The Moscow-Beijing Quantum Axis: China and Russia's Quantum Efforts Increase Risks to the West

How far the Russia-China quantum partnership has gone, and what it means for the United States, NATO and their allies

                               

A Note From the The Friends of IonQ

This report is the product of several months of research. It began as a study of China, of its laboratories, standards bodies, satellites and the state plans behind them, and it kept bending toward Moscow. A Russian ion-trap physicist lecturing in Beijing as a visiting scholar. Chinese grant numbers in the acknowledgments of papers written by Russian specialists. A navigation roadmap signed by two space agencies. We followed those threads in English, Russian and Chinese, through grant records, standards rosters, conference programs, patents, procurement notices and sanctions filings, until they formed a picture we had not expected to find.

The first thing we learned is that the instruments the West uses to rank quantum powers were not built to see it. They count open papers, patents and declared budgets, one field at a time. Russia publishes little in English, runs its machines on sanctioned infrastructure and now registers its research with foreigners with the state. By the trackers' measure it is a minor quantum nation with 3 percent of the world's papers. By the record assembled here it fields ion machines counted at 70 and 72 qubit-equivalents, superconducting chips above 99 percent two-qubit fidelity, one of them on an open cloud, a 7,858-kilometer quantum-secured rail network, and a channel of specialists into a Chinese state-funded program.

The second is how wide the partnership already runs. Since 2023 Russian quantum delegations have visited Peking and Renmin universities, the two sides have held three annual quantum workshops, the latest organized by the Russian Quantum Center and Rosatom, placed a Russian ion-trap group leader inside a Chinese state-funded group, and, in the Great Hall of the People with both presidents looking on, signed a memorandum between Rosatom and the Chinese Academy of Sciences covering photonic and quantum technologies. By July, Rosatom's chief was describing that cooperation as reaching practical applications, the development of algorithms and the building of installations. The Russian Academy of Sciences has opened a joint laser and quantum laboratory in Shanghai. The two navigation systems run on a joint five-year roadmap, Russian and Chinese engineers have exchanged quantum keys through a Chinese satellite, Russians are among the top foreign users of China's leading quantum cloud and Chinese users have joined Russia's, and leaked documents describe the two defense industries discussing joint plans against Western satellites. Every item is on the public record. Together they describe two states building a quantum relationship faster than the West is watching it.

The third is that scale and quality are different things, and the report holds to both. In computing Russia is not ahead of the West. Its largest machines, the ion systems counted at 70 and 72 qubit-equivalents, run two-qubit gates at 95 to 96.5 percent as last reported, with no published increase since December 2025. Set against the best Western reported figures, that is roughly fifty times the reported infidelity, an arithmetic comparison of figures measured in different ways rather than a head-to-head benchmark. Its superconducting chips do better, 99.1 to 99.4 percent, but on 4 to 16 qubits, while China and the United States already pair 99.6 percent or better with about a hundred. These are the figures Russia has chosen to publish, mostly from yearly test rounds held each December; work tied to defense would not appear in them at all. But a fidelity table is the wrong measure of this partnership. What Russia brings China is not processors. It is trained ion and qudit specialists, clock and space heritage, nuclear materials, a ground segment across Eurasia and a counterspace program, and a quantum effort run from inside its nuclear-weapons complex. None of that shows up in a benchmark. The partnership is unequal in money, mutual in need and deliberately quiet.

The fourth is where the risk actually sits. It is not in any one laboratory. It sits at the joins between fields: ion clocks headed for two navigation constellations that coordinate their time, satellites able to degrade GPS across a continent, cheap launch, and a quantum link that a new Chinese satellite could restore. Scored one field at a time, each piece looks modest. Together they describe partners who could keep their own time while denying ours.

Both nations conduct this work behind a deliberate veil. Research with foreigners must now be registered, launches go undated, and meetings are held without publicity. What we can document is therefore a floor, not a ceiling. The same rule applies to our own side: Washington withholds too, and its public assessments show what it chose to publish, not everything it knows. We have tried to apply one standard to all three capitals, to say plainly where the evidence is thin, and to name what would change our view.

