# DECODING: Trump Signs Two Quantum Decrees — A Practical Computer in 5 Years, Federal Crypto Before 2031

> On June 22, 2026, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on quantum computing that chart the contours of an ambitious —

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Analysis
- Published: 2026-06-26
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/decryptage-trump-signe-deux-decrets-sur-le-quantique-un-ordinateur-en-5-ans-cryp

## Introduction: On June 22, **2026**, **America** declares quantum war

### Two executive orders redefining American national security

On **June 22, 2026**, President **Donald Trump** signed two executive orders on quantum computing that chart the contours of an ambitious — and urgent — national strategy. The first sets a national objective: develop a **practical quantum computer within five years**, meaning by **2031**. The second mandates the migration of all federal systems to **post-quantum cryptography before 2031**. These two orders form a coherent whole that recognizes both the promise and the threat of quantum computing for American national security.

These orders do not emerge from a vacuum. They are part of a strategic trajectory that began under previous administrations — the **National Quantum Initiative Act of 2018** under **Trump's first term**, the Biden administration's investments in quantum research, the post-quantum cryptography standards finalized by the **NIST in 2024**. But they represent a change of scale: transforming a research ambition into a national mission with a specific deadline and immediate federal security implications.

### $3.1 billion in quantum R&D: the scale of the investment

The **United States** is investing **$3.1 billion in quantum research and development** in fiscal year **2026** alone — a figure that attests to the strategic importance Washington places on this technology. This investment level places the **United States** among the global leaders in the quantum race, alongside **China** (estimated to have invested more than **$15 billion** since **2017**), the **United Kingdom**, the **European Union** (through the Quantum Flagship, **€1 billion**), and **Japan**.

This international comparison immediately reveals the stakes: **China has been investing massively** in quantum computing for years — some estimates suggest total Chinese investments of several tens of billions since **2017**. The **Trump** order is therefore also a response to a technological competition with Beijing that plays out in laboratories and on quantum processors as much as on battlefields.

*I want to be honest about the limits of my expertise on this subject: quantum computing is one of the domains where the gap between experts' understanding and that of a generalist columnist is greatest. I will decode these orders as best I can, but I will do so with the humility of someone who knows he is touching the edges of his competence. This decoding will be of the political and strategic significance, not of the physical mechanics of quantum coherence.*

## The practical quantum computer: what does it really mean?

### Quantum computing: a brief introduction for non-specialists

A **quantum computer** exploits the properties of quantum mechanics — superposition and entanglement — to process information in a fundamentally different way from classical computers. Whereas a classical computer processes bits that are either **0** or **1**, a quantum computer uses **qubits** that can simultaneously be **0** and **1** (superposition), enabling it to explore in parallel an exponentially larger number of possibilities for certain classes of problems.

For certain specific problems — optimization, molecular simulation, cryptography — quantum computers promise revolutionary speed advantages. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could, in theory, solve in a few hours problems that would take a classical supercomputer billions of years. It is this capability that makes quantum computing both so promising and so threatening for the security of communications.

### "Practical": the key word in the first order

The first **Trump** order sets the objective of a **"practical"** quantum computer by **2031** — and that qualifier is crucial. Quantum computers exist today but are limited by several major technical obstacles: **high error rates** (qubits are extremely fragile and subject to decoherence), the need to operate at temperatures near absolute zero, and the limited number of qubits that can be maintained in a coherent state simultaneously.

A "practical" quantum computer would be a system capable of solving **real-world problems at operational scale** with a demonstrable advantage over the best classical supercomputers. IBM, Google, IonQ, and other companies are making progress toward this objective but experts are divided on the timeline — some believe **2031** is achievable for specific applications, others estimate that error correction challenges push this horizon back a further decade.

*The 2031 objective for a practical quantum computer seems ambitious to me — perhaps too ambitious according to the experts I have read. But a national deadline objective mobilizes resources and attention in a way that programs without deadlines cannot. That was Kennedy's logic for the moon in 1969 — a declared ambition creates the conditions for its realization. I do not know whether it will work here, but I understand the strategy.*

## The "harvest now, decrypt later" threat: why the urgency is real

### The long-term attack on current cryptography

The second **Trump** order — migration to **post-quantum cryptography before 2031** — responds to a very concrete threat that the technical term **"harvest now, decrypt later"** describes perfectly. The adversaries of the **United States** — whose the order explicitly names **China** and **Russia** — are collecting today data encrypted with current algorithms (RSA, elliptic curves) with the intention of decrypting it once they have sufficiently powerful quantum computers.

