The geopolitical reality of quantum
Quantum computing is no longer just a research frontier. It is now a strategic terrain where states, corporations, and alliances are positioning themselves for long-term dominance.
Last week was devoted to primarily digging into where the best quantum systems are right now based on geopolitical location and potential on the leaderboard. This week we should take a stop back from those assessments and consider the geopolitical reality of quantum. It’s entirely possible that this becomes nothing more than an enterprise play and Google, IBM, or Microsoft ends up dominating the technology and the result is the playing field is even internationally and concentrated in one or a handful of stocks.
Things to consider:
Quantum capacity is converging with AI acceleration, and their intersection could amplify power imbalances.
Export controls on photonics and cryogenic systems may mirror semiconductor sanctions.
Quantum-safe migration will reveal which institutions are capable of rapid cryptographic adaptation.
Early alliances around open standards could determine who sets the rules of interoperability.
The gap between research and usable systems will remain a key indicator of genuine strategic advantage.
Quantum computing is no longer just a research frontier. It is now a strategic terrain where states, corporations, and alliances are positioning themselves for long-term dominance in computation, materials science, and cryptography. Even NVIDIA has now made their position on the future ecosystem clear with the announcement of NVQLink [1]. What began as physics labs exploring coherence and entanglement has become a matter of national strategy. The leading nations including the United States, China, members of the European Union, Japan, and a few emerging clusters in Australia and Canada are treating quantum capabilities as both economic engines and security imperatives.
At the center of this competition is control over error-corrected quantum capacity. Physical-qubit counts grab headlines, but the real power lies in fault-tolerant logical qubits capable of sustaining stable computations. You can check out my logical qubit leaderboard from last week [2]. That ability will determine who can simulate advanced materials, design next-generation batteries, or decrypt certain classes of data once believed secure. Quantum computing is increasingly tied to the future of intelligence gathering, supply-chain autonomy, and technological sovereignty.
The second layer of this geopolitical shift is infrastructure centralization. Building quantum computers requires supply chains for superconducting materials, cryogenic systems, lasers, and photonics. All of this backward linkage includes industries already under the influence of state-backed funding and export controls. The chip wars have shown how technological choke points can become geopolitical levers. Quantum introduces new choke points: dilution refrigerators, trapped-ion systems, error-correction stacks, and the rare-earth isotopes needed for precise control. Whoever owns these bottlenecks will set the tempo of global innovation.
Cryptography represents the third dimension. The post-quantum encryption standards being developed by NIST and other agencies are as much about information asymmetry as they are about security [3]. The first actor to achieve a large-scale, reliable quantum computer will gain a window into encrypted archives and communication systems across decades. That potential has driven an acceleration in quantum-safe protocols and national transitions to lattice-based encryption. But these defensive moves also signal an unspoken acknowledgment that quantum supremacy, once reached, will have immediate geopolitical consequences.
Footnotes:
[1] NVIDIA Corporation. (2025, October 28). Nvidia introduces NVQLink: Connecting quantum and GPU computing for 17 quantum builders and 9 U.S. labs. NVIDIA News.https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-nvqlink-quantum-gpu-computing
[2] Lindahl, N. (2025, November 7). Top quantum computers by logical qubit count. nels.ai. https://www.nels.ai/p/top-quantum-computers-by-logical
[3] National Institute of Standards and Technology. (n.d.). Post-quantum cryptography project. NIST. https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/post-quantum-cryptography