Quantum Nexus LSI Test Published by Vanderbilt JET Law

Most technology law arrives too late: the architecture ships, the market consolidates, and legislators are left regulating what already exists. A new essay in Vanderbilt's Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law argues that quantum technology presents the opposite—and far rarer—situation, and explains what the law should do with it. Quantum law is being written before quantum technology has fully arrived, and that timing is not a defect to apologize for but an opportunity to seize.

A test with three prongs

At the center of the essay stands the LSI test, a doctrinal instrument for dual-use governance that asks of every state intervention whether it is the least trade-restrictive, security-sufficient, and innovation-preserving measure available. The shift in emphasis is subtle but consequential: the question is no longer whether a government possesses a restrictive tool—export control, outbound investment screening, patent secrecy—but whether it is deploying the narrowest one that actually works. Between the romantics of total openness and the reflexes of total restriction, the test stakes out a defensible middle ground the essay calls security-sufficient openness.

Patents and export controls, one system

The essay's second contribution is diagnostic. Intellectual property and national security are conventionally treated as separate fields with separate experts and separate statutes. In quantum practice they behave as one entangled legal control plane: a single patent disclosure can simultaneously raise eligibility questions under Alice, research-security questions under the export-control regime, and commercialization questions under Bayh-Dole and the federal acquisition rules. Reading them together is not an academic nicety—it is the only way to see where over-securitization would quietly strangle the startups, standards participation, and allied interoperability on which democratic quantum leadership depends, a dynamic explored across the MINDS quantum strategy research at CIGI.

From a six-paragraph essay to a coalition playbook

Behind the essay stands the full Quantum Nexus Article—a book-length treatment on arXiv that develops the LSI test into an implementable coalition playbook: empirically anchored criteria, differentiated guardrails with red-zone domains where denial is the default, and secure closed-loop enclaves for high-sensitivity collaborative research. The stakes are framed without euphemism: U.S. assessments now call for a Quantum First posture by 2030, China's program advances under military-civil fusion, and the choice before democratic legislators is whether the coming wall of quantum regulation will be disciplined by doctrine or improvised under pressure. For lawyers, the essay is a preview of their next decade; for policymakers, it is a usable standard; and for the quantum community, it is an argument that the rules now being written deserve the same precision as the systems they will govern.

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Intellectual Property, Quantum Technology, GovernanceHenry Quentir9 april 2026Intellectual Property, National Security, Dual-Use, Export Controls, Patents, Quantum Governance, Stanford RQT, CIGI, Mauritz Kop, LSI Test, Vanderbilt JETLaw, Quantum Nexus

Mauritz Kop Principal Investigator of MINDS Quantum Strategy Grant at CIGI

Waterloo, February 18, 2026—The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) has awarded Mauritz Kop a new leadership role as Principal Investigator (incoming) of a MINDS Targeted Engagement Grant on Quantum Strategy. The grant advances a central proposition of his recent work: quantum technologies are no longer best understood as a narrow scientific frontier or a conventional innovation file. They have become a strategic domain in which law, industrial policy, intellectual property, defense planning, and geopolitical competition now converge.

That convergence matters because quantum capability is being built in an era of systemic rivalry, supply-chain vulnerability, and technological coercion. In that environment, democratic states cannot afford to treat quantum merely as a research ecosystem problem. They must govern it as part of a broader strategy for safeguarding the democratic industrial commons: the shared base of talent, infrastructure, know-how, trusted supply chains, standards, and institutions on which long-run security, prosperity, and coalition advantage depend.

What MINDS in Defence and Security Is and Why This Grant Fits

The MINDS program—Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security—is a Canadian Department of National Defence initiative designed to strengthen evidence-based defense policy thinking and foster the next generation of defense and security experts. Its Targeted Engagement Grants provide non-recurring support for projects such as workshops, roundtables, research, and publications, and they are assessed primarily against the annual Defence Policy Challenges.

The current 2025-2026 MINDS challenge set is especially well aligned with the subject matter of this grant. The official challenge framework emphasizes several critical priorities: securing Canada’s sovereignty and continental defense posture; attracting advanced-technology talent across the defense sector; and strengthening the defense industrial base through resilient supply chains and dual-use technologies such as quantum and artificial intelligence. Furthermore, the framework addresses the pressures of strategic competition—including adversarial exploitation of vulnerabilities—and the accelerating adoption of pan-domain, emerging technologies where interoperability, trust, and responsible governance must be preserved.

Strategic Leadership and Human Capital

Kop’s fellowship at CIGI has centered on the governance of transformative technologies, especially quantum technology, AI, dual-use export controls, national security, and intellectual property. The new grant builds directly on that portfolio, but with a more operational mandate. As incoming Principal Investigator, his role will be to provide the project’s strategic and intellectual leadership: conceptualizing the workshop, defining the central themes and policy questions, structuring the panels for direct relevance to Canadian defense audiences, chairing the main event, moderating key expert sessions, identifying high-level contributors, and guiding the project’s analytical outputs.

