Trump Wants a Quantum Revolution - US Scientists Just Took a 13-Mile Leap

A few photons left a hair-thin fiber on a Stony Brook rooftop Friday and showed up 13 miles away at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Nothing connected the buildings but open air. No other country has done it at this scale on a permanent link. The United States just did.

Brookhaven called Friday’s run the first U.S. demonstration of its kind, one open-air piece added to a 161-mile quantum network with eight nodes.

On Friday, Stony Brook fired a laser from the roof of its Health Sciences Center. A few photons emerged from a fiber with a five-micron core, crossed 13 miles to Upton and were caught by an ultrafast camera inside Brookhaven’s Quantum Lighthouse.

Researchers got their first clear nighttime reading at 12:26 AM Wednesday. Entangled photons traveled by cable to Stony Brook’s rooftop Watchtower, made the 13-mile jump, and registered at Brookhaven. The researchers are testing entangled photons for three uses: secure communications, quantum sensing and links between quantum computers.

Darío Gil, the Energy Department's (DOE’s) undersecretary for science, was inside the Lighthouse when the beam arrived. A ribbon covered the receiver for the ceremony. Gil cut it, the photons came through, and the camera found them. He also brought up Genesis, DOE’s AI-for-science program.

Genesis traces back to Trump's Nov. 24 order, which put the DOE in charge and demanded a list of at least 20 national science problems to solve. Quantum information made the cut, alongside manufacturing, biotechnology and semiconductors. White House science adviser Michael Kratsios showed up July 22 with a price tag: more than $5 billion across 278 projects, including AI work on quantum computers, sensors and communications.

Trump also signed an executive order on June 2 directing federal agencies to speed up the use of advanced AI for cybersecurity, protect critical infrastructure and work with private companies on defensive technology. It calls for AI-enabled tools to be made available to federal agencies, state and local governments, and operators of rural hospitals, community banks and local utilities. Twenty days later, Trump signed a quantum order. His words: "America stands at the cusp of a quantum revolution." His June 22 order gives his science adviser 180 days to return with an updated national strategy. The National Science Foundation is supposed to work on grants for shared quantum facilities. The FBI and the Departments of War, Commerce, and Energy were handed the security and foreign-threat work.

Commercial fiber is tuned for telecom traffic. Many quantum processors use infrared. Going through open air removes the conversion in the middle, but the atmosphere brings its own trouble. Heat, wind, and buildings shove the beam around while adaptive mirrors keep pulling it back into place.

Brookhaven scientist Justine Haupt praised the equipment teams at both ends that had to work together as one experiment.

"Bringing all those pieces together — and then adding the quantum layer — is what makes this capability unique."

A third rooftop station now stands at Yale University. The next shot will cover 30 miles from Stony Brook to New Haven across Long Island Sound. Brookhaven’s longer-range plan sends quantum information upward to satellites.

First, they have 30 miles of choppy air over Long Island Sound to deal with.

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