Mauritz Kop Consults Amgen on Quantum-Biomedical Discovery

Invited by Howard Chang—the physician-scientist who led a renowned genomics laboratory at Stanford and now serves as Senior Vice President, Global Research, and Chief Scientific Officer at Amgen—Mauritz Kop consulted with Amgen's research organization on quantum-biomedical discovery: a disciplined exchange of ideas about where quantum methods can genuinely improve the way medicines are found.

An invitation from Amgen's chief scientist

The conversation paired deep biology with quantum strategy and governance. Its anchor was the Hippocratic Quantum approach Kop published at Harvard: accelerate discovery with quantum and quantum-classical methods, but under guardrails medicine itself would prescribe—validation, privacy, security, and patient trust from the first experiment. The same translational seriousness ran through the responsible-quantum lecture and workshop Kop gave at SandboxAQ.

Six use cases, one discipline

From computational chemistry for de novo discovery and lead optimization, through protein structure and selected omics analytics, metabolism and toxicity simulation, blood-brain-barrier hypotheses validated in organoid and lab-on-a-chip systems, operational optimization, and a watchlist for quantum neural networks—every candidate use case answers to the same rule: benchmark hard against strong classical baselines from day one, and let the evidence decide which pilots earn the next dollar.

Guardrails before hype

The strategy's quiet half is security and governance: a post-quantum cryptography roadmap for long-lived patient and research data, vendor diversification across qubit modalities, trade-secret and IP protection, and standards alignment. What the exchange was about, in the end, is decision quality—smarter discovery pipelines, better-protected data, and medicines that reach patients sooner.

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Healthcare, Quantum Technology, MedicineHenry Quentir3 maart 2026Mauritz Kop, Stanford RQT, Quantum Governance, Healthcare, Post-Quantum Cryptography, Amgen, Hippocratic Quantum, Quantum Medicine, Drug Discovery, Biomedical Discovery

Harvard Law Publishes Hippocratic Quantum: The Ethics of Biomedical Discovery in the Quantum Age

Cambridge, MA, February 25, 2026—Harvard Law’s Petrie-Flom Center has published Mauritz Kop’s new article, Hippocratic Quantum: The Ethics of Biomedical Discovery in the Quantum Age:https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2026/02/25/hippocratic-quantum-the-ethics-of-biomedical-discovery-in-the-quantum-age/

The article advances a proposition that is becoming increasingly difficult for health lawyers, policymakers, and biomedical innovators to ignore: as quantum technologies begin to enter biomedical discovery, the decisive challenge is no longer only scientific capability, but rather governance. In Kop’s account, quantum-enabled medicine should not be understood as a distant or speculative frontier that can be regulated later, once the engineering settles. It should instead be approached as a present-tense quantum governance problem, one that already implicates patient confidentiality, data integrity, cyber resilience, export controls, supply chains, and the geostrategic value of biomedical knowledge.

The article’s answer is not a new morality, but a more demanding implementation of an existing one: quantum medicine requires a Hippocratic framework that is technical enough for engineers, legal enough for regulators, and concrete enough for hospitals and pharmaceutical firms, yet flexible enough to let innovation breathe and encourage the crucial public-private investment necessary to advance allied quantum capabilities.

Five examples of quantum-enabled biomedical innovations

To ground this institutional view, one must consider the specific technological capabilities currently transitioning from theoretical physics to applied biomedicine. Five feasible vectors of innovation illustrate the breadth of this shift. In the domain of quantum computing, hybrid classical-quantum algorithms are emerging to optimize complex drug discovery pipelines and process large-scale genomic datasets. In quantum sensing, technologies such as diamond nitrogen-vacancy magnetometry enable ultra-sensitive, room-temperature mapping of neurological and cardiac activity. For quantum simulation, researchers are utilizing qubit-based systems to model molecular interactions and drug-target binding affinities with high accuracy, aiming to reduce reliance on extensive physical wet-lab screening. Within quantum imaging, techniques leveraging entangled photons permit the high-resolution visualization of cellular structures at lower light intensities, thereby mitigating phototoxicity in living tissues, benefitting medical diagnosis. Finally, in quantum networking, the deployment of quantum key distribution protocols offers a mechanism to cryptographically secure the transmission of sensitive multi-omics data across distributed hospital and research architectures.

