[House Hearing, 119 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
PREPARING FOR THE QUANTUM AGE:
WHEN CRYPTOGRAPHY BREAKS
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CYBERSECURITY,
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY,
AND GOVERNMENT INNOVATION
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 24, 2025
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Serial No. 119-37
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAVILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on: govinfo.gov, oversight.house.gov or docs.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
60-816 PDF WASHINGTON : 2025
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman
Jim Jordan, Ohio Robert Garcia, California, Ranking
Mike Turner, Ohio Minority Member
Paul Gosar, Arizona Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Columbia
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Michael Cloud, Texas Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Gary Palmer, Alabama Ro Khanna, California
Clay Higgins, Louisiana Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
Pete Sessions, Texas Shontel Brown, Ohio
Andy Biggs, Arizona Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico
Nancy Mace, South Carolina Maxwell Frost, Florida
Pat Fallon, Texas Summer Lee, Pennsylvania
Byron Donalds, Florida Greg Casar, Texas
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Jasmine Crockett, Texas
William Timmons, South Carolina Emily Randall, Washington
Tim Burchett, Tennessee Suhas Subramanyam, Virginia
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Yassamin Ansari, Arizona
Lauren Boebert, Colorado Wesley Bell, Missouri
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida Lateefah Simon, California
Nick Langworthy, New York Dave Min, California
Eric Burlison, Missouri Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Eli Crane, Arizona Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
Brian Jack, Georgia Vacancy
John McGuire, Virginia
Brandon Gill, Texas
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Mark Marin, Staff Director
James Rust, Deputy Staff Director
Mitch Benzine, General Counsel
Lauren Lombardo, Deputy Policy Director
Raj Bharwani, Senior Professional Staff Member
Duncan Wright, Senior Professional Staff Member
Mallory Cogar, Deputy Director of Operations and Chief Clerk
Contact Number: 202-225-5074
Jamie Smith, Minority Staff Director
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
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Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government
Innovation
Nancy Mace, South Carolina, Chairwoman
Lauren Boebert, Colorado Shontel Brown, Ohio, Ranking
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida Member
Eric Burlison, Missouri Ro Khanna, California
Eli Crane, Arizona Suhas Subramanyam, Virginia
John McGuire, Virginia Yassamin Ansari, Arizona
C O N T E N T S
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OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Hon. Nancy Mace, U.S. Representative, Chairwoman................. 1
Hon. Shontel Brown, U.S. Representative, Ranking Member.......... 2
WITNESSES
Dr. Scott Crowder, Vice President, IBM Quantum Adoption
Oral Statement................................................... 4
Ms. Marisol Cruz Cain, Director, Information Technology and
Cybersecurity, U.S. Government Accountability Office 6
Mr. Denis Mandich, Chief Technology Officer, Qrypt
Oral Statement................................................... 8
Dr. Brenda Rubenstein, Associate Professor of Chemistry and
Physics, Brown University
Oral Statement................................................... 9
Written opening statements and bios are available on the U.S.
House of Representatives Document Repository at:
docs.house.gov.
INDEX OF DOCUMENTS
* Statement, June 25, 2025, MITRE; submitted by Rep. Mace.
The documents listed above are available at: docs.house.gov.
ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS
* Questions for the Record: Dr. Scott Crowder; submitted by
Rep. Mace.
* Questions for the Record: Mr. Denis Mandich; submitted by
Rep. Mace.
* Questions for the Record: Dr. Brenda Rubenstein; submitted by
Rep. Ansari.
These documents were submitted after the hearing, and may be
available upon request.
PREPARING FOR THE QUANTUM AGE:
WHEN CRYPTOGRAPHY BREAKS
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TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 2025
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information, Technology, and Government
Innovation
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in
room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Nancy Mace
[Chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Mace, Burlison, Crane, McGuire,
Brown, and Subramanyam.
Ms. Mace. The Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information
Technology, and Government Innovation will now come to order,
and I want to say welcome, everyone.
Without objection, the Chair may declare a recess at any
time.
And I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an
opening statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRWOMAN NANCY MACE REPRESENTATIVE FROM
SOUTH CAROLINA
Ms. Mace. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us for
this discussion on quantum computing and its impact on
cybersecurity. To those watching this hearing and asking, what
is quantum and why should I care, you are not alone. Quantum
computing is complicated, but it is important for the
government to understand and prepare for how quantum will
change everything from encryption to drug discovery.
Classical computing is what we all know and use today. It
is the kind of computing that runs your phone, your laptop,
pretty much everything, every government system. This type of
computing is what we are used to talking about around here. It
is the type of computing we are thinking of when we talk about
cloud-based software, chip production, and IT modernization.
Quantum computing, on the other hand, sounds like it is the
stuff of science fiction, and it might be, but it is real, and
it is very powerful. Today quantum computing is in its pre-
market stage, but United States companies are already investing
billions of dollars each and every year into its development. A
2023 McKinsey report projected the quantum technology market
could be larger than $100 billion by 2040.
Quantum computing applies the laws of quantum physics to
get more information out of fewer computations. Quantum
computers are not faster classical computers. They operate
completely differently and allow us to solve new types of
problems, which classical computers cannot solve. Quantum
computers will contribute significantly to problems which
require the evaluation of vast numbers of possibilities all at
once. This will lead to incredible new discoveries,
specifically in the fields of medicine and science. However,
this will also be used to break traditional encryption, thought
to be unbreakable by most classical computers.
An important role of this Subcommittee is to ensure proper
cybersecurity of Federal technology. One thing all experts
agree on is a sufficiently advanced quantum computer will upend
cryptographic security in every sector, including finance,
healthcare, and defense. This is why I led the Quantum
Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act with Representative
Khanna, which was signed into law in December 2022. This bill
requires the Federal Government to develop and execute a plan
to migrate Federal IT to post-quantum cryptography. The Federal
Government must not wait to tackle this enormous task. Already
we know foreign adversaries are implementing a ``steal now,
decrypt later'' strategy, with the hope today's data will still
be valuable when they have a quantum computer.
I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about
the progress of agencies in implementing our bill. When
President Trump signed the National Quantum Initiative Act into
law in 2018, he showed the United States is taking quantum
technology seriously. It is essential to the United States that
we lead in this disruptive technology, and I will now recognize
Ranking Member Brown for her opening statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF RANKING MEMBER
SHONTEL BROWN, REPRESENTATIVE FROM OHIO
Ms. Brown. Thank you, Chairwoman Mace, for calling a
hearing on this important topic. Ensuring that Americans' data
is safe is a top priority. That is why I am proud to have
introduced the Electronic Consent Accountability Act with
Chairwoman Mace today. This bipartisan bill would ensure
Federal agencies are modernizing and simplifying electronic
consent while protecting their personally identifiable
information, but safeguarding data does not stop with consent
alone. It also depends on the strength of the technology behind
the scenes to protect that information.
For decades, encryption technology is something that
governments, companies, and private citizens alike have relied
on to protect our text messages, passwords, documents,
financial transactions, and so much more from hackers, leaks,
and bad actors. Originally, it was believed it would take the
best supercomputers millions of years to crack the codes that
we use to protect our data and privacy, but then came quantum
computing. While we are still in an estimated 10 to 20 years
away from a quantum computer that is able to decode the
encryption technology that we currently use, we must prepare
for the day when our current encryption methods fall before the
power of the next generation of machines.
