U.S. drafts sweeping executive order to unify national quantum strategy

Washington is preparing a coordinated federal push to sharpen American competitiveness in quantum technologies, centering responsibility in the Office of Science and Technology Policy and mandating cross-agency execution. The draft directs senior officials across Energy, Defense, Commerce, and intelligence bodies to collaborate on an updated national strategy and to translate that strategy into agency-specific implementation plans under compressed timelines. It directs the Department of Energy to host a national quantum computer for scientific discovery and to accelerate deployment through public-private partnerships while tasking Commerce to reduce commercial risk for quantum firms. Energy, Commerce and Defense are required to stand up a Center of Excellence to evaluate quantum computing capabilities and to provide standardized benchmarking. The order elevates quantum sensing and networking as priorities, calling for five-year roadmaps tailored to mission needs and leveraging prizes and market incentives to spur private-sector component development. Workforce expansion is a central pillar: federal leaders will partner with academia to scale training pipelines and NSF-led education hubs, while Labor will monitor workforce metrics. The draft assigns counterintelligence and protection responsibilities to security agencies to harden quantum-related assets and manage defensive resource allocation. Policy actions on trade aim to identify foreign barriers and recommend steps to protect U.S. competitiveness abroad. The order arrives against a backdrop of rising federal cyber investment and shifting procurement priorities — defense budgets are moving from exploratory research toward fieldable, verifiable cyber capabilities — and experts warn of a growing ‘harvest-now, decrypt-later’ threat where adversaries archive encrypted data now for future quantum decryption. That context raises the stakes for cryptographic agility, interoperable controls, and carefully sequenced migration roadmaps. Notably, the draft does not explicitly assign DHS or its cybersecurity agency a leading role in post-quantum cryptography transition, creating a potential coordination gap at a time when agencies and vendors are already prioritizing certification, interoperability testing, and backward-compatible migration strategies. If implemented, the order signals a shift from stovepiped programs to a synchronized federal architecture intended to accelerate technology maturation while balancing commercial growth and national security. The immediate deadlines and institutional directives make this more than a policy statement: it is an operational blueprint whose success will hinge on funding, clear interagency governance, and the ability to translate milestones into funded programs, interoperable standards, and measurable capability gains.