Countries around the world are trying to find their place in a world of new and powerful quantum computing possibilities. China and the U.S. are investing tens of millions of U.S. dollars to build individual quantum computers for their national laboratories as part of a wider investment of tens of billions of dollars over the past decade. Brazil has so far announced approximately R$69 million (about US $14 million) in dedicated public investments in quantum technologies, including R$60 million (US $12 million) for an EMBRAPII Center of Competence in Quantum Technologies and R$9 million (US $1.8 million) for a national quantum communications program. It has announced that it aspires to spend and attract the much larger sum of US $1 billion over the next six years on quantum computing. These initiatives support research and innovation in quantum computing, communications, sensing, and software. How Brazil distributes the next wave of money, however big it ends up being, among its research institutes and companies, and among the many threads of quantum technology, will shape the return on the investment. Americo Cunha, a computational science researcher at Brazil’s National Laboratory for Scientific Computing in Petrópolis, argues that less wealthy countries should concentrate strategic investments on quantum-related services above the hardware layer, while accessing frontier quantum processors through cloud services when needed. Spectrum: How do you think less wealthy countries can make their best investments in quantum technology? Americo Cunha: Nowadays there is a big geopolitical debate about sovereignty. Countries want to preserve critical technological capabilities so they are not entirely dependent on foreign suppliers. But sovereignty does not mean competing at every layer of the technology stack. In quantum computing, only a handful of countries—including the United States and China, together with a few others such as Canada, Germany, France, Japan, and the