This is not a theoretical problem. Foreign adversaries,
like China and Russia, have already started what is called
steal now and decrypt later attacks in which they steal as much
of our encrypted data as possible. When they crack the code of
quantum computing, they will already have vast troves of
sensitive secret data from the American people and the Federal
government at their fingertips ready to unlock and exploit it.
Given the risk to privacy and national security, we must invest
to keep the United States a global leader in quantum computing
and prepare the Federal Government for the quantum computing
age.
In 2022, the Biden-Harris Administration implemented the
national security memo on ``Promoting United States Leadership
in Quantum Computing While Mitigating Risk to Vulnerable
Cryptographic Systems,''--easy for me to say. This memo gives a
blueprint to prepare government technology for a post-quantum
future. This is not a quick fix, but it began the process of
upgrading Federal IT systems vulnerable to quantum decryption.
It is essential that we keep that momentum going.
Researchers at universities and laboratories across the
country have demonstrated that quantum computing is real and
can solve problems that traditional computers struggle with. In
2023, I attended the unveiling of the first onsite private
sector quantum computer in the United States at the Cleveland
Clinic, the first time anyone in the world had applied a
quantum computer to be wholly focused on healthcare research.
Today, that machine is working at helping the Cleveland Clinic
accelerate scientific breakthroughs to save lives and improve
treatments. From Fiscal Year 2019 through Fiscal Year 2022,
Congress allocated more than $2 billion in research and
development across multiple departments and programs to study
quantum capability and to harden our systems against quantum-
ready adversaries. The National Institute of Science and
Technology has approved three cryptography standards for the
post-quantum world, and we need to provide the funding
necessary to implement these standards governmentwide to
safeguard privacy and security.
Investing in U.S. relationships in quantum computing also
means investing in basic research, educating top talent, and
other essential building blocks of scientific advancement. For
decades, Federal funding has been a vital tool in positioning
the United States as a leader in innovation. We take for
granted GPS, voice assistance, and the touchscreens that we use
every day, but each of these technologies was developed thanks
to foundational research funded with Federal dollars. Despite
the clear importance of Federal science funding to our national
security and economic prosperity, the Trump Administration has
cut this funding to its lowest level in decades, while our
country faces unprecedented global competition in science and
technology. This includes $700 million in cuts to the National
Science Foundation grant program and $879 million in cuts from
new and existing science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) education grants. President Trump's budget
request asked Congress to slash the NSF budget by more than
half. Experts say this could amount to the same level of long-
term damage to the U.S. economy as a major recession.
So, I look forward to our conversation today on how we can
best prepare the country for quantum computing and post-quantum
encryption, but it would serve everyone here to remember that
America is only able to lead and benefit from scientific
advancements because of Federally funded scientific research.
We must continue to make it a priority to do so, and with that,
Madam Chairwoman, I yield back.
Ms. Mace. Thank you, and I am now pleased to introduce our
witnesses for today's hearing. Our first witness today is Dr.
Scott Crowder, Vice President of IBM Quantum Adoption. Our
second witness is Ms. Marisol Cruz Cain, Director of
Information Technology and Cybersecurity at the U.S. Government
Accountability Office. Our third witness today is Mr. Denis
Mandich, Chief Technology Officer at Qrypt, and our fourth
witness today is Dr. Brenda Rubenstein, Associate Professor of
Chemistry and Physics at Brown University.
We welcome everyone and pleased to have you here this
afternoon, and pursuant to Committee Rule 9(g), the witnesses
will please stand and raise your right hands.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony that you are
about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth, so help you God?
[A chorus of ayes.]
Ms. Mace. Let the record show the witnesses all answered in
the affirmative. You may sit down. We appreciate all of you
being here today and look forward to your testimony.
Let me remind the witnesses that we have read your written
statements, and they will appear in full in the hearing record.
Please limit your oral statements to 5 minutes. As a reminder,
please press the button on the microphone in front of you so
that it is on and the Members can hear you. When you begin to
speak, the light in front of you will turn green. After 4
minutes, the light will turn yellow. When the red light comes
on, your 5 minutes has expired, and we would ask that you
please wrap up. One thing I want to note is that we are
scheduled to have votes at 1:30 today, so we hope we will get
through your intros, 5 minutes each, and then we will break for
votes, and then we will come back for questioning.
I will now recognize Dr. Crowder to please begin his
opening statement.
STATEMENT OF SCOTT CROWDER
VICE PRESIDENT, IBM QUANTUM ADOPTION
Dr. Crowder. Chairwoman Mace, Ranking Member Brown,
distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for this
opportunity to once again testify before you all. As a global
leader in technology and quantum computing, IBM's mission is to
bring useful quantum computing to the world and to support the
transition to post-quantum cryptography. We are the largest
fleet of quantum computers and the largest ecosystem of quantum
computing users in the world. We have built and made available
to our customers over 80 quantum systems via our data centers
in the United States and Europe. All of our quantum systems are
manufactured in the United States in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Our industry research and academic partner network has over 275
members exploring the use of quantum computing for business and
science to accelerate algorithmic discovery and workforce
development. Partners such as the Cleveland Clinic, University
of Missouri, Oak Ridge National Lab, Wells Fargo, and Lockheed
Martin are working with IBM to advance applications of quantum
computing and build their quantum skills.
2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of quantum
mechanics. We have already witnessed the first quantum
revolution based on our understanding that nature is discrete
or quantized. This understanding has led to technologies such
as lasers, transistors, MRI machines. It has had tens of
trillions of dollars of economic benefit and a fundamental
impact on our lives. Quantum computing will usher in a second
quantum revolution based on the insight that the math of
quantum mechanics can be used to do computing in a new way.
Quantum computers will be able to more accurately simulate
chemistry, leading to breakthroughs in areas like personalized
medicine, advanced materials, and more energy-efficient
batteries. Quantum algorithms will be able to discover patterns
in data that appear random to classical algorithms, leading to
improved financial modeling and optimized manufacturing and
logistics. Quantum will be used in concert with classical
computers to drive a new computing revolution that will
generate significant economic and societal impact.
Since my testimony in 2023, the industry has made
significant progress. IBM now has a fleet of 100-plus qubit
quantum computers of sufficient scale and quality that they can
run quantum programs that are too complex to execute on the
world's largest classical supercomputers. This threshold
enables research into application of quantum algorithms which
hold an advantage over any known classical method. IBM has
stated we will demonstrate this quantum advantage by next year.
Based on public data, we believe IBM, Google, and possibly the
Chinese Academy of Sciences are also building systems that may
be capable of meeting this threshold, and this progress is
accelerating. Multiple vendors have published technical
roadmaps to build more powerful, fault-tolerant quantum
computers that will enable a much wider range of applications.
Earlier this month, IBM announced we were building what we
believe will be the world's first large-scale, fault-tolerant
quantum computer in Poughkeepsie, New York, by 2029. This
system will be capable of running programs 20,000 times more
complex than today's quantum computers.
