Podcast with Alice and Bob Discussing the U.S. National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act

Overview Earlier this month, several bipartisan U.S. Senators introduced The Quantum National Initiative Reauthorization Act of 2026 that would renew and extend the original U.S.

Quantum National Initiative Act signed in 2018. There are some differences in focus in this reauthorization act that are different from the version passed in 2018. Listen to this podcast with Alice and Bob who comment on this bill that describe some of the changes and the thinking behind it. Transcript (00:00) Bob: Okay, so picture this. It’s January 2026. The holidays are barely over and, uh, Congress is back. And amidst all the usual noise, a bill just quietly dropped in the Senate. S-11. (00:13) Alice: S-11. And you know that low number is actually really significant. In the Senate, the first few numbers, they’re usually reserved for leadership priorities. This isn’t just some random proposal. (00:23) Bob: See, exactly. And the title is, well, it’s a mouthful.

The National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act of 2026. (00:33) Alice: (Chuckles) Yeah, not exactly catchy. (00:36) Bob: No, not at all. And I know what you’re thinking—legislation and reauthorization, should I just take a nap? But stick with us, because this isn’t just dry legalese. If you, uh, read between the lines, which is exactly what we’re going to do, this document is basically a starting gun. (00:51) Alice: It really is. It’s a signal that the U.S. government is fundamentally changing how it sees the future of tech. (00:58) Bob: We are talking about a massive pivot. We’re moving from, you know, science fiction to actual infrastructure. From theory to factory floor. (01:06) Alice: And honestly, from friendly scientific cooperation to, uh, hard-nosed national security. (01:13) Bob: It’s a shift from “can we do this?” to “we must build this.” So for our deep dive today, we’re going to unpack this specific bill. We’re going to look at what they’re funding, who they’re banning, and maybe most interesting of all, what old tech they’re killing off to make room. (01:28) Alice: Right. So where do we start? What’s the headline here? (01:31) Bob: Okay, so let’s get into the text. What is the National Quantum Initiative trying to do in 2026 that’s so different from before? (01:39) Alice: The headline is actually hidden in this really subtle linguistic shift. If you look at Section 2, where they update the definitions from the original act, they’ve basically done a find and replace. (01:53) Bob: A find and replace, what do you mean? (01:55) Alice: Well, the original act was all about science. It was discovery, academics, you know, the what ifs. But in this new bill, almost every single time the word science appears, they’ve gone in and inserted engineering and technology right after it. (02:08) Bob: So it’s not just quantum information science anymore. (02:11) Alice: No. Now it’s quantum information science, engineering, and technology. (02:16) Bob: And that might sound like just bureaucracy, but… (02:19) Alice: But it’s a declaration of intent. Science is what you do in a lab to figure out how the universe works. You publish papers. Engineering and technology is what you do when you want to build a product, scale it, and, you know, deploy it. (02:32) Bob: It’s the difference between understanding the physics of lift and actually building a Boeing 747. (02:38) Alice: That is the perfect analogy. This bill is saying, okay, the science is mature enough. We’ve done the math. Now. Now build the machine. (02:47) Bob: And they get surprisingly specific about what that machine looks like. I mean, usually legislation is so vague, but here, under quantum computing, they’re listing specific hardware. (02:58) Alice: They are. They list superconductors, ion traps, photonics, neutral atoms, the whole menu. (03:04) Bob: I had to pause at topological qubits. I mean, that’s a very specific and frankly very difficult approach. (03:12) Alice: It’s the high-risk, high-reward play for sure. But listing them all out like this shows the people writing this are tracking the actual horse race of hardware. They aren’t just funding magic computers, they’re placing bets on the whole track. (03:26) Bob: They also expanded quantum applications. It’s not just about raw computing power. (03:32) Alice: No, and that’s crucial. They’ve added quantum-classical hybrids, quantum sensing, and, uh, quantum networks. (03:39) Bob: Okay, let’s drill down on quantum networking, because the definition there kind of blew my mind. It defines it as the distribution of entanglement across nodes. (03:49) Alice: Right. (03:50) Bob: We are literally legislating spooky action at a distance. (03:54) Alice: In a way, yes. But what it really means is building the internet of the future. Entanglement allows for perfectly secure communication. (04:03) Bob: Because if someone tries to eavesdrop, the quantum state collapses. (04:07) Alice: Exactly. You know immediately. The act of observing it destroys the message. So the fact that the Senate is funding this means they want to build the physical infrastructure. The repeaters, the switches, to make that unhackable network real. (04:22) Bob: Which brings us to the why. Why now? And why is the tone of this bill so urgent? Because the deeper I got, the vibe shifted from “let’s discover cool things” to “we need to lock this down.” (04:36) Alice: It feels like a defense bill in disguise. (04:39) Bob: It really does. (04:40) Alice: And that’s because, frankly, it is one. The geopolitical landscape has just changed so much. This bill introduces some very strict definitions for a foreign country of concern. (04:53) Bob: So who are we talking about? Who does the bill point to? (04:56) Alice: Well, it refers to covered nations in the U.S., so, you know, think China, Russia, Iran. But it also gives the Secretary of Commerce the power to designate any country that’s acting against U.S. national security. (05:10) Bob: And it gets really granular with entities, not just countries. (05:14) Alice: Very granular. If a company is on the Treasury’s SDN list, they’re out. If they’re involved in espionage—and the bill explicitly cites the Espionage Act—they’re out. (05:25) Bob: There was one specific ban that just jumped out at me.

