Why the US Energy Department Added Helium to Its Critical Material List on 27 October 2026, and Where Quantum Computing Appears in 91 FR 67558
What the Department of Energy published on 27 October 2026
The US Department of Energy added helium to its Critical Material List in a notice published in the Federal Register on 27 October 2026 as 91 FR 67558. Assistant Secretary Audrey Robertson of the Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation signed it on 21 October. The legal basis is section 7002(a)(2) of the Energy Act of 2020, which lets the Secretary of Energy name materials with a high supply-chain risk that serve an essential function in energy technologies. The notice has no comment period. Helium joins the 18 critical materials for energy on the 2023 list and metallurgical coal, added in May 2025.
Where quantum computing appears in the helium notice
The summary calls helium non-substitutable for semiconductor manufacturing, leak testing of natural gas infrastructure and quantum computing, and essential to medical and scientific uses. The justification in the body rests on chips and AI infrastructure. Quantum computing is named once and is not developed further.
Why the notice matters for dilution refrigerators and helium-3
Superconducting and most spin-qubit processors run inside dilution refrigerators that circulate a mixture of helium-3 and helium-4. The designation covers helium without qualification, yet the notice contains no isotope-specific analysis, and helium-3 supply follows its own route: DOE's helium-3 is a byproduct of tritium processing at the Savannah River Site, sold through the DOE Isotope Program. What the designation does for the cold end of the quantum stack depends on what DOE publishes next.
What Does the Postal Service's New Call-Center System Collect? USPS 830.100 Lists AI Among Its Purposes in a Privacy Act Notice Filed 16 October 2026
What the Postal Service filed on 16 October 2026
The United States Postal Service has filed a notice creating a new Privacy Act system of records, USPS 830.100, Customer Call Center. It went on public inspection at the Federal Register on 16 October 2026, is scheduled for publication on 19 October as FR Doc. 2026-21265, and takes effect 30 days after publication, on 18 November 2026, unless comments lead to a different decision. The fifth of its seven stated purposes reads: "To utilize Artificial Intelligence to support call center operations and provide customer support, and to evaluate customer interactions to perform Quality Assurance audits." That sentence lists AI in USPS call centers among the purposes of a formal Privacy Act notice; it describes intended uses and does not itself report a deployment.
Why the notice matters for callers and postal employees
The same system lists six groups of information. They include agents' Social Security numbers, customers' tax identification numbers and truncated card numbers, security questions and answers, text messages and transcribed voicemails, and, on the employee support line, birth date, race or national origin, bank routing and account numbers and medical information. The notice does not say which AI system will be used, who supplies it, whether callers will be told, or which of these categories, if any, an AI tool would access. This post answers the questions a careful reader of a Privacy Act system of records notice would ask, using only the notice's own text.