It is tempting to read Russia's war in Ukraine as proof of a hollowed-out state. Ukraine's defenders have shown remarkable courage, and Russia's military has paid dearly for underestimating them. But the battlefield record and the laboratory record are different things, and it would be a serious mistake to assume that Russia's military science, quantum included, has weakened with its army's reputation.

Every national quantum program is now racing toward the same destination: an integrated, operational quantum full stack. As these systems mature, their promise to enrich the human condition grows with them. So does the danger that one nation will turn them against another. We believe the strength of the United States and its allies across these accelerating ecosystems is essential, and that the support governments now provide falls well short of the risks that nations of free women and men may come to face. This report is offered in that conviction.

THE AUTHORS' VIEW Russia is more capable and more connected than the public picture allows. It trails the West in computing, not in what it brings to China, and it is working with China in exactly the fields both conceal. And the support free nations now provide does not match the risk.

Table of Contents

Report at a Glance

How to Read This Report: Evidence Tiers

1. Executive Summary

Part A: What the Evidence Shows

Part B: What the Evidence Implies

Part C: What It Means for the United States, NATO and Their Allies

Part D: What Is at Stake

2. Method and Source Base

2.1 Three-Language Search

2.2 Verification Rule

2.3 Limits

2.4 Why Silence Is Not Absence

2.5 Measured Is Not Known: Why the Leading Trackers Cannot See the Axis

3. The Strategic Frame: How the Russia-China Relationship Is Expanding

3.1 Political Architecture, 2025-2026

3.2 Economic Strain

3.3 Military Signals

3.4 The Science and Technology Machinery

3.5 What Each Side Gives, and Why Each Wants the Other

3.6 A Quantum Program Run From Inside the Nuclear-Weapons Complex

4. The Quantum Partnership in Detail

4.1 Origins: The November 2023 Visits

4.2 The Workshop Series

4.3 The Trapped-Ion Axis

4.4 From Space Clocks to Quantum Computers: Russia's Planar-Trap Lineage

4.5 Who Builds the Hardware: Fabrication and Contracted Work

4.6 China's Own Trapped-Ion Base and Its New Standards

4.7 Quantum Communication

4.8 Timing and Navigation: The Strategic Strand

4.9 Space Clocks: Parallel National Programs

4.10 Maturity by Domain

4.11 Russia's Quantum Sensors: Behind, and Rebuilding

4.12 Software, Clouds and Who Uses Them

5. Space: Trapped-Ion Technology, Joint Programs and the AI Link

5.1 What the Record Shows About Intent

5.2 Joint Space Programs, Current and Planned

5.3 The Shared Technology That Suits Space, and Why

5.4 How This Connects to AI

5.5 Reusable Launch

5.6 Satellite Killers

5.7 Jamming From Orbit

5.8 Russia's Own Space-Quantum Record

5.9 Risks to the United States and Allies

6. Capability Benchmarks: Russia, China and the United States

7. Russia's Wider Quantum Network Beyond China

7.1 The Multilateral Layer

8. Controls, Sanctions and Concealment

8.1 Russia's Controls on Its Own Researchers

8.2 Western Restrictions on the Partnership's Institutions

8.3 Control-List Fragmentation

8.4 Following, Replacing and Acquiring Western Technology

9. What the Think Tanks Say

10. NATO Deep Dive

10.1 What NATO Has Committed To

10.2 How NATO's Political Attention Has Moved

10.3 Where the Russia-China Axis Touches NATO

10.4 Allied Assets Already in Place

11. Threat Assessment and the Cost of Losing

11.1 Threat Vectors

11.2 Scenarios (No Probabilities Assigned)

11.3 What Is Not a Threat

11.4 What Is at Stake

11.5 The Commercial Cost: Seven Applications

11.6 The Military Cost

11.7 What Owning the Full Stack Adds

11.8 The Migration Clock

11.9 Chemistry and Biology: What Quantum Changes, and When

11.10 Submarines and Deterrence: What Quantum Sensing Can and Cannot Find

11.11 Supply Chokepoints: Ytterbium, Isotopes, Helium-3 and Tools

12. Recommendations

12.1 For the US Government

12.2 For NATO

12.3 For Western Quantum Companies and Research Institutions

12.4 Questions Quantum Industry Leaders Should Be Asking

13. Indicators and Warnings

14. Honest Concessions

15. What Would Change This View