Congress can help ensure the United States remains a leader
in this emerging technology in three ways, first, by investing
in the deployment of high-performance quantum computing
technology. In addition to reauthorizing the National Quantum
Initiative Act, the Federal Government should ensure agencies,
such as the Departments of Energy and Defense, deploy and
integrate quantum-centric supercomputers. Without greater
access to the best available quantum computers, the U.S.
Government will fall behind other nations in applications
critical to national defense and economic prosperity.
Second, by increasing the focus on algorithmic discovery to
capitalize on the benefits from this emerging technology. Rapid
advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have demonstrated it
is the combination of advanced computing and algorithmic
innovation that determines our global leadership. As in AI, our
ability to main technological superiority in the quantum era
requires research into new algorithmic approaches, innovation
in the application of these algorithms for specific use cases,
and access to leading-edge computer infrastructure.
Finally, the U.S. Government and industry must become
quantum safe and quantum ready. If the industry continues to
advance at the expected pace, quantum computers will have the
ability to break asymmetric encryption. The National Institute
of Standards and Technology (NIST) has recommended existing
encryption vulnerable to quantum computers be disallowed by
2035, and previous experiences have shown broad adoption of new
cryptography can take more than a decade. Thus, we must act
now. We must ensure our Nation's most critical systems are safe
from this future threat. Thankfully, this Committee has
realized this need and has already begun acting. Congress can
help further by supporting the passage of additional
legislation that ensures rapid adoption of post-quantum
cryptography and appropriating funds to support this
transition. With much of the work on standards already done,
now is the time for action and implementation.
Thank you for convening this hearing, and I look forward to
today's discussion.
Ms. Mace. Ms. Cruz Cain, you are recognized for your
introductory statement.
STATEMENT OF MARISOL CRUZ CAIN, DIRECTOR
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND CYBERSECURITY
U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. Cruz Cain. Chairwoman Mace, Ranking Member Brown, and
Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me today to
discuss the rise of quantum computers and the risks they
present.
As you know, quantum computers hold the promise of solving
critical problems that conventional computers cannot. These
computers use the property of quantum physics to perform
calculations dramatically faster than today's conventional
computers. This allows them to execute significantly greater
numbers of calculations in the same amount of time. This
increased computing power has potential applications in many
different fields. For example, quantum computers may be able to
simulate critical chemistry processes for developing new
fertilizers and medicines. However, the flip side of this
potential is that quantum computers can threaten the security
of information systems and the data they contain, including
those controlled by the Federal government.
For instance, quantum computers could defeat widely used
encryption methods that individuals, Federal agencies, and
critical infrastructure entities rely on. These computers could
break current encryption in only hours or days, compared to the
billions of years a conventional computer would take. Some
experts predict that a quantum computer capable of breaking
existing cryptography could be developed in the next 10 to 20
years. Furthermore, adversaries or other malicious actors could
copy data protected by cryptography today and store it with the
intention of accessing it later once a sufficiently powerful
quantum computer is developed.
Today I will focus on two important issues: first, the
factors that affect the development of a quantum computer, and
second, the Federal government's strategy to address the threat
that quantum computers pose to cryptography. In October 2021,
we identified several factors that affected the development and
use of quantum computers and technologies. We also outlined
options that policymakers should consider to address these
factors. I will highlight two.
First, the United States needs to develop a strong quantum
workforce to maintain its leadership position in quantum
technology hardware and software development. In doing so,
leveraging programs, training, and hiring are key. For example,
educational programs could provide the qualifications and
skills needed to work in quantum technologies across both the
public and private sector. Second, sustained investment is
particularly important to advance these technologies. It is
imperative for us to find additional ways to incentivize or
invest in the development of quantum technologies. To do so,
basic funding for research and early development activities is
essential.
With the respect to the security threat quantum computers
pose, in 2022, Congress passed the Quantum Computing
Cybersecurity Preparedness Act, which outlined important steps
to facilitate the government's transition to post-quantum
cryptography. Nonetheless, we reported last year that the
Federal government lacks a comprehensive national strategy for
addressing cybersecurity risks posed by quantum computing.
Various documents developed by the White House, Office of
Management and Budget (OMB), NIST, and Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) have contributed to an emerging U.S. national
strategy. However, the documents, even when taken altogether,
do not fully address the threat. For example, while the
documents included evaluations of risks to the critical
infrastructure sectors, there was no similar assessment of the
risks to Federal agencies.
In addition, the strategy documents did not assign roles
and responsibilities to key Federal entities for helping
critical infrastructure sectors migrate to post-quantum forms
of cryptography. One reason we identified for the lack of a
comprehensive strategy is that there is no single Federal
organization responsible for coordinating such a strategy. We
believe that the Office of the National Cyber Director is well-
positioned to lead the coordination and oversight of a quantum
strategy, and we recommended that the office take steps to do
so.
In summary, quantum computers hold tremendous promise for
solving problems and improving life across multiple fields, but
at the same time, their enhanced computing power creates
serious risks to the security of information systems and the
sensitive data they contain. Policymakers have several options
for expanding the development of quantum computing. While doing
so, it will be important that the country takes a coordinated
and strategic approach to dealing with the risks it presents.
This concludes my remarks, and I look forward to answering any
questions you may have.
Ms. Mace. Thank you, and I now recognize Mr. Mandich for
your opening statement.
STATEMENT OF DENIS MANDICH
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, QRYPT
Mr. Mandich. Thank you. Chairwoman Mace, Ranking Member
Brown, Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity
to testify today on the national security risks posed by
quantum computing and the urgent need for a post-quantum
cryptography, PQC.
For decades, our cybersecurity strategy has focused on
preventing immediate threats, but today's dangerous
vulnerabilities stem from what has already happened. We now
live in an era of retroactive insecurity, where vast amounts of
sensitive and encrypted data, government communications,
defense secrets, critical infrastructure, telemetry are being
silently intercepted and stored by foreign adversaries. This is
known as harvest now and decrypt later, a tactic perfected
during the cold war and actively pursued today, most notably by
China. I will point out that we say harvest now and decrypt
later, not stolen or stored now and encrypted later because you
still have your data that is just a copy of it in China.
The recent exposure of Salt Typhoon, where nine of our
largest telecom backbone networks were compromised, is
undeniable proof hostile actors already have pervasive access
to collection points of encrypted data, including
infrastructure used by the intelligence community and law
enforcement. Some officials have labeled the arrival of
cryptographically relevant quantum computers, one capable of
breaking today's encryption as a Black Swan event, rare,
unpredictable, and catastrophic, but that is not a Black Swan
event. This is a White Swan event. It is inevitable. It is only
unknown as to the arrival time, the question of timing when
this will happen. With billions invested globally in rapid
advances in error correction, the timeline is shrinking. The
threshold is roughly 4,000 logical qubits, and leading programs
are racing toward that mark already.
Delay is not just risky, it is irrational. Progress in
quantum computing is nonlinear and prone to sudden
breakthroughs, and our adversaries have every incentive to
conceal milestones until it is too late, but the real danger is
not only in the quantum threat. It is in our complacency. We
have seen this pattern before. Flame malware exploited weak
cryptography many years ago, lingering undetected for years.