The Quantum Nexus Paper Behind the Grant

The grant builds on Kop’s recent paper, The Nexus of Quantum Technology, Intellectual Property, and National Security: An LSI Test for Securing the Quantum Industrial Commons, now available on arXiv.

In that paper, he argues that quantum technologies have moved from laboratory structures to the geopolitical stage, and that democratic states therefore need a governance model that is neither naively open nor reflexively protectionist. The paper's contribution is an implementable coalition playbook, offering empirically anchored criteria, templates, and differentiated guardrails - including red zone domains where denial is the default - to avoid both over-securitization and under-securitization. Properly applied, LSI reduces the risk of a self-defeating hard decoupling from China while establishing standards-first interoperability as a stabilizing eigenstate of the international order and enabling RQT by design to shape trusted adoption pathways beyond the coalition, including in the majority world.

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An LSI Test for Securing the Quantum Industrial Commons

Mauritz Kop—Founder of the Stanford Center for Responsible Quantum Technology and a CIGI Senior Fellow—has posted as a preprint a book-length Article that reframes quantum strategy as a problem of disciplined openness. The Nexus of Quantum Technology, Intellectual Property, and National Security argues that democracies should pursue neither closure nor laissez-faire, but "security-sufficient openness," screened through a single administrable test. It is a strategic companion to the cryptographic argument set out in "A Bletchley Park for the Quantum Age."

Deterrence by denial for democratic resilience

The Article's organizing idea is responsible quantum technology reframed as values-based deterrence by denial: a legal, ethical, and institutional control plane that protects the shared "quantum industrial commons"—talent, tooling, standards, supply chains, and the research base—against authoritarian appropriation. Deterrence by denial aims to make hostile gains too slow or costly to be worthwhile, rather than relying on the threat of retaliation, and the Article presents it as the least escalatory way to preserve crisis stability. It situates the analysis against an approaching strategic "event horizon," citing the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission's call for a "Quantum First by 2030" posture and parallel White House initiatives to secure critical inputs.

The LSI test

The central contribution is the LSI test, which asks whether any given control is least-trade-restrictive, security-sufficient, and innovation-preserving. The test is built to avoid two failure modes: over-securitization, which chills publication, standards leadership, and venture formation, and under-securitization, which leaks crown-jewel capabilities that are slow to reacquire. LSI is applied across a "pillarized" quantum stack—computing, sensing, simulation, networking, communication, quantum-AI hybrids, and enabling materials—and to its upstream dependencies in patent and trade-secret doctrine, government-funded IP and data rights, export controls, investment screening, and cryptographic baselines including post-quantum cryptography and crypto-agility. The framing borrows from physics with care: because the relevant systems are genuinely probabilistic, the Article uses the "Eight Worlds" scenario method to keep governance robust across divergent futures.

A coalition playbook against a "Silicon Curtain"

Rather than stop at theory, the Article assembles an implementable coalition playbook—administrable criteria, templates, and differentiated guardrails, including red-zone domains where denial is the default—and integrates instruments of economic statecraft such as a strategic critical-minerals reserve and a Quantum Criticality Index. Its closing warning is that mishandled securitization could raise a self-defeating "Silicon Curtain" between allied innovators; the constructive alternative is standards-first interoperability treated as a stabilizing feature of the international order. The work has been posted as a preprint on arXiv and is announced on AIRecht in the Nexus paper announcement.

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Quantum Technology, Intellectual Property, GeopoliticsHenry Quentir12 februari 2026Mauritz Kop, Quantum Governance, Intellectual Property, National Security, Stanford RQT, Geopolitics, Standards, Policy, LSI test, Deterrence by Denial, Quantum Industrial Commons, CIGI, Export Controls, Post-Quantum Cryptography, arXiv

The Nexus of Quantum Technology, Intellectual Property, and National Security

Some moments in technology policy demand a text that turns scattered anxieties into administrable law. For the collision of quantum technology, intellectual property, and national security, Mauritz Kop's book-length Article on arXiv makes that move: The Nexus of Quantum Technology, Intellectual Property, and National Security: An LSI Test for Securing the Quantum Industrial Commons—a work that reads today's probabilistic security environment like a wavefunction of plausible futures, and asks which policy choices will collapse it into an outcome democracies can live with.

The claim: security-sufficient openness

The Article's central claim is that the United States and its allies should pursue security-sufficient openness, operationalized through an LSI test: every intervention—an export control, an outbound-investment screen, a patent-secrecy order—must be the least trade-restrictive, security-sufficient, innovation-preserving measure available, whether the actor is a state or a private firm. Between total openness, which hands strategic capabilities to rivals mobilized under military-civil fusion, and total restriction, which strangles the science, the test stakes out the only ground that is defensible in both senses of the word.

