INVESTIGATION: Cybersecurity, AI, and Quantum Computing—Trump’s Doctrine of Technological Dominance Against Beijing

Maxime Marquette

2026-06-24 13:07:59

Mandatory deadlines that apply to the entire federal government

Executive Order 14409 is remarkably precise—a rarity for a U.S. presidential order. Each federal agency has 30 days to appoint a “PQC migration lead,” who must report directly to the agency’s chief information officer. The Office of Management and Budget has 90 days to issue a binding directive requiring all agencies to transition their High-Value Assets and high-impact systems to NIST-standardized post-quantum cryptography algorithms for key generation by December 31, 2030, and for digital signatures by December 31, 2031. NIST itself must launch a PQC migration pilot project on its own systems within 180 days, to be completed no later than December 31, 2027.

This timeline is not a recommendation—it is a legal requirement. And it applies to the private sector as well: the FAR Council, the body that governs federal procurement, is tasked with publishing, within 180 days, a proposed rule requiring covered federal contractors to comply with FIPS standards incorporating PQC algorithms by December 31, 2030, according to the official text of EO 14409 published on the White House website. In other words, any company working with the U.S. government will have to have migrated to quantum-resistant cryptography by the end of the decade.

A Direct Response to the “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” Threat

The executive order is explicit about the nature of the threat: “The advent of large-scale quantum computers, particularly in the hands of adversaries, will pose a significant threat to widely used cryptographic security systems.” ” Further on, the text notes that “ongoing cyber activity against the Nation poses the risk that adversaries are collecting U.S. information today to decrypt it later.” These diplomatically vague formulations—China is not named—fool no one in cybersecurity circles. The NSA, CISA, and the National Cyber Director are all involved in the strategic coordination of this national migration, according to the text of the executive order.

What strikes me about Executive Order 14409 is the implicit admission it contains. The U.S. government officially acknowledges, in legally binding language, that its own systems are currently vulnerable to a class of future attacks. This is a rare display of lucidity in government communication. I’m not sure that all private-sector stakeholders yet fully grasp the urgency—a deadline of 2030 may seem far off, but the PQC migration of a complex federal system takes years. The countdown, however, has already begun.

EO 14411: Building the First Quantum Computer Capable of Ushering in a New Era

The QC-ADDS Project: The Vision for a Quantum Computer for Scientific Discovery

Executive Order 14411 is even more ambitious in its scope. It officially establishes the Quantum Computer for Application Development and Discovery Science Effort, known as QC-ADDS, a national program coordinated by the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology. The stated goal: to develop a quantum computer whose scale will “usher in the era of quantum-enabled scientific discovery,” according to the text of the EO. At least one of these systems must be delivered to a Department of Energy facility and made accessible to the scientific community to the extent possible. The Department of Energy has 90 days to identify the required technical specifications.

This program is not a laboratory pipe dream. The Department of Defense—referred to as the “Secretary of War” in the text, in accordance with the Trump administration’s terminology—is listed first among the agencies tasked with supporting this program, with an explicit mention of the NSA, according to an analysis published by Breaking Defense on June 22, 2026. Within 180 days, the Secretary of Defense must establish or designate activities to develop the tools necessary for national security applications of quantum computing, potentially through the creation of a dedicated center.

The Updated National Quantum Strategy, DARPA, and AI in Support

EO 14411 also represents a strategic overhaul. Within 180 days, the National Quantum Strategy must be fully updated to incorporate the now-mature commercial QIST ecosystem, derived quantum technologies, and partnerships with U.S. industry. DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative is explicitly cited as a source of strategic information on quantum supply chains. This is no small matter: DARPA is the agency that has historically anticipated breakthroughs in military technology—from the Internet to drones.