Storm-0558 from China, you are probably familiar with, resulted
in Microsoft's master signing key being stolen, compromising
nearly all Federal agencies, and to this day, the true root
cause remains completely unknown, despite the Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)'s excellent reporting on
it.
Deprecated algorithms like MD5, SHA-1, and flawed random
number generators, like Dual--EC--DRBG, still exist across
critical infrastructure that we use today. Even with full
public knowledge of these flaws, meaningful reform is very
slow, fragmented, or entirely absent in many cases. The
transition to PQC will be far more complex than any previous
cryptographic upgrade because like in the 1990s, we now operate
on a global scale of digital infrastructure, cloud networks,
AI-driven systems, exascale computers, and quantum research
itself. Our systems were never designed to resist the types of
catastrophic nation-states attacks we are seeing today. Worse,
PQC is not a silver bullet. The collapse of promising
algorithms, like SIKE just two years ago, broken in under an
hour by a regular laptop computer, is a sober reminder that no
encryption is invulnerable. Even new standards like the PQC
algorithms will have flaws. Waiting for the perfect solution is
a fantasy. This will be a long, continuous process, not a
finish line.
Compounding this risk is the convergence of AI and quantum
technologies, which amplifies the threat vectors involved. AI
accelerates cryptanalysis, enabling automated, scalable, and
unpredictable new attacks. Data poisoning becomes a systemic
risk where AI agents ingest corrupted or intercepted data,
creating catastrophic decision failures. Future Stuxnet-like
campaigns will combine malware, AI, and quantum-powered
exploits embedded in persistent and invisible threats at our
firmware and hardware levels.
The status quo of reactive cybersecurity, patching
vulnerabilities after they are weaponized, cannot survive in
this environment. We need a proactive architectural shift. The
basics are simple: it is crypto agility. Systems must be
designed so encryption can be hot-swapped very quickly,
redundant and distributed defense systems, no single point of
failure. They must all be eliminated, especially with PQC, and
a government-led mandate, above all else.
The U.S. Government, as the world's largest technology
customer, can drive the market by refusing to procure any non-
PQC-compliant systems. The PQC transition is not just
technical. It is strategical and a national economic security
necessity. The internet itself evolved from 1970s telecoms
networks, prioritizing scale and monetization over resiliency
and security. That model is now unsustainable, given the
geopolitical risk we are facing today.
Harvest now, decrypt later is not speculative. It is
happening now. Quantum feudal capable of exploiting stockpiles
of this data is foreseeable in the future, and combining it
with AI, the threat is not additive; it is now exponential.
Inaction costs more than preparation, and history shows we
rarely regret moving early to mitigate these predictable and
catastrophic risks. The EU has now mandated all their systems
of high-value data and critical infrastructure must be
completed by 2030. More than a decade ago, National Security
Agency (NSA) director General Alexander said it best: this is
the single greatest transfer of wealth in human history, and we
cannot survive this if quantum is achieved in China before the
United States Thank you for your time.
Ms. Mace. Thank you, and, Dr. Rubenstein, you are
recognized for your opening statement.
STATEMENT OF BRENDA RUBENSTEIN
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS
BROWN UNIVERSITY
Dr. Rubenstein. First and foremost, I would like to thank
Chairwoman Mace, Ranking Member Shontel Brown, and the
honorable Members of this Committee for your continued interest
in quantum technologies. I particularly applaud this
Committee's efforts for thinking about the Department of
Defense's Quantum Computing Center of Excellence, which would
potentially significantly transform the technologies that our
armed services use routinely. Quantum technologies are
absolutely critical to our Nation's health, prosperity, and
defense. I thank the Committee for thinking about this and
inviting me to testify regarding these matters.
For background, my name is Brenda Rubenstein. I am an
Associate Professor of Chemistry and Physics, soon to become
the Vernon Krieble Professor of Chemistry at Brown University.
I am an expert in quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics
with 20 years of experience, who has led a number of large
teams on quantum computing, and in particular, we are looking
at how we can actually use quantum computers to understand
biochemistry and biological and health problems. My experience
transcends academia. I previously worked at the National
Laboratories. I have formed a number of different startups, and
I am a member representing quantum science on the U.S. Defense
Science Study Group.
To get to the point, the reason why we are here is thinking
about quantum technologies. As we all know, over the past
several decades, computing has emerged as one of the
cornerstone technologies of all of society, enabling a number
of transformative advances in communication, health, business,
and other areas. To give you an example, my grandfather was one
of the first mathematicians, a basic scientist, who worked on
Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) and used it to actually
predict election results. You may remember that UNIVAC got the
election right, and actually CBS got the election wrong. Since
that time in 1952, we have witnessed an incredible increase in
the computational power that we have, which has completely
transformed our society.
However, classical computers, however advanced they have
gotten, cannot solve every single known problem. There are wide
classes of problems in optimization, in energy, and in biology,
for which we cannot solve rapidly and efficiently using
classical computation. These problems can potentially be
addressed by quantum computers, and as was said before, if
America is the first to use these, it will be the difference
between using my grandfather's 1952 computer and us using
modern computers of today.
In order to ensure our quantum leadership, however, we must
train a fully skilled quantum workforce. As Vannevar Bush
phrased it so eloquently many years ago, we shall have rapid or
slow events on any scientific frontier, depending upon the
number of highly qualified individuals and scientists exploring
it. The same rings true today for quantum technologies. In
fact, quantum science is a particularly special area for
developing the workforce because it requires a number of
complex skills. One must know quantum, one must know biology,
one must know a variety of different areas in mathematics and
engineering in order to realize the quantum computers of
tomorrow. Fortunately, the United States is very positioned to
train individuals in these different areas. We come with an
approach where we train quite broadly and we educate the
leaders of the future to think and innovate beyond what others
have done before.
However, what is critical to ensuring our workforce is
basic research. Basic research is the way that we train our
students, we train our trainees in order to think creatively
and innovatively to solve these different key challenges. Basic
research is also the way that we have come up with quantum
computing in the first place. So, if we think about Richard
Feynman, Feynman enunciated and thought about quantum computers
out of thought, out of curiosity, out of interest, and so many
things about quantum computing rest on the pillars of basic
research. However, as many of you know, basic research has been
substantially reduced in looking at future budgets. We are
seeing significant reductions in what we will be able to expend
on our quantum workforce. If we look at the NSF budget alone,
that will be reduced by 57 percent and a total of 85 percent
for physics, so that is all the basic physics research that has
gone into quantum computing over the many years.
There will also be significant cuts to things like graduate
research programs. These fund our graduate students in order to
perform the kinds of important research that we need in order
to advance quantum technologies over the future, and there are
even significant cuts to DOD basic research as well, including
in fields that are related to quantum technologies. These
different cuts have had marked impacts on the psyches of our
trainees and on educators. Labs, even at prestigious
universities, are starting to shut. And let me tell you, one of
my students, who is a Lindau Nobel Laureate, the highest
laureate you can be as an undergraduate and graduate student,
once recently told me that maybe he should not do physics
because there will not be a job for him.
So, this leaves us with the question of who will be our
next generation of American scientific leaders who will lead
our quantum revolution. I, therefore, advocate that if you want
to think about that mountain vista of attaining quantum
leadership, that we must traverse the mountain and we must
actually support scientific research, including basic research.