16. How Widely Read Reports Compare With This Evidence

16.1 Ten Widely Circulated Reports

16.2 Ten Government, Think-Tank and Russian State Assessments

16.3 Two Benchmark Trackers

Appendix A. Verification Matrix (English, Russian, Chinese)

Appendix B. Chronology

Appendix C. Key People and Institutions

Appendix D. Evidence Gaps at Specimen Level

Appendix E. Source Citation List

Disclosure

Report at a Glance

Item	Scope
Subject	The depth and direction of the Russia-China quantum technology partnership, with emphasis on trapped-ion computing, quantum communication, and positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) through atomic clocks; and the layers beneath it: fabrication, software and cloud access, supply chains, chemistry and biology, and undersea sensing.
Questions answered	How advanced is the partnership? How is the wider Russia-China relationship expanding? Who else is Russia bringing into its quantum orbit? Do Russia and China intend to take trapped-ion technology into space, and how does that connect to AI? Who builds the hardware and who uses whose clouds? Where do the West's supply chains run through China and Rosatom? What do quantum chemistry and quantum sensing mean for weapons programs and submarine deterrence? Is any of this a threat to the United States and NATO, and what should governments and companies do?
Period covered	2019 to October 11, 2026, with emphasis on November 2023 to September 2026.
Languages searched	English, Russian and Chinese. Material facts were checked against at least one source in a second language where one exists (Appendix A).
Source base	449 listed sources: peer-reviewed papers, government and institutional pages, national standards records, grant records, patents, sanctions and export-control records, conference programs, think-tank reports from the US, Europe, Asia, Russia and China, space-agency and satellite-tracking records, company filings and press releases (Appendix D). Section 16 checks twenty widely read and official assessments of Russian quantum activity against this evidence.
Evidence standard	Every substantive statement is tagged FACT, INFER, ARG or UNDISC (legend below). Charts use sourced figures only.
What this report is not	It is not a classified assessment and sees only what is on public display. Both Moscow and Beijing conceal; absence of evidence is weaker here than usual, and unacknowledged is not the same as nonexistent (Sections 2.4 and 8).
Named researchers	Researchers are named because of their public professional roles, affiliations, grants and published papers. Being named here is not evidence of wrongdoing.
What "axis" means here	A working channel between two states' laboratories, navigation programs, space agencies and defense industries, not a treaty alliance. The partnership is institutional and widening, unequal in money and mutual in need (Sections 3.4 to 3.6 and 9).
Byline and disclosure	Friends of IonQ. Friends of IonQ owns equity positions in several quantum technology companies. Companies, including IonQ and its subsidiaries, are named wherever they are the source of a fact or the example given (Section 10.4).

What the evidence shows ■  A China-funded trapped-ion pipeline from a US-sanctioned Russian center to an unlisted Chinese university ■  Coordinated GLONASS-BeiDou timing to 2030 ■  A Rosatom-Academy memorandum, joint laboratories and shared counterspace planning ■  Clouds used in both directions; a quantum program run from Russia's nuclear-weapons complex	What it implies ■  Timing and space, not computing, are the center of gravity ■  Counterspace plus independent timing is the top risk ■  Hardware controls miss the people channel ■  Supply chains are the nearest exposure for Western industry
What stays hidden ■  Registered research with foreigners; FSB field list unpublished ■  Undated Chinese quantum satellite launches ■  An unpublicized military-technical forum ■  Who the Russian users of China's clouds are	What to watch next ■  China's ytterbium decision on November 10, 2026 ■  A Chinese quantum satellite reaching a Russian ground station ■  Ion clocks on GLONASS or BeiDou ■  Russian names on Chinese trapped-ion standards

 

How to Read This Report: Evidence Tiers

Each statement carries one of four tags. The tag describes the strength of the support, not the importance of the point.