The ambition of QC-ADDS reminds me of Apollo. Not in the grandeur of the symbolic gesture, but in the underlying geopolitical logic: we’re pursuing cutting-edge science because we can’t afford to leave it to our adversary. Beijing has invested billions in quantum technology over the past decade. Washington is catching up, but with one key difference: the U.S. private-sector ecosystem—Google, IBM, SandboxAQ—is infinitely more advanced than its Chinese counterpart. EO 14411 doesn’t invent U.S. quantum technology; it provides direction and timelines.

Military quantum sensors: a quiet revolution for the Pentagon

Navigation without GPS, anti-submarine warfare: the three priority sensors

The least publicized aspect of the June 22, 2026, executive orders may be the one with the most concrete immediate military implications. EO 14411 directs the Secretary of Defense to deploy at least three new types of quantum sensors in the field by September 30, 2028. According to an analysis published by Breaking Defense on June 22, 2026, two priority applications have been identified: alternative precision navigation when GPS is jammed, and the detection of hostile submarines without sonar. These two challenges are directly linked to contemporary threats. GPS jamming is a daily reality near war-torn Ukraine and in the Middle East, and the Chinese and Russian navies rely on their submarine stealth capabilities to project their power.

Jack Hidary, founder and CEO of SandboxAQ, quoted by Breaking Defense, put it with striking clarity: “Quantum detection is available today for navigation in the event of GPS jamming and decoys.” ” SandboxAQ has already tested this technology for the U.S. Air Force. The Pentagon has conducted tests in the air and in space. What EO 14411 does is convert these experiments into operational requirements within a legal timeframe.

An area where China has historically held the advantage

Breaking Defense highlights a troubling fact: quantum networks—the third component of the QIST revolution—have historically been “a major focus of Chinese research and development, yet relatively neglected in the United States.” Beijing has deployed the world’s first long-distance quantum communication network, connecting Shanghai to Beijing. The United States, focused on quantum computing, has underinvested in quantum networks. EO 14411 seeks to correct this imbalance by mandating five-year plans for the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, and NASA to advance quantum sensors and networks.

There is a certain irony in the fact that the Trump administration—which for years downplayed Chinese threats in certain areas—is the very one signing the most ambitious legislation ever drafted to catch up with Beijing in the field of quantum technology. I’m not naive: there are powerful industrial interests behind all of this, and companies like SandboxAQ and IBM have every reason to want Washington to open the floodgates of funding. But geopolitics and commercial interests are converging here, and this convergence is producing concrete public policies. That’s rare—and it’s useful.

The June 2 EO IA: Voluntary Governance of Boundary Models

A pre-launch framework for engagement, not a censorship regime

Signed three weeks before the quantum decrees, the June 2, 2026, executive order on AI—Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security—is the most controversial of the three. It establishes a framework for voluntary dialogue between developers of cutting-edge AI models and the federal government, within 60 days prior to their release to trusted partners. The distinction is crucial: the order explicitly states that it “does not create any government obligation for licensing, pre-authorization, or permits” for the development or release of AI models, according to an analysis by the law firm Latham & Watkins published on June 3, 2026. It is voluntary. For now.

The term “covered frontier model”—which triggers the procedural obligations—is deliberately left undefined in the text. Within 60 days of signing, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense through the NSA, and the Secretary of Homeland Security through CISA must develop a classified process for benchmarking the advanced cyber capabilities of AI models to establish this designation threshold. The definition will therefore emerge not from the public boundaries of the law, but from secret intelligence assessments. This is an approach that warrants close scrutiny.

The Cybersecurity Clearinghouse Led by the Treasury

The Executive Order of June 2 also introduces an innovative mechanism: an AI cybersecurity clearinghouse coordinated by the U.S. Treasury, in voluntary collaboration with the AI industry and operators of critical infrastructure. Its role is to coordinate the detection of vulnerabilities, validate identified flaws, and prioritize the distribution of patches. The Attorney General is also tasked with prioritizing criminal prosecutions against anyone who uses AI to illegally access computer systems, targeting in particular autonomous AI agents that could exceed their authorizations, according to analyses by Latham & Watkins and Skadden published on June 9, 2026.

