Quantum between lab and threat

A subject the papers are about. The loosest grouping, and the one to reach for last.

Quantum technology between the laboratory and the threat model -- and the two are further apart here than the shared word suggests.

Only one record actually tests the physics in deployed conditions: Peters, at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference, running quantum key distribution through DWDM alongside classical traffic on a reconfigurable optical network. That is the hard engineering question, whether the quantum channel survives sharing fibre with everything else, and the set holds a single answer to it.

Two records are the cryptographic response, and neither needs a quantum computer to exist. Dam's survey of post-quantum cryptography is about replacing algorithms before the threat arrives; Cambou generates post-quantum keys from physical unclonable functions, and Nikolopoulos drives QKD post-processing from the same primitive. These belong to hardware security as much as to quantum -- both are shared with `the-secret-in-the-silicon` -- and they are the part of the field that is already deployable.

Two are about what states expect, which is a different question again. Krelina writes it twice, in EPJ Quantum Technology in 2021 and for SIPRI in 2025; the two are linked and are genuinely different documents, a journal survey and a policy report for a different audience.

So the set's title is a fair description of a gap rather than a bridge. The threat side is forecasting and procurement, the lab side is one conference paper, and the records that connect them do so by leaving quantum mechanics out of the mechanism entirely. Note that `nikolopoulos2024quantum` has an open upload question in the queue: the bytes held may be the preprint rather than the version of record.

An earlier version of this description said two records test deployment in fibre. That was a miscount; there is one.