Why I Joined Qunnect’s Board — And What Everyone Gets Wrong About Quantum Networks

If you think quantum networking is about linking quantum computers, you’re missing the real story: it’s the next security layer for the world’s most sensitive communications.

Quantum Networking, Q‑Day, and Why I Joined Qunnect’s Board

I recently joined the board of Qunnect, which I believe is further along in practical quantum networking than any other company in the world. I’ll come back to what they’ve actually deployed—and why it matters for national security and financial infrastructure—but first we need to clear up what quantum networking is, and why you should care.

What Quantum Networking Really Is

When most people hear “quantum network,” they picture a sci‑fi internet connecting giant quantum computers. That will eventually happen, but it’s not the main story today. In the near term, quantum networking is about distributing and manipulating entanglement—shared quantum states—across distance using photons in ordinary fiber. Once you can distribute entanglement reliably, you can turn it into ultra‑secure keys, teleport quantum states between locations, or knit together quantum sensors and processors into larger, distributed systems. This will enable unbreakable and secure networks that are impervious to Qday (the day all encryption is broken by Quantum Computers) attacks.

The key point: quantum networks are multi‑purpose infrastructure that ride over today’s optical plant and enable new security and sensing capabilities long before large‑scale quantum computers are commonplace. This capability DOES NOT require rip and replace but is an overlay network.

Misconceptions: It’s About Security, Not a Sci‑Fi “Quantum Internet”

The dominant misconception is that quantum networking is primarily about connecting quantum computers into a giant cluster. In reality, the first commercially relevant applications are about security and resilience for classical networks. Because quantum states cannot be copied or measured without disturbance—the no‑cloning theorem—entanglement‑based networks can offer information‑theoretic security for key distribution and built‑in intrusion detection at the physical layer. They give you new levers at the fiber level that are simply impossible with classical optics alone.

Long before quantum computers reach anything resembling broad “supremacy,” entanglement‑based networks will be deployed to harden the physical layer of critical infrastructure, provide quantum‑safe key distribution, and instrument fiber for tamper detection. Quantum networking is about building provably secure, resilient communication systems for national security, finance, and other high‑value sectors well before anyone is routinely running Shor’s algorithm at scale.

Q‑Day Is Closer Than Most People Think

“Q‑Day” is the point at which a large‑scale quantum computer can run Shor’s algorithm against real‑world public‑key cryptography (RSA, ECC) quickly enough to matter—turning today’s encryption into something attackers can peel open. For years, people assumed that would require millions of physical qubits and was safely decades away.

A major new architecture paper upends that assumption, showing that Shor’s algorithm for cryptographically relevant elliptic‑curve and RSA parameters could run on neutral‑atom hardware with on the order of 10,000–25,000 physical qubits, with runtimes measured in days to months instead of centuries. The comfort blanket is gone: the gap between lab demos and Q‑Day is now an engineering problem and a planning horizon for defenders and investors, not a distant theoretical curiosity.

Ten years ago, experts said you’d need something like a million high‑quality qubits to crack a standard 2048‑bit RSA key, which felt safely out of reach. Today’s work shows you can, on paper, do the same job with roughly 10,000–100,000 physical qubits and days‑to‑months runtimes—a move from “computer the size of a country” to “computer the size of a factory.”

Recent Paper: 10000-Qubits-to-Run-Shor-s-Algorithm.pdf

Why Quantum Networking Matters in a Post‑Q‑Day World

Post‑quantum cryptography (PQC) will replace today’s vulnerable public‑key algorithms with new math that’s believed to be resistant to quantum attacks, and that migration is already underway through NIST’s standardization process. PQC alone doesn’t fix the harvest‑now, decrypt‑later problem for the most valuable data. Adversaries can record encrypted traffic today and wait for the hardware to catch up. Entanglement‑based quantum networking attacks the problem from a different angle: it provides key distribution and intrusion detection rooted in physics rather than computational hardness.

NSA is explicit that post‑quantum cryptography alone does not eliminate the quantum threat, especially for long‑lived data. Their CNSA 2.0 guidance frames PQC as a necessary replacement for vulnerable public‑key algorithms in National Security Systems, but also stresses that migration will take years and that adversaries can already “harvest now, decrypt later” by collecting encrypted traffic today and decrypting it once cryptanalytically relevant quantum computers exist. In other words, PQC helps protect future sessions once deployed, but it cannot retroactively secure data already captured under RSA and ECC, which is why NSA and other national‑security stakeholders continue to explore quantum‑secure communications, quantum key distribution, and related physical‑layer protections alongside PQC rather than treating PQC as a complete solution.