What stands out to me about this AI executive order is not so much what it mandates as what it foreshadows. A voluntary framework today could become mandatory tomorrow—all it takes is a major incident, such as an AI model being used in a state-sponsored cyberattack, for the political will to tighten the regulations to become irresistible. The Trump administration has laid the institutional groundwork. The pressure will mount. And when it does, it is this infrastructure—the clearinghouse, classified benchmarks, and the Attorney General mobilized—that will be ready to spring into action. I’m not sure that all the players in Silicon Valley have fully grasped the long-term implications of their “voluntary” participation.

Chinese "distillation" attacks: the theft of U.S. AI on an industrial scale

The White House documents a systematic campaign

Behind the executive orders lies a specific operational context. In May 2026, the White House formally accused China of conducting “industrial-scale” campaigns to copy cutting-edge U.S. AI models. Experts refer to this mechanism as a “distillation attack”: operators linked to Beijing create proxy accounts on U.S. AI platforms, query the most advanced models on a massive scale, and use the responses to train their own Chinese models—replicating the capabilities without paying the development costs, according to Politico on May 11, 2026. Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, signed the memo documenting this practice.

Aaron Rose, a security architect at Check Point Software, quoted by Politico, put it succinctly: “The new flashpoint is AI itself.” These attacks on intellectual property, he says, are “industrial espionage for the AI era.” Matt Pearl, former director of emerging technologies at the National Security Council under Biden, adds that this dynamic “has reinforced the administration’s belief that competition in AI is not just about who develops the best models, but also about what we can do to protect those capabilities.”

Beijing’s Digital Espionage on U.S. Critical Infrastructure

Distillation attacks are not isolated incidents. According to Politico, U.S. and allied cybersecurity agencies have reported that hackers linked to Beijing have expanded their large-scale espionage operations by turning connected home devices—such as smart TVs and routers—into covert espionage networks. The FBI classified a breach of a U.S. agency’s surveillance system as a major incident in 2026, indicating a significant risk to national security. Andrew Garbarino, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, stated: “China has spent years stealing U.S. secrets, infiltrating our critical infrastructure, and appropriating our intellectual property.”

I must confess to feeling somewhat uneasy about this picture. On the one hand, the facts are clear: Beijing steals, infiltrates, and copies—on a scale we would have deemed unimaginable a decade ago. On the other hand, U.S. responses remain fundamentally asymmetrical. Mandatory executive orders for federal agencies, voluntary frameworks for the private sector—while China, for its part, centralizes and imposes. This regulatory asymmetry between democracies and authoritarian regimes is perhaps the West’s true strategic vulnerability. Not cryptography. The governance model.

Trump's Cyberoffensive Strategy: Deterrence Through Retaliation

A doctrine that is as alarming as it is deterrent

Alongside the June 2026 executive orders, the Trump administration rolled out a national cybersecurity strategy earlier this year that explicitly relies on offensive cyber operations to deter attacks. The logic is that of nuclear deterrence applied to cyberspace: demonstrating the capacity to retaliate in order to discourage aggression. According to an analysis published by National Today on April 7, 2026, this strategy “raises concerns among experts who believe it could actually push China and other adversaries to accelerate the development of their own offensive capabilities.” The cyber arms race is picking up speed.

Even more troubling: according to the same analysis, the Trump administration’s national cyber strategy does not explicitly name China as a cyber threat—an omission that was pointed out by Annie Fixler, director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. In her view, President Trump is unlikely to prioritize confrontation with Xi over Chinese cyber operations. This strategic ambiguity—rigorous PQC executive orders on one hand, hesitation to name Beijing in the cyber doctrine on the other—illustrates the internal tension within a Trump administration still torn between its “strongman” posture and its trade calculations with China.