Tag	Meaning	Worked example from this report
FACT	Stated directly in a cited primary or reputable secondary source. Bracketed numbers such as [S1] point to Appendix E.	The October 2025 surface-trap paper lists Ilya Semerikov with Lebedev, Renmin University and the Russian Quantum Center, and is funded by two Chinese grants [S1].
INFER	A conclusion the authors draw by combining two or more facts. The facts are cited; the link between them is the authors'.	Because a Russian-funded 2024 trap design precedes the China-funded 2025 paper, and Russia's 2026 planar-trap experiment cites the 2025 paper, the technical lineage runs through Russian work [S1][S3][S106]. Citation is evidence of related engineering, not of physical design inheritance.
ARG	A position the authors argue for, typically a recommendation or a judgment about significance. Reasonable analysts can disagree.	PNT, not computing, is the vector of the partnership that matters most for NATO.
UNDISC	Undisclosed or unknown: a question the public record cannot answer, flagged so readers do not mistake silence for absence.	Whether the Russian government's list of research fields requiring FSB approval for foreign participation includes quantum computing.

The report assigns no numeric probabilities. Risk levels use the report's own scale, defined below with an example of each; they combine how well a mechanism is documented with how much it would matter. They are not the probability bands of US intelligence writing standards.

Level	Meaning in this report	Example
LOW	No documented mechanism, or one that depends on a capability neither side has shown.	A Russia-China code-breaking computer (Section 11.1).
LOW-MODERATE	A documented mechanism whose effect is limited or can be mitigated with known steps.	Supply chains: a licensing, cost and lead-time risk, not a shortage (Section 11.11).
MODERATE	A documented mechanism already operating, with a bounded effect on US or allied interests.	Knowledge flow past sanctions through papers, grants and workshops (Section 4.3).
MODERATE-HIGH	Documented capabilities on each side that would combine into a significant effect, without proof of joint use.	Counterspace paired with independent timing (Sections 5.6 and 5.9).
HIGH	A demonstrated joint capability with direct effect on US or allied operations.	None on the current record; Section 15 lists what would raise a vector to high.

Horizon words qualify a level: "rising" means the documented trend points up within the stated horizon; "near-term" means within about a year; "slow" or "long" means the main effect falls after 2030; "watch" means the rating turns on an indicator in Section 13.

1. Executive Summary

The judgments below are current to October 11, 2026. Each carries its evidence tag and points to the section where the evidence sits.

Evidence tier	What the public record shows	Status
Institutional cooperation	Rosatom-Academy memorandum, annual workshops, a Russian visiting scholar in a Chinese state-funded group, shared grants, the GLONASS-BeiDou roadmap	Documented
Reported component exchange	Detectors made with USTC equipment and exchanged for access, described in one institutional interview; Rosatom isotope and helium-3 contracts with China	Reported; no specimen-level record recovered
Demonstrated integration	Any Russian component or design shown inside a Chinese system, or the reverse	Not shown
Demonstrated performance	Russian fidelity and qubit figures from state and laboratory releases; no full-system benchmark or error budget	Self-reported; not independently benchmarked

