Recently in Geneva, the world’s largest forum on AI for Good, gathered around a simple question: how can technology best serve society? While the sentiment goes back to pre-industrial times, the conversation has firmly moved to algorithms. What about the machines that will come next?
Executive Director of Quantum Communications at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII).
Quantum technology has crossed a line. It is no longer a distant promise, but a growing portfolio of real applications. Quantum and quantum-inspired solutions are being applied to the simulations that underpin nuclear power, to protein design in drug discovery, and traffic forecasting in congested cities.
Quantum sensors are being tested for medical imaging, navigation where satellite signals fail, and monitoring carbon storage sites deep underground. These are no longer mere laboratory curiosities: they are increasingly emerging as working programs, with industrial partners and delivery dates.
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For those of us in the industry, these developments are both timely and long anticipated. But they also force us to confront a less comfortable reality: the same machines that will one day simulate new molecules will also break the public-key cryptography that secures much of the modern internet.
By some estimates, up to 80% of the world’s digital infrastructure is exposed. The world’s digital economy – not to mention every AI model celebrated in Geneva, runs on encrypted data. Every health record or financial transaction owes its confidentiality to mathematical assumptions that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer will overturn.
Store now, decrypt later
The threat timeline is worse than most realize. Rather than waiting for when the machine arrives, the clock started the moment adversaries began harvesting encrypted traffic: the so-called “store now, decrypt later” approach.
Data that remains valuable for years, from medical records to state secrets, may already be beyond rescue. Nobody knows exactly when “Q-Day” comes. But those who harvest our data today have time on their side.
This is why quantum-safe security cannot be a footnote to quantum computing. It is the other half of the field, and it needs to mature on the same schedule.
Quantum trip-wire
Two defenses exist, and they are not interchangeable. Post-quantum cryptography replaces vulnerable algorithms with mathematics believed to resist quantum attacks; it is software, it scales, and it is the workhorse of the migration now beginning worldwide.
Quantum key distribution takes a different route: it distributes encryption keys using quantum states of light that cannot be intercepted without being disturbed. In this way, these schemes deploy a “quantum trip-wire”, an eavesdropper reveals herself by the simple act of listening-in
Far from being in competition, both algorithmic and physics-based solutions have roles to play in tomorrow’s networks. Serious infrastructure will layer both.
Neither of these solutions are theoretical. New post-quantum standards have been finalized, with contributions from research teams around the world. And quantum-secured networks are already running in the field: since 2022, Abu Dhabi has hosted entanglement-based metropolitan networks, like the ADGM Quantum Testbed announced in August 2025.
These are initiatives that bring quantum security to where data actually lives. Long-range terrestrial links, satellite connections and “last-mile” access networks are the next steps, extending that protection between cities and, eventually, across continents. If there’s one lesson the field has learned from operating these systems, it’s this: migration takes years, so the time to start is before the threat matures, not after.
Depth of capability
There is a broader lesson in how this capability is being built. A growing number of nations have chosen to be builders of quantum technology rather than buyers, developing the full portfolio of sensing, communications and computing solutions. From processor fabrication to control software, to the hardware enabling quantum networks: the word “sovereignty” is often heard as a synonym for walls.
But our experience suggests otherwise. It is precisely the teams that build every layer themselves that can contribute most readily to the global commons, from working with international standards organizations like ITU and ETSI on quantum-safe networking, to releasing open-source middleware that researchers worldwide now use to program quantum hardware, wherever it was made.
It is this depth of capability that turns a nation from a spectator of the quantum era into an active participant.
That should also be the model for the decade ahead. No single country will own quantum technology, and no single vendor should be the sole authority on quantum-era trust. What the field needs now is what the AI community showcased in Geneva: open tools that lower the barrier to entry, interoperable standards so quantum-safe systems can talk to each other, and honest engagement with the risks alongside the promise.
For years, the defining question about quantum computing has been when the machines will arrive. Increasingly, I think that’s the wrong question. The more important question is whether the digital world they inherit will still deserve their trust. The answer depends on what we choose to secure, build, and share today.
Quantum for good does not start with a breakthrough. It starts with trust.
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This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.
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