Forget AI, Europe has a plan to win the next tech revolution

Forget AI, Europe has a plan to win the next tech revolution Draft strategy on quantum computing obtained by POLITICO shows Europe won’t repeat its AI regulatory playbook. By PIETER HAECKin Brussels Illustration by Nicolás Ortega for POLITICO A perennial also-ran in the global AI race, Europe now sees an opportunity to win what promises to be another technological revolution by learning from its mistakes. Brussels is set to unveil the Quantum Act, a major piece of tech-sector legislation aimed at pushing EU countries to band together to attempt to stay ahead of the United States and China in quantum computing. A draft of the November proposal obtained by POLITICO seeks to overcome factors that have constrained Europe’s ambitions in artificial intelligence, including a lack of funding to turn research into commercially viable and competitive products — and to scale globally. Crucially, it also shifts focus away from regulating the technology to driving competitiveness — an acknowledgement of concerns that Europe overregulated AI and shouldn’t do the same in a field in which it is at the scientific forefront. “Quantum is one of those [technologies] where we definitely can and should lead the pack,” said Théau Peronnin, CEO of French quantum computing company Alice & Bob. Quantum is considered the next technological breakthrough that could revolutionize many industries, from drug discovery to the military, as the problem-solving capabilities of quantum computers far surpass those of current computers. There is also a huge national security dimension, since it has the potential to break the encryption technology that secures modern communications and banking services. Much of the research is still in the laboratory, but experts forecast that over the next five years, the new generation of computing will become more widely available — and be made only more powerful when fused with AI’s continued progress. “Quantum computing is a way to solve problems that are so difficult that we know that with our normal computers we will never be able to solve,” said Jan Goetz, CEO of Finnish quantum computing company IQM, in an interview. The draft leans heavily on supporting the industry, ideally at the EU level, to avoid national champions struggling to scale because of a lack of funding. It also mandates governments to procure quantum technology from EU-based companies, or from countries that have a strategic partnership with the EU on the technology. The EU agrees quantum legislation should be fundamentally different than for AI, a senior Commission official told POLITICO: “It’s not about regulation. There’s nothing to regulate.” ‘Nothing to regulate’ The EU was quick to regulate AI through its AI Act, even before the 2022 release of ChatGPT brought generative AI into the technology mainstream. The Commission tabled a first proposal in April 2021, and talks closed in 2024. “AI is about usage of technology, it’s a solution, whereas quantum is an infrastructure. It’s a resource, it’s hardware, it’s computing power,” Peronnin said. “You don’t regulate computing power, you regulate what you do with that compute power.” Goetz described Europe’s AI strategy as “very regulatory,” compared with other approaches. “The U.S. continued to invest money in it, and now we’re in a situation where all of the big AI labs are in the U.S., the chips come from the U.S.” The draft quantum law closely mirrors the bloc’s chipmaking plan, the Chips Act 2.0, and its data center plans, the Cloud and AI Development Act — both of which aim to reduce Europe’s dependency on U.S. technology and boost capabilities instead of regulating technology. Becoming a world leader in quantum also means that the EU has to tame another decades-old problem: it is a research powerhouse that fails to translate that know-how into market-ready products and scale them to compete globally. Though it is one of the leaders in paten