UCLA Physicist Warns US Could Lose the Quantum Industry It Invented

The United States could invent quantum computing and still lose it, according to UCLA physicist Prineha Narang. In a Financial Times opinion essay, she argues that research leadership means little without a domestic strategy for manufacturing, procurement, and secure supply chains. Her warning draws directly on what happened to semiconductors.

The semiconductor warning

Narang, a professor of physical sciences and engineering at UCLA, points out that American labs produced the transistor, the superconducting transmon qubit, and Shor’s algorithm, the discoveries that underpin the field. Invention, she writes, did not keep the industry at home.

“After America invented the transistor, it watched semiconductor manufacturing migrate to Asia, ceding the most strategic supply chain on Earth. Quantum technology carries the same structural risk.”

Her point is that focusing on research while ignoring production capacity repeats a mistake the country has already made once.

A case for government as first buyer

Venture money has poured in and several quantum companies have gone public, but Narang writes that investment alone will not build an industry. What the sector needs, she argues, is a dependable early customer, the role defense and space procurement played for semiconductors. Government purchasing commitments, she says, would give hardware developers a demand signal strong enough to justify building factories in the United States.

She credits the Department of Energy’s planned role as an early buyer of quantum computers and possible advance market commitments from the Department of Commerce as steps in that direction. She also praises two executive orders issued this year that treat quantum as an economic and security priority.

Because no single country controls the whole stack, from cryogenic systems to rare earths, Narang argues the supply chain will have to be built with allies.