Quantum computing is often framed as a distant breakthrough: powerful, transformative — and perpetually just over the horizon. That’s misleading. Quantum is already shaping security, communications, and infrastructure.
By harnessing quantum mechanics to solve complex problems faster than classical computers, this new technology threatens to break widely used encryption — while simultaneously offering the possibility of securing communication.
The US, China, and Europe are engaged in a competitive race. China leads in quantum communication infrastructure, while the US holds an edge in gate-based hardware, which break algorithms into discrete, manageable steps to manipulate data. Europe is strong in quantum research and has spawned startups. All could still win the quantum prize.
Unlike classical encryption, quantum key distribution (QKD) leverages the laws of physics to detect any interception attempt, making it tamper-proof rather than merely computationally hard to break. China has already operated a 2,000-kilometer QKD backbone between Beijing and Shanghai and has demonstrated satellite-based quantum key distribution over intercontinental distances.
The European Quantum Communication Infrastructure promises to be a secure, pan-European quantum communications network. It will protect government communications, critical infrastructure, and data flows.
The US supports quantum networking research through the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, university-led testbeds, and defense-relevant networking experiments. On both sides of the Atlantic, quantum secure communications represent a giant opportunity.
Yet quantum also represents a potential danger. Once sufficiently powerful quantum computers exist, many current public-key encryption schemes could be broken. Adversaries such as China are already harvesting encrypted data, with the intent of decrypting it later.
The US government has made quantum-safe encryption a legal and strategic requirement. Federal agencies are mandated to identify vulnerable systems and transition to quantum-resistant encryption standards, with a government-wide compliance deadline of 2035. The March 2026 National Cyber Strategy elevated quantum-safe encryption to a core pillar of national security alongside AI defense.
Defense contractors are on the strictest timeline, obliged to meet quantum-resistant standards by 2027. Banks, energy companies, and other critical infrastructure operators are also on notice. The message from Washington is clear: the transition to quantum-safe encryption is no longer a future problem. It is an active national security priority.
Europe has similarly made crypto-agility a policy priority. In April 2024, the European Commission published a roadmap for the transition to post-quantum cryptography. Each EU country must put national strategies and inventories in place by end of this year and complete broad migration by 2035. The financial sector is explicitly in scope. Regulators expect banks and financial institutions to be quantum-ready for core systems within the next five years.
While quantum computing dominates headlines, quantum sensing may deliver some of the earliest consequential impacts. Quantum sensors exploit quantum mechanical effects to measure time, gravity, magnetic fields, and acceleration with extraordinary precision, far beyond what classical instruments can achieve.
These capabilities are already in use or under active operational development:
- Navigation in GPS-denied environments. Quantum inertial navigation systems maintain positional accuracy without satellite signals, a critical capability in contested or jamming-heavy theaters.
- Subsurface detection and geophysical surveying. Quantum gravimeters can detect underground structures, tunnels, and infrastructure from the surface.
- Advanced timing for communications and financial systems. Quantum clocks offer precision that underpins secure synchronization across networks.
- Enhanced detection for defense and intelligence missions. Quantum magnetometers can detect submarines or buried objects at ranges that classical sensors cannot match.
Both the US and Europe have active quantum sensing programs embedded in defense research, space exploration, and critical infrastructure planning. The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense has invested in quantum timing and navigation as part of its Future Navigation program. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funded quantum-enhanced sensing under multiple programs aimed at military advantage in contested environments.
The lesson here is consistent: quantum advantage does not require a universal quantum computer. It requires identifying where quantum effects outperform classical systems and deploying accordingly.
None of this diminishes the long-term significance of quantum computing itself. Universal, fault-tolerant quantum computers could transform materials science, drug discovery, logistics, and financial modeling. Governments are right to invest seriously and benchmark claims rigorously.
But focusing exclusively on future quantum computers risks missing the more immediate reality. Quantum networking changes how trust is established. Post-quantum cryptography changes how data is protected. Quantum sensing changes how environments are measured and contested. Together, these technologies form a stack, one that is being built now, beneath the surface of the headline race for qubit counts.
The countries that treat quantum as a distant science project may eventually acquire powerful machines, but they will do so atop fragile systems. Those that treat quantum as a present-day enabler are already hardening infrastructure, shaping international standards, and training workforces attuned to a quantum-enabled world.
The real divide is not between quantum leaders and laggards. It is between those who recognize quantum as a foundational capability today, and those who are still waiting for it to arrive. Quantum may not yet be a general-purpose computing tool. But as a skeleton key to future security, resilience, and competitiveness, it is already operational.
Alicia Chavy is a Vice President at Beacon Global Strategies, a National Security Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and a Board Member of the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum. She specializes in national security, emerging technology policy, and geopolitical risk, with a particular focus on AI, quantum innovation, and emerging tech adoption. She holds a BS in Foreign Service and an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown University.
Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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