David Sacks and the Imperative of AI Supremacy

White House AI advisor David Sacks has no such ambiguity. “China is our main global competitor in this AI race,” he stated, according to an analysis published by the Brookings Institution on February 23, 2026. Trump himself asserted: “China and other countries are racing to catch up with America on AI, and we’re not going to let them.” ” The administration’s AI Action Plan identifies three priority areas for maintaining U.S. dominance. This rhetoric of technological supremacy as a national security imperative marks a significant break from previous administrations, which framed technological competition in commercial terms. It is now a matter of geopolitical survival.

David Sacks is right about one thing: competition in AI is not sector-specific; it is existential. Whoever masters tomorrow’s frontier models will master autonomous weapons systems, synthetic biology, mass surveillance, and industrial disinformation. I understand the urgency driving the June 2026 executive orders. What I don’t understand is how an administration that has, incidentally, approved the sale of advanced chips to China as part of trade negotiations can simultaneously present itself as the last bastion of Western technological dominance. Trump’s geopolitical consistency remains his Achilles’ heel.

The Trump-Xi Summit and the Absence of Cybersecurity from the Diplomatic Agenda

Beijing on the Agenda, Cybersecurity Off the Agenda

There is a glaring contradiction at the heart of Trump’s strategy: the June 2026 executive orders codify a doctrine of technological dominance over China, but in diplomatic practice, cybersecurity remains absent from the official agenda. In May 2026, on the eve of the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing, Politico reported that “experts and policymakers are divided on whether digital threats are emerging as a key issue in the discussions.” The answer is no. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the matter.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) put it with biting candor, as quoted by Politico: “In a normal administration, one would expect the president to confront Xi about cyberattacks against our networks and about Chinese companies stealing our AI models. But you can’t expect that from the man who approved the sale of high-performance chips to China.” ” This is the central tension in Trump’s doctrine: a robust regulatory framework to protect U.S. systems, coupled with a persistent reluctance to directly confront Beijing in diplomatic forums. The necessary evil that Trump represents on this issue is precisely this duality—he signs the necessary executive orders, but hesitates to deliver the coherent message they demand.

The Pax Silica Agreement and Trade Tensions Over Semiconductors

EO 14411 explicitly mentions Pax Silica, an international framework of multilateral commitments for access to strategic quantum markets and the protection of quantum technologies. This framework, currently being established, aims to align Western and Indo-Pacific allies around common standards for access to and protection of sensitive quantum technologies. According to an analysis by the University of Technology Sydney published in March 2026, Washington and Beijing are simultaneously staking their claims in a competition to control and shape next-generation AI ecosystems. In April 2026, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission tightened compliance restrictions on electronics laboratories in mainland China and Hong Kong, prompting strong protests from Beijing.

I find that “Pax Silica” is one of the most revealing terms of this period. “The peace of silicon.” ” It is an admission that the war is being fought in semiconductors and qubits, not on battlefields. Ukraine understands this better than anyone—technological superiority in drones, encrypted communications, and satellite intelligence made all the difference in a war where Zelensky was able to mobilize the West’s digital tools against the Russian military. The Trump doctrine of technological dominance, if it delivers on its promises, will extend this advantage into the quantum era. But that requires a level of consistency that Trump has not yet demonstrated.

The institutional infrastructure: CISA, NSA, NIST—the guardians of the system

An Unprecedented Coordination Framework

What sets the June 2026 executive orders apart from previous U.S. cybersecurity policies is their detailed institutional architecture. EO 14409 simultaneously mobilizes the OMB, the National Cyber Director, the NSA, CISA, NIST, the FAR Council, sector-specific risk management agencies, the Secretary of State for International Engagements, and all agency CIOs by imposing cascading legal deadlines—30, 90, 180, 270 days—for specific and measurable actions. This is project governance applied to national security.

NIST plays a pivotal role. Its FIPS standards—and in particular FIPS 203 (the standard for key encapsulation mechanisms based on lattice-based modules) and FIPS 186-5 (the standard for digital signatures)—become the legally binding framework for all federal and contractor PQC migrations. NIST’s cryptographic module validation program must be revised within 180 days to accelerate validations. CISA, for its part, must publish, within 270 days, a public guide describing the minimum elements of a cryptographic inventory—a new concept that lists all algorithms used in an IT system—a sort of cryptographic health check.