This strategy is particularly alarming because it means that data **currently considered secure** could become vulnerable in the future. Government communications encrypted today, industrial secrets protected by current algorithms, medical data, financial transactions: all of this represents a potential target for the "harvest now, decrypt later" strategy. The future vulnerability window is being built today through the mass collection of encrypted data.

### **China** and **Russia** as quantum adversaries

The report from **OriginBrief on June 22, 2026** on quantum cyber threats documents how **China** has developed a coherent national strategy for quantum computing that combines fundamental research, industrial development, and military and intelligence applications. The Chinese quantum program is considered by American intelligence services to be one of the most serious technological threats to American technological superiority.

**Russia**, while less advanced than **China** in quantum civilian infrastructure, possesses advanced cyber warfare capabilities and a solid scientific tradition in quantum physics inherited from the Soviet era. Specialized Russian units in the intelligence services (GRU, FSB, SVR) are presumed to be engaging in massive collection of encrypted data in anticipation of future decryption. The war in **Ukraine** has amply demonstrated the sophistication of Russian cyber capabilities.

*The "harvest now, decrypt later" strategy makes me think of libraries of classified files being physically stolen today to be opened in twenty years, when the locks protecting them have been rendered obsolete. It is a form of strategic patience that supposes the adversary thinks in decades, not quarters. Our democracies, with their four- or five-year electoral cycles, are structurally ill-suited to think and plan at that scale. That is an institutional weakness that the **Trump** order is partly trying to address.*

## NIST post-quantum cryptography standards: what has already been done

### 2024: NIST finalizes new standards

Good news in this concerning picture: the standardization work for **post-quantum cryptography** is well advanced. The **National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)** finalized in **2024** its first post-quantum cryptography standards — mathematical algorithms that resist attacks by quantum computers. These standards are the fruit of more than six years of a competition and evaluation process open to the entire world.

The algorithms retained — primarily **CRYSTALS-Kyber** for key exchange and **CRYSTALS-Dilithium** for digital signatures — are based on mathematical problems (Euclidean lattices) whose resolution is considered difficult even for quantum computers. Their adoption in American federal systems, mandated by the second **Trump** order, is technically feasible — but it requires a large-scale migration across thousands of government computer systems, some of which are very old.

### Migration as an operational challenge

Adopting the **new post-quantum cryptography standards** across all federal systems before **2031** is a titanic operational challenge. The American government operates thousands of computer systems distributed across dozens of agencies — from the Department of Defense to the Social Security Administration, from NASA to the **IRS**. Each of these systems must be audited, upgraded, or replaced to integrate the new post-quantum algorithms.

The report from the **CISO (Cloud Security Alliance) on June 20, 2026** mentions **NSPM-12** and the executive orders on national AI security as context for this cryptographic migration — signaling that the reform of federal computer security is a coordinated effort that goes beyond the quantum issue alone. But the post-quantum migration adds a strict time constraint that did not exist in other IT modernization programs: the "harvest now, decrypt later" threat creates an urgency that cannot be indefinitely deferred.

*Migrating the cryptography of thousands of government systems in five years is a herculean task. I am not certain the 2031 deadline is realistic for all federal systems — but setting an ambitious deadline and reaching 80 percent of it is probably preferable to setting no deadline and remaining at 20 percent in ten years. Political urgency can be a driver of achievement that bureaucracy alone cannot provide.*

## Why current cryptography will be broken: a simplified technical explanation

### RSA and elliptic curves: modern cryptography and its foundations

The public-key cryptography that today secures the bulk of digital communications — from emails to banking transactions to government communications — rests on mathematical problems that classical computers cannot solve in a reasonable time. The most widespread, **RSA**, exploits the difficulty of **factoring large prime numbers**: multiplying two large prime numbers is easy, but factoring their product to recover the original numbers is practically impossible for a classical computer if the numbers are large enough.

