The Nexus of Quantum Technology, Intellectual Property, and National Security: An LSI Test for Securing the Quantum Industrial Commons

TL;DR

This paper proposes an LSI test framework to balance security and openness in quantum technology development, aiming to foster trusted innovation and prevent over-securitization in the international quantum industrial ecosystem.

Contribution

It introduces an empirically grounded coalition playbook with criteria and guardrails for secure, open quantum R&D collaboration, enhancing strategic stability.

Findings

The LSI test helps avoid over- and under-securitization in quantum R&D.

It provides a practical framework for secure international collaboration.

The approach supports trusted adoption pathways beyond coalitions.

Abstract

Our world of power and national security is increasingly probabilistic: like a quantum wavefunction, it encodes multiple plausible futures until policy choices and shocks collapse them into observable outcomes. Quantum technologies have moved from laboratory curiosities to strategic infrastructure, with an approaching 'event horizon' reflected in recent United States strategic assessments -- incl. the U.S. --China Economic and Security Review Commission's (USSC) call for a Quantum First posture by 2030- and in parallel White House initiatives aimed at securing critical inputs and accelerating trusted innovation. Government research further documents that China's quantum program is centrally mobilized under military-civil fusion, and that its consequential advantages may arise not only from computing milestones but also from sensing and cryptanalytic applications, thereby sharpening the need for a values based deterrence by denial governance posture. The Article's central claim is that the U.S. and its allies should pursue security-sufficient openness, operationalized through a least-trade-restrictive, security-sufficient, innovation-preserving (LSI) test that disciplines both state and private action. The LSI test integrates emerging instruments of economic statecraft to create secure closed loop enclaves for high-sensitivity collaborative R&D. The Article's contribution is an implementable coalition playbook, offering empirically anchored criteria, templates, and differentiated guardrails -- incl. red zone domains where denial is the default -- to avoid both over-securitization and under-securitization. Properly applied, LSI reduces the risk of a self-defeating Silicon Curtain while establishing standards-first interoperability as a stabilizing eigenstate of the international order and enabling RQT by design to shape trusted adoption pathways beyond the coalition, incl. in the majority world.