From legal-ethical framework to Quantum-ELSPI

The Harvard article is best read as part of a longer intellectual trajectory. An early expression of that project appeared in March 2021 in the Yale Journal of Law & Technology, in Establishing a Legal-Ethical Framework for Quantum Technology: https://yjolt.org/blog/establishing-legal-ethical-framework-quantum-technology

That Yale piece argued that quantum technologies were moving from hypothetical ideas to commercial realities, and that law and policy should not wait for full technical maturity before building governance tools. It proposed a culturally sensitive legal-ethical framework for applied quantum technologies, drawing on AI governance and nanotechnology’s ELSI tradition while recognizing the distinct physical characteristics of quantum systems. Crucially, it also insisted that ethical aspiration must be accompanied by practical mechanisms for monitoring, validation, and life-cycle risk management. In retrospect, many of the themes that now reappear in Hippocratic Quantum were already visible there: the concern for human-centered design, the call for risk-based governance, and the insistence that ethics without institutionalization would be inadequate.

Why quantum medicine changes the governance question

The new Harvard article narrows the focus to biomedicine, but in doing so it sharpens the stakes. Biomedical discovery is not simply another application area. It is a setting in which long-lived and highly sensitive data, bodily integrity, public-health interests, commercial incentives, and geopolitical competition intersect. Quantum technologies matter here not because they promise speculative disruption, but because they may incrementally and then materially improve specific tasks: hybrid quantum-classical computational chemistry, de novo molecular design, lead optimization, selected toxicity and metabolism modeling, and perhaps aspects of high-fidelity sensing, simulation, and networked quantum computation. The issue, then, is not whether every promise will be realized immediately. It is whether institutions are preparing now for the forms of capability that are already foreseeable.

A Harvard-facing research arc

This Harvard publication also extends a longer Harvard-facing research arc across AI, health law, and responsible quantum governance. That arc includes:

The Right To Process Data For Machine Learning Purposes In The EU (Harvard JOLT) https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/the-right-to-process-data-for-machine-learning-purposes-in-the-eu
Towards Responsible Quantum Technology (Harvard Berkman Klein) https://cyber.harvard.edu/publication/2023/towards-responsible-quantum-technology
EU And US Regulatory Challenges Facing AI Health Care Innovator Firms (Harvard Petrie-Flom) https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2024/04/04/eu-and-us-regulatory-challenges-facing-ai-health-care-innovator-firms/
A Brief Quantum Medicine Policy Guide (Harvard Petrie-Flom) https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2024/12/06/a-brief-quantum-medicine-policy-guide/
How Quantum Technologies May Be Integrated Into Healthcare: What Regulators Should Consider (Stanford Law) https://hls.harvard.edu/bibliography/how-quantum-technologies-may-be-integrated-into-healthcare-what-regulators-should-consider/

Seen in this broader context, Hippocratic Quantum brings together early legal-ethical framing, responsible quantum governance, healthcare regulation, and geopolitical analysis into a single biomedical governance argument.

The article has also been featured by The Quantum Insider, which highlighted its central argument that quantum medicine’s promise must be matched by stronger privacy and governance safeguards: https://thequantuminsider.com/2026/02/27/analysis-quantum-medicines-promise-raises-new-privacy-and-governance-risks/

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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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GARP Interviews Mauritz Kop on Quantum Governance Strategies for Risk Professionals

The Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) interviewed Mauritz Kop for David Weldon's article Full-Scale Quantum Computing May Be Years Away. Risk Mitigation Can't Wait.—bringing quantum governance to the desks of risk professionals worldwide.

Q-Day is the wrong question

Kop's message to the risk profession inverts the usual timeline anxiety. The immediate danger is not a cinematic moment when encryption falls; it is the quiet accumulation of harvested data—financial records, identity data, health and government archives—collected today for decryption tomorrow, compounded by weak vendor oversight and a lack of crypto-agility. Records that outlive their cryptography may already face that exposure, whatever the hardware roadmaps say.

Five must-haves for a quantum governance strategy

The strategy Kop laid out is deliberately operational: a PQC migration roadmap anchored in asset classification and harvest-now-decrypt-later exposure; board-level ownership; integration with existing cyber, model, and operational risk frameworks; vendor due diligence on quantum-safety claims; and independent testing and benchmarking instead of marketing trust. Layered across architecture, algorithms, and operations, it treats quantum as an extension of disciplines risk professionals already command—the same principles-to-practice arc as the global quantum policy brief he co-authored at CIGI.