A **sufficiently powerful quantum computer** could solve this factorization problem using **Shor's algorithm**, developed in **1994**. Shor's algorithm exploits quantum properties to factor large numbers exponentially faster than a classical algorithm. Applied to standard-size RSA keys, a sufficiently powerful and reliable quantum computer would render current RSA cryptography useless in a matter of minutes or hours.

### The time window: between today and 2031

The critical question is: **how long** before quantum computers are sufficiently powerful and reliable to break RSA under real conditions? Estimates vary considerably among experts: from **10 to 20 years** for optimists on the pace of progress, to "never achievable in practice" for the most skeptical about error correction challenges. The official position of American intelligence agencies — reflected in the **Trump** orders — is that the risk is sufficiently real to warrant preventive migration by **2031**, even if the exact threat at that date is uncertain.

This precautionary choice is rational: the cost of post-quantum migration — considerable but achievable — is preferable to the potential cost of all federal communications being vulnerable to future decryption. It is an **insurance logic**: one pays an insurance premium to protect against a risk one cannot be certain of but whose consequences would be catastrophic if it materialized.

*The precautionary logic underpinning the **Trump** orders on post-quantum cryptography seems perfectly reasoned to me. We do not know exactly when quantum computers will break RSA — perhaps 2031, perhaps 2041, perhaps never in practice. But if we wait to be sure before migrating, it will be too late. It is the same logic as for climate change or pandemic preparedness — the cost of preventive action is always lower than the cost of inaction if the risk materializes.*

## The global quantum race: who is winning?

### The state of quantum competition in **2026**

The **global quantum race** in **2026** primarily pits the **United States**, **China**, and to a lesser extent the **European Union** against each other. The **United States** maintains an advantage in academic research and private industrial development — companies like **IBM**, **Google Quantum AI**, **IonQ**, **Quantinuum**, and others represent a quantum industrial ecosystem of unmatched global depth. This advantage is real but not insurmountable.

**China** has built a massive quantum research infrastructure in less than a decade, with government investments that surpass in volume those of most countries. Laboratories such as that of the University of Science and Technology of **China** (USTC) in Hefei have produced world-class research results on quantum communications and quantum processors. **China** has also built urban quantum communication networks and quantum satellite links that the **United States** has not yet deployed at this scale.

### **Europe**: a serious but fragmented player

The **European Union** is investing through its **Quantum Flagship** program (**€1 billion** over **10** years) and through national funding in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Companies like **IQM** in Finland, **Pasqal** in France, and **eleQtron** in Germany represent a growing European industrial ecosystem. But the fragmentation of investments — **27** national programs plus European programs — limits the mass effect that the **United States** and **China** achieve with more centralized approaches.

The **Trump orders of June 22, 2026** also represent competitive pressure on **Europe**: if the **United States** achieves practical quantum advantage by **2031**, companies and governments that have not migrated to post-quantum cryptography will be vulnerable to an American breakthrough as much as to a Chinese or Russian one. Quantum urgency is global and respects no alliance boundaries.

***Europe** in the quantum race reminds me of **Europe** in the drone race before **2022**: quality research capabilities, a developing industrial ecosystem, but national fragmentation that deprives the whole of the critical mass needed to compete with the major powers. The European Quantum Flagship is a start — but €1 billion over ten years against the tens of billions invested by **China** and the **United States** is an insufficient start. **Europe** must accelerate.*

## Military implications: the quantum war starts now

### Secure communications and intelligence: the immediate military stakes

For the armed forces and intelligence agencies, the stakes of quantum computing are immediately operational. **Military communications** — between commands, between units, with satellites, with allies — rest on encryption algorithms that will be vulnerable to an adversary with a practical quantum computer. Migration to post-quantum cryptography for military communications is therefore an absolute priority that the second **Trump** order formalizes.

The report from the **CSA CISO on June 20, 2026** mentions the context of **NSPM-12** (National Security Presidential Memorandum **12**) that addresses national security in the AI domain — signaling that cryptographic and AI security issues are treated within an integrated national security framework. This integration is appropriate: the AI military systems to be deployed in the coming decades must be designed now with post-quantum cryptography, not with current algorithms that will need to be replaced later.

