—a figure that is dwarfed by current investments in quantum computing (a field that remains much more nascent) and the up to hundreds of millions of dollars in estimated daily costs from losing GPS service.⁶ A firm demand signal for quantum sensors from the government would attract private investment and further accelerate their deployment.

Establish an interagency program to advance the transition of quantum sensors across national security applications. Bringing the DoD together with additional end users of quantum sensors for PNT such as NASA and the Departments of Homeland Security, Energy, and Transportation could maximize government investments by facilitating knowledge sharing and creating a larger, more enticing market for the private sector. A memorandum of understanding among the agencies could be a start, but a formal program with defined activities and timelines would be more effective.⁷

Reauthorize the 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act (NQIA) to boost America’s research and talent base. While China and many others have launched quantum strategies and substantive investments, the first Trump administration’s NQIA ran out of authorized funding in 2023.⁸ Reauthorizing this bill would demonstrate America’s unequivocal commitment to quantum leadership and enable the new administration to focus federal funding on critical areas with low private investment. Specifically, the new NQIA should:

Support fundamental science and engineering research programs. Quantum technologies like computing and networking have made important progress in recent years, but they remain at early R&D stages. Government spending should prioritize fundamental research in underdeveloped fields—such as quantum algorithms, error correction, and quantum engineering—that may lead to the breakthroughs needed to scale quantum systems and bring these technologies to fruition.⁹ To maximize impact and long-term sustainability, these federal investments should be leveraged to attract additional support from academia, industry, and state and local governments.

Expand America’s quantum workforce. The quantum industry is voicing shortages in qualified U.S. talent.¹⁰ In fact, 50–70 percent of those receiving quantum-relevant PhDs in the United States are foreign students, mostly from China.¹¹ The United States must grow its quantum talent at all levels, especially as over half the quantum jobs are estimated to not require advanced degrees.¹² The NQIA should prioritize solving these critical gaps and expanding employment opportunities by authorizing the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish a quantum workforce development hub. Its activities might include ongoing assessments of the knowledge and skills required by different quantum subfields (e.g., sensing, computing hardware, algorithms, communications, and enabling technologies), gathering and disseminating training programs, and running outreach campaigns. To ensure these programs meet employer and local needs, the NSF should coordinate with industry, including through the Quantum Economic Development Consortium, as well as with regional efforts, such as the Colorado Quantum Tech Hub.¹³ Coordination with workforce programs in semiconductors and related fields could further optimize investments and avoid duplication.¹⁴

Strengthen America’s quantum technology protection strategy. In addition to building domestic capabilities, securing U.S. quantum technology leadership requires protecting this progress against espionage, intellectual property theft, and broader technology transfer to China and beyond. To effectively safeguard America’s quantum edge, the administration should:

Address the gaps in the Biden administration’s export controls on quantum computing. The controls require substantial improvements to block China’s technology access without hurting the U.S. industry.¹⁵ The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) should clarify the language of its controlled technology categories to resolve ambiguities and avoid under- and over-compliance, as well as consider revising these controls periodically as the field of quantum computing continues to evolve rapidly.¹⁶ Additionally, the administration should continue pressing allies and partners to quickly adopt similar controls to avoid China’s access through other markets and to prevent U.S. suppliers from bearing the brunt of the impacts of restricted trade. The BIS also can strengthen its deemed export requirements to better prevent technology leaks via foreigners inside the country. All nationals from countries of concern with access to the controlled quantum technologies should be reported to the government, not just new hires, and the BIS should impose risk mitigation strategies or deny access altogether whenever the reported access jeopardizes U.S. national security.

Incentivize stronger internal security protocols in the quantum industry. Government agencies should leverage financial incentives, such as contracts and high-funding research programs like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, to demand quantum organizations of all sizes to strengthen their cyber, physical, and personnel security protections.¹⁷ Moreover, law enforcement and intelligence agencies should continue engaging with the quantum ecosystem to inform them of security threats and proactively mitigate all potential vectors of technology leakage.¹⁸

Accelerate the implementation of the first Trump administration’s research security memorandum. National Security Presidential Memorandum 33 (NSPM-33) was published in early 2021 to enhance the protection of federally funded research against foreign government interference and exploitation, but many measures have not yet taken effect.¹⁹ The new Trump administration should press funding agencies to implement NSPM-33, and additional research security requirements in the CHIPS and Science Act, promptly and effectively.²⁰ A relevant program to watch is the NSF’s new grant review process, which will pilot this year with a focus on quantum.²¹ To maximize fairness and “getting to yes,” each quantum proposal will undergo a multistage review to determine if the project scope and investigators trigger national security concerns, and to subsequently negotiate a risk mitigation plan with the research institution.²² This case-by-case model risks being too idiosyncratic and time-consuming, which could hinder both the progress and security of U.S. innovation. The program’s effectiveness should be compared to more straightforward approaches like the DoD’s risk matrix, or the Canadian government’s, which simply does not fund quantum projects whose investigators have connections to a list of proscribed entities.²³

Continue the country’s migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC). Future quantum computers may be able to break public-key cryptography and expose highly sensitive U.S. information, from military and intelligence communications to critical infrastructure and the broader civilian sector. To protect against this threat, the administration should continue to lead the swift migration of U.S. digital systems to PQC standards as outlined in National Security Memorandum 10, prioritizing public and private entities critical to national security.²⁴ The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and National Security Agency should provide ongoing guidance as well as authoritative vetting of PQC security vendors.²⁵ The administration also should press countries around the world to quickly adopt the NIST’s PQC standards, rather than developing their own, to avoid global interoperability issues.²⁶

Together, these recommendations highlight the many opportunities for the administration to consolidate its quantum legacy and both promote and protect the United States’ global quantum supremacy.