Cybersecurity Policy Report, Defense Bill Amendment Aims to Speed DoD’s Transition to Quantum-Resistant Encryption, (Jun 30, 2026)
The Department of Defense would have to quickly identify systems that can be protected by quantum-resistant encryption under an amendment that will be debated along with the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The amendment, proposed by Rep. Troy Nehls (R., Texas), was among 312 NDAA amendments approved for House consideration late yesterday by the House Rules Committee. It would give DoD’s “portfolio acquisition executives” 45 days to conduct “a narrow, expeditious review of each program of record assigned to such executive to determine whether it is feasible and practicable” to deploy cryptographic protections that can withstand quantum-enabled cyber attacks.
Legacy encryption tools will be vulnerable to hackers once quantum technology advances sufficiently because quantum computers will be able to easily solve the math problems underlying existing cryptographic methods. DoD has set a deadline of Dec. 31, 2030, for its post-quantum cryptography (PQC) transition (CPR, June 24).
Rep. Nehls’ amendment—which is co-sponsored by Reps. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R., Iowa), and Nick Begich (R., Alaska)—would limit the faster transition to PQC to systems that wouldn’t require “replacement, modification, or augmentation of existing chips, cryptographic cards, radios, hardware security modules, or other physical components,” according to its text.
It would also require new DoD systems to be quantum-resistant “from inception, to the extent it is feasible and practicable to do so.”
The House version of the NDAA (HR 8800) recently cleared the Armed Services Committee. In a report accompanying the bill, the committee expressed concern about the pace of DoD’s PQC transition (CPR, June 9).
The House and Senate are expected to begin consideration of their versions of the NDAA in mid-July.
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