Red zones, enclaves, and economic statecraft

What makes the work more than a framework essay is its machinery. The Article delivers an implementable coalition playbook: empirically anchored criteria, templates, and differentiated guardrails—including red-zone domains where denial is the default—plus secure closed-loop enclaves where allied researchers can pursue high-sensitivity R&D without choosing between secrecy and collaboration. The instruments of economic statecraft that democracies have increasingly been deploying are integrated here into a single disciplined doctrine, with the U.S. assessments calling for a Quantum First posture by 2030 supplying the deadline.

What is at stake

The Article names the twin failure modes precisely. Over-securitize, and democracies erect a self-defeating Silicon Curtain—suppressing publication, standards participation, and startup formation until the alliance walls itself off from its own innovation. Under-securitize, and strategically meaningful capabilities in computing, sensing, and cryptanalysis diffuse to adversaries faster than open societies can respond. Threading that needle is the geostrategic design problem of the decade—the same problem Kop works on as an expert at the Eric Schmidt-backed von Neumann Commission on quantum-AI geostrategy. Properly applied, the LSI test secures the quantum industrial commons without suffocating the scientific commons beneath it—and extends trusted adoption pathways to the majority world. This post walks through the Article's argument, its playbook, and what both mean for the lawyers and legislators who will write the quantum statutes of the late 2020s.

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Quantum Technology, Intellectual Property, GeopoliticsHenry Quentir11 februari 2026Mauritz Kop, Intellectual Property, National Security, Quantum Governance, Geopolitics, Stanford RQT, Trade Secrets, Export Controls, Dual-Use, LSI Test, Quantum Industrial Commons, arXiv, Economic Statecraft

CIGI Publishes Global Quantum Policy Brief by Mauritz Kop and Tracey Forrest

Waterloo, 5 February 2026—The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) has published a new policy brief, Global Quantum Governance: From Principles to Practice, authored by Mauritz Kop and Tracey Forrest. The brief is written for policy makers, regulators, standards bodies, and industry actors facing a practical transition: quantum technologies are moving from laboratory milestones toward deployment pathways where governance choices—especially around cybersecurity and cross-border infrastructure—become difficult to reverse.

Download the Policy Brief here: https://www.cigionline.org/documents/3746/PB_No.222_Kop_and_Forrest.pdf

Why this brief on quantum governance, and why now

The brief’s central timing claim is that near-term milestones—particularly post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration and quantum networking—create a governance tipping point. After that point, certain security and societal harms may be costly (or impossible) to remediate. In the brief’s framing, PQC migration is not merely an engineering update; it is a “temporal rights and resilience” imperative because present-day decisions about crypto-agility, key life-cycle management, and data minimization determine whether sensitive data remains protected against future adversaries.

This urgency is paired with a structural diagnosis: national initiatives—including the EU’s proposed Quantum Act—are important, but insufficient on their own given quantum’s dual-use characteristics, global supply chains, and asymmetric capabilities across states and firms. The authors argue for a governance architecture that is “standards-first” and internationally coordinated, capable of sustaining what they call “security-sufficient openness,” and overseen by an International Quantum Agency.

The brief’s recommendations in practical terms

The brief concludes with a multi-pronged path “from principles to practice,” emphasizing four implementable priorities:

Strengthen foundations through standards and PQC execution: align cryptographic profiles across sectors; update procurement so crypto-agility, key life-cycle management, and “harvest now, decrypt later” mitigation become baseline requirements; and adopt “cryptographic resilience” via agile standards, testing, and incident playbooks.
Harmonize among allies: coordinate export controls, investment screening, and supply-chain security via mechanisms such as a proposed G7 Quantum Technology Point of Contact Group and narrowly scoped license-exception approaches in Five Eyes/AUKUS-style arrangements, while avoiding poorly designed measures that impose high compliance costs and chill benign collaboration.
Incentivize global collaboration and capacity building: federate national quantum clouds, SDG-oriented demonstrators, and regional test networks under common governance rules; and consider, longer-term, a “CERN for Quantum” that provides shared access anchored in transparency and equitable access, including for Global South partners.
Institutionalize foresight and bounded algorithmic regulation: resource international foresight capacities—within an IQA-type body or linked observatories—to update risk scenarios and stress-test legal frameworks, while experimenting with limited, well-governed AI-assisted monitoring and red-teaming to inform accountable human decision makers.

Takeaway for AIRecht’s readership

For legal and policy practitioners, the brief’s message is that quantum governance is entering a phase where operational artifacts—standards, benchmarks, procurement baselines, and interoperability profiles—will increasingly determine real-world rights, liabilities, and security outcomes. PQC migration and quantum networking are treated as the near-term proving ground for whether democracies can coordinate “security-sufficient openness” at scale.

