Google’s Call to Action on the Quantum Era: Five Recommendations for Policymakers

February 7, 2026 — Google issued a public call to action on quantum security on February 6, urging organizations and policymakers to accelerate preparations for the quantum computing era. In a blog post authored by Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs, and Hartmut Neven, Founder of Google Quantum AI, the company outlined both its own post-quantum cryptography (PQC) commitments and policy recommendations for government leaders.

The post highlighted that malicious actors are already conducting “store now, decrypt later” attacks, harvesting encrypted data today in anticipation of future quantum computers capable of breaking current encryption standards. Google pointed to research showing that the resources required to break 2048-bit RSA encryption have decreased by orders of magnitude over the past decade.

Google confirmed it remains on track to complete its PQC migration within NIST’s current guidelines, building on work that began in 2016. The company has started rolling out PQC capabilities within its infrastructure for internal operations and products, focusing on crypto agility, securing critical shared infrastructure, and facilitating ecosystem shifts.

The tech giant made two specific research commitments: sharing findings on requirements needed to break public-key cryptography, and providing insights on how a Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computer (CRQC) will affect sectors like healthcare and finance. These updates will inform PQC migration timelines across industries.

For policymakers, Google presented five recommendations:

First, drive society-wide momentum, especially for critical infrastructure sectors including energy, telecommunications, and healthcare. Second, ensure AI systems are built with PQC foundations from the start. Third, reduce global fragmentation by adopting NIST’s internationally agreed standards. Fourth, promote cloud-first modernization rather than updating legacy systems. Fifth, maintain ongoing dialogue with quantum computing experts to avoid strategic surprise.

Walker and Neven emphasized that a CRQC is not “forever a decade away,” warning that the timeline remains uncertain but the outcome is not. They positioned PQC migration as essential infrastructure for the AI economy, arguing that cryptography secures AI systems and the more society relies on AI, the more critical quantum-resistant security becomes.

The post specifically promoted Google Cloud’s PQC capabilities, encouraging government agencies to migrate legacy systems to cloud infrastructure rather than attempting to update hard-coded cryptography in existing systems. Google characterized this approach as both more efficient and more secure, leveraging work cloud providers are already doing to enable PQC across global networks.

My Analysis

The post is a policy document more than a technical one, and it stops short of a completion date.

Here’s what caught my attention: Google says it is “on track to complete a PQC migration safely within NIST’s current guidelines,” and NIST’s draft transition guidance deprecates quantum-vulnerable algorithms from 2030 and disallows them from 2035. That leaves a lot of room. The same post says Google isn’t taking those guidelines for granted, which reads to me like a company preparing to set an earlier date of its own.

But let’s talk about what Google actually said versus what they carefully didn’t say.

The “store now, decrypt later” threat gets top billing, and rightly so. I’ve been hammering this point for years — adversaries don’t need a working quantum computer today to be dangerous. They need patience and storage capacity. Google’s acknowledgment that this is “likely already” happening moves this threat from theoretical to operational reality.

Their graph showing the decreasing resources needed to break RSA-2048 is particularly telling. Orders of magnitude improvement over a decade. That’s not linear progress; that’s the kind of curve that ends with surprises.

Now, about those policy recommendations. Google’s push for cloud-first modernization is self-serving, sure, but they’re not wrong. I’ve watched too many organizations try to retrofit PQC into legacy systems. It’s like trying to install airbags in a horse-drawn carriage. Sometimes starting fresh makes more sense.

Their AI angle is clever positioning. “Cryptography secures AI systems” — true, but incomplete. The real story is that AI systems create massive new attack surfaces that quantum computers could exploit. Google’s framing this as protecting AI’s “enduring economic potential” speaks to C-suite fears better than any technical argument could.

What strikes me most is the careful calibration of urgency. “A CRQC is not ‘forever a decade away'” paired with “no one knows precisely when it will arrive.” This is exactly right. The uncertainty isn’t whether, but when. And given migration timelines, “when” matters less than “now” for starting preparations.

Google’s emphasis on NIST standards as the global baseline is smart politics and good security. The quantum security landscape doesn’t need innovation in standards — it needs execution on existing ones. Every country or company that tries to roll their own PQC standards delays real security deployment.

I found one notable absence: no mention of hybrid approaches. Most organizations I work with aren’t doing pure PQC migrations — they’re implementing hybrid classical-PQC systems as a hedge. Google’s silence here might reflect their confidence in pure PQC, or just blog post brevity.

The ecosystem play deserves attention. Google mentions “facilitating ecosystem shifts” and working with certificate authorities. This acknowledges a truth many miss: PQC migration isn’t just about updating your own systems. It’s about ensuring every system you communicate with can handle the new cryptography. That’s a coordination challenge that makes Y2K look quaint.

Here’s my read on the subtext: Google’s feeling the pressure to lead by example. They’ve got the quantum computing credibility through their hardware advances. They’ve got the infrastructure footprint through Google Cloud. Now they’re using both to push the ecosystem forward.

The “team sport” framing is particularly apt. As I’ve documented, we’re seeing a convergence around 2029-2030 as the critical window. Not because everyone believes Q-Day arrives then, but because that’s when early movers will have their defenses up. Nobody wants to be the last one without quantum-resistant encryption when the music stops.

For security leaders reading this, the message is clear: the tech giants are moving. When Google tells governments that a CRQC is not “forever a decade away,” what’s your timeline?

The quantum era isn’t coming. For anyone storing sensitive data with a multi-year shelf life, it’s already here. The only question is whether you’re defending against tomorrow’s threats with yesterday’s cryptography.