What the Future of Quantum Technology Means for Global Security

Earlier this week, our CEO addressed the United Nations Security Council during a session focused on the future of quantum technologies and their implications for global security and international cooperation. The remarks were delivered as part of a broader discussion among governments, researchers, and industry leaders about how emerging technologies will shape the decades ahead. We are sharing the speech below in its original form to contribute to the ongoing conversation about responsible development, collaboration, and governance in the quantum era.

“Your Excellencies, dear colleagues, thank you for inviting me into this forward-looking discussion.

The United Nations Security Council is asked to make decisions when information is incomplete, time is short, and the cost of being wrong is paid in human lives. So I will speak about quantum technologies through a lens that is natural for this room: uncertainty, resilience, verification, and strategic stability.

The quote on the slide is from quantum physicist and Nobel Laureate Antony Leggett, reflecting that quantum mechanics is a radical shift in how we understand the world.

My goal today is practical:

Quantum technologies change the boundaries of certainty — what can be measured, what can be computed, and what can be trusted. And that matters for peace and security because uncertainty is where fragility and escalation grow.

I will keep the timeframe short: what is real now and what is plausible in the next 2–5 years.

Quantum is a disruptive and strategic technology

This is because it changes the balance of capability: what can be measured, what can be understood and modelled from first principles, and what can be protected. That shift won’t arrive everywhere at the same time, and that unevenness is where instability can grow.

The Council’s work is to keep disputes from becoming disasters. Quantum matters because it can reduce uncertainty in some hands and increase vulnerability in others. Steering it toward resilience and verification — and widening the capacity to participate — is therefore not a technology agenda, but a concrete contribution to international peace and security.

We will discuss three types of quantum technologies: quantum sensing that measures reality more precisely, computing that helps us understand complex systems more deeply, and communication that helps us distribute information more reliably. Used well, this is stabilizing. Used without preparation and shared norms, it becomes destabilizing. The choice is ours. The time to act is now.

Last year—2025, the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology—was a global moment to celebrate quantum’s breakthrough impact and accelerate its responsible adoption.

Three main groups of quantum technologies

I will now take a closer look at the current state and future prospects of the three main families of quantum technologies: sensing, computing, and communication.

First, quantum sensing. This is about measuring physical reality with extreme precision: time, acceleration, rotation, gravity, magnetic fields—signals that tell you where you are, what is moving, and what is happening, even when conditions are difficult. In practical terms, for example, quantum sensing can support reliable navigation and timing when satellite signals are unreliable.

Second, quantum computing. This is about exploring complex problems that are impossible to tackle with classical computers, even the most powerful supercomputers. Two examples make it tangible:

Cryptography is a national security risk because sufficiently advanced quantum computers could break widely used public-key encryption, potentially exposing classified government communications, intelligence sources and methods, and critical infrastructure systems unless States rapidly migrate to quantum-safe standards.

Simulation is a strategic opportunity because quantum computers can help us understand, for example, how materials and molecules behave at a fundamental level, enabling more resilient infrastructure and safer technologies.

Third, quantum communication: it can make it much harder to secretly intercept the most sensitive communications, giving governments a higher-security option alongside quantum-safe encryption.

Quantum sensing in depth

Quantum sensing is the most mature today, with multiple products already deployed commercially; quantum computing is at an inflection point where it can support scientific research in ways that were not previously possible with classical computers; and quantum communication has already demonstrated quantum key distribution via satellites and over long distances.

When we talk about quantum sensing, let’s make it concrete. It spans a wider set of capabilities, but three examples capture why it matters: accurate timing, resilient navigation, and the simple reality that satellite signals can be jammed or spoofed. This matters strategically because when timing and navigation fail, coordination breaks down, logistics become fragile, safety margins shrink, and the risk of incidents rises. Quantum sensors—already entering real-world deployments—can help sustain reliable positioning and timing when GPS is denied or degraded. Their uses range from safer navigation in contested environments to detecting hidden hazards such as landmines. The stabilizing payoff is practical: fewer accidents and misread signals, stronger monitoring and verification, and more reliable humanitarian and civil-protection operations in difficult conditions.

Security, encryption, and quantum

Let me now address the topic that often comes up first when people hear ‘quantum’: security and encryption.

In the long run, sufficiently capable quantum computers could compromise some widely used public-key cryptography. But that is not what today’s machines can do.

The real issue for decision-makers is timing. Updating critical systems takes years. Additionally, there is a “harvest now, decrypt later” risk: hackers can steal and store sensitive data today—diplomatic cables, military communications, critical infrastructure plans—and decrypt it in the future once powerful enough quantum computers exist, unless we migrate to quantum-safe encryption. The good news is that the main defense is already available: post-quantum cryptography. It’s mainly a software and standards upgrade: map what you use, protect the most sensitive systems first, and migrate step by step in a controlled way.