Thank you.
Ms. Mace. All right. Thank you. And since we are going to
be voting here momentarily, pursuant to the previous order, the
Chair declares the Subcommittee in recess subject to the call
of the Chair. We will plan to reconvene 10 minutes after votes.
The Subcommittee now stands in recess.
[Recess.]
Ms. Mace. The Subcommittee will come to order, and I would
like to thank everyone for your patience this afternoon. I
would now like to recognize myself for 5 minutes.
Ms. Cruz Cain, my first question goes to you. The Quantum
Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act, signed into law in
December 2022, what progress has the Federal Government made in
migrating to post-quantum cryptography, and where are we
feeling behind?
Ms. Cruz Cain. OMB's guidance asked for inventory of
systems that have sensitive information and also asked for
funding and what that would take, and last, asked agencies to
start testing the post-quantum cryptography that NIST gave.
Right now we have ongoing work and we are looking to release
that in a couple months, I think, so I cannot give you the
findings of that, but what I can tell you is we are in the very
early stages.
Ms. Mace. Okay. And then this is a question for everybody
on the panel today. What keeps you up at night when it comes to
quantum? It is a loaded question. Mr. Crowder, you can go
first.
Dr. Crowder. Sure. I mean, I guess, as a vendor of quantum
computing, part of what keeps us up at night is making sure we
are staying ahead. We have been very public about what we are
going to do in terms of building quantum computers. We
obviously do not tell people how, but we tell them what we are
going to do. We are very public about that, so that means we
literally have to execute on our roadmap in order to maintain
leadership, since we have kind of set a target on ourselves, so
that keeps me up at night. And then the second thing that keeps
me up at night is, yes, you know, I am concerned about post-
quantum cryptography implementation. I mean, a lot of the hard
work from a technical point of view is already done, but the
harder part of it is not really the technical part. It is
actually finding all this stuff, fixing all this stuff, and,
you know, doing it in such a way that is easy to fix the next
time.
Ms. Mace. Do you think we are doing enough, I guess, pre-
post cryptography? I mean, how do you plan for that if it has
not quite arrived, right?
Dr. Crowder. Yes. So, we can because, you know, NIST has
done a pretty good job, I think, I think maybe even an
excellent job, of starting early and, you know, getting the
mathematicians to come up with, you know, new algorithms, you
know, getting the standards in place. So, standards are there.
So, I think we know what we need to do. We know that it is not
going to be a perfect fix, as Dr. Mandich said. We also know
how to do more agile ways of fixing crypto, but it is a lot of
work. It takes a lot of investment, and I think that is where
the challenge is.
Ms. Mace. And Ms. Cruz Cain, what keeps you up at night?
Ms. Cruz Cain. I think the two things are harvest now and
decrypt later. The government has a lot of sensitive
information, and we are not sure what our adversaries have and
are holding until a quantum computer is developed, and then the
second is the cuts to the funding. The agencies, the private
sector need the funding to do their research and also start the
transition to post-quantum cryptography.
Ms. Mace. Mr. Mandich.
Mr. Mandich. It is the possibility that China is ahead of
us, and we do not know it. They have gone very silent on what
they are doing on the quantum for the last couple of years.
Before this, they were very public about it. There is no
incentive for them to publicize the fact that they have it and
that they can actually exploit a lot of the data that they are
already sitting on today. Another concern is that we are
relying on a single algorithm. There are three that are
standardized but only one does the actual data encryption. If
that fails, there is no backup plan right now. We have to
transition to that sooner rather than later because, you know,
the ones we are using today are quantum broken, but if all
those things happen at the same time, we are in a dark place.
Ms. Mace. Dr. Rubenstein.
Dr. Rubenstein. I agree with everything that was previously
said. Just to add, I worry about how American leadership and
what American leadership will look like in the future. We rely
on a relatively small pool of people who are trained and
educated in the United States. If that pool goes away, I am
very worried about who will be leading us in the future when we
compete against China and other near peers.
Ms. Mace. Mr. Mandich, where do you think China is? What is
your personal opinion, your assessment on China and their
quantum capabilities?
Mr. Mandich. Sure. You know, I was in the intelligence
community for decades. I watched them very up close and
personal. Stealing: the scale of theft is extraordinary. So, my
guess is that they have access to everything that we have
already done, and it is not just from one company. It is from a
lot of companies, and that they are pulling all of that in a
single facility in Anhui Province--this is all public
information--where they are gathering tens of thousands of
people to train them as the next generation of physicists, and
we are not doing that. The other piece is that there is no
quantum industry in the United States without that fundamental
research that you just mentioned. There is not a single U.S.
company quantum computing or otherwise that did not rely on the
research, the fundamental pieces that came out of the
universities and the National Labs. That includes everyone that
you have heard of.
Ms. Mace. How is AI playing a role in this, both in what we
are doing, it might be what China is doing, to advance?
Mr. Mandich. Yes. Oh, they are definitely going to use AI
to decrypt analysis on the existing set of algorithms and the
flaws that are available to them that they know about. We
talked about zero days offline, but it is all the other things
that go along with that. That is the real power behind all
this. I do not think AI is going to be very useful for these
other pieces, but for breaking crypto, it is going to be
incredibly useful.
Ms. Mace. How far behind do you think China is from the
United States on AI?
Mr. Mandich. It is another situation where I do believe
that, just again, having observed them so long, they have
access to everything that we have ever done in all of our
companies. All of our companies have been penetrated. As far as
we know, many of their employees are in China. In many cases,
those employees actually physically work from remote locations
in Chinese intelligence agencies, not even in the private
sector. So, I do feel that, because they are so quiet about
this, they are being very secretive about what they are doing,
we do not even know the names of the quantum companies in
China. There are only a couple of them that are public. The
rest of them are completely unknown. We are likely going to
experience a DeepSeek moment in quantum computing. Again,
DeepSeek. There was no DeepSeek before ChatGPT 3. That came up
afterwards and that came up very quickly, and that did not
happen from fundamental research. It came from data theft and
Internet Protocol (IP) monetization.
Ms. Mace. This is one of my favorites, too, and I yield
back. I will now recognize Mr. Subramanyam for 5 minutes.
Mr. Subramanyam. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to
the witnesses for being here today.
Ms. Cruz Cain, you mentioned in your testimony that we need
to have a national security strategy for quantum, especially
when quantum breaks encryption. Just for the folks at home,
what are the ramifications of maybe a bad actor having access
to quantum that can break encryption? What would that mean for
our economy, for our national security?
Ms. Cruz Cain. It is going to have severe ramifications for
all of the things that you just mentioned. So, the bad actors,
again, are taking data, our sensitive data, our personally
identifiable information (PII) government information, and
storing it, and once in 10 to 20 years, when the quantum
computer is developed, they can access all of that information,
and much of that is going to be still sensitive in the next 10
to 20 years. So, it can have severe ramifications on military
operations. It can have severe damage to people whose PII is
now out there, Social Security numbers, health information, you
name it. As long as we are holding it and it is being protected
by current encryption standards, they can take it and it will
be accessible to them once the quantum computer is developed.
