Israel Doesn’t Need to Win the Quantum Race

In July, the Israel Innovation Authority announced a NIS 100 million investment in new national quantum computing R&D infrastructure. The facility is expected to integrate at least three different quantum processing technologies and provide Israeli companies and researchers with capabilities spanning hardware, control systems, error correction, software, algorithms, and applications.

It is the latest step in a much larger investment. Israel’s national quantum science and technology program has been backed by a budget framework of approximately NIS 1.25 billion, alongside investments in research, infrastructure, industry, and human capital.

Israel clearly recognizes the strategic importance of quantum technology. The challenge now is deciding what the country wants to achieve with these investments.

For a country of Israel’s size, competing with the United States, China, or Europe across every layer of quantum technology would be neither realistic nor necessary. Israel’s opportunity lies in deciding where it can have the greatest strategic impact.

Israel has already built a foundation

There is a tendency when discussing emerging technologies to focus on what Israel needs to do next and overlook what has already been built. Quantum is a good example.

Israel has developed research capabilities across quantum computing, information, communications, sensing, materials, photonics, and related fields. Institutions including the Technion, Weizmann Institute, Hebrew University, and Tel Aviv University have established significant quantum research programs and infrastructure.

Israel has also invested in physical infrastructure. The Israeli Quantum Computing Center gives researchers and companies access to multiple quantum computing technologies alongside classical high-performance computing and development tools.

An industry is emerging around that science as well. Israeli companies are developing technologies across different layers of the quantum stack, from control systems and computing infrastructure to software, error correction, and other enabling technologies. Several have attracted substantial international investment and are competing globally.

The challenge now is turning these capabilities into a national advantage.

The quantum race has many fronts

Quantum computing receives much of the attention, but the Quantum Era is developing across many fronts, including communications, sensing, security, photonics, control systems, software, algorithms, materials, and other enabling technologies. Different countries bring different advantages to those layers.

The United States can mobilize enormous research budgets and some of the world’s largest technology companies. China can combine state investment, manufacturing capacity, infrastructure, and long-term strategic planning. Europe is increasingly coordinating research, industrialization, infrastructure, skills, strategic autonomy, and dual-use technologies.

Israel cannot compete with those players on scale. But scale has rarely been the source of Israel’s technological advantage. Israel has often succeeded by concentrating limited resources around difficult problems, connecting research with operational requirements, moving quickly from experimentation toward deployment, and developing technologies that become important components of much larger global systems.

That model may be particularly relevant to quantum. For a small country, quantum leadership will come from strategic focus.

Where can Israel become indispensable?

Israel should begin by identifying the areas where it can become indispensable to the emerging global quantum ecosystem.

The answer may lie in quantum computing itself, or in the technologies around it: control systems, software, photonics, sensing, secure communications, post-quantum security, or technologies with defense and dual-use applications. Israel’s own recent investments suggest that this broader view is already beginning to take shape.

The new national quantum computing infrastructure, for example, is expected to support at least three different quantum processing technologies. This will allow researchers and companies to work across competing approaches in a field where the eventual technological winners remain uncertain.

Israel is also investing beyond the quantum processor itself. Recent investment in national photonics infrastructure is an example of how capabilities surrounding computing, communications, sensing, and other advanced systems can become strategically important enabling technologies.

The task now is to turn individual strengths into strategic choices. Which quantum capabilities are essential to Israel’s national security? Which technologies require a degree of domestic capability? Where can Israeli research create disproportionate global value? Where can Israeli companies become essential components of international quantum ecosystems? And where should Israel rely on trusted international partners?

These are questions of economic policy, national security, industrial strategy, and technological sovereignty.

From innovation to national advantage

Israel has been exceptionally good at producing innovation. Turning that innovation into lasting national advantage requires another layer of thinking.

A scientific breakthrough can become intellectual property commercialized elsewhere. A promising startup can be acquired before a broader domestic industry develops around it. Israeli engineers can help create critical technologies while the infrastructure needed to deploy them ultimately resides outside the country.

These outcomes are part of an open, globally connected technology economy, and Israel’s integration into that economy is one of its greatest strengths. Strategic technologies, however, require countries to understand which capabilities they need to preserve, which infrastructure they need access to, which supply chains require resilience, and which international relationships will matter most.

Quantum makes those choices increasingly important because of its potential impact across the economy, critical infrastructure, and national security.

For Israel, quantum is therefore both an economic opportunity and a matter of technological sovereignty.

National security belongs in the strategy

Israel approaches this challenge from a somewhat unusual position. The divide between commercial technology and national security has long been relatively thin. Cybersecurity provides an obvious example. National security requirements helped develop expertise and talent that later contributed to a globally significant commercial cybersecurity industry.

Quantum could create similar intersections, although the technologies and timelines are very different. Quantum sensing may affect navigation and intelligence. Quantum communications could influence how highly sensitive information is protected. Quantum computing could eventually affect simulation, optimization, and materials. The transition to post-quantum security is already forcing governments and organizations to reconsider the cryptographic foundations of critical infrastructure.

National security should therefore be integrated into Israel’s quantum strategy alongside scientific excellence and commercial opportunity.

Strategy is more than funding

Israel already has significant quantum activity, investment, and ambition. The next layer is coordination: a long-term national framework that makes clear where Israel intends to lead, which capabilities it considers strategically essential, who owns those priorities, and how success will be measured.

Funding is one part of that framework. Strategy also requires continuity, procurement pathways, talent, infrastructure, international partnerships, and mechanisms for moving technologies from laboratories into real-world deployment.

Quantum technologies will mature on very different timelines. Some may take many years to reach their full potential, while areas such as post-quantum security and enabling technologies require decisions much sooner.

The goal should be to ensure that Israel has the capabilities, infrastructure, talent, relationships, and strategic flexibility needed to remain relevant as these technologies evolve.

Strategic indispensability

Technological sovereignty requires strong international partnerships. The Quantum Era will be built through global research networks, capital, manufacturing, infrastructure, and supply chains, and Israel will need deep relationships with the United States, Europe, Canada, and other trusted technology ecosystems.

Israel already has a foundation for this role. Its participation in international quantum research frameworks and European research programs places it within a broader network of technology partners.

Israel’s objective should be strategic indispensability. That means owning parts of the quantum stack that the world cannot afford to ignore.

That could mean a critical control technology, a security layer, a sensing capability, a software platform, a photonics component, or something that has not yet emerged from an Israeli laboratory. The technologies will evolve, but the strategic principle remains the same.

Israel has already demonstrated that it has the scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, security expertise, and innovation ecosystem required to play a meaningful role in the Quantum Era. The next challenge is deciding where Israel wants to lead and connecting academia, industry, defense, government, and international partners around those priorities.

Technological excellence has already given Israel a place in the Quantum Era. Strategy will determine how important that place becomes.

In my next article, I will move from national strategy to a more immediate question: when should organizations and governments begin preparing for the Quantum Era? The answer matters because quantum readiness begins long before a powerful quantum computer arrives. Organizations making decisions today about data, infrastructure, procurement, and security may already be determining how prepared they will be when that moment comes.