Key judgments [INFER] The Russia-China quantum relationship is institutional at the top and widening. On May 20, 2026 Rosatom, which runs Russia's national quantum computing roadmap, signed a science and technology memorandum with the Chinese Academy of Sciences covering new photonic and quantum technologies, witnessed by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin; Rosatom's chief called it the company's first direct cooperation with the Academy [S422][S423][S424], and in July said the work now reaches practical applications, the development of algorithms and the building of installations [S440]. The Russian Academy of Sciences opened a joint laser and quantum laboratory with the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics in October 2025 [S441][S442]. An annual Russia-China quantum workshop now has a Chinese co-chair, and Russia's science ministry says the 2026-2030 science roadmap "will be signed" by year-end, with quantum on the agenda but not yet in any published text (Sections 3.1 and 4.2) [S4][S285][S287]. [FACT] At working level, Russian trapped-ion specialists work inside a Chinese state-funded program. A Russian Quantum Center group leader is a visiting scholar in Renmin University's trapped-ion group, and three papers pairing Lebedev and RQC physicists with that group all acknowledge the same Chinese state grant. The Russian end is on US sanctions lists, partly on nuclear grounds; Renmin is on no US list (Sections 4.3 and 8.2) [S1][S2][S104][S105][S386][S321]. [INFER] Timing and space, not computing, are the center of gravity. GLONASS and BeiDou have a 2026-2030 cooperation roadmap, ion and optical clocks are being prepared for both, and a not-yet-peer-reviewed study traces strong GPS interference over Europe to Russian early-warning satellites. The top risk, rated moderate-high, is counterspace paired with independent timing (Sections 4.8, 5.6, 5.7 and 11.1) [S131][S12][S20][S261]. [INFER] Russia is more capable than the trackers record; it trails the West in computing, not in what it brings to China. [FACT] Its ion machines are counted at 70 and 72 qubit-equivalents because each ion stores four or seven levels, at 95.4 to 96.5 percent two-qubit fidelity as last reported (December 2025 to February 2026); its superconducting chips reach 99.1 to 99.4 percent, but on 4 to 16 qubits, and the eight-qubit SnowDrop 8Q has been on Russia's Octillion cloud since August 1, 2026, with users from China, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Spain; [INFER] on the public record no Russian machine yet combines high fidelity with large size, and headline scale has grown faster than gate quality; the next roadmap test round, likely in December 2026, could change these figures (Section 6); [FACT] its 7,858 km quantum-secured rail network was licensed to sell services from August 11, 2026; it has never flown its own quantum payload (Sections 4.7, 4.12, 5.8 and 6) [S123][S124][S388][S428][S430][S425][S426][S397][S399][S275]. [INFER] The flow runs both ways. China gives Russia money, fabrication access, a satellite, clouds and inputs that sanctions deny it; Russia gives China specialists, clock and space heritage, nuclear materials, a ground segment and counterspace capability. The partnership is unequal in money and mutual in need (Section 3.5) [S1][S23][S160][S170][S291][S299][S377]. [FACT] Russia's quantum program is run from inside its nuclear-weapons complex. Rosatom coordinates the national quantum computing roadmap; VNIIA, which co-builds Russia's SnowDrop processors and runs its Octillion quantum cloud, is part of Rosatom's nuclear-weapons complex; and the Russian Quantum Center was put on the US Entity List for supporting nuclear explosive activities. [INFER] The institutional setting creates potential military and dual-use pathways, while the scale and performance of undisclosed work remain unknown (Section 3.6) [S126][S193][S386][S446][S447]. [FACT] The nearest exposure for Western industry is supply, not processors. By China's own text its suspension of ytterbium and erbium export controls ends on November 10, 2026; the wider US-China truce runs to January 10, 2027, but China's statement on it does not mention rare earths. [INFER] Machines need minute quantities, so this is a licensing, cost and lead-time risk rather than a shortage (Section 11.11) [S369][S370][S418]. [ARG] The allied answers exist; the gap is fielding them. Executive Order 14413 directs the Pentagon to prioritize at least three next-generation quantum sensor projects for fielding by September 30, 2028, and US and allied companies already build deployable optical clocks, satellite-independent navigation and quantum networks (Section 10.4) [S402][S408][S417]. [INFER] No specimen-level chain is complete. For the ion traps, Figure 2 of the 2026 experiment, domestic fabrication and the USTC detectors, no public record links a released design or batch to a received, mounted and measured device (Appendix D). That limits claims about particular devices; it leaves the broader evidence of cooperation intact. [ARG] What to watch. China's decision on November 10; the signing and text of the 2026-2030 science roadmap; projects under the Rosatom-Academy memorandum; a Chinese quantum satellite reaching a Russian ground station; ion clocks on GLONASS or BeiDou. Section 15 lists what would lower these judgments as well as raise them.

