The United States is on track to “experience a DeepSeek moment in quantum” unless it takes accelerated action on the quantum tech front, witnesses told lawmakers this week as they warned of “catastrophic” consequences if China wins the global race in quantum computing.
“Some officials have labeled the arrival of cryptographically relevant quantum computers … a black swan event, rare, unpredictable and catastrophic,” said Denis Mandich, chief technology officer at quantum encryption company Qrypt, while testifying on June 24 at a hearing of the House Oversight Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation Subcommittee.
“But that’s not a black swan event … it’s inevitable,” Mandich said.
“It’s only unknown as to the arrival time,” Mandich added. “Progress in quantum cleaning is nonlinear and prone to sudden breakthroughs … The real danger isn’t only the quantum threat, it’s in our complacency.”
That warning was echoed by other witnesses as they fielded questions from lawmakers on where the United States stands in the race against China to advance quantum computing to the point where it could break all standard encryptions on today’s computer systems.
“[There’s a] possibility that China’s ahead of us, and we don’t know it,” said Mandich. “They’ve gone very silent on quantum the last couple years. Before this, they were very public about it. There’s no incentive for them to publicize the fact that they have it.”
Marisol Cruz Cain, director of information technology and cybersecurity at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), told lawmakers that the U.S. government doesn’t have the right information to begin to accurately protect against quantum threats.
“Unless we have done a complete risk assessment to find out where our vulnerabilities are and the threats that they pose, how to mitigate it – we are not even prepared to start to protect our systems and transition them to PQC [post-quantum cryptography],” Cruz Cain explained. “There’s no milestones there to sort of measure ourselves against and when we should be in certain places.”
One way to transform the Federal government’s quantum strategy is to house those efforts under the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD), said Cruz Cain. She called the office “well positioned” to coordinate and oversee the U.S. quantum strategy, and added, “we recommended that the office take steps to do so.”
Her comments referred to a new GAO report out Tuesday that reiterated a recommendation from the Federal watchdog in 2024 where it suggested that ONCD take over PQC readiness.
Beyond the expertise offered by those in ONCD – the Federal government’s central cyber policy office – Brenda Rubenstein, the minority witness and professor and director of the Data Science Institute at Brown University, said U.S. advancements in quantum computing will require a specialized workforce. She emphasized that a quantum workforce uniquely demands event more skills than a good cyber workforce.
“One must know quantum, one must know biology, one must know a variety of different areas of mathematics and engineering in order to realize the quantum computers of tomorrow,” explained Rubenstein, adding that the U.S. is well “positioned to train individual areas.”
Rubenstein warned that major budgetary cuts to research and science funding at agencies such as the National Science Foundation under the Trump administration could undermine building that workforce, saying she’s worried about what “American leadership will look like in the future.”