From the trading floor to the boardroom

Quantum, Kop argues, is both threat and tool for finance: it endangers the confidentiality of everything archived, and it is being explored for better simulation, optimization, and risk discovery. His benchmark for the U.S.: core post-quantum migration substantially done before 2030 for long-lived data and critical systems. The institutions that will meet that deadline are the ones whose boards treat quantum readiness as governance, not as someone else's research project.

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Quantum Technology, Governance, CybersecurityMauritz Kop19 december 2025Mauritz Kop, Quantum Governance, Policy, Standards, Post-Quantum Cryptography, GARP, Risk Management, Financial Services, Crypto-Agility, Quantum Technology Impact Assessment

Mauritz Kop Speaks at Oxford University on Quantum Threats

Oxford University, 10 November 2025—This afternoon, Professor Mauritz Kop joined distinguished colleagues at the University of Oxford for a high-level panel discussion titled “Quantum Supremacy: Technology, Strategy, and International Order.” Hosted by the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) and the Oxford Emerging Threats & Technology Working Group (ETG), the event convened a diverse audience of scholars, policymakers, and industry leaders to dissect the rapidly evolving landscape of quantum technologies.

Moderated by Sarah Chen, the session moved beyond the hyperbolic headlines often associated with quantum computing to address the granular realities of strategy, governance, and international security. Alongside Kop, the panel featured Dr. Simson Garfinkel of BasisTech, Angus Lockhart of SECQAI, and Professor Michael Holynski of the UK Quantum Technology Research Hub. The resulting dialogue offered a dense, forward-looking examination of quantum threats and opportunities—ranging from the precision of quantum sensing and the urgency of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) to the geopolitical friction points of supply-chain resilience and the risk of sub-optimal governance lock-in.

The Mission of Oxford’s Emerging Threats & Technology Working Group

The context for this discussion was set by the unique mandate of the host organization. The Emerging Threats & Technology Working Group at Oxford University stands as one of the few academic platforms systematically examining how critical and emerging technologies (CETs) reshape the security environment. Meeting regularly to assess the national-security implications of technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, directed energy, and space systems, the Group brings together participants from academia, industry, and government in a hybrid format.

This institutional design is consequential. By convening interdisciplinary seminars and publishing detailed session reports, Oxford Emerging Threats builds a community capable of treating quantum technology not merely as a laboratory curiosity or a narrow industrial race, but as a systems problem. Within this forum, quantum is framed as a variable that touches deterrence, alliance cohesion, human rights, and the resilience of critical infrastructures. For Stanford RQT (Responsible Quantum Technology), represented by Kop, this mandate aligns closely with the necessity to develop governance, standards, and strategic frameworks that keep quantum innovation compatible with an open, rules-based international order.

Reframing the Narrative: From Quantum Supremacy to Allied Quantum Assurance

In his opening remarks, Kop challenged the utility of the term “quantum supremacy” when applied to state actors. While the term has technical validity in describing a computational threshold, legally and strategically it acts as a misleading metaphor. Kop argued that for democratic states, the more relevant concept is assurance: the ability of allies to deploy quantum-era capabilities in a way that is verifiable, interoperable, and resilient, while simultaneously preserving an open international order.

To operationalize this, Kop proposed the framework of Allied Quantum Assurance, a strategy built upon recognizing that the world is currently crossing a “quantum event horizon.” Much like an astrophysical event horizon represents a point of no return, the current governance tipping point implies that early decisions on standards, export controls, supply chains, and research security will lock allies into long-lasting path dependencies.

The immediate driver of this urgency is the “harvest-now, decrypt-later” (HNDL) risk—a metaphorical “Q-Day” scenario where data exfiltrated today is decrypted by a future, Shor-capable quantum computer. This reality reframes strategic stability: whereas classical nuclear deterrence rests on mutually assured destruction, quantum security centers on deterrence-by-denial, achieved through informational assurance and operational resilience.

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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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Mauritz Kop Advises Stanford FSI Students on Quantum Policy and Cybersecurity Project

Mauritz Kop advised a Stanford student research team on their quantum policy and cybersecurity project—part of Technology, Innovation, and Great Power Competition, the policy-entrepreneurship course at the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI).