### Molecular simulation and its military applications

Beyond cryptography, military applications of quantum computing include domains less familiar to the general public. **Quantum molecular simulation** could revolutionize the development of new materials — more powerful explosives, lighter and more resistant armor materials, more efficient propulsion fuels. It could also accelerate the development of medications against biological threats or improve catalysts used in chemical weapons production.

**Quantum logistics optimization** could transform complex military planning — finding the optimal allocation of resources in a multi-theater campaign, optimizing supply routes, planning preventive maintenance of equipment. These applications do not necessarily require a universal quantum computer — specialized **quantum optimization systems** could offer significant advantages for these specific applications even before **2031**.

*Quantum molecular simulation for developing new military materials deeply concerns me. It is a scientifically legitimate application — understanding the behavior of materials at the atomic scale is fundamentally important. But applied to the arms race, it risks accelerating a competition in domains (explosives, armor materials, hypersonic propulsion) whose effects on global strategic stability are difficult to predict. International governance of military quantum computing is nonexistent.*

## Post-quantum cryptography: what changes for businesses and citizens

### The impact on the financial sector

The American and global financial sector is one of the most exposed to the quantum threat to cryptography. **Banking transactions**, financial markets, payment systems, communications between central and commercial banks: all this infrastructure rests on cryptography algorithms that will need to be migrated. The global financial sector is beginning to develop migration plans, but international coordination — for the global financial sector to shift synchronously to the new standards — is a considerable challenge.

The **BIS (Bank for International Settlements)**, the **ECB**, the **US Fed**, and other central banks are working in coordination on post-quantum cryptographic migration. But the private sector — the thousands of commercial banks, fintechs, and payment platforms — will have to migrate independently, often without the institutional resources of major central banks. This will be a standardization and coordination challenge whose complexity recalls the Y2K transitions of the **1990s** — but in a context of active adversarial threat.

### The cloud and personal data

For ordinary citizens, migration to post-quantum cryptography means that **data stored in the cloud** — emails, photos, documents, medical records — currently encrypted with RSA or similar algorithms will need to be migrated to new algorithms. The major cloud providers — **Amazon AWS**, **Google Cloud**, **Microsoft Azure** — have already begun preparing this migration and some already offer post-quantum options to their customers.

For most users, this migration will be **transparent** — providers will manage it in the background. But for organizations managing their own infrastructure — SMEs, local governments, hospitals, universities — migration will require active planning, auditing of their systems, and investments in upgrades. The **Trump** order, by establishing a deadline for the federal government, also creates a calendar pressure on the American private sector.

*I think of all those small rural hospitals, municipal governments, SMEs using ten-year-old software with cryptography they do not even know exists and whose migration to post-quantum will require resources they do not have. The federal migration mandated by **Trump** is good — but who will help these smaller actors make the same migration? That is a question of digital equity that the order does not address.*

## **Europe** facing the quantum threat: how to respond?

### The EU and quantum digital sovereignty

For the **European Union**, the **Trump** orders of **June 22, 2026** are both an opportunity and a warning. An opportunity: if the **United States** migrates to post-quantum cryptography by **2031**, their communications with European allies — diplomatic, military, commercial — will need to use compatible algorithms. **Europe** therefore has a direct interest in aligning its migration with the American schedule to maintain secure interoperability with Washington.

A warning: **Europe** that has not migrated to post-quantum cryptography by 2031 will potentially be vulnerable to its own adversaries and risk seeing its communications with the **United States** become an interface of vulnerability. The **ENISA** (European Union Agency for Cybersecurity) has published recommendations on post-quantum migration, and some member states have begun national plans — but the urgency and resources invested remain below what the threat demands.

### Quantum satellites as a sovereignty issue

**China** has developed the first quantum communication satellite (Micius) and demonstrated quantum communications between Earth and space over record distances. These satellite quantum communications theoretically offer absolute security against espionage — the laws of quantum physics guarantee that an interception disturbs and reveals the communication.

**Europe** does not yet have equivalent quantum satellite communication capabilities — but projects such as **EuroQCI** (European Quantum Communication Infrastructure) aim to build a pan-European quantum communication network in the coming years. This initiative, if properly funded and executed, could give **Europe** a sovereign communication infrastructure resistant to quantum attacks — a form of **quantum diplomacy** that would reduce dependence on American or exposed communication infrastructure.