Why the public picture misses this [ARG] Quantum technology sits inside a guarded, cloak-and-dagger ecosystem. Moscow, Beijing and Washington all withhold what they know, what they fund and what they field. A capability or an intention that a government has not acknowledged must not be read as one that does not exist. This report's findings are a floor, not a ceiling. [ARG] The public assessments that policymakers and investors cite leave Russia out of quantum or call it lagging. The Congressional Research Service called its effort not military-specific with little open information, the 2026 US intelligence threat assessment's short quantum section names the US, China, the EU, Japan and the UK but not Russia, and the most-cited quantum threat-timeline survey never mentions Russia [S182][S183][S189]. Over the same years Russia built 70- and 72-qubit-equivalent systems, placed its trapped-ion specialists inside a Chinese state-funded program, laid a 7,858 km quantum-secured rail backbone and signed navigation and lunar roadmaps with Beijing [S1][S123][S124][S131][S170][S397]. [ARG] The thesis cuts both ways. Those US documents are unclassified and short, so their silence shows what was published, not what the government knows; this report does not claim the intelligence community has missed Russia. Washington also withholds: classified defense and intelligence research and export-controlled results are not published. The claim is narrower: the picture that reaches the public, and the budgets and rankings built on it, leaves Russia out. [INFER] Russia and China are now working together in exactly the fields both conceal: trapped-ion computing, timing, secure communication and space. Section 2.4 sets out the evidence of concealment on each side. [ARG] The measures most often quoted as the scoreboard of quantum power cannot see this. They count open papers, patents and declared budgets, one field at a time, over windows that close years before publication. They are cited as verdicts on national capability; they are samples of open output. Section 2.5 shows what they miss. [ARG] The stakes are not one market. Losing the quantum race would cost the United States and its allies the encryption, the navigation, the materials and the medicines of the next economy, and the intelligence and targeting edge of the next war. The leading market forecasts price none of the security and strategic losses, and Russia's part is to supply China's stack with specialists, timing and partners (Section 11.4) [S57][S183].

THE MEASUREMENT GAP [ARG] The world is ranking quantum powers with instruments built for open science. Russia and China do their most important work where those instruments cannot reach, and the rankings are quoted as if they could. [S217][S222]

THE COST OF LOSING [ARG] A quantum race lost is not market share lost. It is a standard, a supply chain and an archive lost, and none of them come back. In the words of the US-China Commission, whoever gets there first could lock in irreversible strategic superiority. [S57]

How the axis works, in four steps

Russian minds Trapped-ion, clock and microwave-gate specialists [S1][S2]

▶

Chinese money State grants, laboratories and scale [S104][S107]

▶

Shared systems Coordinated timing, a lunar station, counterspace plans [S131][S157][S170]

▶

Western leverage reduced Sanctions bypassed; GPS dependence reduced [S28][S17][S131]

 

Part A: What the Evidence Shows

Russia and China have built a working quantum partnership. It is real, institutional, personal and widening. Since October 2025 it has gained a joint laser and quantum laboratory in Shanghai, a five-year navigation roadmap, a memorandum between the two quantum establishments signed before both presidents, a third workshop organized by the Russian Quantum Center and Rosatom and co-chaired from Beijing, and a public statement that joint work now reaches algorithms and installations. It is unequal in money, mutual in need and deliberately quiet. Its most consequential strands for the United States and NATO run through timing and navigation and through secure communications, not through quantum computing. Beneath it sit layers this report also documents: Russia's domestic build chain, Chinese clouds that Russians use, supply chains that run through China and Rosatom, and chemistry and undersea sensing, where the risk is real but long-horizon. In chemistry and biology, both states apply quantum methods to medicine and both carry US findings on weapons programs, but no evidence links quantum chemistry to weapons institutes and the near-term driver is AI, not quantum (Section 11.9) [S324][S325][S329].

