President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on June 22 that suggest the administration understands what's at stake.

Most transformative technologies promise productivity before they threaten security. Quantum computing reverses that order, and that changes everything about how America needs to respond.

President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on June 22 that suggest the administration understands what’s at stake. One directs a national effort to deliver a quantum computer capable of conducting real scientific research, with officials pointing to 2028 as the target. The other accelerates the government’s transition to quantum-resistant cybersecurity, with key systems required to migrate by 2030 or 2031 — four full years ahead of the timeline the Biden administration had set.

IBM’s Arvind Krishna and Google’s Ruth Porat attended the Oval Office signing. That wasn’t a photo opportunity. It was a signal that the private sector is already aligned and waiting for Washington to keep pace.

The instinct to be skeptical of executive orders is healthy. Milton Friedman spent a career reminding us that governments make poor entrepreneurs, and he was right.

But Friedman also understood that markets require conditions: clear rules, secure infrastructure, a strategic framework within which private genius can operate freely. These orders don’t substitute for private investment in quantum. They create the runway it needs.

The economist Robert Solow once observed that “you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”

His point was that transformative technologies take time. Institutions, habits and workforces must adapt before the gains fully materialize. We are almost certainly in that lag period with quantum today. The temptation is to look at the technology’s current limitations and conclude the urgency is premature. That temptation is exactly how countries fall behind.

Advertisement

Here is what makes quantum categorically different from previous technology waves: the security threat arrives before the productivity boom. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer won’t merely solve problems faster than classical machines. It will eventually break the public-key encryption protecting bank transactions, classified communications and much of the internet itself.

Rebecca Krauthamer, CEO of quantum security firm QuSecure, put it plainly: “This executive order matters because it puts dates on a security transition that can no longer stay theoretical.” The 2031 deadline isn’t bureaucratic target-setting. It’s triage.

China grasps this with uncomfortable clarity. Beijing has spent years integrating quantum research into its national security strategy, funding satellite-based quantum communications and treating the field as strategic infrastructure, not academic exploration. Chinese leaders are not debating whether quantum matters. They are debating how fast they can dominate it.

The Trump administration is right to match that urgency, and right to do so by mobilizing private enterprise rather than attempting to replace it.

One dimension of this competition deserves more attention than it typically receives: quantum sensing. The executive orders direct the Commerce and Defense departments to deploy quantum sensors within five years, systems that use quantum mechanics to provide navigation alternatives to GPS. In theaters where adversaries are actively jamming satellite signals, that capability isn’t incremental. It’s decisive. The nation that fields reliable quantum sensors first doesn’t simply win a technology competition. It wins battles.

The right historical analogy here isn’t the nuclear arms race, though the stakes are comparable. Think instead of the interstate highway system, a strategic federal commitment that didn’t crowd out private enterprise but built the infrastructure on which private enterprise flourished. Eisenhower didn’t build the trucking industry. He built the roads. Trump’s quantum orders are an attempt to build the roads. The private sector will build the trucks.

As Republican Indiana Sen.Todd Young put it when introducing the bipartisan National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act earlier this year: “We need to ensure the United States has the talent and research capabilities required to lead the global tech competition and outcompete China.” 

Advertisement

Congress must match that conviction with sustained appropriations. Universities must treat quantum workforce development as a national priority. Regulators must resist treating the security transition as just another compliance exercise.

Safety here is not the enemy of innovation. It is the precondition for the trust that makes innovation scale.

The question before the country is not whether quantum computing transforms the world. It will. The question is whose values, whose security standards and whose technological architecture sit underneath that transformation when it arrives.

The breakthrough will come. The question is whether we’ve secured what comes before it.

James Carter is a Principal with Navigators Global. He previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Treasury and as a Senior Fellow at the America First Policy Institute. Timothy Maney is a board member of Zenith Intelligence Group and directed the Federal Budget and Appropriations portfolios for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from 2000 to 2024.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].