Mauritz Kop and Paul Davies at Co-Opting AI: Quantum: Harvest Now, Decrypt Later, the Quantum Event Horizon, and Surgical Guardrails (Video)

The University of Virginia has published the recording of Co-Opting AI: Quantum, the public conversation of October 28, 2026, in which our founder Prof. Mauritz Kop and the physicist Paul Davies discussed quantum technology and AI with host Mona Sloane. Kop opened with access: "Decisions about access to quantum technologies will shape who can benefit from them and who controls their use." Leadership in quantum technology, he said, could give states enduring power over the world's digital operating system, and he described that lasting shift in strategic power as a quantum event horizon.

The Quantum Apocalypse, Harvest Now, Decrypt Later, and Quantum First

Davies warned that encrypted data already collected by an adversary could be read once a large quantum computer exists: "We may be on the verge of a quantum apocalypse." Kop said that preparing systems with post-quantum cryptography can deny an adversary the benefit of a quantum attack, a form of deterrence by denial, and gave the audience a method for reading the headlines: separate a demonstrated result, a resource estimate, and a commercial forecast.

Surgical Guardrails and a Quantum Workforce

On governance, Kop asked policymakers to learn from the AI, biotechnology, and nuclear governance cycles and to keep interventions surgical, so that innovation can breathe while the United States works to be quantum first. He invited the audience to become the quantum workforce for a values-based American quantum ecosystem.