Another key issue with PQC is its own long-term reliability. Just like all the previous mathematical based approaches, PQC is not secure against all foreseeable algorithms and computing technologies. Although the NIST approved PQC protocols are certified against the Shor’s algorithm, it is quite likely that eventually quantum computer scientists find more advanced algorithms on more advances quantum computers that even these protocols are not immune against.

Properly implemented, entanglement‑based security offers information‑theoretic security: even a future adversary with a large‑scale quantum computer and unlimited storage cannot retroactively decrypt past traffic protected with one‑time or high‑grade symmetric keys derived from entanglement. That makes quantum networking particularly compelling for national security, critical infrastructure, and financial systems with long confidentiality requirements.

A Quick Primer on Entanglement‑Based Networks

An entanglement‑based quantum network has three main ingredients:

• Entangled photon sources that create pairs of photons whose quantum states are correlated. (often cryogenic based)

• Quantum memories that can store those states long enough for network protocols to run, replicate and amplify this state into a new network thread.

• Measurement and control hardware to perform operations like Bell‑state measurements, entanglement swapping, and purification.

At the physical layer, the network distributes entangled pairs between adjacent nodes using elementary entanglement‑generation protocols over fiber. The link and network layers then use purification and entanglement swapping to extend that entanglement over many hops while keeping the fidelity high enough for applications like entanglement‑based key generation (BBM92) and quantum teleportation.

Figure 1. Quantum Network Architecture with Orchestrated Classical and Quantum Overlays

Classical channels remain essential—they carry metadata, error correction, and authentication—but they never expose the raw quantum states that carry the security guarantees.

Why Cryogenics Don’t Belong in the Middle of the Network

Most of today’s quantum processors—superconducting qubits, many trapped‑ion systems—live in dilution refrigerators at millikelvin temperatures. That’s tolerable in a data center; it is completely impractical in a street cabinet or long‑haul repeater hut. For wide‑area networks, you need photonic qubits and room‑temperature quantum memories and repeaters that can slot into conventional telecom environments. Cryogenic hardware can sit at endpoints; it shouldn’t be sprinkled every 50–100 km along a fiber route.

This is where Qunnect has been focused: building room‑temperature quantum memories and entanglement‑distribution hardware that can live in real‑world fiber networks while still delivering high entangled‑pair‑per‑second performance. That’s the difference between lab demos and something a carrier can actually deploy.

Qunnect: From Lab Physics to Live Networks

Quantum networking is real today. There are already entanglement‑based networks running over existing fiber, supporting applications like quantum‑secure communication and advanced sensing.

Qunnect has been a first mover in taking these technologies out of the lab and into urban fiber. Their deployments in New York and Berlin demonstrate entanglement distribution over installed fiber, with entangled‑pair rates and fidelities high enough to support real protocols rather than toy experiments. In Berlin, entanglement even shares the same fiber as the digital data traffic. These networks deal with real‑world impairments—loss, dispersion, environmental noise—and they do it without cryogenic infrastructure in the field.

While most quantum networking companies remain in the lab, Qunnect has built and is actively operating four live entanglement-based quantum networks across the U.S. and Europe—a milestone no competitor has come close to matching.

• GothamQ — New York City (2023): The world’s first entanglement-based quantum network built for product and protocol development, with nodes at Qunnect HQ, NYU, QTD, Columbia University, Stony Brook University, and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

• BearlinQ — Berlin, Germany (2025): Established in partnership with Deutsche Telekom across seven nodes throughout Berlin, supporting real industry use cases and protocol development on live commercial network infrastructure—a critical third-party validation of Qunnect’s technology by one of the world’s leading carriers.

• ABQ-NET — Albuquerque, New Mexico (2026): An open-access quantum network established in partnership with New Mexico’s Economic Development Division, with nodes at BigByte and the CINT Los Alamos/Sandia facility, supporting both startups and academic research.

• QCORE-NET — Bozeman, Montana (2025): Established at Montana State University, funded by the U.S. Air Force, and focused on research applications of quantum networking beyond cryptography—validating Qunnect’s technology for defense mission use cases.

All four networks, demonstrated 99% network uptime over commercial-grade fiber—proof that Qunnect’s room-temperature platform is not a lab experiment but a carrier-ready, operationally deployed quantum networking infrastructure.

