As Federal Quantum Funding Lapses, Florida Deploys Quantum-Secured Fiber

ORLANDO, May 18, 2026 — The federal framework coordinating America's quantum research and development lapsed in September 2023 and has not been reauthorized, leaving the United States without a funded national strategy as China commits an estimated $15 billion to the same technology. 

Florida signed an agreement three weeks ago to deploy the first fully quantum-secured fiber network in the United States, panelists said, a move that one investor said signals the private sector is moving with or without Washington.

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Speaking at the Fiber Connect conference here, Matthew Cimaglia, founder and managing partner of the Palm Beach-based technology investment firm Quantum Coast Capital, said quantum networking would not exist without the fiber infrastructure operators have spent decades building. 

Every quantum node, every secured link, and every entanglement-based network runs on fiber, he said. 

The Florida deployment will connect research institutions, NASA facilities, and military installations along the Palm Beach to Miami corridor, with a second phase going online next year.

A bipartisan reauthorization bill introduced in December 2024 would authorize $2.7 billion over five years for federal quantum research and development but has not passed. China has committed an estimated $15 billion in public funding to the same technology, accounting for roughly 34 percent of all global public investment in the field.

"The government wasn't putting enough into quantum," Cimaglia said. "The shiny object was AI."

Quantum communications using photons

Quantum communications transmits information using individual photons, particles of light, sent through fiber optic cables. Since measuring a photon changes its state, any attempt by a third party to intercept the signal leaves a detectable trace, a property no classical encryption system can match.

The private sector is not waiting. Qunnect, the Brooklyn-based quantum networking startup, demonstrated in February quantum entanglement swapping over 17.6 kilometers of existing commercial telecom fiber in New York City, with more than 99 percent of entangled photon pairs arriving intact despite the noise and interference of a dense urban environment.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the federal agency that sets cybersecurity standards for government and critical infrastructure, has set a target of migrating most federal facilities to post-quantum cryptography algorithms designed to resist quantum attacks, by 2030. 

Adversaries including China are already harvesting encrypted data from existing fiber networks and storing it, intending to decrypt it once quantum computers are capable, Cimaglia warned. Google initially estimated that threshold would arrive by 2030, but revised its projection to 2029 two months ago. IonQ has set an even earlier target of 2028.

Chattanooga's fiber network was the precondition for everything the city is now building in quantum, said Evann Freeman, vice president of government and community affairs at the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, who moderated the session. Cimaglia said cities with fiber infrastructure already in place are becoming destinations for companies that want access to quantum computing, a dynamic that did not exist two years ago.

"Fiber is the future," Freeman said. "Fiber is now."