For innovators and investors, the brief underscores that governance is not a brake on quantum progress but a design constraint that—if addressed early—can preserve global interoperability, reduce fragmentation, and support responsible diffusion of quantum capability without deepening geopolitical divides.

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War on the Rocks Publishes "A Bletchley Park for the Quantum Age"

Washington DC, Nov. 6, 2025—War on the Rocks has published a major new commentary by Stanford RQT’s Mauritz Kop, titled “A Bletchley Park for the Quantum Age.” The article translates his broader research on quantum governance into a concrete, operational blueprint for post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration across the United States and its allies.

Appearing in a venue read closely by practitioners in defence, intelligence, and foreign policy, the piece draws a deliberate conceptual line from the World War II codebreaking effort at Bletchley Park to today’s challenge of securing democratic communications. It argues that Bletchley Park was more than a geographic location; it was a method—an integrated system of science, engineering, operations, and alliance management. Kop contends that a similar methodology is required now to protect national security systems against cryptanalytically relevant quantum computers.

The Enigma Machine utilized a complex series of electromechanical rotors to produce a polyalphabetic substitution cipher, creating an encryption standard that was widely deemed unbreakable by contemporary adversaries. Defeating this system required the Allies to operationalize abstract mathematics into industrial capability, a feat that fundamentally altered the trajectory of the war.

The article situates PQC migration not as a narrow information technology upgrade, but as a core tenet of United States and allied quantum-AI grand strategy. It highlights how flagship programmes such as the United States Department of Defense’s Replicator initiative must be made “quantum-ready” to avoid becoming silently obsolete once large-scale quantum computers arrive.

Professor Kop extends his gratitude to War on the Rocks editor Lieutenant Colonel Walter ‘Rick’ Landgraf, PhD, whose precise editorial work helped sharpen the argument and tailor it to the publication’s strategic readership.

The Core Argument: A Bletchley Method for Post-Quantum Cryptography Migration

The essay begins from a straightforward technical premise. Once fault-tolerant quantum computers exist, Shor’s algorithm will efficiently factor large integers and compute discrete logarithms, thereby breaking the public-key cryptosystems—such as RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography—on which secure communication currently relies. In parallel, Grover’s algorithm will provide a quadratic speed-up in brute-force search, effectively halving the security margin of many symmetric-key schemes.

In this setting, the world’s cryptographic infrastructure cannot simply be patched at the margins. It requires a comprehensive, carefully managed transition to new, quantum-resistant algorithms.

Kop proposes that the United States and its allies apply a “Bletchley method” to this problem by tightly linking:

Domestic execution of PQC migration, and
An allied, standards-based certification compact that prevents fragmentation.

Defensively, this means post-quantum cryptography by default and certified interoperability across critical systems. Politically, it means that Washington earns the right to lead abroad by delivering verifiable results at home.

The framework is organised around two distinct but mutually reinforcing tracks:

Track One – “Ultra at Home”: rigorous domestic execution, and
Track Two – “Allied Codebook Abroad”: international architecture designed to avoid a “quantum splinternet.”

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Music Law and Artificial Intelligence: From Cloned Artists to AI-Generated Works

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in the music industry is sparking a revolution, profoundly changing how music is created. This development raises complex legal questions concerning AI and copyright, including related rights. How can we protect the creative rights of artists and composers while simultaneously allowing room for technological innovation? In this comprehensive yet accessible legal overview, we explore key issues regarding AI and music. These include whether AI can legally train on copyrighted materials without consent, TDM exceptions, how various rights organizations (such as Buma/Stemra and Sena) approach AI, the status of AI-generated musical works, the threshold of human creativity required, protection against AI voice cloning via privacy laws and moral rights, contractual implications, new obligations under the EU AI Act, differences between European and American law, and ongoing lawsuits. This article is tailored for artists, composers, music publishers, labels, voice actors, producers, and AI companies seeking clarity on their legal standing.

AI Training on Protected Music and Video Materials: Legal Framework and Debate

Can an AI model in the Netherlands and the EU train on copyrighted material (such as music or video) without permission from the rights holders? Generally, using protected material beyond private use or citation requires permission. Scraping or using data for AI training without permission is typically considered infringement unless a specific legal exception applies.

Buma/Stemra’s Opt-Out Policy

In the Netherlands, Buma/Stemra explicitly uses its opt-out rights, requiring prior consent for TDM on its repertoire, thus ensuring fair compensation for composers and lyricists.

EU AI Act: Transparency Obligations and System Monitoring

The EU AI Act, effective from August 2025, introduces important transparency requirements, obliging generative AI model developers to:

Disclose training data used, including copyrighted music or texts.
Maintain policies ensuring compliance with EU copyright law.
Respect explicit opt-out signals from rights holders during training.