The Confucius Institute. (05:30) Alice: Yes, that’s in there. The bill explicitly prohibits funding to any university that has a contract or an agreement with a Confucius Institute. (05:39) Bob: That’s a hard line. It’s basically saying universities choose. You can have our federal quantum funding or you can have that partnership. You can’t have both. (05:48) Alice: It’s a firewall. The government is terrified of intellectual property leakage. They’re saying we’re not going to fund a breakthrough at a U.S. university just to have it walk out the door the next day. (06:01) Bob: Speaking of things not coming in the door, let’s talk about supply chain shock. This was another new definition. (06:08) Alice: And that definition is such a sign of the times. It’s not just trade disruptions. It includes pandemics, biological threats, cyberattacks, geopolitical conflicts. (06:21) Bob: A pandemic is a supply chain shock for quantum computing. (06:25) Alice: Absolutely. Think about it. These things require incredibly specific components. Specialized lasers, dilution refrigerators that get colder than outer space. If you can’t get one tiny valve because a factory in Malaysia is shut down, your whole program stalls. (06:41) Bob: So they’re mandating the Secretary of Commerce to map and model the entire quantum supply chain. (06:46) Alice: Yeah, they want to see the whole spiderweb. They’re looking for single points of failure. They specifically mention not being reliant on foreign countries of concern for critical components, like helium-3. (06:58) Bob: Helium-3, that’s for the supercooling fridges, right? (07:01) Alice: Exactly. You can’t run a superconducting quantum computer without it, and it’s incredibly rare. If your only supply comes from a country you end up in a conflict with, well, you don’t have a quantum industry anymore. (07:13) Bob: So we have the definitions, the security anxiety. Now what about the players? Because it’s not just the National Science Foundation anymore. This bill introduces a brand new title. Title V. (07:27) Alice: Right, and Title V brings in the astronauts. NASA officially enters the chat. (07:33) Bob: Why NASA though? Is it just for, like, calculating trajectories? (07:36) Alice: It’s deeper than that. Space is the ultimate high ground for quantum networks. The bill lists specific goals: quantum sensing, quantum networking, and quantum satellite communications. (07:49) Bob: Satellite communications. So we’re back to that entanglement idea. (07:53) Alice: Precisely. If you want to build a global quantum internet, you have a physics problem on Earth. A quantum signal in a fiber optic cable, it just degrades after about 100 kilometers. (08:04) Bob: So you can’t just run a cable from New York to London. (08:07) Alice: Not easily. But space… space is a vacuum. Photons travel with almost no loss. So if you can beam entangled photons from a satellite down to two ground stations… (08:18) Bob: You could link them. You could cover the whole globe. (08:21) Alice: Exactly. NASA is being tasked with building the orbital backbone of the quantum internet. (08:28) Bob: And while NASA’s looking up, NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is looking at the code. (08:34) Alice: Yeah, NIST is the rule maker. They’re tasked with setting up one to three quantum centers for measurement and manufacturing scale-up. Again, the engineering. How do we build these things reliably? (08:48) Bob: But I saw something that sounded a little ominous. Post-quantum cryptography. (08:54) Alice: This is the defensive side of the coin. We know quantum computers can break today’s encryption. So NIST is being funded to promote PQC, post-quantum cryptography. (09:05) Bob: The shield against the sword. (09:07) Alice: It’s the shield. The bill tells NIST to help everyone replace their current crypto keys with new standards that can survive, and I’m quoting, “quantum cryptoanalytic attacks.” (09:18) Bob: So the government knows a quantum computer will eventually unlock all our secrets. (09:23) Alice: And they’re trying to change the locks before the burglars get the master key. (09:27) Bob: That is both comforting and terrifying. It’s a race. (09:31) Alice: It is the defining cybersecurity race of the next decade. (09:36) Bob: So we have the tech, the security, the space lasers. But who is going to build all this? I mean, do we have enough geniuses? (09:44) Alice: That’s the bottleneck. And Section 16 of the bill attacks it head-on. It establishes something called the QREW coordination hub. (09:54) Bob: QREW. Quantum Reskilling, Education, and Workforce. (09:59) Alice: Right. And what’s fascinating is it’s not just funneling money to MIT and Stanford. The hub has to include at least four institutions, and the bill mandates that two of them must be community colleges. (10:13) Bob: Community colleges? For quantum engineering? That seems like a stretch. (10:17) Alice: It does, until you look at the semiconductor industry. To run a chip fab, yeah, you need PhDs designing the chips. But you need