Mr. Subramanyam. Is it not true that, theoretically,
quantum could break the encryption of Bitcoin, right, and that
is a huge market alone, just Bitcoin, right? Is that true?
Ms. Cruz Cain. Yes.
Mr. Subramanyam. And so, we have huge ramifications for our
economy, for national security, and you mentioned wanting the
Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD) to put together a
strategy. Would you or anyone on the panel have any thoughts on
what that strategy would look like or any suggestions that
Congress could take action on right now?
Ms. Cruz Cain. I will yield to everybody else, but first,
in our report that we issued last year, we mentioned that there
was a couple of key things missing from the documents that do
comprise the strategy we do have. One, there was no risk
assessment to the Federal government. So, there was a risk
assessment done for critical infrastructure sectors and what
the risks of quantum computing would be to that sector, but not
to the Federal government. So, unless we have done a complete
risk assessment to find out where our vulnerabilities are and
the threats that they pose and how to mitigate it, we are not
even prepared to start to protect our systems and transition
them to PQC. And then also, there are no milestones there to
sort of measure ourselves against and when we should be in
certain places, so that is another thing that we highlighted in
our report. And I think those are probably the most important
ones, but I will let the fellow panelists----
Mr. Subramanyam. Does anyone else have any suggestions or
thoughts on what a strategy might look like?
Mr. Mandich. I have a thought about Bitcoin is that once a
cryptographically relevant quantum computer comes online, they
will be able to calculate the largest Bitcoin wallet, so the
value of Bitcoin will be zero.
Mr. Subramanyam. And do you think that is in the near
future or possible in near future?
Mr. Mandich. That is a question about Q-Day, which none of
us probably want to answer.
Mr. Subramanyam. Okay.
Mr. Mandich. But the reality is that whoever has that
computer will be able to transfer that cryptocurrency to their
own accounts, and that is an immutable transaction. There is no
regulatory authority that says that that is invalid and you get
the money back. There is no FDIC for cryptocurrency, so that
whole industry just goes away.
Mr. Subramanyam. And so, the ONCD, and for folks at home,
it is the Office of National Cyber Directorate, and as one of
the things that GAO has mentioned is that this office should
direct the strategy and lead the strategy that we are talking
about right now. Do you have any concerns about the expertise
there, the leadership to be able to direct our strategy on
quantum?
Ms. Cruz Cain. We do not. I think it is important to get
the National Cyber Director confirmed so that they have clear
and pointed leadership. That is going to be important, but they
are best positioned being that they are in charge of coming up
with national strategies and then sort of piecing out what
every other Federal agency needs to do to support that
strategy.
Mr. Subramanyam. And I think, would you not want a national
cyber director who has technical experience or some sort of
background in cyber policy?
Ms. Cruz Cain. Yes, that would be a good idea.
Mr. Subramanyam. Okay, yes. I just say that that is a
concern for me right now because the current one who is up
appears to be someone who is simply a political person who was
an official at the Republican National Committee and does not
have a background, certainly not in quantum, but really in
cyber anything else, and so that is a deep concern. I am also
really concerned generally about our Federal government
expertise in IT, cybersecurity, all of these issues. If we keep
chasing away the people who have expertise and these spaces,
then we are going to end up being behind the eight ball,
whether China or anyone else, any adversary.
And so, I am going to continue to push to, one, you know,
try to fix this issue and make sure that we have good
leadership, ONCD, and we have a strategy in place, and we can
do that in a bipartisan way, but two, also make sure that we
are not chasing away the best and brightest in these fields,
especially in cyber. So, thank you, and I yield back.
Ms. Mace. Okay. I will now recognize Mr. Crane for 5
minutes.
Mr. Crane. Thank you guys for coming today. Thank you, Ms.
Chairwoman, for hosting this event. I want to start with you,
Dr. Rubenstein. Are you concerned about adversarial countries,
like China, developing quantum computing before the United
States?
Dr. Rubenstein. I am definitely concerned about this. We
really do not know what is happening in China. We obviously
share our information quite freely. That is part of our
culture. That is part of, you know, what we do in order to
innovate and to share ideas. As a result of that, that also
exposes us.
Mr. Crane. And you are a professor at Brown University. Is
that correct?
Dr. Rubenstein. That is correct.
Mr. Crane. Do you guys have courses in quantum computing,
nuclear engineering, et cetera, at Brown?
Dr. Rubenstein. We do have courses in quantum computation
and other related areas. A lot of universities have stepped
back from teaching in nuclear areas a long time ago.
Mr. Crane. Ms. Rubenstein, are there any vetting processes
that take place at Brown to make sure that students coming from
adversarial countries are not getting access to the education
and knowledge needed to kind of defeat the United States in
quantum computing?
Dr. Rubenstein. So, we currently follow the laws regarding
the students that we take. We believe that students improve our
environment. They contribute to our atmosphere. Many of those
students come here to pursue a degree in a free country where
they want to stay. So, virtually all of my students have
stayed, for example, and so we follow the law there. I will
leave it to you to prescribe the law moving forward.
Mr. Crane. Do you see that as problematic? I mean, we are
sitting here talking about who is going to win this quantum
computing race, and if we lose the quantum computing race, that
could have disastrous ramifications, national security-wise,
economic-wise. But you sit here as a representative from Brown
University, and you guys do not vet any of the foreign students
coming into your university, and you allow them to get educated
in many of these fields and then go back, you know, to their
countries and compete against the United States
Dr. Rubenstein. So, we rely on the Federal government in
order to vet students right now, and so we follow the law in
that regard. Are these things concerning? Absolutely, they are
concerning, but there are experts that are better than me who
can proscribe what that law should be and how it should be
affected. I should say there are pluses and minuses to this,
right? So many of these people come to our country, they work
at our companies, and they do, in fact, innovate in ways that
are exceptional, and so we do have to balance those tradeoffs
as well, and so someone smarter than me should dictate those
laws.
Mr. Crane. Have you ever raised that concern with anybody
at Brown?
Dr. Rubenstein. We have thought about these concerns.
Mr. Crane. Yes. How many international students attend
Brown University?
Dr. Rubenstein. I do not know the exact number off the top
of my head, but I probably estimate around 1,000 to 2,000 out
of about 8,000.
Mr. Crane. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Mandich, is that correct?
Mr. Mandich. Yes.
Mr. Crane. You said you worked in the intelligence field
for a long time?
Mr. Mandich. Yes.
Mr. Crane. Does it concern you that universities like Brown
and others allow students to come here? Sometimes they will
come and say that they are going to start an English program,
and then they work with maybe a sympathetic professor who
shifts them into something like nuclear engineering or quantum
computing, and then they end up competing with the United
States.
Mr. Mandich. Well, you know, we know that China floods the
United States with students. That is one of their frontline
collection platforms. It floods, not just the university
system, but almost every country and every company that you can
think of with collectors. So, we need to do a much better job
of limiting that because we have effectively trained their
entire quantum industry here in the United States. Very little
of that happened domestically in China, so we have to do
something about it, but we also need more Americans to get into
these fields than to get out of, you know, social media and
TikTok.
Mr. Crane. Right.