The Act doesn't prohibit using protected material for training outright but enforces transparency and compliance through oversight and penalties.

Composition, Lyrics, and Master Recordings: Different Rights Regimes

Music rights in the Netherlands broadly split into:

A. Copyright: Protects compositions and lyrics, managed by organizations like Buma/Stemra.

B. Neighboring Rights: Protect recordings and performances, managed by Sena.

AI-Generated Compositions and Lyrics: Completely AI-generated works often fail to meet traditional copyright criteria, as human creativity is essential.

Neighboring Rights: It remains uncertain whether AI-generated performances and recordings attract neighboring rights, as these typically rely on human involvement.

Copyright Status of AI-Generated Music

In the U.S., fully AI-generated works explicitly do not receive copyright protection. While Europe hasn't clarified explicitly, the prevailing legal view aligns with this stance—AI-generated works likely fall into the public domain unless there's significant human creativity involved.

Hybrid Creations: Music combining human and AI input may qualify for copyright protection depending on the human creative contribution's significance.

AI Voice Cloning: Personality Rights and Privacy

AI voice cloning technology poses challenges regarding personal rights and privacy. Artists may invoke:

Privacy rights under EU law (Article 8 ECHR).
Personality rights.
Potential trademark and image rights analogously.

The EU AI Act mandates transparency in AI-generated content, aiming to mitigate unauthorized use and deepfake concerns.

Music Contracts in the AI Era

Existing music contracts require updates addressing AI-specific matters, including (1) Explicit licensing terms for AI training; (2) Ownership clarity of AI-generated content; and (3) Liability assignment for copyright infringements involving AI.

Conclusion: Balancing Innovation and Rights—Be Prepared

The intersection of AI and music law presents both opportunities and challenges. Stakeholders should proactively:

Clearly define rights in AI-generated music contractually and update existing music contracts.
Specify permissions (licenses) and restrictions (opt-out) regarding AI training explicitly.
Seek specialized music & AI legal advice to navigate evolving regulations.

By strategically addressing these issues, artists, companies, and AI developers can legally and effectively harness AI innovations, maintaining both creative and commercial control.

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Public Property from the Machine published in Harmonizing Intellectual Property Law for a Trans-Atlantic Knowledge Economy

Brill | Nijhoff's edited volume Harmonizing Intellectual Property Law for a Trans-Atlantic Knowledge Economy—edited by Péter Mezei, Hannibal Travis, and Anett Pogácsás, with a foreword by Maciej Szpunar—includes a chapter by Mauritz Kop, founder of the Stanford Center for Responsible Quantum Technology, titled Public Property from the Machine. The chapter confronts the question generative artificial intelligence forces on intellectual property law: who should own what a machine makes when no human authored it.

A new category, not a new right

Kop's answer breaks with the reflex to meet new output with new ownership. He argues that human authorship and inventorship remain the normative basis of copyright and patent law, and that—on the chapter's account—extending those rights to fully AI-generated works would chill innovation, narrow cultural diversity, and crowd the commons. In their place he proposes Res Publicae ex Machina—public property from the machine—a deliberately designed, permission-free public-domain regime for creations and inventions that have crossed the autonomy threshold, the point at which output is produced without meaningful human creative contribution. He frames the move as a Pareto improvement: many gain access, and no legal person loses a right that was ever warranted.

Rooted in the articulated public domain

The proposal develops Kop's earlier AI & Intellectual Property: Towards an Articulated Public Domain, published in the Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal in 2020, which argued for designing the public domain deliberately rather than treating it as the leftover of whatever rights fail to attach. The 2024 chapter applies that foundation to machine-generated subject matter under a named regime—so the two are best read as a sequence: the foundational article first, the autonomous-output application second. The same design-first instinct that animates Kop's responsible-innovation work, including the Ten Principles for Responsible Quantum Innovation, runs through the chapter: shape the rules before the defaults harden.

Why it matters for trans-Atlantic IP

Placing the argument inside a volume on trans-Atlantic harmonization is deliberate. The familiar questions—can an AI be an author, can an AI be an inventor—assume ownership is the only available category. Public Property from the Machine insists that public property is a category too—one the chapter argues is more defensible for output no human authored. For the United States and Europe, the practical question becomes not how to extend private rights to machines but what to agree to leave free. The fuller portrait of the scholar behind the proposal is set out in the Mauritz Kop profile. The chapter is a scholarly proposal rather than a statement of existing law—but it reframes a debate that has too often had only one answer on offer.