*Satellite quantum communication is one of the rare technologies where physics guarantees security — not just mathematical difficulty. It is a qualitative revolution: moving from "this communication is very difficult to intercept" to "this communication is physically impossible to intercept without the parties being informed." The **Europe** that seriously invested in EuroQCI would give itself a strategic communication autonomy that investments in classical cybersecurity cannot provide.*

## **Ukraine** and quantum war: the implications of the current conflict

### Ukrainian cybersecurity facing future quantum attacks

In the context of the war in **Ukraine**, the **Trump** orders on post-quantum cryptography have direct operational relevance. **Russia** has been conducting active cyber operations against Ukrainian systems for years — well before the full-scale invasion of **2022**. If Moscow possesses or develops quantum capabilities sufficient to break current cryptography, Ukrainian military and government communications — largely using Western standards — would be exposed.

Ukrainian migration to post-quantum cryptography is therefore a national security urgency for **Kyiv**. Western allies of **Ukraine** — who provide secure communication equipment — must ensure that this equipment integrates post-quantum standards. That is a dimension often forgotten in support for **Ukraine**: the security of its communications will only be sovereign if the cryptographic systems it uses resist future adversarial capabilities.

### The war in **Ukraine** as an accelerator of the quantum transition

More broadly, the war in **Ukraine** has demonstrated the critical importance of secure communications for modern military operations. **Starlink** and other satellite communication systems allowed **Ukraine** to maintain tactical communications that Russian jammers could not entirely neutralize. The next generation of these systems will need to integrate post-quantum cryptography to remain secure against an adversary with quantum capabilities.

This operational reality — made immediately visible by the war in **Ukraine** — is one of the factors that accelerated the strategic urgency behind the **Trump** orders. The quantum transition is not only a laboratory concern or long-term planning matter — it is an operational necessity to maintain the communication advantage of democracies against adversaries investing massively to narrow and surpass that advantage.

*I find an additional irony in the fact that **Russia**, which deploys advanced cyber operations against **Ukraine**, is simultaneously one of the threats for which American post-quantum migration is justified. The war in **Ukraine** is both a current cyber laboratory and a warning about future quantum wars. These two temporal dimensions — the present of cyberwarfare and the future of quantum warfare — converge in the security stakes that the **Trump** orders seek to address.*

## The industrial players of the American quantum race

### IBM, Google, IonQ and the American quantum ecosystem

The **Trump** orders draw on an **American quantum industrial ecosystem** of unmatched global depth. **IBM** — with its Eagle/Osprey/Condor program that has progressively increased the number of available qubits — published in 2023 a quantum processor with 1,121 qubits. **Google Quantum AI** has demonstrated quantum advantage on certain specific problems. **IonQ**, **Quantinuum**, and other startups are developing alternative approaches (trapped ions, photonics) that might lead more rapidly toward logical qubits with corrected error rates.

This dynamic private sector is a force that the **United States** possesses and that **China** — with its investments primarily in state laboratories — struggles to replicate. The innovation dynamics of **Silicon Valley startups**, the bridges between university research and private industry, the **venture capital** funding that accepts long-term risks: all characteristics of the American innovation ecosystem that apply to quantum computing as to other breakthrough technologies.

### The risks of American leadership: industrial security and espionage

American quantum leadership is also a target. American counterintelligence services have documented Chinese attempts to steal quantum technology secrets — recruiting engineers, cyberattacks on laboratories, investments in American quantum companies to access their technology. Protection of quantum intellectual property is a dimension of the order that is not always well covered in media analyses.

The **Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)** has strengthened its review of foreign investments in American quantum companies. Restrictions on the export of quantum technologies have been tightened. These industrial protection measures are necessary but create their own tensions with allied partners — European or Japanese companies wishing to invest in American quantum startups face the same scrutiny as Chinese companies, which complicates transatlantic technology collaborations.