Intelligence Agencies on the Front Lines of the Quantum Migration

The Director of the NSA, in his capacity as the National Manager of National Security Systems, must submit a report to the President within 180 days on the progress of the PQC migration for all agencies managing national security systems, and then annually until the migration is complete. The FBI is also tasked by EO 14411 with proposing, within the specified timeframe, plans to expand the Quantum Information Science and Technology Counterintelligence Protection Team—the QCPT—to improve protections against adversarial threats to the U.S. quantum science ecosystem. Quantum counterintelligence is becoming an official institutional priority.

The mobilization of the NSA, the FBI, and CISA around the PQC migration reminds me of the debates that followed Snowden’s revelations about the PRISM programs. At the time, these agencies were perceived as the threat. Today, they are the designated protectors against a well-documented external threat. The world has changed—or rather, the nature of the threat has become clearer. I prefer a NIST that imposes binding cryptographic standards to a vacuum that Beijing could rush to fill. Imperfect security is better than the freedom to be spied on.

The Quantum Workforce: The Urgency of Human Capital

Recruiting, Training, and Retaining Talent: The Demographic Challenge of the Quantum Revolution

One of the least discussed aspects of EO 14411 is its section on the quantum workforce. Within 90 days, the Office of Personnel Management, in coordination with the President’s Assistant for Science and Technology and the OMB, must develop a government strategy for recruiting and retaining QIST talent, potentially including special pay rates and increased recruitment incentives. Within 120 days, the Department of Labor must ensure that the needs of the quantum sector are prioritized in vocational training programs, with an expansion of certified apprenticeships.

This sense of urgency is not exaggerated. The global pool of quantum talent is extremely limited—just a few thousand experts worldwide, sought after by universities, private startups, tech giants, and governments. China has invested heavily in training its own quantum experts over the past decade by funding dedicated doctoral programs. EO 14411 seeks to address this imbalance by establishing a network of national QIST workforce development institutes through the NSF within 180 days.

The Private Sector as a Necessary Partner in Technological Sovereignty

EO 14411 introduces an innovative mechanism to mobilize the private sector: advance market commitments. The Department of Commerce must develop a plan that may include this type of commitment to encourage private quantum computing companies to contribute to the QC-ADDS program. This model—successfully used for COVID vaccines—transforms government procurement into a market signal, guaranteeing a solvent buyer to companies investing in technologies whose commercial timeline remains uncertain. It’s American-style state capitalism, and it’s probably what will work.

The issue of quantum talent concerns me more than the PQC migration timeline. You can write executive orders. You can’t write quantum physicists. Training a quantum computing expert takes between eight and twelve years of post-high-school study. Executive Order 14411 was signed in 2026. The first results of these training policies will arrive in 2034 at the earliest. China began in 2015. I’m not saying it’s too late—the excellence of the American university system and its private sector ecosystem is a considerable structural advantage. But we must be realistic: in the race for quantum talent, Washington is starting from behind.

Western Allies Fall in Line: Quantum Diplomacy Takes Shape

Engage Allies on NIST’s PQC Algorithms

The June 2026 executive orders have an explicit international dimension. EO 14409 directs the Secretary of State to work with NIST, CISA, the National Cyber Director, the NSA, and the DNI to “identify and engage foreign governments and industry groups in key countries to encourage them to adopt NIST-standardized PQC algorithms.” This passage is of strategic importance that is often overlooked: if European and Indo-Pacific allies do not adopt the same cryptographic standards as Washington, the interoperability of allied security systems will be compromised in the post-quantum era. NATO and the EU have their own standardization processes—harmonizing them is a considerable diplomatic challenge.

