Sir, I will describe a global consensus that Singapore sits outside.
In January 2024, the cybersecurity agencies of France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden issued a joint assessment of quantum key distribution. Their conclusion: QKD is "not yet sufficiently mature from a security perspective" and can only serve "niche use cases." The clear priority, they said, should be migration to post-quantum cryptography. Germany's BSI has said explicitly — and I quote the section heading of their guidance — "Migration to post-quantum cryptography has priority over the use of QKD."
This is not only an American position. The PQC algorithms were built by European researchers. The backup algorithm is entirely French. Eighty-two candidates from twenty-five countries went through eight years of open cryptanalysis. Germany published PQC migration guidance in 2020 — four years before the standards were even finalised. Australia has set a deadline of 2030 to cease classical public-key cryptography entirely. Japan has set 2035. Eighteen EU member states signed a joint PQC commitment last November. QKD was not mentioned.
This is not theoretical. PQC is software — it deploys on current infrastructure. Apple shipped post-quantum encryption to 1.3 billion devices in March 2024 with an iOS update. Google enabled it by default in Chrome for 3.4 billion users. Cloudflare has protected roughly 20 per cent of global web traffic since late 2023. No new fibre. No specialised hardware. A software update.
Singapore's position is the opposite. We are expanding the National Quantum-Safe Network with dedicated QKD fibre infrastructure. We have published no PQC migration deadline. Among advanced economies, only Singapore and China are scaling QKD as national infrastructure rather than treating it as a niche research pilot. Our flagship quantum spin-off sells QKD back to the government that funded it.
Will the Minister explain why Singapore is investing in QKD fibre when the rest of the world is upgrading with software — and what our PQC migration deadline is