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Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, InnovationMauritz Kop6 mei 2024Mauritz Kop, AI, Stanford RQT, Intellectual Property, Public Domain, Generative AI, Copyright, Patents, Brill, Res Publicae ex Machina, Trans-Atlantic

Mauritz Kop and Mark Lemley Host High-Level EU Cybersecurity Delegation at Stanford Law

Stanford, CA – On February 26, 2024, the Stanford Center for Responsible Quantum Technology (RQT), a leading interdisciplinary hub operating under the aegis of the Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology, had the distinct honor of hosting a high-level cybersecurity delegation from the European Commission. The meeting, led by the Center’s Founding Director, Mauritz Kop, and Professor Mark A. Lemley, Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology, underscored the growing importance of transatlantic dialogue in shaping the future of digital security and responsible innovation in the quantum age.

The Stanford Center for RQT is dedicated to steering the development and application of quantum technologies toward outcomes that are not only innovative but also equitable, transparent, and beneficial for society at large. Its mission is to proactively address the complex ethical, legal, societal, policy and interoperability implications of quantum advancements, fostering a global ecosystem grounded in democratic values and human rights. The Center was officially inaugurated on December 6, 2023, by His Excellency Mark Rutte, then Prime Minister of the Netherlands and the current Secretary General of NATO, a testament to the geopolitical significance of its work. This recent meeting with the EU delegation builds on that foundation, reinforcing the Center’s role as a crucial bridge between Silicon Valley’s technological frontier and the world’s leading policymakers.

The dialogue centered on some of the most pressing challenges and opportunities at the intersection of quantum technology and cybersecurity, including building global capacity for responsible innovation and aligning EU and US national security strategies.

The EU Cybersecurity Delegation at Stanford RQT

The European Commission’s Cybersecurity Delegation was led by Gerard de Graaf, the Senior Envoy for Digital to the U.S. and Head of the European Union Office in San Francisco. A veteran of the European Commission with a distinguished career spanning several key digital policy areas, Mr. de Graaf is at the forefront of the EU’s efforts to promote a human-centric, ethical, and secure digital transition. His role involves strengthening transatlantic cooperation on digital regulation, from data governance and AI to cybersecurity and platform accountability. Mr. de Graaf, who was also present at the Center’s inauguration, has been a pivotal figure in shaping the EU’s landmark digital policies, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Digital Services Act (DSA). His leadership in the San Francisco office is instrumental in fostering dialogue between European regulators and the heart of the global tech industry.

Accompanying Mr. de Graaf were Joanna Smolinska, Deputy Head of the EU Office in San Francisco and a key figure in transatlantic tech diplomacy, and Ilse Rooze, a Seconded National Expert at the EU Office who brings deep expertise in digital policy and international relations.

Representing Stanford were Mauritz Kop and Professor Mark A. Lemley. Mr. Kop is a pioneering scholar in the governance of emerging technologies, with a focus on quantum, AI, and intellectual property. As the Founding Director of the RQT Center, his work is dedicated to creating robust legal and ethical frameworks to ensure that transformative technologies are developed and deployed responsibly. Professor Lemley is the William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and one of the world's most cited scholars in intellectual property and technology law. His extensive work on innovation, competition, and the digital economy provides a critical legal and economic lens through which to view the challenges of the quantum era.

The Quantum Cybersecurity Challenge: Preparing for Q-Day

A central theme of the discussion was the looming threat that fault-tolerant quantum computers pose to global cybersecurity. The immense processing power of these future machines will render much of the world’s current cryptographic infrastructure obsolete. This critical juncture, often referred to as “Q-Day” or the “Quantum Apocalypse,” is the moment when a quantum computer will be capable of breaking widely used encryption standards like RSA and ECC, which protect everything from financial transactions and government communications to personal data and critical infrastructure.

The implications of Q-Day are profound. Malicious actors could potentially decrypt vast archives of stolen encrypted data—a scenario known as "harvest now, decrypt later." This retroactive decryption capability poses a severe threat to long-term data security, national security, and economic stability.

In his opening remarks, Mauritz Kop emphasized the urgency of a proactive, coordinated global response. The conversation explored the transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), a new generation of cryptographic algorithms designed to be resistant to attacks from both classical and quantum computers. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is in the final stages of standardizing a suite of PQC algorithms, a process closely watched by governments and industries worldwide. The delegation discussed the immense logistical, technical, and financial challenges of migrating global IT systems to these new technical standards—a process that is expected to take more than a decade and require unprecedented public-private collaboration.

The discussion also touched upon other quantum security technologies, such as Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), which uses the principles of quantum mechanics to create secure communication channels. While PQC focuses on developing new mathematical problems that are hard for quantum computers to solve, QKD offers a physics-based approach to security. The participants explored how these different technologies could complement each other in a future-proof security architecture.