From an investor’s standpoint, that matters: it’s early but tangible proof that quantum networking can coexist with classical transport gear and operational practices.

What Quantum Repeaters Are, and Why They Matter

Classical optical networks rely on amplifiers and regenerators that copy, amplify, and forward bits. Quantum mechanics forbids that for unknown quantum states: the no‑cloning theorem means you cannot copy a qubit without destroying the very information you care about. A quantum repeater solves this by chaining together shorter entangled links:

• Neighboring nodes establish entanglement and store it in quantum memories.

• Intermediate nodes perform Bell‑state measurements to swap entanglement, effectively “teleporting” entanglement down the chain.

• Throughout this process, the entangled qubits are never measured and converted into classical bits; only correlations and control data are revealed.

Because entanglement is never classically exposed, there’s nothing for an eavesdropper to store or replay later. Quantum memories are the critical ingredient—they give the network time to coordinate these operations and maintain high‑fidelity entanglement over many hops. Qunnect’s room‑temperature quantum memory platform is designed specifically to enable these repeater architectures without cryostats (super cold refrigerators) in the field, which is a major technical differentiator and commercial deployment impediment.

Entanglement as a Physical Security Layer

While the innovations and hardware to support entanglement-based networks continue to evolve, there are near term use cases where entanglement acts as a physical security layer protecting digital networks.

• Data Protection : Entanglement QKD generates encryption keys to protect digital data

• Channel Protection : Entanglement can be used as a sensor when distributed in channels with digital data

• Authentication : Entanglement can be used to authenticate the position of a transaction partner beyond the limitations of digital networking

Quantum Networks as Sensors

Even before full‑blown repeaters are widespread, quantum techniques can dramatically improve physical‑layer security. One elegant example is the “quantum smoke detector alarm” concept, where entangled photons are augmented within classical traffic over the same fiber.

Any attempt to tap the fiber or run a sophisticated jamming attack introduces changes in channel transmissivity and excess quantum noise that can be detected with much higher sensitivity than classical methods like OTDR or simple power monitoring. Experiments have demonstrated detection of roughly 0.1 dB‑level changes with sub‑second response times over long distances, outperforming traditional physical‑layer surveillance techniques. Qunnect is turning this idea into a commercial “tap alarm” for optical networks: a quantum‑enhanced tap detector that continuously monitors entangled or quantum‑modulated channels and flags anomalies in real time. For CISOs, it’s a way to instrument critical fiber routes against both crude and sophisticated taps, using the same physics that underpins QKD but without the overhead of full key‑distribution systems.

Fighting Spoofing with Entanglement-Based Security

When the NSA issued guidance on QKD in 2020, they flagged a limitation in the inability to use quantum protocols for authentication. The ability to generate and distribute entanglement with high fidelity has opened the door to realize new entanglement-based security protocols. Earlier this year, NIST released a paper demonstrating the use of distributed entanglement to authenticate the position of a transaction partner – a protocol impossible to replicate with digital technologies. Imagine the impact of this technology in combatting spoofing attacks. Qunnect has been developing a deployable version of this protocol on their commercial hardware with design partners from financial services.

Applications like this also give quantum networking a new perspective. Unlike PQC, entanglement networks are not only about the Qday. Secure position and user authentication has use-cases much beyond only protection against quantum computers, especially in the age of AI and deep-fake.

Why Qunnect Is Ahead of QKD‑Only Competitors

Several vendors market themselves as “entanglement‑based” leaders, but they are still effectively single‑purpose QKD companies rather than full quantum‑networking platforms. Qubitekk (now under the IONQ umbrella), NuCrypt (now within QCI), and zero/third in Austria focus on entanglement‑assisted QKD links and components. They do not yet support broader applications such as entanglement swapping, teleportation, distributed sensing, or repeater‑grade quantum memory on the same stack, and their hardware packaging is closer to bespoke experiments than carrier‑grade systems.

By contrast, Qunnect has already demonstrated room‑temperature quantum memories, deployed entanglement over live metropolitan fiber in New York Berlin, and is productizing repeater‑class nodes and quantum “smoke alarm” tap‑detection modules that integrate with telecom operations—putting it substantially further along the path to useful, multi‑application quantum networks.