1. [FACT] A standing channel exists. Russia's Rosatom and the Russian Quantum Center (RQC), with Chinese partners, have held an annual Russia-China quantum workshop since 2024: Moscow (2024), the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei (2025), and Moscow again (June 2026), where the organizing committee was co-chaired by Wei Zhang of Renmin University and the Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (BAQIS) [S4][S5][S6][S7].
2. [FACT] The two quantum establishments signed a cooperation memorandum at the top, and say it is already working. On May 20, 2026 Rosatom and the Chinese Academy of Sciences signed a science and technology memorandum covering new photonic and quantum technologies, witnessed by Xi and Putin (Section 3.1) [S422][S423][S424]. On July 24, Rosatom's chief said the cooperation with the Academy reaches "practical application, development of algorithms and creation of corresponding installations" [S440].
3. [FACT] The academies are building joint laboratories. The Russian Academy of Sciences opened a joint laboratory with the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics in October 2025 for laser systems, optical materials and fundamental quantum technologies, with Academy President Gennady Krasnikov attending; it builds on a 2019 agreement for a joint laser laboratory with Russia's Institute of Applied Physics [S441][S442][S443]. In June 2026 MIET, the Zelenograd institute in Russia's trap build chain (Section 4.5), agreed a joint semiconductor laboratory with East China Normal University, and a Russian-Chinese Institute of Fundamental Research covering physics was launched in Sanya in early 2026 (Section 3.4) [S444][S445].
4. [FACT] The trapped-ion link is funded by China and reaches three members of one Russian laboratory network. Ilya Semerikov, who heads RQC's scalable ion computing group and a Lebedev Institute laboratory, works as a visiting scholar in Renmin University's trapped-ion group [S2]. Three papers pairing Lebedev and RQC physicists with Wei Zhang's group, published or first posted between 2024 and 2025, were funded by China, all three under Zhang's National Natural Science Foundation Key Project 92265208, worth RMB 3.4 million in direct funding [S1][S104][S105][S107].
5. [INFER] The joint design grows out of Russian work, and Russia's own experiment cites it. A Russian-funded 2024 trap design by the same Lebedev team precedes the China-funded 2025 design, and Russia's August 2026 planar-trap experiment cites the 2025 paper [S1][S3][S106]. The citation shows technical continuity, not that the joint design became the 2026 device, whose geometry differs (item 8 below). Rosatom announced Russia's first qubit operations on planar traps on August 12, 2026 [S108]. The 2025 joint paper builds its analysis on microwave-gate schemes published by Oxford Ionics, an IonQ company since September 2025, and by an Oxford University group including its co-founders [S1][S199][S392]. The planar line itself began in a 2017 space navigation clock program coordinated by Russian Space Systems (Section 4.4) [S205][S206]. The record shows Russian surface-trap know-how reaching a Chinese-funded group inside an active national program. No transfer of a specific Russian chip design has been published, and under Russia's 2026 disclosure rules none would be expected to be.
6. [FACT] No record shows the China-funded design was built; Russia's working trap is a different device. No record shows the 2025 joint layout was ever fabricated. The trap in Russia's August 2026 experiment is asymmetric, with 210 µm and 410 µm RF electrodes and a 240 µm center electrode, holding ions about 220 µm above the surface; the joint design's worked example uses an 80 µm center electrode and 40 µm rails. The working trap traces to Skoltech's planar-trap line (Sections 4.4 and 4.5) [S1][S3][S208].
7. [INFER] Russia appears to have a domestic build chain. Lebedev and Skoltech design the traps, MIET manufactures chips and deposits coatings, Zelenograd's Technological Centre makes photonic layers under a presidential strategic-initiative grant, Rosatom roadmap contracts fund trap-detector prototypes, and Russian Space Systems commissioned the photonics behind Russia's first planar trap. No shared specimen record links the steps (Section 4.5) [S210][S213][S293][S294][S295][S296].
