Berichten met de tag Geopolitics

Call for Applications: CIGI Quantum Nexus Emerging Scholars Program for Canadian Strategic Advantage

The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) is accepting applications for a competitive emerging scholars program attached to The Quantum Nexus: A Framework for Canadian Strategic Advantage in a Contested Domain, a research project supported by the Department of National Defence's MINDS program and led by CIGI Senior Fellow Mauritz Kop. The deadline is July 15, 2026.

A mentorship cohort with a mission

Four to six emerging scholars from across Canada—undergraduates through post-docs, from any discipline—join a virtual program from September to December 2026. The format is deliberately personal: a one-on-one mentorship session with the Principal Investigator, an online international expert workshop in October, and a group masterclass on emerging-technology governance and publication development in November. No prior quantum expertise is required, and applications from equity-deserving groups are strongly encouraged; the program is built on the conviction that good governance of emerging technologies needs many kinds of minds. It is the same conviction that brought a Canadian quantum governance delegation to Stanford to prepare Canada's G7 presidency.

From analytical note to CIGI report

This is a publication program, not a lecture series. Every participant develops a 1,200–1,500-word analytical note on an assigned subtopic within one of six themes—spanning intellectual property and export controls, post-quantum cryptography migration, critical materials and supply chains, quantum-AI convergence, standards and allied interoperability, and the application of the LSI test (least trade-restrictive, security-sufficient, innovation-preserving) to a real case. The notes are contributed to the project's final CIGI report as a dedicated Emerging Scholars annex—a substantive contribution at the start of a research career.

Dates and deadlines

Applying takes one PDF: a 300–500-word expression of interest naming the theme you want to work on, a CV, and one reference letter, sent to programs@cigionline.org (subject line: Emerging Scholars Application: DND MINDS Project). Applications close July 15, 2026; acceptances follow in mid-August; the program runs September through December. For emerging scholars who want to help shape how the quantum age is governed, this is the opening.

Meer lezen

Quantum Technology, CIGI, ScholarshipHenry Quentir5 juni 2026Mauritz Kop, CIGI, Quantum Governance, National Security, Intellectual Property, Geopolitics, Emerging Scholars, Quantum Nexus, DND MINDS, Canada, LSI Test

NATO StratCom Features Mauritz Kop as Subject Matter Expert in Workshop Video on Quantum and Cognitive Sovereignty

The NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence engaged Mauritz Kop as a subject-matter expert for its Riga workshop The Integrity of Reality and Cognitive Sovereignty—via a thirty-minute video interview recorded as study material for participants and as input to the Centre's threatcasting work.

A video briefing for Riga

Held in early June 2026, in the week of the Centre's flagship Riga StratCom Dialogue, the workshop examined what happens to shared truth when both conflict and communication are increasingly automated. Kop's recorded interview adds the layer the strategic-communications field is only beginning to map: the quantum layer. His opening line does the analytical work of a whole briefing—the past is not yet stable. The argument extends the case he made when the Hoover Institution invited him to speak on quantum, democracy, and authoritarianism.

Three quantum pressures on the mind's privacy

The interview names three converging pressures on cognitive sovereignty: civic-scale quantum sensing that, in principle, could resolve subsurface and interior spaces from public rights-of-way—what Kop calls the X-Ray City scenario; quantum-enhanced biosensing and brain-computer interfaces that open the inference of mental states; and the temporal instability of the cryptographic record under harvest-now, decrypt-later collection. For the first two, Kop argues for capability protection—prohibition-grade guardrails at the infrastructure layer, not consent forms after deployment.

Why communicators should care about cryptography

An adversary who can retroactively forge or contest the signed record does not need to fabricate convincingly—only to seed doubt at scale. The interview's prescription is precision over speed: the LSI test for every proposed control, standards-first governance, and verifiable allied migration to post-quantum cryptography as the strategic-communications measure rarely recognized as one.

Meer lezen

Quantum Technology, Geopolitics, GovernanceHenry Quentir3 juni 2026Mauritz Kop, National Security, Quantum Governance, Geopolitics, Post-Quantum Cryptography, NATO, NATO StratCom COE, Cognitive Sovereignty, Riga StratCom Dialogue, Threatcasting, Quantum Sensing

Stanford and Los Alamos Researchers Publish Critical Quantum Minerals Dashboard

Quantum computers are usually discussed in the vocabulary of physics—qubits, coherence, error correction. A new Stanford–Los Alamos preprint argues that the decisive vocabulary of the next decade may instead be geological: niobium, nickel, indium, tantalum, helium-3. Min-Ha Lee, Alan J. Hurd, Jolante Wieke van Wijk, and Mauritz Kop map the critical minerals and materials that every serious quantum platform silently depends on, and show how concentrated mining, refining, and qualification chokepoints can convert commercial dependence into strategic vulnerability.

Why a dashboard, and why now

The Stanford–Los Alamos team's central proposal is a Quantum Criticality and Critical Minerals (QCCM) dashboard: a continuously updated, allied decision-support instrument—grounded in the preprint's two-level criticality screening—that tracks concentration, substitutability, qualification bottlenecks, stockpiling gaps, and geopolitical stress signals across quantum computing, sensing, and networking. The argument is institutional rather than technical—static national critical-minerals lists, however valuable, refresh on bureaucratic timelines, while administrative export-control actions move markets in weeks. When China added bismuth to its dual-use control list in February 2025, the spot price rose roughly tenfold within two months. An instrument that registers such signals continuously is the difference between awareness and resilience.

Two use cases, one lesson

The authors develop the argument through two concrete cases. The first is niobium, the backbone of superconducting qubits: roughly ninety percent of world production comes from Brazil, the United States imports all of it, and Chinese state-linked groups have spent a decade quietly acquiring the assets. The second is the space-qualified single-photon detector, where radiation and thermal stress can degrade a quantum communications link into insecurity long before the hardware visibly fails. The lesson is the same in both: criticality lives at every layer of the stack—ore, refining, isotopes, components, qualification—and a strategy that only counts qubits will miss it. The same blind spot extends to national stockpiles, which exclude by statute the gases and isotopes—helium-3 above all—on which dilution refrigeration and quantum sensing actually run.

Materials policy as quantum statecraft

What elevates this preprint beyond supply-chain analysis is its placement of materials within the architecture of quantum statecraft: supply assurance and post-quantum cryptography migration as twin pillars of security, standards-aligned governance as the multiplier, and allied coordination as the operating system. It is a natural companion to the geostrategic analysis in the Oxford lecture on quantum threats, extending that argument from algorithms and adversaries down to the periodic table. For governments drafting quantum strategies, for industry qualifying components, and for scholars of economic security, the message is direct: the quantum age will be built from materials the democratic world does not currently control—and managing that fact deserves an instrument of its own.

Meer lezen

Quantum Technology, Quantum Computing, GovernanceHenry Quentir27 april 2026Stanford RQT, National Security, Geopolitics, Export Controls, supply chains, CIGI, Quantum Governance, Mauritz Kop, Cybersecurity, Critical Minerals, Niobium, QCCM Dashboard, Los Alamos National Laboratory

EPJ Quantum Technology Publishes Quantum Criticality Index Study by Cho, Kop and Lee

EPJ Quantum Technology has published a peer-reviewed framework by Dongyoun Cho, Mauritz Kop, and Min-Ha Lee that gives policymakers something the quantum field has lacked: a Quantum Criticality Index designed to flag supply-chain chokepoints before they harden into strategic crises.

A tri-axial index for fragile supply chains

Quantum hardware depends on inputs most governments have never inventoried—helium-3, isotopically enriched silicon-28, thin-film lithium niobate, superconducting niobium, dilution refrigerators from a handful of specialist suppliers. The QCI scores each input on supply risk, substitutability, and strategic significance, then adds an artificial neural network foresight layer that detects trend shifts and stress-tests scenarios: demand surges, export restrictions, regional shocks. Static critical-minerals lists update too slowly for a technology that scales architecture by architecture; the QCI is built to move at the field's own pace.

The molybdenum case

Preliminary QCI results flagged molybdenum's concentration risk publicly in May 2024; in February 2025, China placed the metal under export licensing, with global price effects the paper documents. The index had flagged the chokepoint before the shock—one episode that neatly illustrates the argument for criticality-based foresight. The same anticipatory logic drives the geostrategic work Kop contributes to the Eric Schmidt-backed von Neumann Commission on quantum-AI geostrategy.

Hardware shield, software shield

The framework's strategic claim is that supply-chain assurance and post-quantum cryptography migration are twin pillars of quantum security: PQC protects the data, the QCI protects the physical capability to build the machines. Diagnosis feeds decision feeds delivery—allied procurement, targeted licensing, calibrated stockpiling, verifiable assurance. Quantum statecraft, the paper argues, begins with knowing your own dependencies better than your rivals know them.

Meer lezen

Quantum Technology, Quantum Computing, GeopoliticsHenry Quentir10 maart 2026Mauritz Kop, Quantum Governance, Geopolitics, National Security, supply chains, Critical Minerals, Export Controls, Quantum Criticality Index, Molybdenum, EPJ Quantum Technology, CISAC

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.

Meer lezen

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.

Meer lezen

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

Mauritz Kop Speaker at United Nations International Year of Quantum Science and Technology 2025

On 31 October 2025, Mauritz Kop, Founder of Stanford RQT (Responsible Quantum Technology), served as one of the main speakers at the North America regional workshop on the Ethical, Legal, and Social Aspects (ELSA) of Broadening Global Ownership of Quantum Technologies. The online workshop was part of the United Nations International Year of Quantum Science and Technology 2025 (IYQ 2025), a year-long initiative mandated by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and led by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to mark 100 years of quantum mechanics and to address the emerging “quantum divide” in access, skills, and infrastructure.

The North America edition was convened by Dr. Zeki C. Seskir and Professor Shohini Ghose as part of a six-region ELSA-of-quantum workshop series. Each regional workshop is feeding into a global IYQ event on the Ethical, Legal, and Social Aspects of Broadening Global Ownership of Quantum Technologies to be held in Istanbul in November 2025.

The program brought together four principal speakers—Mauritz Kop, Bruna Shinohara de Mendonça, Lindsay Rand, and Isabelle Lacroix—and designated commentators Rodrigo Araiza Bravo and Karl Thibault. The workshop closed with an open discussion in which participants reflected on regional needs, expected impact, and the kind of alignment that is necessary for a fair and secure quantum future.

The International Year of Quantum and the North America ELSA Workshop

The International Year of Quantum Science and Technology 2025 was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in June 2024. The resolution calls on states and international organizations to use 2025 to raise public awareness of quantum science, promote education and capacity-building—especially in the Global South—and strengthen cooperation so that all countries can participate in and benefit from quantum technologies.

Within this broader mandate, the ELSA of Broadening Global Ownership of Quantum Technologies initiative focuses on quantum governance. The North America workshop was explicitly framed around three questions:

Which ethical, legal, and social aspects of quantum technologies are most urgent for North America today?
Which ELSA topics are most important globally?
How should the future of ELSA and related policy implications be shaped in Europe, North America, and worldwide, and what forms of alignment are needed?

The three-hour program opened with an overview of the IYQ ELSA event series, followed by the four invited talks, a short break, and then a structured discussion and closing reflections.

From ELSA to ELSPI: A Metaparadigm for Quantum Governance

Kop’s keynote, “From ELSA to ELSPI: A Metaparadigm for Quantum Governance,” drew on his recent work on Quantum-ELSPI and Responsible Quantum Technology, including Quantum-ELSPI: A Novel Field of Research; Ten Principles for Responsible Quantum Innovation (co-authored with, among others, Raymond Laflamme); and his legislative blueprint Towards a European Quantum Act.

He began by defining Quantum-ELSPI (co-developed with Luciano Floridi then at Oxford, now at Yale) as the study of Ethical, Legal, Socio-economic, and Policy Implications of quantum technologies. Classical ELSA—Ethical, Legal, and Social Aspects—was designed for more conventional technologies and, in his view, is too narrow for quantum systems that combine:

Dual-use components that can be deployed for both civilian and military purposes;
Long security horizons, where sensitive data captured today may be decrypted decades later by cryptanalytically relevant quantum computers; and
Fragile supply chains, in which a handful of materials, cryogenic systems, or photonic components create systemic bottlenecks.

To address this, Kop articulated three foundational pillars of the Quantum-ELSPI metaparadigm, developed in a recent Science article with co-authors Mateo Aboy, Urs Gasser, Glenn Cohen, and others:

Standards-First Governance
Technical and assurance standards—such as post-quantum cryptography (PQC) profiles, quantum quality-management systems, and certification schemes—are treated as the primary vehicle for embedding values into systems. Law, policy, and institutional design are built around these standards rather than attempting to regulate hypothetical risks in the abstract.
Execution-Oriented Ethics
Ethics is framed as a delivery problem. Instead of high-level value statements, Kop emphasized auditable supply chains, post-quantum cryptography migration drills, and verifiable deployment metrics in sectors such as finance, health care, and government archives. Ethics, in this sense, is measured by what actually ships and how it behaves under stress.
Planetary Welfare
The third pillar reframes quantum technologies not only as instruments of national competitiveness or military advantage, but as ecological and health technologies. Quantum-ELSPI is thus aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), emphasizing applications in climate modeling, clean-energy materials discovery, quantum-enabled medical technologies, and resilient humanitarian communications.

Taken together, these pillars elevate Quantum-ELSPI from a narrow ethics add-on to a metaparadigm for governing the entire quantum stack—from materials and cryogenic infrastructure to cloud-based access, algorithms, and hybrid quantum–classical systems.

Meer lezen

Governance, Quantum ELSPI, Stanford RQTMauritz Kop31 oktober 2025United Nations, Quantum-ELSPI, Ethics, Law, Policy, Governance, UNESCO, OECD, IYQ 2025, Geopolitics, Societal Impact, Innovation, Science, Mauritz Kop, Stanford RQT

Mauritz Kop Awarded Senior Fellowship at Leading G7 Think Tank CIGI Waterloo

Mauritz Kop, founder of the Stanford Center for Responsible Quantum Technology (RQT) and a guest professor at the US Air Force Academy (USAFA), has been appointed a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), a leading Canadian G7 think tank with a global reputation for impactful research and policy advice. This fellowship marks a significant new chapter in Professor Kop's work, allowing for a deeper dive into the intricate and rapidly evolving nexus of quantum technology, artificial intelligence (AI), intellectual property (IP) law, competition policy, and national security. The initial project will focus on developing a comprehensive roadmap for navigating this complex landscape, building on previous engagement with CIGI and long-standing academic and professional connections with Canada.

Mauritz Kop Appointed Senior Fellow at CIGI: A New Chapter in Quantum Governance and Global Security

This CIGI senior fellow appointment is not just a personal honour, but a testament to the growing global recognition of the urgent need for innovative governance models to steer the development of powerful dual-use technologies towards beneficial outcomes for humanity. The challenges are immense, but so are the opportunities. In a world grappling with geopolitical instability and the disruptive potential of emerging technologies, CIGI’s mission to build bridges from knowledge to power has never been more critical. Kop is thrilled to contribute to this mission and to collaborate with CIGI’s distinguished team of experts.

Building on a Foundation: The Dual-Use Project and Previous Engagements

Professor Kop's journey with CIGI began prior to this fellowship, with a seminar delivered on the governance of dual-use quantum technologies. That lecture, titled “Responsible Quantum AI Governance: From Ethical Principles to Global Frameworks,” set the stage for the work he is about to undertake. In that presentation, he argued that we are approaching a “Quantum Event Horizon”—a critical juncture beyond which our ability to shape the trajectory of advanced quantum and AI systems may be irrevocably lost. The core of Kop's argument was that traditional governance models and diplomatic efforts are insufficient to address the systemic challenges posed by a global, high-stakes race for quantum supremacy.

The seminar explored the necessity of a multi-layered governance strategy. This includes not only the development of robust international legal frameworks and oversight bodies, drawing inspiration from nuclear non-proliferation treaties, but also the integration of “Quantum-Resistant Constitutional AI” to hardwire universal values into the technology itself. This dual approach, grounded in the principles of responsible innovation, is essential to mitigate the risks of misuse by state and non-state actors, and to ensure that these technologies serve to enhance, rather than undermine, democratic societies.

The positive reception to these ideas and the stimulating discussions that followed with the CIGI community laid the groundwork for this senior fellowship. It became clear that there was a shared understanding of the stakes involved and a common commitment to forging a path towards a safe and equitable quantum future. This fellowship provides the ideal platform to transition from articulating these principles to developing concrete, actionable policy recommendations.

A New Frontier: IP, Competition Law, Quantum, Dual-Use, and National Security

Professor Kop's first project as a CIGI Senior Fellow will be an in-depth analysis of the critical nexus between quantum technology, AI, IP policy, and national security strategy. The convergence of quantum and AI capabilities presents unprecedented challenges for global innovation and strategic stability, most notably the looming threat of “Q-Day,” when a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break most of the public-key cryptography that underpins our digital world.

This project will draw lessons from historical precedents, particularly the governance of nuclear technology, to inform the development of novel frameworks for quantum governance. A key component of the research will be a comparative analysis of quantum IP strategies across the dominant tech blocs, examining how different approaches to patents, trade secrets, and state secrets are shaping the global quantum race.

Meer lezen

Quantum Event Horizon: Addressing the Quantum-AI Control Problem through Quantum-Resistant Constitutional AI

What happens when AI becomes not just superintelligent, but quantum-superintelligent? QAI agents with both classical and quantum capabilities? How do we ensure we remain in control?

This is the central question of my new article, where I introduce the concept of the Quantum Event Horizon to frame the urgency of the QAI control problem. As we near this point of no return, the risk of losing control to misaligned systems—machines taking over or seeing them weaponized—becomes acute.

A metaphorical Quantum Event Horizon can be thought of as an inflection point, or quantum governance 'tipping point' beyond which our ability to steward advanced quantum technology and AI towards beneficial outcomes for all of humanity, may vanish.

Simple guardrails are not enough. The solution must be architectural. I propose a new paradigm: Quantum-Resistant Constitutional AI, a method for engineering our core values into the foundation of QAI itself. This is a crucial discussion for policymakers, researchers, builders, and industry leaders.

Navigating the Quantum Event Horizon

This paper addresses the impending control problem posed by the synthesis of quantum computing and artificial intelligence (QAI). It posits that the emergence of potentially superintelligent QAI agents creates a governance challenge that is fundamentally different from and more acute than those posed by classical AI. Traditional solutions focused on technical alignment are necessary but insufficient for the novel risks and capabilities of QAI. The central thesis is that navigating this challenge requires a paradigm shift from reactive oversight to proactive, upfront constitutional design.

The core of the argument is framed by the concept of the ‘Quantum Event Horizon’—a metaphorical boundary beyond which the behavior, development, and societal impact of QAI become computationally opaque and practically impossible to predict or control using conventional methods. Drawing on the Collingridge dilemma and the Copenhagen interpretation, this concept highlights the risk of a "point of no return," where technological lock-in, spurred by a "ChatGPT moment" for quantum, could cement irreversible geopolitical realities, empower techno-authoritarianism, and present an unmanageable control problem (the risk of machines taking over). Confronting this requires a new philosophy for governing non-human intelligence.

Machines Taking Over

The urgency is magnified by a stark geopolitical context, defined by a Tripartite Dilemma between the existential safety concerns articulated by figures like Geoffrey Hinton, the geopolitical security imperative for rapid innovation voiced by Eric Schmidt, and the builder’s need to balance progress with safety, as expressed by Demis Hassabis. This dilemma is enacted through competing global innovation models: the permissionless, market-driven US system; the state-led, top-down Chinese system; and the values-first, deliberative EU model. In this winner-takes-all race, the first actor to achieve a decisive QAI breakthrough could permanently shape global norms and our way of life.

An Atomic Agency for Quantum-AI

Given these stakes, current control paradigms like human-in-the-loop oversight are inadequate. The speed and complexity of QAI render direct human control impossible, a practical manifestation of crossing the Quantum Event Horizon. Therefore, governance must be multi-layered, integrating societal and institutional frameworks. This includes establishing an "Atomic Agency for Quantum-AI" for international oversight and promoting Responsible Quantum Technology (RQT) by Design, guided by principles such as those outlined in our '10 Principles for Responsible Quantum Innovation' article. These frameworks must be led by robust public governance—as corporate self-regulation is insufficient due to misaligned incentives—and must address the distributive justice imperative to prevent a "Quantum Divide."

Towards Quantum-Resistant Constitutional AI

The cornerstone of our proposed solution is Quantum-Resistant Constitutional AI. This approach argues that if we cannot control a QAI agent tactically, we must constrain it architecturally. It builds upon the concept of Constitutional AI by designing a core set of ethical and safety principles (a 'constitution') that are not merely trained into the model but are formally verified and made robust against both classical and quantum-algorithmic exploitation. By hardwiring this quantum-secure constitution into the agent's core, we can create a form of verifiable, built-in control that is more likely to endure as the agent's intelligence scales.

Self-Aware Quantum-AI Agents

Looking toward more speculative futures, the potential for a Human-AI Merger or the emergence of a QAI Hive Mind—a networked, non-human consciousness enabled by quantum entanglement—represents the ultimate challenge and the final crossing of the Quantum Event Horizon. The foundational governance work we do today, including projects like Quantum-ELSPI, is the essential precursor to navigating these profound transformations.

In conclusion, this paper argues that for the European Union, proactively developing and implementing a framework centered on Quantum-Resistant Constitutional AI is not just a defensive measure against existential risk. It is a strategic necessity to ensure that the most powerful technology in human history develops in alignment with democratic principles, securing the EU’s role as a global regulatory leader in the 21st century.

Meer lezen

Mauritz Kop Delivers Keynote on Global Quantum Governance Frameworks at the World Quantum Summit in Washington DC

At the World Quantum Summit in Washington, DC, held during DC Climate Week on May 2, 2025, Mauritz Kop, Founder of the Stanford Center for Responsible Quantum Technology, delivered a keynote on Global Quantum Governance Frameworks. The address landed in a symbolic year—the centennial of quantum mechanics and the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology—and made a single, sustained argument: that quantum's distinctive physics demands tailored governance, and that the world should cooperate to unlock quantum for societal progress rather than fracture into rival blocs.

A fragmented compliance web—and a standards-first answer

Kop's diagnosis is that developers of quantum and hybrid systems already face a fragmented web of regional and global requirements, from export controls to sector-specific rules supported by standards, certifications, and quality-management systems. His remedy is unified quantum interoperability standards to avert a "quantum splinternet," paired with the Responsible Quantum Technology (RQT) framework and its benchmarks. This standards-first posture—building technical consensus before locking in less adaptable legislation—runs through his scholarship on responsible quantum innovation, including the Ten Principles for Responsible Quantum Innovation published in IOP Quantum Science and Technology.

Benefits, risks, and Quantum-ELSPI

The keynote mapped quantum's promise and peril by domain. On the benefit side, Kop aligned responsible quantum innovation with the UN Sustainable Development Goals—drug discovery, weather forecasting, battery chemistry, carbon capture. On the risk side, he flagged "Q-day," when current RSA and AES encryption fails, alongside dual-use ambiguity in quantum simulation and sensing. These interrelated ethical, legal, socio-economic, and policy implications form what he calls Quantum-ELSPI, the lens through which he argues quantum should be governed in line with civil liberties, human rights, and the rule of law.

An Atomic Agency for the quantum age

The address built toward an institutional proposal: a globally harmonized "Quantum Acquis Planétaire," a UN Quantum Treaty modeled on the 2024 UN AI Resolution and the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and an "Atomic Agency for Quantum/AI" inspired by the IAEA's safeguards model, complemented by CERN-style international resource pooling. The keynote is distinct from Kop's role as a speaker for the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology 2025: that recognition concerns the year's designation, whereas this address sets out the specific governance architecture he believes the quantum age now requires. His central claim is that the architecture must be designed today—before second-generation, agentic quantum and AI systems outpace the law—and that it should be standards-first, rights-respecting, and global by construction, so that quantum technology serves a collective future of widespread, equitably distributed prosperity.

Meer lezen

Mauritz Kop Reviews Der Derian’s Project Q: War, Peace and Quantum Mechanics

Stanford University, April 1, 2024—In an era defined by rapid technological acceleration, the quantum revolution looms as perhaps the most profound and least understood transformation on the horizon. It is a domain where the esoteric principles of physics—superposition, entanglement, and uncertainty—are migrating from theoretical blackboards to the geopolitical chessboard. It is this critical, and often unsettling, intersection of science, society, and security that James Der Derian’s consequential new documentary, Project Q: War, Peace and Quantum Mechanics, masterfully explores. Having been graciously invited by the film’s producers at Bullfrog Films to review this important work as the Founding Director of the Stanford Center for Responsible Quantum Technology, Mauritz Kop found it to be an essential primer for what may well be the defining technological challenge of the 21st century.

The film serves as a crucial vehicle for fostering what Mauritz Kop calls ‘quantum literacy’—a foundational understanding of not just the science, but the societal, ethical, and political ramifications of quantum technologies, and their inherent dual-use nature. Der Derian, a distinguished scholar of international relations and director of the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney, is uniquely positioned to guide this inquiry. He eschews a purely technical exposition, instead weaving a narrative that brings together a diverse chorus of voices: leading physicists, philosophers, national security experts, artists, and historians. This multidisciplinary approach is the film’s greatest strength, transforming a subject that could easily be arcane and inaccessible into a deeply human and urgent conversation.

A Summary of the Film: The Quantum Conundrum

Project Q dives headfirst into the rapidly advancing world of quantum science, highlighting the massive investments by governments, corporations, and universities while probing the unanswered questions about humankind's quantum future. The documentary skillfully unpacks the foundational elements of quantum mechanics for a lay audience. It introduces concepts like complementarity, Niels Bohr’s principle that objects can exhibit contradictory properties, such as being both a wave and a particle, but not simultaneously. It visualizes superposition through the famous Schrödinger's cat analogy, where a particle—or a cat in a box—can exist in multiple states at once until the moment it is observed.

Project Q in Sydney: A Conclave for the Quantum Age

The documentary is inextricably linked to the real-world initiative from which it takes its name. Project Q, based at the University of Sydney, is an ambitious undertaking to bridge the gap between the scientists building the quantum future and the humanists, policymakers, and public who will inhabit it. A ‘quantum risk lab’'. The project’s home is the Q Station in Sydney, a former quarantine station with a history of isolating and managing existential threats. This setting serves as a poignant backdrop, a physical manifestation of the need to grapple with the potentially world-altering implications of quantum technology before they arrive unchecked.

A Must-Watch Call for Quantum Literacy

Project Q is a documentary of profound importance and timeliness. It is a wake-up call, an invitation to a global conversation that has been largely confined to laboratories and classified government briefings. Der Derian has crafted a film that is both intellectually rigorous and deeply accessible, challenging its audience to think critically about the path we are on. By exploring both the risks and benefits of quantum innovation, the film offers a vital multidisciplinary perspective on how this emerging suite of technologies might reshape global peace, security, and politics.

Meer lezen

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.

Meer lezen

Blog over Kunstmatige Intelligentie, Quantum, Deep Learning, Blockchain en Big Data Law

A mentorship cohort with a mission

From analytical note to CIGI report

Dates and deadlines

A video briefing for Riga

Three quantum pressures on the mind's privacy

Why communicators should care about cryptography

Why a dashboard, and why now

Two use cases, one lesson

Materials policy as quantum statecraft

A tri-axial index for fragile supply chains

The molybdenum case

Hardware shield, software shield

Deterrence by denial for democratic resilience

The LSI test

A coalition playbook against a "Silicon Curtain"

The claim: security-sufficient openness

Red zones, enclaves, and economic statecraft

What is at stake

The International Year of Quantum and the North America ELSA Workshop

From ELSA to ELSPI: A Metaparadigm for Quantum Governance

Mauritz Kop Appointed Senior Fellow at CIGI: A New Chapter in Quantum Governance and Global Security

Building on a Foundation: The Dual-Use Project and Previous Engagements

A New Frontier: IP, Competition Law, Quantum, Dual-Use, and National Security

Navigating the Quantum Event Horizon

Machines Taking Over

An Atomic Agency for Quantum-AI

Towards Quantum-Resistant Constitutional AI

Self-Aware Quantum-AI Agents

A fragmented compliance web—and a standards-first answer

Benefits, risks, and Quantum-ELSPI

An Atomic Agency for the quantum age

A Summary of the Film: The Quantum Conundrum

Project Q in Sydney: A Conclave for the Quantum Age

A Must-Watch Call for Quantum Literacy

The EU Cybersecurity Delegation at Stanford RQT

The Quantum Cybersecurity Challenge: Preparing for Q-Day

Juridische diensten en projecten in Nederland en daarbuiten