For decades, many nations have operated under a comfortable assumption: that digital security, like physical defence, could be outsourced to trusted allies. That assumption is now under scrutiny.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, US President Donald Trump’s remarks on defence, security and national capability served as a timely reminder that geopolitical certainty is eroding.
Around the world, governments are responding in the only way that makes rational sense: investing in sovereign capability where possible, diversifying suppliers, and reducing over-reliance on any single country for critical systems. Cybersecurity, and particularly encryption, sits squarely at the centre of this transition.
As Trump himself has hinted in recent remarks regarding US military operation in Venezuela, electronic warfare (the ability to disrupt, degrade or disable systems remotely) is now a core component of military capability.
Communications networks, command systems, energy infrastructure and data flows are all potential targets. Encryption is foundational to national resilience to attacks on these systems.
Quantum computing represents a revolution in computing power. Once Cryptographically Relevant Quantum Computers (CRQC) reach sufficient scale, widely used public-key algorithms such as RSA and elliptic curve cryptography will become vulnerable.
Post-quantum readiness is now a strategic decision. Nations that delay this transition risk finding themselves dependent on legacy systems that cannot be trusted in a crisis, or reliant on external providers at a time when autonomy matters most.
Source:
Julian Fay, CTO and Co-founder, Senetas, at Security Brief Australia: Nations race to sovereign encryption in quantum age https://securitybrief.com.au/story/nations-race-to-sovereign-encryption-in-quantum-age