EO 14411, for its part, directs the Secretary of State to recommend, within 120 days, ways to align existing multilateral commitments—including the Pax Silica framework—with the priorities of the order. According to an analysis published by the University of Technology Sydney, Washington and Beijing are simultaneously waging a battle to control global technological standards. Whoever succeeds in imposing their standards—cryptographic, AI, and quantum—in third countries effectively secures lasting geopolitical influence. This is the battle over standards, and it is being fought right now.

Europe: Between Alignment and Strategic Autonomy

Europe finds itself in a delicate position in this landscape. It benefits from the U.S. technological umbrella—NIST standards, U.S. cloud infrastructure, NATO cooperation—but aspires to digital strategic autonomy, which sometimes makes it reluctant to simply adopt Washington’s dictates. The Brookings Institution, in its analysis of the Trump administration’s China strategy published on February 23, 2026, notes that U.S. export controls on advanced semiconductors—designed to curb Chinese AI by limiting access to cutting-edge computing chips—have yielded “mixed results,” with increased costs for Chinese companies but remarkable resilience on the part of Beijing’s technology ecosystem. Europe will have to choose: either align itself fully or attempt a third way, which, in the recent history of technological geopolitics, has rarely succeeded.

I am pro-West, clearly. But being pro-West does not mean being blind to the West’s contradictions. Europe cannot, on the one hand, complain that Washington is making technological decisions without consulting it, and on the other, fail to invest sufficiently in its own quantum and AI capabilities to have a say in the matter. Zelensky, for his part, has understood that technology is as much a political weapon as it is a military one. Technological Europe must do the same, or accept becoming a digital province of the United States—which, in the current geopolitical context, would still be preferable to the Beijing alternative, but would represent a historic step backward.

Private Actors: Between Opportunity and Systemic Responsibility

SandboxAQ, IBM, Google: The Industrial Architects of Quantum Sovereignty

The June 2026 executive orders were not drafted in a vacuum. They build upon and accelerate a U.S. private-sector ecosystem that is, in fact, the most advanced in the world. SandboxAQ, an Alphabet spin-off, was among the first to express its support for EO 14409, according to a press release distributed on June 22, 2026, via PR Newswire on Morningstar. The company is uniquely positioned to support federal agencies and contractors in their PQC migrations—a market that will be worth billions of dollars in the coming years. Google DeepMind, Microsoft, and xAI have also signed agreements with the U.S. government for national security assessments of their AI models, according to The Guardian on May 12, 2026.

This convergence of private interests and public policy is the hallmark of the Trump administration’s approach to technology. Whereas Obama and Biden sought to regulate Silicon Valley, Trump co-opts it—and uses it as a geopolitical lever. The technology delegation in Beijing, which accompanied Trump on his trip to China, included the CEOs of the largest U.S. tech companies, paraded as living proof of the superiority of the U.S. economy. This is industrial soft power, and it works—in Beijing’s conference rooms as well as in multilateral forums.

Federal Contractors Face a Massive Compliance Effort

For the thousands of companies that work with the U.S. federal government, EO 14409 represents a compliance effort of considerable scope. The FAR Council will publish, within 180 days, a proposed rule requiring all covered contractors to comply with FIPS standards—including PQC algorithms—by December 31, 2030. This involves auditing their entire cryptographic infrastructure—what the EO refers to as a “cryptographic inventory”—and migrating often outdated and complex systems to quantum-resistant algorithms. For a small or medium-sized business subcontracting for the Pentagon, this could potentially cost several million dollars.

PQC compliance among federal contractors will create a new market, but also a new inequality. Large tech companies—Microsoft, Lockheed, Raytheon—have the resources to migrate quickly. Small and medium-sized subcontracting firms, however, risk being unable to meet the new regulatory requirements and being squeezed out of government contracts. I hope the administration plans to provide substantial support for these players—because the U.S. defense supply chain depends on thousands of small, specialized suppliers, and weakening it amid heightened geopolitical tensions would be a serious strategic mistake.

