Eight Western security agencies reject quantum key distribution (QKD) as a replacement for public-key cryptography in government systems, while the European Union, Germany, Canada, and governments across Asia pay for QKD networks and satellites as a long-term capability. The split over QKD therefore runs through governments as well as between them.
The eight are the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), France’s National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI), Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), the Netherlands National Communications Security Agency (NLNCSA), Sweden’s National Communications Security Authority, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. They published their positions between 2020 and October 2026. The funding programs include the European Commission’s EuroQCI initiative, Germany’s QuNET, Canada’s QEYSSat satellite, and national efforts in China, Japan, Singapore, and India.
South Korea and China depart from that pattern in different ways. Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) verifies QKD equipment so that national and public institutions can buy it. China’s cryptography regulator has issued a commercial-cryptography standard for QKD products, which is not an approval of equipment for state networks.
In QKD, two parties build a shared encryption key from quantum states of light sent over optical fiber or through free space, in a way designed to reveal an eavesdropper. Quantum Observer explains the protocols and what their security proofs assume in a guide for security professionals. QKD distributes keys and nothing else.
The two parties still need a separate way to confirm each other’s identity, a step called authentication. NSA wrote that QKD networks often require trusted relays, “increasing the costs for secure facilities and increasing the risk of insider threats.” A trusted relay is an intermediate station that handles the key and must itself be guarded.
How the security agencies decided
On October 1, 2026, NSA published a rewritten statement on QKD. “As of June 2026, the National Security Agency (NSA) does not recommend using quantum key distribution (QKD) and quantum cryptography (QC) for securing the transmission of data in National Security Systems (NSS) unless several technical limitations are overcome,” the agency wrote. Quantum Observer reported the changes from NSA’s 2020 text, among them a new argument that security established at certification can degrade during operation.
According to NSA, QKD does not authenticate the source of a transmission and depends on special-purpose equipment. NSA also wrote that QKD’s sensitivity to eavesdropping increases the risk of denial-of-service attacks and that “the actual security of a QKD system is limited by hardware and engineering designs.”
In an October 2026 update to its FAQ on the Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite 2.0 (CNSA 2.0), the quantum-resistant algorithms it specifies for those systems, NSA wrote that it “does not generally consider QKD a practical security solution for protecting NSS.”
Britain’s NCSC reached the same answer in an August 2025 white paper. “The NCSC will not support the use of QKD for government or military applications,” the agency wrote. For other sectors, NCSC recommended that QKD “should not be solely relied upon for generating and distributing cryptographic keys.” It also wrote that “QKD does not provide authentication, nor do any other quantum techniques.”
In January 2024, ANSSI, BSI, NLNCSA, and the Swedish National Communications Security Authority, part of the Swedish Armed Forces, published a joint position paper. “Due to current and inherent limitations, QKD can however currently only be used in practice in some niche use cases,” the four agencies wrote in the paper. They added that “QKD is not yet sufficiently mature from a security perspective.”
The four agencies gave top priority to “the migration to post-quantum cryptography and/or the adoption of symmetric keying.” Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) consists of public-key algorithms that run on existing networks and equipment and are designed to resist attacks by quantum computers.
Two of those four governments repeated the line in 2026. The Dutch cabinet wrote in an October 5 quantum strategy that central government does not currently use QKD for information security, citing the joint paper. Sweden’s government wrote in its August 18 national strategy that QKD is at a very early stage and is not currently judged applicable on a broader scale.
ASD wrote in a primer first published on March 18, 2026 that it “does not support its use for secure communications,” citing specialized hardware and concerns about availability and native authentication. The agency said it would continue to monitor methods of securing communications, QKD among them.
