On 22 June, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders focused on quantum computing: The first aims to accelerate the development of quantum computers, sensors, and networks. The other seeks to accelerate the timeline for migrating critical infrastructure to cryptographic schemes that are immune to quantum attacks. In response, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has committed to deploy “the world’s first fault-tolerant, scientifically relevant quantum computer” by the ambitious deadline of 2028. “It feels like everything is happening all at once, which is great,” says Pranav Gokhale, chief technology officer and co-founder of quantum company Infleqtion. “I think this executive order is in many ways a continuation of what’s been going on since 2018, when the first National Quantum Initiative Act was passed,” says Elizabeth Goldschmidt, associate professor of physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne (UIUC). “It revives and continues a lot of things that have happened since. I think it’s very ambitious, but there’s a lot of very good stuff in here.” IEEE Spectrum spoke to experts about these policy initiatives and how they reflect and shape the United States’ quantum capabilities for the next few years. How realistic is the 2028 deadline for a fault-tolerant quantum computer? Here, the devil is in the details. A fault-tolerant quantum computer is one that can correct mistakes that happen naturally, and inevitably, during computations. Fault tolerance is achieved through quantum error correction, a way to make fragile quantum bits (qubits) robust against noise. This is generally done by encoding a single bit of quantum information into a collection of physical qubits, called a logical qubit. For a quantum computer to be useful, it would need to be able to do operations on many such logical qubits, and actively correct errors in the process. The DOE is aiming for quantum