Legal Doctrine in Perspective: What the Decrees Don't Say

The Blind Spots of an Ambitious Strategy

Every doctrine has its blind spots. This one is no exception. The first blind spot: the encryption of civilian communications. The June 2026 executive orders focus on federal systems and critical infrastructure. The PQC migration of the one billion daily civilian communications—messaging, banking transactions, medical communications—is left to market forces, with no binding timeline. However, a quantum hacker won’t need to hack into a federal system if they can decrypt the work emails of an undersecretary of state. Perimeter security for institutions is only effective if it is complemented by systemic communications security.

Second blind spot: dual-use generative AI. The Executive Order of June 2 establishes a framework for monitoring state-of-the-art models for their offensive cyber capabilities. But generative AI is also a vehicle for massive disinformation, the creation of deepfakes, and the automation of propaganda. None of the three decrees issued in June 2026 directly addresses the threat of foreign-origin AI-driven disinformation—a gap that adversaries, particularly Russia and China, are actively exploiting. Digital information warfare is the unregulated facet of Trump’s doctrine of technological dominance.

Russia and Iran in the Cyber Threat: Underestimated Actors

It would be inaccurate to reduce Trump’s cyber doctrine to a Sino-American duel. Russia remains a leading cyber actor—its operations against Ukrainian infrastructure, its election disinformation campaigns, and its attacks on software supply chains (with SolarWinds remaining the textbook example) are well documented. Iran, for its part, has significantly expanded its offensive cyber capabilities, regularly targeting Israeli, Saudi, and Western infrastructure. North Korea uses cyberspace to finance its nuclear program through cryptocurrency thefts amounting to billions of dollars. These three actors will not be deterred by the U.S. transition to post-quantum cryptography—they operate in different spheres. The Trump doctrine must address them with other tools.

Upon rereading all of these texts, I am left with mixed feelings. There is a coherence to the vision—dominating quantum technology, securing AI, protecting cryptography—that is intellectually satisfying and geopolitically necessary. But there is also fragmentation in execution, a lack of coherence in diplomatic communication, and a tendency to treat Beijing as a technological adversary while, at the same time, selling it strategic components. Trump is a necessary evil for the West: he signs the executive orders that his predecessors were slow to sign, but with an erraticity that undermines their long-term credibility. The West deserves better—but in the meantime, it takes what it can get.

Conclusion: Technological dominance, a non-negotiable Western imperative

June 2026 as a turning point in doctrine

The three executive orders signed in June 2026—the AI EO of June 2, EO 14409 on post-quantum cryptography of June 22, and EO 14411 on quantum innovation of June 22—collectively constitute the most coherent body of doctrine ever produced by a U.S. administration on technological dominance as a national security imperative. They set legal deadlines, mobilize the entire federal apparatus, engage the private sector, and lay the groundwork for a multilateral diplomatic framework. This is no small matter. It is, to the extent that Trump is capable of producing it, a serious public policy.

China is not named on every page—diplomatic prudence precludes that—but it is the defining adversary underpinning the entire framework. “Harvest now, decrypt later,” “distillation attacks,” China’s lead in quantum networks, and Beijing-based hackers turning home routers into espionage networks: all of this paints a picture of a threat that Washington can no longer ignore. The PQC migration by 2030/2031, military quantum sensors by 2028, and the AI clearinghouse: these are concrete responses—imperfect but real—to a concrete and well-documented threat.

The Technological West: Between Hope and Necessity

What is at stake goes beyond U.S. politics. The West’s technological dominance is a common good—for Ukraine, which survives thanks to Western satellite intelligence and encrypted communications; for Indo-Pacific democracies that depend on open digital standards in the face of pressure from Beijing; and for civil societies around the world that benefit from an internet still—barely—governed by open standards. June 2026 may be remembered as the moment when Washington decided to no longer treat technological dominance as a given, but as a deliberate political construct, to be defended every day against adversaries who, for their part, have never stopped attacking it.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist