In 2016 the Department of Energy started the Exascale Computing Project with a bet that hardware alone would not be enough. Its teams wrote scientific applications and software libraries for machines that did not yet exist, adjusting the code as the hardware designs firmed up, so that the programs would be ready to run when the computers arrived. In 2022 Oak Ridge's Frontier became the first system on the TOP500 list to pass one exaflop, and the applications were waiting for it. The Commission on U.S. Quantum Primacy cites that project, a $1.8 billion effort by its own count, as the model for quantum software in its preliminary report of 10 November 2026.
The report, titled Defining the American Quantum Era, is the first deliverable of a commission convened by the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP). Its argument fits in one sentence from the opening letter: "scientific leadership alone will not be enough." The rest of the 19 pages sets out what the commissioners think must happen for research to turn into machines, factories and deployed systems, and where they think the United States is behind.
Practical takeaway. The preliminary report proposes three new national structures (an Exascale-style quantum software program, a NIST-led benchmarking and interoperability partnership, and a National Quantum Foundry Access Program) and a push for post-quantum cryptography in state and local government. It attaches no funding figure to any of them. The final report, due in spring 2027, is described as a plan with policy recommendations, infrastructure needs and an implementation strategy.
Who sits on the commission, and what the co-chairs did and did not write
The co-chairs are Senator Todd Young (R-IN), Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) and SCSP president Ylli Bajraktari. The eleven commissioners combine national laboratories and agencies (Thomas Mason of Los Alamos, Laura McGill of Sandia, Whitney Mason of DARPA), academia (Gretchen Campbell of the University of Maryland), investors (Megan Anderson of IQT, Pat Gelsinger of Playground Global) and companies: Niccolo de Masi of IonQ, Jay Gambetta of IBM, Hartmut Neven of Google Quantum AI, Jack Hidary of SandboxAQ and Mit Jha of Quantum Corridor. The commission held its first plenary on Capitol Hill in March 2026 and its second at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque in September 2026.
One sentence on page 3 deserves attention from anyone citing the report in Washington: the two senators "provided guidance on developing this report but were not involved in formulating the specific policy recommendations." The text also says a majority of commissioners gave substantive input and concurred with its release. The recommendations are therefore a commission product with bipartisan sponsorship, and they carry no legislative text and no statement of either senator's position on any single item.
How the report compares U.S. and Chinese quantum capacity, figure by figure
The comparison relies mostly on SCSP's own earlier study, Quantifying the Competition. U.S.-affiliated researchers account for 35% of the world's most-cited quantum papers, and in December 2025 U.S. software development kits were downloaded more than 100 times as often as Chinese ones. Estimates for 2025 put deployed U.S. quantum computers at about 39 to 73, against 15 to 18 Chinese systems. On networking, the report says China has a quantum key distribution trunk line integrated into China Telecom's commercial fiber, while U.S. quantum networks remain mostly regional testbeds.
The figures the commission treats as the larger risk concern manufacturing. China's domestic dilution refrigerator market grew roughly 58% from 2021 to 2025, against roughly 35% in the United States. Chinese cleanrooms for quantum hardware cost roughly $150 per square foot, against $800 to $1,000 in the United States. China spends about $3 billion a year in public quantum funding, and U.S. federal R&D runs about $1 billion. Several of these figures come through secondary trade sources cited in the footnotes, and the report presents them as estimates. They are the commission's case for treating industrial capacity as the binding constraint.
Which ten priorities the report sets under discovery, development, deployment and scale
Discovery carries two priorities: sustained funding for foundational research, and dedicated funding tracks for new classes of quantum algorithms, with federal money encouraging open release of foundational algorithms. Development carries two: the Exascale-style co-design program, and a national benchmarking and interoperability effort "led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in collaboration with" the Department of Energy, the Department of War and industry. The report builds on DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, which it describes as evaluating whether a utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer can be built by 2033.