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security wrote in a 2020 guidance note that “QKD is not a replacement for current applications of cryptography.” The center added that “it could be a way of securely communicating in the future.” In its June 2025 migration roadmap for federal systems, the center set PQC deadlines of the end of 2031 for high-priority systems and the end of 2035 for all remaining systems. The center did not mention QKD in the roadmap.
| Agency | Country | Position on QKD | Document |
|---|---|---|---|
| NSA | United States | Not recommended for national security systems | Statement, October 2026 |
| NCSC | United Kingdom | Will not support it for government or military use | White paper, August 2025 |
| ANSSI | France | Niche use cases only, PQC first | Joint paper, January 2024 |
| BSI | Germany | Niche use cases only, PQC first | Joint paper, January 2024 |
| NLNCSA | Netherlands | Niche use cases only, PQC first. Central government does not use QKD. | Joint paper, cabinet strategy, October 2026 |
| Swedish National Communications Security Authority | Sweden | Niche use cases only, PQC first. Not applicable on a broader scale. | Joint paper, national strategy, August 2026 |
| ASD | Australia | Does not support its use for secure communications | Primer, March 2026 |
| Canadian Centre for Cyber Security | Canada | Not a replacement for current cryptography | ITSE.00.017, May 2020 |
Each of the eight agencies set QKD against PQC as a way to protect government or sensitive communications. NSA, NCSC, and ASD each named authentication as a gap. QKD needs an authenticated channel, which requires public-key signatures or pre-placed keys.
What the funding programs pay for
European Union
Through its European Quantum Communication Infrastructure initiative, EuroQCI, the European Commission funds national quantum communication networks and the links between them. On its EuroQCI page, last updated November 5, 2026, the Commission wrote that EuroQCI “will reinforce the protection of Europe’s governmental institutions,” along with data centers, hospitals, and energy grids. Seven member states launched the initiative by signing a declaration in 2019. All 27 have since joined, according to the Commission.
The EU used its Digital Europe Programme to pay for the first phase of the national terrestrial networks from 2023 to 2025, the Commission wrote. Through the Connecting Europe Facility, the Commission funds 19 projects for cross-border links. Through NOSTRADAMUS, a four-year project that started in January 2024, the Commission set up an infrastructure for testing and evaluating QKD equipment and has since transferred it to its Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy.
The Commission now expects Eagle-1, a prototype QKD satellite, to launch in late 2027. In its July 2025 Quantum Europe Strategy, it had scheduled Eagle-1 for 2026 and set 2030 for a first EU-wide experimental network on the ground and in space. Under a draft of the Commission’s planned Quantum Act that The Quantum Insider obtained and reported on November 10, 2026, the Commission would work toward “an interconnected experimental terrestrial and space network by 2031” and toward certified operational services in 2031–2035. The Commission has not published the draft.
China
Chinese scientists reported in January 2021 that they had joined fiber and satellite QKD links into a network spanning 4,600 kilometers. In its announcement, the Chinese Academy of Sciences wrote that the team had linked the fiber network and the satellite-to-ground links through trusted relays. The network served more than 150 industrial users, among them “state and local banks, municipal power grids, and e-government websites,” the academy wrote.
Pan Jianwei, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, concluded from the team’s work that “quantum communication technology is sufficiently mature for large-scale practical applications.” In March 2025, a team using the Jinan-1 microsatellite reported in a peer-reviewed Nature paper that it had achieved quantum-secured communication over more than 12,900 kilometers between China and South Africa, the academy said. Jinan-1 itself served as a trusted relay. In a 2024 preprint, the team described the satellite as a “space postman” that can relay keys between distant ground stations.
On the security side, China’s National Cryptography Administration issued GM/T 0108-2021, a commercial-cryptography standard for decoy-state BB84 QKD products, in October 2021 and put it into effect in May 2022, The Quantum Insider reported at the time. BB84 is the original QKD protocol, published in 1984. In its decoy-state form, the sender adds pulses of varied brightness so the two parties can detect a class of attacks.
South Korea
South Korea’s NIS scheduled a security verification scheme for quantum cryptography equipment to start on April 3, 2023, so that national and public institutions could adopt such equipment, Digital Daily reported. For the scheme, NIS set 152 security criteria covering QKD devices, key-management systems, and QKD-based encryptors. An NIS official said the government would support standardization to help domestic products into markets at home and abroad.
The first product to pass, in November 2023, was a key-management system, Boan News reported, citing the Ministry of Science and ICT. In January 2025, ID Quantique said that its Clavis XG system had become the first product of its class to receive national security approval from the NIS.