*Protecting the American quantum ecosystem against espionage and malicious investments is legitimate and necessary. But it must be calibrated to distinguish real adversaries (**China**, **Russia**) from allies (**Europe**, Japan, South Korea, Australia) with whom technology collaboration should be encouraged. A CFIUS that treats all foreigners with the same suspicion ends up isolating **America** from its most valuable partners in the quantum race.*

## The political decoding: why **Trump** signs these orders now

### The geopolitics behind the quantum orders

The **Trump** orders of June 22, **2026** are not only technological — they are political. They fit within a moment of intense technological competition with **China**, where every advance in critical technologies — AI, semiconductors, quantum computing, biotechnology — is perceived as a national superiority stake. The political communication of these orders is designed to show that the **United States** takes the quantum threat seriously and is investing massively to maintain its advantage.

The **White House Fact Sheet of June 22, 2026** presents the orders in a national security language explicitly oriented toward competition with unnamed but obvious adversaries. This security framing is politically effective — it creates bipartisan consensus more easily than a purely technological or economic framing. National security transcends (often) partisan divides in **America**.

### Policy continuity: beyond **Trump**

An important fact to note: the **Trump** orders on post-quantum cryptography are part of a **bipartisan continuity** that extends beyond a single presidential term. The National Quantum Initiative Act of 2018, Biden-era quantum funding, the NIST standards finalized in 2024: all of this architecture was built by Republicans and Democrats who collectively recognized the strategic stakes.

This continuity is valuable: it means that even if the administration changes in 2028, quantum programs have a high probability of being maintained. Multi-year commitments to national laboratories, partnerships with industry, scientific training programs: these investments unfold over a duration that extends beyond electoral cycles. It is a lesson in how democracies can build long-term technology strategies despite their apparent political volatility.

*I find a glimmer of hope in the bipartisan continuity of American quantum policy. It is proof that democracies can think long-term on strategic technology issues when institutional mechanisms allow it — permanent parliamentary committees, independent standardization agencies, national laboratories. It is a model that **Europe** should study and adapt for its own long-term technology priorities.*

## The future of digital security: beyond the **Trump** orders

### Agile cryptography: preparing for uncertainties

Beyond the specific post-quantum migration, the **Trump** orders have popularized within computer security circles the concept of **"cryptographic agility"** — designing computer systems so that cryptography algorithms can be easily replaced when standards evolve, without having to entirely rebuild the architectures. It is a lesson that the post-quantum crisis teaches for all future cryptographic developments.

A system designed with cryptographic agility can migrate from one algorithm to another relatively easily — like changing a lock without rebuilding the door. A system designed without this agility often needs to be entirely replaced to change its cryptography — like having to rebuild the whole house to change a lock. The current post-quantum migration reveals how much our existing systems lack this agility, and the next generation of systems must be designed with it integrated from the start.

### Distributed quantum computing and the quantum cloud

A dimension of the quantum future that the **Trump** orders do not fully cover is that of **distributed quantum computing and the quantum cloud**. The practical quantum computers of 2031 — if the objective of the first order is achieved — will probably not be personal machines on everyone's desk. They will be accessible via cloud to users who submit specific tasks to benefit from quantum power on demand.

This quantum access model creates new security challenges: how to ensure that calculations submitted to the quantum cloud are not intercepted by the provider or by adversaries who might have compromised the infrastructure? **Homomorphic cryptography** — allowing computations on encrypted data without decrypting it — and other advanced techniques will be necessary to maintain confidentiality in a quantum cloud world. These future technical challenges are the next frontier of quantum security.

*I close this decoding with a thought on the time scale of quantum challenges. We are talking about 2031 as the horizon for a practical quantum computer and for the federal cryptographic migration — that is five years, approximately one American presidential term. The technologies developed within that timeframe will shape the following ten to twenty years. The decision taken today — invest massively, set deadlines, coordinate migrations — will determine what technological position **America** will be in by 2041. This type of long-term decision is exactly what our political systems find hardest to make. The fact that it is being made now, with these orders, is good news after all.*

## Post-quantum cryptography in everyday life: what changes for citizens

### From abstract protocols to concrete impacts on personal security

The **quantum executive orders** signed on **June 22, 2026** by **Trump** primarily concern government systems, but their implications quickly descend to the level of ordinary citizens. **Post-quantum cryptography** is not only a subject for **NSA** engineers or **NIST** managers — it directly concerns the security of your banking transactions, your medical records, your private communications, and your digital identity.