The three deployment priorities are work with early adopters such as agencies, infrastructure operators and financial institutions on application-specific use cases; repeatable integration pathways that produce reusable procurement lessons; and post-quantum migration. The three scale priorities cover supply chains and shared manufacturing, including Defense Production Act Title III for bottlenecks and the National Quantum Foundry Access Program for "shared fabrication, metrology, packaging, pilot production, and testing across hardware modalities"; a workforce built around apprenticeships, capstones and regional programs as well as doctorates; and an allied market built on the Technology Prosperity Deals with the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Sweden and Finland, AUKUS Pillar 2, and "stable, risk-based export controls."
A shared foundry has a local precedent. In October Quentir examined New York City's $29.2 million QFab award to NYU, where a city funds a fabrication facility and takes a share of the intellectual-property proceeds. A national access program would raise the same questions about who books the tools, who owns the process knowledge, and what a startup pays, at a larger scale.
What the post-quantum priority would mean for state agencies, counties and utilities
The third deployment priority asks the federal government to accelerate post-quantum cryptography "across critical infrastructure and state and local governments through risk-based assessments, implementation guidance, testing, and targeted assistance," using the federal phased-migration plan as a model. The footnote points to NIST's IR 8547, Transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards, and to an Office of Management and Budget migration memorandum of 2026.
This is the recommendation with the most direct civic reach. State motor-vehicle records, tax files, court systems, Medicaid data and water-utility controls are held by public bodies with small security teams and long procurement cycles. Data intercepted from them today keeps its value for years, which is why the report's wording on timing matters: "Deferring security considerations will make upgrades more costly, time-consuming, and fraught with fragility and mistakes." The report states that one fault-tolerant quantum computer could threaten widely used cryptography, and attack estimates keep falling: in a September paper Quentir's Defense Monitor reviewed, IonQ researchers projected an attack on the secp256k1 curve used by Bitcoin at about 26 days per attempt on 19,397 physical qubits in a specific fault-tolerant trapped-ion architecture, with a success probability of about 63% per attempt. That is a resource estimate for a machine nobody has built. The report's text does not say who would pay for a county's migration or which agency would provide the targeted assistance.
How Quentir Reads It
The report is strongest where it argues from engineering practice. The Exascale analogy is apt: quantum hardware is arriving faster than the software that would make it useful, and co-design is a tested remedy. The same is true of the foundry proposal, since many quantum firms build components in-house, which the report notes duplicates effort. Its definition of primacy is also more careful than the title suggests; it "requires neither complete self-reliance nor being first at every milestone," and it depends on allies.
Two features deserve scrutiny before the final report. The first is governance of measurement. Three commissioners lead quantum work at IonQ, IBM and Google, companies whose machines a NIST-led benchmarking partnership would compare, and the report itself asks for independent evaluation. The final report can settle this by stating who sets the test suites, who runs them, and how vendors participate, so that the benchmarks carry weight with procurement officers and supervisors. The second is money. The commission documents a gap of about $3 billion against $1 billion a year in public funding and proposes no figure for its own programs. A spring 2027 report that prices the software program, the foundry network and state migration assistance would give Congress something to vote on; one that does not would leave the four elements as a framework.
For organizations planning their own transition, the state-and-local priority is the near-term signal. Quentir's Signature Report No. 2, the PQC Migration Roadmap, covers what this post leaves out: the finalized NIST standards (FIPS 203, 204 and 205), the EU and US regulatory calendar and a phased migration roadmap, with an internal-use license for the whole organization. The next date to watch is the final report in spring 2027, and whether it names the agency that would deliver targeted assistance to state and local governments.
Sources: Commission on U.S. Quantum Primacy, Special Competitive Studies Project, Defining the American Quantum Era, preliminary report (PDF, 19 pages), 10 November 2026, and report page; The Quantum Insider, "Commission on U.S. Quantum Primacy Urges Sustained Investment to Turn Quantum Discovery Into American Advantage" (press release), 10 November 2026; NIST, IR 8547, Transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography Standards; U.S. Department of Energy, Exascale Computing Project, as described in the report's footnote 31. Links checked 10 November 2026.
Published intelligence, built to inform your own decisions. Published: November 10, 2026.