Telecom‑Grade Quantum Networking Matters

Telecom operators will only deploy quantum networking when it looks and behaves like carrier‑grade infrastructure: modular boxes that slide into standard racks, software that plugs into existing management and security systems, and reliability measured in “five nines,” not “best effort from a physics lab. This is exactly the bar we are building towards at Qunnect, and why we are delighted to have Cisco as both a design partner and an investor. Cisco brings decades of experience turning fragile new technologies into robust, global‑scale platforms, and they are working with us so that entanglement sources, quantum memories, and repeaters plug seamlessly into the optical transport, routing, automation, and security frameworks carriers already trust.

Beating China on Quantum Networks Matters

China has made quantum networking a strategic national priority, funding multi‑city quantum communication backbones, satellite‑based quantum links, and dedicated quantum‑research megaprojects with explicit military and intelligence applications. The goal is not just scientific prestige; it is to control the next generation of secure communications infrastructure, from government and military networks to critical economic links, with technology that is difficult to monitor or coerce from the outside.

If the West falls behind—much as it did in early 5G—we risk a world where Chinese‑built quantum systems become the default for backbone security in key regions, giving Beijing a structural advantage in secure command‑and‑control, signals‑intelligence denial, and standards‑setting. Winning the quantum‑networking race is therefore about long‑term deterrence, alliance interoperability, and the ability of liberal democracies to communicate securely without depending on adversary‑controlled hardware and protocols.

U.S. Government Backing and Qunnect’s Lead

The U.S. government has quietly but meaningfully prioritized quantum networking, with programs across DoD, DOE, NSF, and NIST funding quantum‑communication testbeds, quantum‑internet blueprints, and enabling hardware. Within that landscape, Qunnect has secured competitive support from the DOE, U.S. Air Force and DARPA via SBIR awards, validating both the technical merit and strategic relevance of its room‑temperature quantum memories, entanglement‑distribution hardware, and repeater concepts. That kind of non‑dilutive funding is not just capital—it’s an endorsement from some of the most demanding early customers in the world, and a strong signal that Qunnect’s architecture is viewed as a leading contender to anchor future U.S. quantum‑secure networks.

First Markets: National Security and Financial Services

National security and intelligence. Classified networks already use layered defenses—physical isolation, high‑assurance crypto, specialized key management. Entanglement‑based key generation and quantum alarms are natural additions for inter‑facility links, command‑and‑control paths, and space‑ground segments where long‑term confidentiality and tamper detection are paramount.

Financial services and market infrastructure. Trading venues, central counterparties, custodians, and systemically important banks all have fiber links whose compromise would be catastrophic. Quantum‑secure key distribution and quantum alarms offer a way to harden those backbones against both harvest‑now‑decrypt‑later threats and sophisticated physical taps, while coexisting with PQC and existing optical equipment.

Over time, the same networks will support distributed quantum sensing (networked clocks, gravimeters, magnetometers) and, eventually, clustered quantum‑computing nodes. But the wedge, and the near‑term revenue, come from security.

Where This Goes

If you believe:

1. That credible architectures have pulled Q‑Day meaningfully forward;

2. That governments and regulators will demand quantum‑safe networking for high‑value systems;

3. And that carriers and hyperscalers will prefer room‑temperature, fiber‑compatible solutions over cryogenic science projects;

then quantum networking—and especially room‑temperature entanglement‑based networks—looks less like a science experiment and more like an inevitable new layer of the internet and global communications framework.

That’s why I joined Qunnect, and why I think now is the time for investors and strategics to start paying close attention to this multi-billion-dollar market potential. Qunnect is getting ready to raise they Series B round. If you want to join Cisco, Airbus Ventures, SandboxAQ, Quantonation, NY Ventures and others – let us know.

Appendix: Notes and References

1. Aliro Technologies, Quantum Networking 101 (overview of entanglement‑based networking, repeaters, and hardware stack). Quantum Networking 101

2. M. Humble et al., “Q‑Security for the Physical Layer,” IEEE (2013); M. A. Teixeira et al., “Security threats for optical networks,” IET Optoelectronics (2017).Security-threats-for-optical-networks-IET-Optoelectronics-2017.pdf

3. Y. Gong et al., “Secure optical communication using a quantum alarm,” Light: Science & Applications 9, 170 (2020). “Secure optical communication using a quantum alarm,”

4. Marin Ivezic, “10,000 Qubits to Run Shor’s Algorithm,” Applied Quantum (2026), summarizing Cain et al., “Shor’s algorithm is possible with as few as 10,000 reconfigurable atomic qubits. “10,000 Qubits to Run Shor’s Algorithm,”

5. NIST, Quantum Position Verification brief and 2026 report (quantum‑secure communications and positioning).NIST-QPV-Summary-Brief.pdf