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Mauritz Kop Speaks at CNAS Quantum Roundtable on Research Security, Technology Theft, and Intellectual Property Rights

Washington, D.C. – On October 11, 2023, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) convened a timely, off-the-record roundtable discussion to address one of the most pressing national security challenges of our time: safeguarding American leadership in quantum technology. The event, titled "Quantum Roundtable: Research Security, Technology Theft, and Intellectual Property Rights," brought together a select group of leading experts from government, industry, and academia. Among the distinguished speakers was Mauritz Kop, Fellow and Visiting Scholar in Quantum and Law at Stanford University and later the Founding Director of the Stanford Center for Responsible Quantum Technology (RQT), and Chair of the annual Stanford RQT Conference.

The roundtable served as a critical forum for in-depth dialogue on formulating a robust U.S. strategy to protect its quantum ecosystem from intellectual property theft and illicit technology transfer, particularly in the context of strategic competition with nations like China. Quantum technology governance global expert Mauritz Kop was invited to provide his unique perspective, rooted in a holistic framework for responsible innovation, to help navigate the complex interface of intellectual property and national security.

The Center for a New American Security: Shaping the National Security Debate

The Center for a New American Security is a prominent, bipartisan non-profit organization that develops strong, pragmatic, and principled national security and defense policies. CNAS engages policymakers, experts, and the public with innovative, fact-based research, ideas, and analysis to shape and elevate the national security debate. Its Technology and National Security Program, led by Senior Fellow and Director Vivek Chilukuri, focuses on the complex challenges and opportunities presented by emerging technologies, aiming to ensure the United States maintains its technological leadership while upholding democratic values. This roundtable was a key component of the program's project on U.S. quantum strategy and its intersection with U.S.-China economic relations, reflecting CNAS’s commitment to proactive and forward-thinking policy development.

A High-Stakes Convening of Quantum Leaders

The roundtable's agenda was designed to facilitate a candid and substantive discussion among key stakeholders. The session was opened by CNAS Executive Vice President and Director of Studies, Dr. Paul Scharre, and Program Director Vivek Chilukuri, who set the stage by outlining the critical importance of the topic.

The main discussion featured two expert speakers:

Mauritz Kop, who brought a comprehensive legal, ethical, and policy perspective from his work at Stanford. His research focuses on developing governance frameworks for emerging technologies, integrating intellectual property, antitrust law, distributive justice, and national security strategy.

Dr. Elliott Mason, a Registered Patent Agent at Young Basile and a leader within the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C). Dr. Mason provided deep technical and practical insights from the front lines of quantum patenting and the development of industry standards.

Conclusion: A Principled Approach to Quantum Technology Governance

Mauritz Kop concluded his remarks by emphasizing the profound dilemmas and trade-offs inherent in governing quantum technology. The pendulum swings between open and closed innovation, and between mitigating risks and maximizing benefits, require a sophisticated, evidence-based, and adaptive approach.

His participation in the CNAS roundtable provided a crucial, principled voice, advocating for a strategy that is not merely defensive but forward-looking. By grounding the discussion in the RQT framework, he made a compelling case that true security lies in advancing a thriving, competitive, and responsible quantum ecosystem—one that leads the world in innovation while being firmly anchored in democratic values and a commitment to the planetary good. The event highlighted the essential role of deep, interdisciplinary dialogue in shaping a quantum future that is both secure and beneficial for all humankind.

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Quantum Technology Impact Assessment (EU AI Alliance, European Commission)

Brussels, 20 April 2023—The emergence of powerful new capabilities in large AI models, such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), underscores the critical need to continuously improve and update technology impact assessment tools, ensuring they keep pace with rapid technological development. As defined in recent scholarship, technology impact assessment is the systematic process of monitoring and determining the unintended, indirect, or delayed societal impacts of a future technological innovation. Crucially, it is also about capitalizing on opportunities and enabling responsible innovation from the outset.

An article by Stanford Law’s Mauritz Kop on this topic is also featured on the European Commission's Futurium website.

Shaping the Quantum Innovation Process

Quantum Impact Assessments (QIAs) are emerging as vital practical tools to facilitate the responsible adoption of quantum technologies. There are several related approaches to this assessment: (1) interactive QIA, which seeks to influence and shape the innovation process; (2) constructive QIA, where social issues guide the design of the technology from its earliest stages; and (3) real-time QIA, which connects scientific R&D with social sciences and policy from the start, before a technology becomes locked-in.

Often taking the form of codes of conduct, best practices, roadmaps, and physics de-risking tools, QIA instruments can be used by governments, industry, and academia. These soft law toolsallow stakeholders to explore how current technological developments affect the world we live in and to proactively shape the innovation process toward beneficial, societally robust outcomes.

Exploratory Quantum Technology Assessment

Implementing interdisciplinary, expert-based QIAs can help raise awareness about the ethical, legal, socio-economic, and policy (ELSPI) dimensions of quantum technology, including quantum-classical hybrid systems. For instance, QIAs cultivate a deeper understanding of the potential dual-use character of quantum technology, where beneficial applications (such as quantum sensing for medical diagnostics) can exist alongside potentially harmful ones (such as the same sensors being used for autocratic surveillance).

