The CRQC / quantum-advantage landscape — what's really happening
Web-verified 2026-06-07. Full structured data + sources: macro-crqc-quantum-landscape.json. Pairs with macro-quantum-computing.json (equities/threat) and macro-pqc-chips.json (PQC/defense).
The claims are noisy — even the proofs get forged
- Trail of Bits (Apr 17 2026) "We beat Google's zero-knowledge proof of quantum cryptanalysis" — exploited memory-safety + logic bugs in Google's Rust zkVM and forged a proof claiming better quantum-circuit performance than Google's own. The verification infrastructure behind the claim was unsound. (On-thesis: claims need real verification.)
- Broader skepticism: Sycamore (2019)/Willow (2024) "supremacy/advantage" repeatedly narrowed by classical tensor-network spoofing; IBM disputed the 2019 claim; the sampled distribution is hard to verify; classical advantage returns beyond ~a few hundred qubits.
The threat is real and compressing — and the loss is already happening
- CRQC vs RSA-2048: ~2030 ±3, but resource estimates fell from ~20M qubits → <1M → possibly ~100k (2025-26 papers) — the clock is moving toward us.
- Harvest-Now-Decrypt-Later (NSA, 2021): adversaries are collecting encrypted data now to decrypt later. ~95–100% of government-classified and ~98–100% of healthcare data encrypted today is exposed to retroactive decryption. The damage to long-lived secrets is already incurred; only the decryption is deferred.
The geopolitical race
| Power | Spend | Edge |
|---|---|---|
| China | ~$15B + a $138B (1T-yuan) AI/quantum/H2 VC fund | leads quantum comms (~12,000 km network + 2 Micius satellites) + sensing |
| US | NQI ~$1.2B→$1.8B; DOE $625M | computing + PQC + sensing |
| EU | Quantum Flagship €1B + AGILE defense roadmap | coordination + defense |
| UK | £2.5B (2024-34) + £2B (Mar 2026) | computing/procurement |
| Russia | ≥100B rubles | comms + sensing |
Increasingly military (sensing/PNT for GPS-denied navigation, secure comms, codebreaking). Corporate: IBM (roadmap → "Starling" fault-tolerant ~2029) and Google (Willow) lead; IonQ/Quantinuum/PsiQuantum/Rigetti/D-Wave/Microsoft(Majorana)/Amazon(Ocelot); China USTC/Origin. (Broadcom is custom-AI-silicon, not quantum — see fin-meta-family/fin-google-amazon-anthropic-meta.)
The counter-migration (deadlines)
- NSA CNSA 2.0: NSS quantum-safe by Jan 2027, app-layer 2030, full infra 2035.
- NIST: RSA-2048/ECC deprecated 2030, disallowed 2035 (FIPS 203/204/205 replace them).
- EU: national strategies + crypto inventories by end-2026; critical financial infra PQC by 2030 (DORA/NIS2/PCI-DSS 4.0).
- G7 (US Treasury + Bank of England) urging banks/insurers/exchanges; Trump 2026 Cyber Strategy mandates PQC. Hybrid (classical+PQC) dominates rollouts.
The city / infrastructure layer
Sub-national action is mostly research/industry clusters (Chicago Quantum Exchange; Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park, PsiQuantum anchor ~$500M; Maryland "Capital of Quantum"; Colorado "Elevate Quantum") plus a migration burden landing on under-resourced municipal critical infrastructure (utilities, water, transit, hospitals, courts) that must inventory + migrate crypto before 2030. Cities are exposed nodes, not yet coordinated actors.
What's really happening (synthesis)
Three things at once: (1) a claims problem — advantage assertions are contested and even Google's ZK proof was forged, so "how close is Q-Day" is hype-prone; (2) a real, compressing CRQC threat whose harvest-now-decrypt-later loss to today's secrets is already locked in; (3) a geopolitical race — China leads comms/sensing and outspends via a $138B vehicle, the US/EU/UK lead compute + drive the PQC migration (2027–2035 deadlines). For this repo: separate the real (HNDL, programs, PQC mandates, IBM/Google/IonQ engineering) from the hype (800×-sales pure-plays, forged proofs, "Q-Day next year" marketing).
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