Mr. Mandich. We need to get that to be the majority in
these programs and not the minority.
Mr. Crane. Dr. Crowder, can you give the American people
who you know, would not consider themselves tech experts by any
stretch of the imagination, some idea of the type of power that
we are talking about here in relation to, say, the computer I
have in front of me, or the iPhone that I have in front of me?
Dr. Crowder. Yes. I mean, the way I would say that it is
completely different kind of computing, so it will solve
different kinds of problems, so it is not going to, like, solve
the same problem a lot better. It is going to be able to solve
complex chemistry problems to help materials development or
financial optimization, if, like, you are a bank and you want
to do portfolio optimization. So, those kind of problems that a
cloud computer is going to help with society.
Mr. Crane. Thank you. I yield back.
Ms. Mace. All right. I will now recognize Congresswoman
Brown for 5 minutes.
Ms. Brown. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you to
the witnesses for being here today. Far too often, Congress is
the last to act in the face of technological change. The rise
of quantum computing and post-quantum cryptography poses far
too great of a challenge for us to keep our collective head in
the sand. Congress has already invested nearly $2 billion in
quantum resilience research and development, but that is just a
down payment. We should be doing more now to prepare. So, Mr.
Mandich, what should Congress be doing right now to ensure the
Federal Government and our critical infrastructure is secure in
the face of quantum computing advancements?
Mr. Mandich. We absolutely have to upgrade not just the
algorithms that we are using, but everything around that, all
the equipment, the people that are trained behind it as well.
There is no simple answer to this. It is almost a pervasive
problem, so we really have to get the next generation of people
trained up that can even do this, that can implement and
upgrade these systems. We have not done this for decades, and
the last time we did this, there was barely an internet. The
cloud did not exist. Virtual networks, that was a fantasy. We
are in an environment now where everything is completely
interconnected that was made to be physically isolated before,
and we are connecting all that to the internet for autonomous
control by AI for access to more information. It is going to be
a long process, and we do not have the people to do this.
Ms. Brown. I appreciate that. Thank you. To prepare for the
quantum computing age, we must ensure that the American
workforce, to your point, has the skills necessary to innovate
and compete on the world stage. So, Ms. Cruz Cain, what are
some of the unique intricacies of developing a quantum
workforce, and why is building a resilient and long-lasting
workforce important for the threats of tomorrow?
Ms. Cruz Cain. In a report that we did in 2021, we
mentioned having an increased workforce size, but also skill,
and we pointed out there were several different ways that we
could do that. We could use existing programs. NSF has a
program, the Joint Industry Graduate Training Program, and we
can use those type of programs to make sure that we are
recruiting people, as all of my panelists have said, that have
the skill. You are going to need skills from multiple different
areas as well. It is not just computing. There is science,
there is biology, there are all different types of academic
rigor that you need for quantum computing. So, those are some
of the intricacies. It is not just one trained skill. You are
going to need many trained skills.
And the biggest workforce issue that the Federal government
has been facing, specifically with cybersecurity, is the
private sector tends to outweigh our benefits, and people will
go there. So, we have got to increase the collaboration between
the Federal government's skills and workforce, and work with
academia, work with the industries to make sure that
collaboration is productive. We need the funding for the
research, we need funding for the skills, we need funding for
those type of programs to make them successful.
Ms. Brown. Thank you, and the universities, as you touched
on our critical training grounds for the next generation of
innovators, if the United States is to remain a global leader
in the science and technology of the future, we will need to
continue attracting young innovators from all over the world to
study here in the United States. But as you talked about,
universities rely on Federal funding for the science and
technology research that drives American innovation and
competitiveness, and President Trump has released a budget that
would cut science funding to its lowest level. So, Dr.
Rubenstein, how does Federal funding facilitate your team's
research and the training of doctoral students in your lab? And
then if you could chime in, Mr. Mandich and Dr. Crowder, how do
your companies rely on basic research funding and the pipeline
of doctoral students to continue to innovate? Starting with
you, Doctor.
Dr. Rubenstein. Federal funding is absolutely essential to
running any research lab in any university or college or
institution across the country. In particular, in terms of
funding graduate students, virtually all graduate students are
federally funded at some level, so some work with industry,
some work with the government. Sometimes there are
partnerships, but the majority of funding is really for
graduate students. And so, without that Federal funding, I
believe about 60 percent of all U.S. graduate students are
federally funded right now, at least 60 percent, then we are
losing about 60 percent of our graduate students.
Ms. Brown. And since I have not heard from Dr. Crowder, if
I can let him jump in. Go ahead.
Dr. Crowder. Sure. Yes. I mean, quantum is a very
multidisciplinary space, especially in building quantum
computers. So, we do rely on, like, really strong basic STEM
students coming out of the university system. We actually do
vet all of our hires into our critical space, in that space, to
address a previous question, and I think one of the areas that
I think is also really important is research into algorithms,
research into application. Those areas, I think, are a little
bit under-focused right now in terms of the funding that is
gone so far.
Ms. Brown. Go ahead.
Mr. Mandich. We have hired lots of graduate students. We
funded them through their Ph.D. programs and hired them
afterwards, and only one of them was a foreigner. Rarely are
you going to get anyone working on some of these problems
unless they are in the university or the National Lab system.
Again, as I mentioned, there are no U.S. quantum companies that
did not start on second or third base without that National Lab
or University System Research. They did not fundamentally come
up with any of these technologies, not one.
Ms. Brown. Thank you. I look forward to more bipartisan
discussion on this, and with that, I yield back.
Ms. Mace. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I will now recognize Mr.
Burlison for 5 minutes.
Mr. Burlison. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is one of my
favorite topics. I find it extremely fascinating. Mr. Crowder,
I know that there are different types of quantum, like, ways in
which you can build a quantum computer. There is, like,
photonic. What is IBM doing?
Dr. Crowder. We are using something called superconducting
qubits, and there are a lot of ways you can hold a quantum
state and build a quantum computer. But at the end of the day,
from our perspective, you are trying to build a computer, and
how it works is less important than how quickly it can compute
stuff. And that is why we chose the approach that we chose
because we think it is the right balance of allowing us to
build really large systems in the future, but also the
underlying operation is pretty fast so it is really good as a
computer, as opposed to just a research project.
Mr. Burlison. So, you are measuring the state of what
particle?
Dr. Crowder. Some people call it, like, an artificial atom.
It is basically just something that resonates at a certain
frequency and holds a quantum state. So, it is either in the
zero state or in the one state, or in a superposition of the
zero state and the one state, which is what makes it quantum,
and there are a lot of ways you can build those quantum states.
You can use individual ions; you can use photonics. You can do
it the way that we do it. There are lots of different ways that
you can do it.
Mr. Burlison. Okay. And then whenever you are doing that,
there are different algorithms that perform very well, given
the fact that you are basically dealing in probability, right?
Dr. Crowder. Yes. It is actually this bizarre mix of
probability and precise, like, so it is, actually, when you are
in a quantum state, you are in a very precise, exact quantum
state, but it appears probabilistic because when you measure,
it either collapses to a zero or one based on that precise
state, so it is one of those head-hurting things about quantum
computing. But yes, so the trick is to create these algorithms
that use all this compute power in a way that is useful, in a
way that is efficient, and that is where I would argue we need
to put more research because that is really where the rubber
hits the road in terms of taking quantum computers and making
them useful for U.S. government missions and for industry.