Building on the foundational work of the 2018 AI Impact Assessment developed by ECP | Platform voor de InformatieSamenleving chaired by Prof. Kees Stuurman, this work presents a prototype of a QIA instrument: the Exploratory Quantum Technology Assessment (EQTA). This pioneering initiative was made possible through a collaboration between the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs & Climate Policy, Quantum Delta NL (QDNL), and ECP. The EQTA will be presented by Eline de Jong and Mauritz Kop at the inaugural Stanford Responsible Quantum Technology Conference in May 2023.

Guidance for Responsible Quantum Technology Implementation

The EQTA provides a comprehensive, practical step-by-step plan that encourages stakeholders to initiate a dialogue to clarify which ethical, legal, and social aspects are important in the creation and application of quantum systems and their interaction with classical technologies. This structured approach helps make the use of quantum technology—as well as the data and algorithms that power it—more transparent and accountable from an early stage.

Looking forward, establishing a risk-based legal-ethical framework in combination with standardization, certification, technology impact assessment, and life-cycle auditing of quantum-driven systems is crucial to stewarding society towards responsible quantum innovation. Mauritz Kop’s research group has written more on this framework in their seminal article Towards Responsible Quantum Technology (Harvard).

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Mauritz Kop Speaks on Quantum Ethics, Intellectual Property and Innovation at NASA SWEEEP Event

On October 3, 2022, a interdisciplinary dialogue on the future of quantum technology and its societal implications took place within a consortium focused on some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time. Mauritz Kop, a visiting quantum and law scholar at Stanford University, was invited to address a workshop for the SouthWest Engine for Environment and Economic Prosperity (SWEEEP), a major initiative led by a consortium including NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), CalTech, and California State University, Northridge. The event, part of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Regional Innovation Engines program, provided a platform to discuss the intricate web of ethical, legal, socio-economic, and policy implications—termed "Quantum-ELSPI"—that must be navigated as quantum technologies are harnessed to address grand challenges like water scarcity and agricultural sustainability.

The Institutional Context: NASA and the SWEEEP Mission

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), established in 1958, has a storied history of pushing the boundaries of science and technology for the benefit of humanity. While renowned for space exploration, its mission extends deeply into Earth science, utilizing its unique vantage point from space to understand and protect our home planet. From monitoring climate change and weather patterns to managing natural resources, NASA’s work is foundational to global environmental stewardship.

This commitment to terrestrial challenges is exemplified by its involvement in the SWEEEP initiative. SWEEEP is a direct response to the NSF Regional Innovation Engines program, a nationwide effort to catalyze and accelerate regional-scale, R&D-based innovation ecosystems. The program is designed to fund "Engines" that advance critical technologies, address societal challenges, promote economic growth, and cultivate regional talent, with potential funding of up to $160 million over ten years per Engine.

It was within this context of ambitious technological solution-building that Mauritz Kop was invited to provide a crucial perspective on governance and responsible innovation. The leaders of the initiative, including Edward Chow of NASA JPL and Bingbing Li of California State University Northridge, recognized that developing powerful new technologies carries a responsibility to proactively address their societal impact.

Quantum-ELSPI: A Framework for Responsible Innovation

In his address, Mauritz Kop introduced the comprehensive concept of Quantum-ELSPI, arguing for a multidisciplinary approach that integrates ethical, legal, socio-economic, and policy considerations directly into the R&D lifecycle. He stressed the importance of "building bridges between disciplines," enabling quantum physicists and engineers to communicate effectively with experts in the humanities and social sciences. The goal is not to give premature, all-encompassing answers, but to begin by asking the right questions.

For a project like SWEEEP, this means looking beyond the technical specifications of a quantum sensor to consider the legal frameworks for the data it collects, the ethical implications of its use in agriculture, and the socio-economic impact on farming communities. Kop noted that NSF reviewers would likely value such a forward-thinking awareness of the complex societal dimensions of the proposed technological interventions.

Intellectual Property in the Quantum Age: Fostering or Hindering Innovation?

A significant portion of the discussion was dedicated to the role of intellectual property (IP) in the quantum domain. Quantum computers and related systems are extraordinarily complex, comprising myriad components, each potentially protected by its own IP right. Kop described this as a "rainbow of IP rights," where patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and trademarks can create a dense and overlapping landscape.

While IP is designed to incentivize invention, he cautioned that an over-reliance on exclusive rights could lead to "IP overprotection," potentially stifling the cumulative, follow-on innovation that is essential for a burgeoning field like quantum technology. The challenge is to balance the need to protect inventions with the goal of building an open, thriving global quantum ecosystem.

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Quantum-ELSPI: A Framework for Responsible Innovation

Intellectual Property in the Quantum Age: Fostering or Hindering Innovation?

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