Startup methods, statecraft problems

In Steve Blank's experiential course, student teams take real-world challenges from U.S. and partner-nation policymakers and work them like founders: rapid discovery, agile iteration, actionable insights for real decision-makers. One team—led by Hannah Nabavi, a graduate student in Aeronautics and Astronautics and Threshold Venture Fellow—chose the quantum frontier: quantum computing and post-quantum cybersecurity as a great-power-competition problem.

From Q-Day to the three pillars

Kop's advisory session gave the team its working map: the Q-Day threat and why harvest-now, decrypt-later collection makes it urgent today; post-quantum cryptography mitigation in finance; the three quantum pillars of computing, sensing, and networking; and the investment ecosystem—startups, ventures, and the discipline that separates substance from hype. It is the same teaching thread he brings to quantum computing and law students at Fordham.

The next quantum policy generation

When aerospace engineers choose post-quantum security as their policy challenge, the signal—in Kop's reading—is clear: quantum literacy is becoming core strategic literacy. The team set out to share its final paper at the end of the fall 2025 quarter—exactly the kind of student work the quantum governance field needs more of.

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Quantum Technology, Teaching, UniversityMauritz Kop27 oktober 2025Mauritz Kop, Stanford University, Quantum Governance, Post-Quantum Cryptography, Stanford RQT, Freeman Spogli Institute, Gordian Knot Center, Great Power Competition, Steve Blank, Stanford Students

Mauritz Kop Teaches Quantum Governance at the United States Air Force Academy

Mauritz Kop, Founder of the Stanford Center for Responsible Quantum Technology, returned to the United States Air Force Academy—where he serves as guest professor—to teach cadets a class titled Responsible Quantum Technology: Establishing a Legal-Ethical Framework. The session began with the physics and moved to the geostrategic, legal, and ethical architecture the field will need as it matures, addressing two questions the cadets had prepared: why govern quantum before it is mature, and what framework best balances innovation against risk.

From the mechanics to the law

The lecture grounded its policy argument in the physics of the second quantum revolution. Where classical systems encode definite bits, quantum systems exploit superposition, entanglement, and tunneling to unlock new categories of capability across computing, sensing, simulation, and networking—from drug discovery and novel materials to jam-resistant navigation and physically grounded secure communications. The same properties that make the technology powerful, Kop argued, strain a legal order built on certainty, locality, and linear causality, which is why quantum governance calls for a tailored, sui generis approach rather than a retrofit of existing rules. The themes extend the line of work Kop set out in Establishing a Legal-Ethical Framework for Quantum Technology.

Why govern before maturity

On the cadets' first question, Kop drew on the Collingridge dilemma—control is easiest early, when knowledge is limited but options remain open—and on his metaphor of a quantum event horizon, a threshold beyond which technological lock-in makes the path far harder to redirect. Acting while the technology is still malleable, he argued, is not a brake on innovation but a precondition for steering it toward democratic values, public trust, and the legal certainty that long-horizon research and investment depend on.

A two-pillar framework

To the second question, Kop offered an integrated two-pillar response: agile, risk-based regulation that tiers obligations by an application's risk, paired with a strategic industrial and security policy that builds national capacity—funding across the lab-to-market pipeline, supply-chain resilience for critical minerals and components, talent development, and shared research infrastructure. This is the operational form of the Responsible Quantum Technology framework, organized under the SEA principles of safeguarding, engaging, and advancing the technology, and aimed at steering innovation rather than slowing it.

Dual-use and deterrence

For future Air Force and Space Force officers, the dual-use character of quantum technology was the connecting thread. The most acute near-term concern is the cryptographic threat—"Q-Day" and "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later"—which makes the migration to post-quantum cryptography a present-tense security task. Set against great-power competition, Kop's prescription is deliberate stewardship: embedding democratic values into standards early, protecting research from state-sponsored theft, and cooperating with allies, themes he has also brought to venues including the Hoover Institution. The class closed on the conviction that technology's trajectory is a matter of choice, and that engaging its technical, strategic, legal, and ethical dimensions is a core professional responsibility for the officers who will shape these systems.

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Teaching, Quantum Technology, GovernanceMauritz Kop23 oktober 2025Mauritz Kop, Quantum Governance, Stanford RQT, National Security, Governance, Policy, Quantum-ELSPI, Standards, US Air Force Academy, Teaching, Dual-Use, Post-Quantum Cryptography

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.

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