The algorithms currently protecting this data — notably **RSA** and **ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography)** — rest on mathematical problems that classical computers cannot solve in a reasonable time. A **practical quantum computer** at the **2031** horizon could solve these problems in minutes. This means that all data currently encrypted with these algorithms — and retained by adversaries under the **"harvest now, decrypt later"** strategy — could become potentially readable in less than five years.

### Migration to NIST standards: timeline and deployment reality

The **NIST post-quantum standards** published in **2024** — notably **CRYSTALS-Kyber** for key exchange and **CRYSTALS-Dilithium** for digital signatures — are technically sound. But migrating existing systems is a challenge comparable in scale to the Y2K transition, and far more complex. Banks, hospitals, critical infrastructure, governments — all use nested layers of cryptography that must be updated in a coordinated manner to avoid compatibility gaps.

The objective set by the **second executive order** — complete migration before **2031** — is technically achievable for the most critical American government systems, but will likely be missed by a significant portion of the private sector and foreign governments. Companies that delay acting are taking an increasing risk. Allied nations of the **United States** — including **Canada**, **Europe**, and **Ukraine** — have a strong interest in aligning their timelines with American standards to maintain **security interoperability**.

*What strikes me about the debate around quantum computing is the abysmal gap between the speed of technology and the speed of institutions. Researchers are talking about 2031. Governments began legislating in **2026**. Companies will begin migrating in 2027-2028. And ordinary citizens will be informed... when? This asymmetry of knowledge is itself a security risk. A democracy cannot protect what it does not understand.*

## Conclusion: **Trump**'s quantum orders — a necessary bet on the future

### The right choice, at the right time, for the right reasons

The two **Trump** executive orders on quantum computing — practical computer by 2031, post-quantum cryptographic migration by 2031 — represent a strategic decision that deserves to be welcomed, independent of the overall political assessment of this administration. These orders recognize the reality of global technological competition, correctly identify the **"harvest now, decrypt later" threat** as a national security urgency, and mobilize resources and executive authority to respond with the seriousness it deserves.

The **$3.1 billion** invested in quantum R&D in FY2026, the NIST post-quantum standards finalized in 2024, the objective of a practical computer by 2031: these elements form a coherent strategy that goes beyond the orders themselves and represents a lasting American commitment to quantum leadership. This is **America** at its best — mobilizing its resources, its industrial innovation, and its institutional will to respond to a long-term strategic challenge.

### What the world should take from June 22, **2026**

June 22, **2026** may be seen by historians of technology as a pivotal moment — the moment when an American administration officially declared that the quantum race was a national priority and that it was prepared to devote the necessary resources and political authority to it. This decision also sent a message to **China**, to **Russia**, and to the rest of the world: the **United States** will not allow its strategic technological advantage to erode without responding.

For **Europe**, for **Ukraine**, for all allies that depend on the security of communications with Washington: migration to post-quantum cryptography is no longer an option but a necessity synchronized with the American timeline. Those who have not migrated by 2031 will not be able to communicate securely with an entirely post-quantum American federal infrastructure. The quantum urgency is now officially dated: **2031**. The countdown has begun.

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Nextgov — Trump signs 2 orders to prepare the United States for the quantum future — June 22, 2026](https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2026/06/trump-signs-2-orders-prepare-us-quantum-future/414331/)

- [White House — Fact Sheet: President Trump secures the nation against advanced cryptographic attacks — June 22, 2026](https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/06/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-secures-the-nation-against-advanced-cryptographic-attacks/)

### Secondary sources

- [Cloud Security Alliance — CISO Daily Briefing: NSPM-12, AI orders, national security — June 20, 2026](https://labs.cloudsecurityalliance.org/research/ciso-daily-briefing-20260620/)

- [OriginBrief — Weekly report on quantum cyber threats — June 22, 2026](https://www.originbrief.app/en/reports/cybersecurity-threats/2026-06-22/weekly)

- [ArentFox Schiff — Trump policy summary June 2026 — June 25, 2026](https://www.afslaw.com/perspectives/customs-import-compliance-blog/the-customs-and-trade-world-turns-june-2026)

- [The Guardian — Trump policy summary: recent decisions and actions — June 25, 2026](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/25/trump-news-at-glance-supreme-court)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/decryptage-trump-signe-deux-decrets-sur-le-quantique-un-ordinateur-en-5-ans-cryp