State Dept. official says post-quantum transition plans will outlive current leadership

State Department deputy assistant secretary Gharun Lacy urged coordinated public-private efforts to transition systems, devices, and data to post-quantum encryption, framing modernization as an ecosystem-wide task rather than an individual organization’s project. He emphasized risks from long-term data harvesting by nation-states, the potential use of predictive attack-chain analysis, and the need to plan across generations with target timelines for migrating high-risk assets by around 2035.