Pentagon unveils US$350 million quantum computing push as China rivalry grows

The Pentagon announced on Thursday a new multimillion-dollar initiative for “maintaining American leadership” in quantum computing capabilities amid accelerating competition between the US and China over the military application of advanced technology.

In a press release, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defence for Research and Engineering, which serves as the US Department of Defence’s chief technology adviser, announced that the new initiative, worth around $350 million, is aimed at strengthening US leadership in quantum computing capabilities to “support national security.”

Quantum computing dominance is a “critical priority” for the Trump administration, said Emil Michael, undersecretary of defence for research and engineering, citing a June executive order to accelerate the technology’s deployment, commercialisation and domestic manufacturing across the US.

“Maintaining American leadership in this field is essential to preserving our technological edge,” he said.

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Quantum computing is a rapidly evolving field of technology that uses the principles of quantum mechanics to solve complex problems much faster than traditional computers.

It not only provides the military with enhanced capabilities for strategic advantage by accelerating data processing, cracking classical encryption, and optimising complex multi-domain operations and logistics supply chains, but also enables it to tackle currently intractable problems in disciplines such as chemistry, materials, physics and applied mathematics that are crucial to the development of advanced weapons systems.

The Pentagon is expected to apply the newly developed quantum computers under the new initiative to enable the development of next-generation weapons, platforms and other critical capabilities that could be “more lethal, cost-effective, and manufacturable,” the press release said.

After China established a $10 billion National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences in 2017, the People’s Liberation Army is reportedly “under development” of more than 10 experimental quantum cyber warfare tools, according to the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology’s official newspaper, Science and Technology Daily, in January.

Under China’s 15th five-year plan between 2026 and 2030, unveiled in March, strengthening research and application of quantum technology and quantum computing has been designated as core strategic priorities.

In response, the US has also been pushing for increased investment in quantum computing, with US House lawmakers from both parties reportedly seeking to debate defence funding legislation that would increase annual military spending on quantum development and application by 68 per cent to $567 million, according to a Bloomberg report in August.

Last month, the US Department of Energy launched the Quantum Genesis Q Competition, offering up to $215 million in funding for private sector companies to build and demonstrate the world’s first fault-tolerant quantum computers capable of solving complex scientific problems while continuously detecting and correcting internal errors as calculations take place.

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In a separate press release on Thursday, the Pentagon said that its Office of Strategic Capital has signed a $150 million conditional loan commitment to PsiQuantum Corp to enhance the company’s advanced manufacturing and prototyping capabilities in the US, following the company’s $125 million expanded agreement with DARPA in July under the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative.

First announced in 2024, DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative is a multistage programme aiming to rigorously verify and validate whether a utility-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer can be successfully constructed and operated by 2033.

On Wednesday, DARPA selected a new cohort of companies to advance to Stage C of the programme, worth up to $300 million, including Atom Computing, Diraq, IBM, IonQ, Microsoft and PsiQuantum, for direct physical testing and empirical validation.