In August 2025, KT said that a QKD device that Coweaver, a Korean transmission-equipment maker, developed with KT’s technology had passed the NIS verification, Bizwatch reported. It was the first domestically made QKD equipment to pass, Hankyung reported. National and public institutions must obtain security verification for such equipment, according to Hankyung.
Japan
In fiscal 2020, Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications began a five-year research program on long-distance links and relay technology for terrestrial QKD. In its 2025 white paper, the ministry wrote that from fiscal 2025 it would pursue a new phase of research aimed at early deployment of a QKD network. Beyond the exchange of information among important national institutions, the ministry expects QKD to reach commercial services in finance and medicine.
Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) has operated the Tokyo QKD Network testbed since 2010. The ministry wrote that equipment specifications based on the testbed were adopted into the ITU-T Y.3800 international standards series in 2020. The development and demonstration of satellite QKD is also a technology theme of the Space Strategy Fund set up at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in March 2024, according to the ministry.
Singapore
Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) appointed SpeQtral and SPTel in November 2023 to build NQSN+, which SpeQtral called Singapore’s first nationwide quantum-safe network. SpeQtral said the network would use QKD systems from Toshiba Digital Solutions and protect data for government and commercial applications.
Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency (CSA) takes the same line as the eight Western agencies. In a July 2026 handbook for critical infrastructure owners, CSA wrote of QKD that “It is not a replacement for PQC” and suggested it for layered defense or niche cases, as Quantum Observer reported.
India
India’s cabinet approved a National Quantum Mission in April 2023 with Rs 6,003.65 crore for fiscal years 2023–24 to 2030–31. Among its deliverables, the government listed “inter-city quantum key distribution over 2000 km” and satellite-based secure quantum communications between ground stations over 2,000 kilometers within India. On September 30, 2026, Jitendra Singh, India’s minister of state for science and technology, said the country had crossed 1,000 kilometers in quantum-secure communication, All India Radio reported. All India Radio did not report how much of that distance used QKD links.
Same government, two answers
Germany gives both answers inside one government. BSI signed the January 2024 paper. A week earlier, on January 18, 2024, BSI certified a Common Criteria protection profile for pairs of prepare-and-measure QKD modules, BSI-CC-PP-0120-2024.
A protection profile is a set of security requirements against which evaluators certify products. A Deutsche Telekom team developed this one on BSI’s behalf, the company reported. The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) lists it as GS QKD 016.
Germany’s Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) has put €125 million into QuNET, a quantum communication research initiative launched in 2019. At QuNET’s final demonstration in Berlin on October 28, 2026, Research Minister Dorothee Bär switched on an experimental network linking subnetworks in Erlangen, Erfurt, and Berlin. The German Aerospace Center (DLR), a QuNET partner, reported the event and named quantum-secured networking among public authorities as an example of the first practical uses. Bär tied the program to technological sovereignty, a theme of Quantum Observer’s companion analysis of the sovereignty tools governments now use.
Canada shows the same pattern. The Canadian Space Agency funds QEYSSat, a microsatellite built to demonstrate QKD from orbit. On a page updated November 2, 2026, the agency gives a launch date of no earlier than 2027.
In Britain, the government set a national mission in 2023 to deploy “the world’s most advanced quantum network at scale” by 2035. NCSC allowed for that future. In its own paper, the agency wrote that “the technologies underpinning QKD could play some part in future quantum networks.” In June 2026, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology published research it had commissioned on QKD networks and said the report “does not reflect government policy.”
France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, the four governments behind the 2024 paper, also take part in EuroQCI as EU member states. In its October strategy, the Dutch cabinet wrote that central government takes part in quantum pilots such as EuroQCI, in separate environments without existing production systems or data. The cabinet also described an optical ground station being built in the Netherlands for QKD demonstrations with Eagle-1.
In each of these governments, funders and security agencies answer different questions. Funders ask whether the country should own the technology, a supply base, and a test network before anyone relies on them. Security agencies ask whether government traffic should rely on QKD today.