Quantum and AI

Perhaps one of the most exciting topics connected to quantum computing is how quantum and AI relate, because they are complementary but not the same.

AI is, at its core, a pattern engine. It learns from data, and it can be remarkably powerful — but it is always limited by the quality, coverage, and bias of the data you feed it. If the data is sparse, noisy, or missing the rare-but-important cases, the predictions can be confidently wrong.

Quantum simulation is different. It’s not primarily about finding patterns in past data; it’s about generating new knowledge by exploring what nature allows, based on the underlying physics. In other words, it can help produce high-quality, very precise, novel data in regimes where we don’t have good measurements yet — or where collecting measurements is too costly or too risky.

So one way to think about it is: AI helps you make sense of data.

Quantum simulation helps you create better data — and expand the space of possibilities — when data is missing.

Here are some concrete examples of why this matters:

1. Resilience of critical infrastructure: for example, in nuclear power plants, better modelling can help predict how key materials age and degrade—so problems are found and fixed before they become failures.
2. Safer energy storage and more reliable supply, by designing and stress-testing materials more intelligently before deployment.
3. Faster testing of protective measures against hazardous agents (including bioweapons), when time and safety limits make real-world experiments difficult—and in many other situations where decisions must be made with incomplete information.

The big picture is that quantum and AI together can improve decisions: AI helps interpret signals faster, while quantum can generate better evidence by modelling parts of the physical world that are hard to compute today—supporting smarter choices in defence and disaster prevention.

The importance of anticipatory resilience

Much of the Security Council’s work involves networks: supply chains, illicit trafficking routes, communication channels, and how failures can cascade across infrastructure. In networks, the biggest dangers are often in the links we don’t see yet—hidden dependencies, weak points that trigger cascades, covert routes, and early warning signals that show up as new connections. That’s why graph-based analysis (including quantum-inspired methods) matters: it helps build anticipatory resilience—moving from “watching what is visible” to “spotting what is missing or emerging,” so we can prevent crises rather than react to them. A concrete example is how law enforcement can map criminal networks and infer previously unknown links between mafia groups and associates.

Today, quantum communications can already deliver tamper-evident key exchange (QKD) over dedicated fibre and, in some cases, satellites—for example, a China–South Africa satellite QKD link and, very recently here in New York, a Brooklyn–Manhattan QKD/quantum networking demonstration over real city fibre by Cisco and Qunnect.

Stability, resilience, and governance

What matters here can be grouped into a few familiar buckets: strategic stability, security risks, operational and military implications, economic competition, standardization, and governance gaps. But for our purposes this evening, I would compress it into three takeaways.

First, strategic stability: if some states upgrade sooner to quantum-safe security, resilient sensing/navigation and gain earlier access to quantum-enabled simulation for critical materials and medicines, new gaps open up. Those gaps can harden dependencies and asymmetries—in energy, health, and industrial capacity—undermining trust and deterrence and raising the risk of miscalculation.

Second, operational resilience: quantum sensing and precise timing directly affect safety and crisis management, especially when signals are jammed, GPS is unreliable, and information is disputed. In parallel, quantum simulation strengthens day-to-day resilience by accelerating the development of better materials, catalysts, and drugs—supporting faster response and recovery in emergencies and reducing supply-chain fragility.

Third, governance: standards and norms will determine whether quantum strengthens interoperability and stability, or instead contributes to fragmentation — and whether access is widened through shared capacity, or concentrated in ways that deepen dependency and insecurity.

The practical implications and quantum as a stability agenda

Let me end with what this means in practice — not as a technology agenda, but as a stability agenda. The priorities are clear: anticipatory governance, early migration to quantum-safe security, attention to supply-chain chokepoints, and the value of multilateral platforms such as the Open Quantum Institute at CERN, created by Gesda.

I would translate that into three actions.

First: resilience by default. Treat quantum-safe migration the way you treat critical infrastructure maintenance: you take an inventory, you prioritise what matters most, you migrate in phases, and you audit continuously. The point is not to predict the exact day of a breakthrough — it is to avoid being late by design.

Second: prevent a governance vacuum. If we don’t shape norms early, they will be shaped by accidents, crises, or unilateral moves; that means engaging quantum experts, but also empowering “bridge” people who can translate across government, industry, deep tech, academia, and security communities, so we can build shared language on what is stabilizing—verification, safety, resilience—and be clear about what is destabilizing: opacity, asymmetric vulnerability, and escalation risks.

Third: capacity and inclusion. Because quantum is a strategic power, capability gaps can become security gaps. We should broaden access, training, and interoperable standards, and use neutral platforms that enable participation — this is exactly why initiatives like the Open Quantum Institute matter: they help ensure quantum strengthens cooperation rather than deepening dependency.

If we do these three things, quantum becomes not a source of surprise, but a tool for resilience and stability.”