thousands of technicians to maintain the clean rooms and fix the machines. This bill recognizes that we need a blue-collar quantum workforce. (10:33) Bob: People who can fix the dilution refrigerators. (10:37) Alice: Exactly. You don’t need a doctorate in theoretical physics for that, but you do need specialized training. The bill also talks a lot about reskilling and bridge programs for people who already have, say, an electrical engineering degree. (10:51) Bob: Just trying to democratize the field. (10:53) Alice: It has to. You can’t build an economy if only 10,000 people in the world understand how it works. You have to open the doors. (11:01) Bob: Okay, let’s talk about use cases. Because the bill also sets up quantum testbeds and wants this new subcommittee to look at quantum use cases. (11:11) Alice: This is the put up or shut up part of the bill. (Chuckles) (11:14) Bob: How so? (11:15) Alice: Well, for a long time, quantum has been driven by hype, you know, it’ll solve cancer, it’ll fix climate change. This bill says okay, prove it. They want to see cost and benefit analysis. And there was one comparison in there that I found absolutely fascinating. They explicitly tell the subcommittee to compare quantum use cases against artificial intelligence. (11:37) Bob: Yeah, Section 6. Comparison to artificial intelligence technologies. This is probably the most important reality check in the whole document. (11:46) Alice: Why is that so critical right now? (11:48) Bob: Because AI is moving so fast. A lot of the problems that were supposed to be the killer apps for quantum, like protein folding or materials, science AI is starting to solve them now on classical computers. (12:01) Alice: So the government’s saying don’t build a $100 million quantum computer to do something ChatGPT-7 can do on a laptop. (12:08) Bob: Exactly. They want to find the true quantum advantage. The problems where quantum is uniquely capable, where it can do things AI fundamentally can’t. (12:18) Alice: Okay, we’re getting near the end of the bill, and we hit Section 21. And I have to say, reading this part felt a bit like attending a funeral. (12:28) Bob: It is a funeral. Section 21 is titled Sunset of National Nanotechnology Program. (12:35) Alice: Sunset. That’s a very polite Washington way of saying termination. (12:39) Bob: It is. The bill explicitly terminates the Nanotechnology Research and Development Act. It orders a wind-down of the infrastructure, a transfer of personnel. It’s over. (12:50) Alice: That’s huge. I remember the early 2000s, nanotech was the buzzword. Tiny robots in our blood. (12:57) Bob: And in many ways, it did what it set out to do. We have nanotechnology in our phones, in our clothes, in the mRNA vaccines. It’s just not the shiny new frontier anymore. It’s a mature industry. (13:10) Alice: So the government is saying mission accomplished, we’re moving on. (13:13) Bob: Exactly. Government funding moves in eras. The nanotech era is officially closing, the quantum era is officially opening. (13:21) Alice: But there’s a clock on this one too, isn’t there? (13:24) Bob: There is. This bill says the authority to carry out these programs terminates on December 30, 2034. (13:32) Alice: So we have an eight-year roadmap. (13:34) Bob: Eight years. That’s two presidential terms. That’s the timeline they’ve set to turn this from a science experiment into a secure industrial engine for the U.S. (13:44) Alice: So bringing it all together. What does this all mean for someone listening right now? (13:49) Bob: It means we’re leaving the playground. For the last decade, quantum was exciting and mostly academic. This bill is the government saying, okay, playtime’s over. They’re mapping supply chains like they do for oil, they’re banning foreign influence like it’s weapons tech, they’re training a blue-collar workforce… (14:06) Alice: And they are demanding results that actually beat AI. (14:10) Bob: Exactly. They’re betting that quantum is the next layer of our global infrastructure, and they want to make sure the United States owns the stack. It’s a full-on transition from scientific discovery to industrial policy. (14:23) Alice: That’s the perfect summary. Well, this has been a fascinating look into the future or the legislation that’s trying to build it. We’ve gone from topological qubits to community colleges, space lasers to the death of nanotech. (14:38) Bob: It’s a lot to digest. (14:39) Alice: It is. And I want to leave our listeners with one final thought. We just talked about how this bill kills the National Nanotechnology Program to make room for quantum. And we know this quantum bill sunsets in 2034. So thinking ahead, in 2034, what emerging technology will be the one that kills the quantum initiative? What’s sitting in a lab right now, totally insignificant, that will eventually push quantum into the retirement home? (15:05) Bob: That is the billion-dollar quantum question. (15:09) Alice: Something to mull over. Thanks for listening to this deep dive. We’ll catch you on the next one. January 20, 2026