Mr. Burlison. Okay. Ms. Rubenstein, in healthcare, how can
the benefits of the way in which quantum computers work and
their complexity and their performance, how would that benefit
the healthcare industry?
Dr. Rubenstein. Absolutely. So, there are a lot of
different drugs that we create that will bind to different
proteins in different ways, and so fundamentally, what people
want to understand is which drugs will bind in different ways
to proteins, and how can we make those new drugs that can be
the therapeutics of tomorrow. And so classically, if we use
regular computers, it can be quite hard to figure out how that
binding occurs. I actually use some of the biggest
supercomputers in the world in order to figure out these kinds
of things accurately. Quantum computers, in principle, will be
able to do that very rapidly, so exponentially faster and
extremely accurately, and so that will let us predict the drugs
of the future much, much faster than we are today.
Mr. Burlison. Okay. And then I had some questions. Mr.
Mandich, what are the key differentiators allowing Americans,
American firms, to lead globally on this topic? So, what is
benefiting us?
Mr. Mandich. Well, we have a vibrant, you know, startup
community.
Mr. Burlison. Private sector community?
Mr. Mandich. Private sector community that has benefited
from all this research that came before it.
Mr. Burlison. And that is one of my biggest questions as
well. It is, like, we have big players like IBM. We have Google
doing Willow, right?
Mr. Mandich. Absolutely, yes.
Mr. Burlison. But then I saw that there is another company
called Psi----
Mr. Mandich. PsiQuantum.
Mr. Burlison. PsiQuantum. Is that a brand-new startup?
Mr. Mandich. They are almost ten years old. They are
photonic computing.
Mr. Burlison. Okay, but they are new, relatively speaking,
compared to these?
Mr. Mandich. Yes, these companies did not exist a decade
ago.
Mr. Burlison. And so, you see this as an opportunity for
some new startups to kind of venture into this market?
Mr. Mandich. Yes, but no startup can enter this business at
all without all this fundamental research. There is nobody that
would have studied. Microsoft just released the Majorana 1,
which is a topological qubit. There are six or seven different
technologies that went into making that, that put them on third
base to even start building that process, and that came out of
Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, National Lab, NIST, and other places
like that. They could never have done that without that
foundational piece.
Mr. Burlison. Okay. Thank you. I yield back.
Ms. Mace. All right. Now I will recognize Mr. McGuire for 5
minutes.
Mr. McGuire. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you to
the witnesses for being here today. Quantum technologies of the
future, and it is imperative that the United States remains the
leader in this realm. In 2023, private investments in quantum
startups in the United States was roughly ten times larger than
China. However, China is rapidly investing to challenge the
U.S. leadership in this space. In the sake of time, just real
quick, yes or no. Is quantum technology a threat to national
security? Do you see that as potential? So ``yes'' or ``no.''
Dr. Crowder.
Dr. Crowder. Yes. If we do not get prepared with post-
quantum cryptography, yes.
Mr. McGuire. Ms. Cain.
Ms. Cruz Cain. I agree.
Mr. McGuire. Mr. Mandich.
Mr. Mandich. Absolutely.
Mr. McGuire. And Dr. Rubenstein.
Dr. Rubenstein. One hundred percent.
Mr. McGuire. So, Dr. Crowder, what areas of U.S. quantum
innovation are most at risk of being overtaken by a foreign
adversary?
Dr. Crowder. I think, again, there are two pieces of that.
One of them is building the best quantum computers on the
planet. Maybe three things. You know, based on public data, we
think we have a lead over any place else in the world today,
but that is only based on public data. The second area is in
the algorithms and applications, and right now, I would say we
are seeing a little bit more investment by other governments
than by the U.S. Government in focusing on really the
application research. We tend to wait until the computers are
large enough to actually solve a mission before we begin the
application research for the mission, if that makes sense.
Mr. McGuire. That makes a lot of sense. Ms. Cain, where is
China in this race, and what is the national security risk if
they develop a cryptographically relevant quantum computer
first?
Ms. Cruz Cain. There has been research that says that North
America, particularly the United States, is the leader right
now, but China is making significant investments and is closely
getting to the spot where we are, so they are not lagging by
much. And I think that my colleagues have said, if they are
able to produce the different algorithms, but also coming from
a Federal government perspective, if they are infiltrating and
taking our sensitive data, that could be significantly
impactful later.
Mr. McGuire. Thank you. All right. Quantum computers will
eventually be able to break today's widely used encryption
standards, putting our national security, financial systems,
and personal privacy at risk, so this is a question for all
witnesses. What is a cryptographically relevant quantum
computer, and how close are we to seeing one? Let us start with
Dr. Crowder.
Dr. Crowder. Yes. So, I think it is a tricky question to
answer because we have to assume what algorithm they are using.
And so known on the algorithm that we know today, if you take
the technology we are going to build by the end of this decade,
beginning of the 2030s, and just poured a ton of money in to
just build a bigger system based on that technology, you get
pretty close to being able to build a cryptographically
relevant quantum computer, which gives you a timeframe of,
like, 2030 to 2035-ish timeframe. The reason why I hesitate to
give you an exact date is because I do not know if there are
any algorithmic advances that might occur to make that time
shorter.
Mr. McGuire. If anybody wants to answer this one. Will we
have advanced warning before this technology is deployed?
Mr. Mandich. My view, again, is from the intel side, is
that we will not know, and that China will keep that very quiet
for as long as they can. I will just add that there are a dozen
or so ways that we have tried to make quantum computers with
different types of qubits that Mr. Burlison said, we do not
know which one will scale the fastest and make those
cryptographically relevant quantum computers. And if history is
our guide in technology, there is always just one winner in
these things: Google, won search; Amazon, won selling anything;
Spotify, won music. The same thing might happen in quantum
computing, and that company might be in China, not in the
United States.
Mr. McGuire. This Subcommittee held a hearing to examine
the outdated legacy IT systems currently in place in our
government. Do legacy systems pose a greater risk in the face
of quantum threats? Anyone want to jump in on that one?
Ms. Cruz Cain. I think that legacy systems has been an
issue that GAO brings up constantly, and it does create
significant risk because those legacy systems are sometimes
outdated, and they do not have the technology that can handle
the transition to PQC. So, in order for us to be able to
transition, they are going to need to start planning on how to
transition those systems over to technology that will handle
the transition. But also, it gets very expensive, and some of
these systems are so outdated that you might just need to start
from scratch and replace the system.
Mr. McGuire. As technology continues to evolve, it is
imperative that we stay in the forefront of innovation. Thank
God we have President Trump, who has pushed for continued
United States dominance in this technology, and with that, I
yield back.
Ms. Mace. Thank you. In closing this afternoon, I want to
thank our panelists once again for your testimony and your time
and traveling to get here today.
With that, and without objection, all Members will have
five legislative days within which to submit materials and to
submit additional written questions for the witnesses, which
will be forwarded to the witnesses for their response.
Ms. Mace. So, if there is no further business, without
objection, the Subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:23 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[all]