Insider Brief
- A “Quantum 101” session at the World Trade Organization, co-organized by the permanent missions of Israel, Singapore and Switzerland, introduced trade negotiators to quantum technologies and their implications for trade.
- Speakers from industry, academia and national programs said the most direct link between quantum and trade is encryption, which secures payments, letters of credit, customs filings and e-signatures.
- Panelists also pointed to concentrated supply chains, diverging standards and a possible “quantum divide” between countries as trade questions that are already emerging.
The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) member delegations were told this week that the encryption underpinning international trade could be broken by quantum computers within roughly five years, and that the trading system has no shared definition yet of what it means to be “quantum safe.”
The warning came at a one-hour session in Geneva, organized by the permanent missions of Israel, Singapore and Switzerland to the WTO. The panel was moderated by Dylan Barry, executive director of the von Neumann Commission.
“We are not here to ask whether the WTO needs rules on quantum technologies,” Carol Hjalmroth, international trade diplomat who serves as deputy permanent representative of Israel to the WTO, told the room, adding, We simply want to start to understand what is changing, what is realistic and what may matter for our economies.”
Trade Runs on Encryption
Miriam Shtilman-Lavsovski, a partner at Tal Ventures, gave the introductory talk before turning to the issue she framed as most important for trade.
“Trade runs on trust and trust runs on encryption,” Shtilman-Lavsovski, said. “ And one of the main issues today is how do we encrypt what we have and how do we encrypt what we’re going to have in the future? It’s e signatures, letters of credit, customs, payment, etc.”
She told delegates that the window for this is probably not more than five years and warned that “harvest now, decrypt later” collection means data sent today is already exposed to a future quantum computer.
Her presentation also set out the scale of the race. She said more than $60 billion in government spending on quantum has been confirmed, with 75% of it coming from five countries, and that private investors have put about $18 billion into quantum startups, 78% of it in five countries. Israeli startups have raised more than $1 billion of private capital, she said, or $2.71 for every dollar of government spending, against an average of less than 50 cents elsewhere. She also cited McKinsey’s estimate that quantum computing could create $1.3 trillion to $2.7 trillion in value by 2035.
Shtilman-Lavsovski said quantum hardware depends on a narrow set of specialized suppliers in lasers and optics, cryogenics, control systems and rare earth materials. That, she argued, creates the risk of restricted access, separate standards for the same product and disputes over intellectual property.
She also warned of a “quantum divide” following the digital and AI divides, noting that 90% of quantum patents come from 11 countries. One result could be a two-tier financial system in which some banks are quantum safe and others are not.
A Threat and a Remedy
Klaus Ensslin, professor of physics at ETH Zurich and president of the Swiss National Quantum Commission, reminded delegates that current security rests on assumptions. He said there is currently no mathematical proof that what we do today is secure, adding that quantum cryptography offers a mathematically proven alternative and was invented in Geneva, where a company has been selling it for about 25 years.
Ensslin cited estimates of three to five years for a quantum computer able to break current encryption. He cautioned that quantum computers will not replace classical machines.
On Switzerland’s position, Ensslin said smaller countries such as Israel, Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands are strong in research but rely on foreign investment to build companies.
Rebuilding Security From the Bottom
Andy Leaver, chief executive of Arqit, said the transition to quantum-safe systems is unlike past security upgrades, where companies add tools to counter new threats.
“This is the first time in security that we have to go all the way back to the very bottom of that stack,” he said.
Leaver pointed to US Executive Order 14412 as an example of governments forcing the pace of adoption by tying quantum-safe plans to access to the federal supply chain. The order, signed in June 2026, sets deadlines of December 2030 for migrating key federal systems to post-quantum cryptography and directs a rulemaking to extend requirements to contractors. Leaver said the European Union is beginning to consider similar steps.
He said investor interest has followed those deadlines.
“AI has been sucking the oxygen out the room for a long long time but now people are turning their attention say well actually we see AI sand quantum is very complimentary technologies,” he said..
Leaver also said that this year’s listings of quantum computing companies have all been in the US, which he called frustrating for Europe and Asia.
Defining Quantum Safe
Kwok Yan Lam, associate vice president at Nanyang Technological University Singapore, said the most direct intersection between quantum and trade is payment and financing, and that trade systems will need a common meaning of quantum safety to connect with banking systems.
“We need to define or give a meaning to what it means by quantum safe,” Lam said.
Lam called for standardized requirements, interfaces and best practices across sectors and borders. He also noted that AI is now being used to find weaknesses in some candidate post-quantum cryptography schemes.
What Comes Next for the WTO
Asked by a delegate whether quantum computing could make some investments in AI data centers obsolete, Barry said quantum gains in AI training and inference were unlikely within five years.
“Given the risks involved in the AI capex build out, this is the least of their current worries,” he said.
Responding to a question from Singapore’s delegation on international cooperation, Ensslin said that apart from a few large countries, progress depends on intense collaboration, and that a startup in a small market such as Switzerland only makes sense with an international orientation.
In closing remarks, Hervé Lohr, deputy permanent representative of Switzerland to the WTO, listed services, technical barriers to trade, development and supply chain security as areas where quantum could touch WTO work, and called for a shared vocabulary on terms such as quantum safe.
Hjalmroth said the session was a first step, and that members would consider whether there is more to explore in the WTO context.