By Chuck Brooks, president of Brooks Consulting International and one of Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Experts

“Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation” and “Securing the Nation Against Advanced Cryptographic Attacks,” two Executive Orders issued by the White House on June 22, 2026, represent a clear, two-pronged approach to securing U.S. leadership in quantum technologies while guarding against the existential cybersecurity threats they pose. The National Quantum Strategy will be updated, strong quantum computers for science and defense will be developed more quickly (capabilities by 2028), quantum sensing and networking will be advanced, and a swift federal (and critical infrastructure) transition to post-quantum cryptography, or PQC, standards with aggressive timelines (high-value assets by 2030–2031) is required.

This strategy directly addresses the convergence of opportunities and risks that I have long highlighted: the urgent need to get ready for “Q-Day,” when large-scale quantum computers could crack existing public-key cryptography, and quantum computing as a transformative force for discovery, optimization and national competitiveness.

The information exchanged by modern devices is typically protected by cryptographic techniques, approaches that convert readable data into scrambled, unreadable code that can only be deciphered by authorized parties or devices. To descramble encrypted data, devices or accounts need access to randomly generated cryptographic keys, unique, randomly generated sequences of binary code, letters or numbers that are essential for encrypting or decrypting data.

To detect cyberattacks, most traditional hardware security systems monitor the power consumption, electrical signals or other changes in devices. However, cyberattackers have devised effective techniques that sometimes allow them to bypass these systems’ defenses.

Researchers at Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Hubei University recently introduced a new hardware security system based on spin-orbit torque (SOC) devices, technologies that operate by leveraging both electrical charge and a quantum property known as electron spin.