One hundred years after quantum mechanics upended physics, the United Nations proclaimed 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology and asked what the next hundred should look like. A new chapter co-authored by Mauritz Kop for a volume in the Year's scholarly program answers for one region, mapping the quantum ELSPI, the ethical, legal, social, and policy implications, of quantum technologies across the United States and Canada.
Where North American quantum governance is actually decided
The chapter's premise is practical. North America's quantum economy runs through cloud platforms and proprietary toolchains, which means the consequential governance decisions are being made in standards bodies, procurement offices, and competition policy, long before any parliament passes a dedicated quantum law. Providers of quantum hardware, benchmarks, and developer tooling shape access conditions and technical practice alongside formal regulators and standards bodies.
That reframing matters for the security agenda too. The migration to post-quantum cryptography is the region's major near-term quantum security program, driven by the prospect that future quantum computers could break today's public-key encryption, and by adversaries harvesting encrypted data now in order to decrypt it later.
How the ELSA lens widened into ELSPI
Behind the chapter stands a research field with a Stanford pedigree. Quantum ELSPI widens the classic ethical-legal-social lens to include policy, market structure, intellectual property, and national security, treating ethics as an operating model to be executed, audited, and improved. The chapter applies the same operational turn that artificial intelligence governance took when principles were translated into controls, documentation, and assurance.
The author team mirrors that ambition: quantum physicist Shohini Ghose, security scholar Lindsay Rand, legal scholar Mauritz Kop, Bruna Shinohara de Mendonça, and Karl Thibault, a multidisciplinary blend Kop has brought into international institutions before, including his work consulting UNESCO and the OECD on quantum ethics and technology policy.
What the chapter forecasts for the next five to ten years
The chapter closes with a five-to-ten-year outlook on how North American quantum technology governance is likely to evolve, from supply-chain chokepoints and export controls to sector-by-sector assurance regimes, grounded in how the ecosystem is actually structured.
For readers in government, industry, or research management, it doubles as a checklist: if your organization touches quantum systems, your cryptographic inventory, procurement clauses, and standards participation are where responsible quantum begins. The full announcement explains what the chapter argues, who wrote it, and why the UNESCO-led Year gives it unusual reach.
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