France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada have each said yes to the funders’ question and no to the agencies’. Britain’s NCSC has said no, but the government set its 2035 mission for quantum networks in general, not for QKD. The agencies’ answers differ in strength, from ruling QKD out for government systems to leaving it a possible role in niche uses.
Korea’s approval and China’s standard
Of the governments covered here, only South Korea has a security service that approves QKD equipment for its own institutions. Korea’s NIS set 152 criteria and then verified devices against them. In 2023, an NIS official tied the scheme to helping domestic products reach markets. Korea’s security service has thus answered the funders’ question as well as its own.
China’s case is narrower. Its National Cryptography Administration has issued a commercial-cryptography standard for QKD products. The Chinese Academy of Sciences reported government and bank users of its QKD network in 2021. Neither is an approval of QKD equipment for state networks.
Europe is building comparable tools, from BSI’s protection profile to the Commission’s NOSTRADAMUS test infrastructure. Still, the Dutch cabinet cited the four agencies’ 2024 paper in October 2026. None of the eight agencies had published a route to government use of certified QKD equipment in the documents reviewed here.
The case for QKD as a second layer
The strongest case for QKD is the risk that PQC fails. On its EuroQCI page, the European Commission describes the network as “an additional security layer based on quantum physics.” A QKD layer would still protect keys if a PQC key-exchange algorithm failed, provided the link’s authentication and the method of combining the two keys held, because QKD’s key secrecy depends on physical laws instead of a mathematical assumption.
PQC algorithms are secure only as long as certain mathematical problems stay hard for attackers. In October 2026, BSI advised against Classic McEliece in new systems after researchers estimated key recovery below its claimed security. BSI said that the lattice-based schemes ML-KEM, formerly CRYSTALS-Kyber, and FrodoKEM are not affected.
The security agencies reply that QKD’s practical security depends on hardware that has failure modes of its own. In September 2026, researchers led by Kejin Wei at Guangxi University reported that attenuators, the parts that dim light in chip-based QKD transmitters, emit light an eavesdropper could split off. In worst-case simulations, the authors calculated that the leak could cut a standard link’s secure range from about 320 to 19 kilometers. NSA cited a BSI-commissioned study of implementation attacks on QKD systems among the references for its 2026 statement.
Because QKD needs PQC or pre-placed keys for authentication, a government that adds a QKD layer gains a second system to secure without retiring the first. For government traffic now, the agencies have judged that second layer not worth its cost and its new attack surface.
The agencies leave room only for narrow uses. NCSC wrote that QKD with pre-shared authentication keys “can work in some controlled environments, but such systems do not have general purpose applicability.” The four European agencies also saw QKD as usable only in niche cases. QKD’s funders have kept paying for the networks regardless.
What would change the split
Four sets of developments due between 2027 and 2035 will test this reading. Each will appear first in an agency document or a program announcement.
- Satellite launches. The Commission expects Eagle-1 in late 2027, and the Canadian Space Agency lists QEYSSat for no earlier than 2027. Whether satellite QKD can serve European and Canadian users at all will be clear from their first results.
- Certification in Europe. Under the draft Quantum Act, as The Quantum Insider reported it, the Commission would aim for certified EuroQCI services in 2031–2035. If ANSSI, BSI, NLNCSA, or the Swedish authority accepted QKD equipment certified through EU testing for a government link, this reading would be overturned.
- PQC deadlines. Under Committee on National Security Systems Policy 15, CNSA 2.0 algorithms “will be required in all new acquisitions for NSS” by January 1, 2027, NSA wrote in its October 2026 FAQ. Canada set deadlines of the end of 2031 and the end of 2035 for its federal systems. Agencies that meet those dates without QKD will have settled their own question in practice.
- Asian build-outs. India’s government set its 2,000-kilometer targets for a mission that ends in fiscal 2030–31. Korean public institutions can now buy NIS-approved QKD equipment. Wider use in Korea would be a test of whether a security authority’s approval changes how a government protects its own networks.
The split would also change if a funding program dropped QKD after its first certified deployments, or if Korea’s NIS withdrew its approval.