8. [FACT] Devices, not just papers, have moved in a second branch: detectors. A Russian doctoral researcher on a long internship at USTC describes a detector array fabricated with the university's equipment (the interview implies, but does not state, that it was made there) and then measured in Russia, where most devices worked; in return USTC receives finished detectors and the chance to learn to make them. The Russian detector maker Scontel had earlier sold multichannel detector systems to the same USTC group. This is an institutional interview account: no batch, receipt or measurement record is public, and the devices are photon detectors, not ion-trap hardware (Section 4.3) [S291][S292].
9. [FACT] China's trapped-ion base is its own, and Beijing is now writing it into national standards. A 2022 Huayi patent and a 2025 National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) surface-trap paper show indigenous trap and addressing capability [S114][S115], and Wei Zhang presented his own group's ytterbium-ion experiment in Innsbruck in June 2026 [S297]. China's quantum standards committee, reorganized in March 2026 under Pan Jianwei, is drafting a reference architecture for trapped-ion quantum computing; Renmin University is among its 20 drafters [S109][S111].
10. [FACT] The Russian end of the ion channel is sanctioned on nuclear grounds; the Chinese host university is not listed. RQC was added to the US Entity List effective February 24, 2022, "for acquiring and attempting to acquire U.S.-origin items in support of nuclear explosive activities," was listed by the EU on February 25, 2022, and has been on the OFAC SDN list since September 15, 2022 [S28][S386][S387]. Renmin University, which hosts the channel, is on neither the Entity List nor the Pentagon's Section 1286 list [S321]. BAQIS, USTC and the CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information (the 2025 workshop host) were added to the Entity List in May 2024, together with the Hefei National Laboratory for Quantum Information Science [S30][S31].
11. [FACT] The only joint capability ever demonstrated is quantum communication, and its satellite is gone. On March 1, 2022, Russian and Chinese teams completed a full-cycle quantum key distribution test via China's Micius satellite between Zvenigorod near Moscow and a ground station near Urumqi, about 3,800 km apart: keys were distributed through the satellite and the stations exchanged encrypted 256x64-pixel images; the releases do not describe an entanglement-based link [S23][S24][S415]. Micius re-entered the atmosphere on January 25, 2026, three months after China's Jinan-1 fell into the South Pacific (by China's account; some tracking catalogs list an April 2025 decay); no successor joint link was found, and no Chinese quantum-communication satellite is announced in orbit; the Micius team says it is preparing a new medium-high-orbit satellite [S125][S154][S155].
12. [FACT] Russian Railways' trunk quantum network reached 7,858 km and is now licensed to sell services. It reached 7,858 km across 27 regions by May 2026, up from 7,012 km in June 2025, and a government decree in force from August 11, 2026 lets the railway sell quantum-communication and quantum-cryptography services over it [S397][S398][S399]. [INFER] It is Russia's largest fielded quantum capability. No published tracker or Western assessment reviewed here counts it (Sections 4.7 and 16).
13. [INFER] Timing is the strategic strand. Russian ion and thulium clocks are being prepared for GLONASS, Chinese mercury-ion clocks for BeiDou, and the two systems have a 2022 agreement on complementary time scales; the public record describes its aim, not its mechanism [S12][S13][S14][S17][S20]. Coordinated, GPS-independent timing is the most militarily relevant outcome in view. Neither country has announced plans for a quantum computer in orbit; in space, trapped ions are headed for clocks (Section 5).
14. [FACT] Rosatom is courting quantum partners abroad. Rosatom has agreed with Vietnam's science academy to develop Vietnam's quantum roadmap jointly, says Indian specialists are in its quantum project, has signed memoranda in Uzbekistan, and has quantum talks under way with Kazakhstan, Belarus, Egypt and Pakistan; its draft program to 2036 targets BRICS, the SCO, UNESCO and ASEAN [S71][S75][S78][S79][S80][S81][S82][S84]. [INFER] Together these amount to a quantum sphere of influence in the making.
15. [FACT] Russia has new powers to control and screen research with foreigners. Since March 1, 2026, Russian research with foreign participants must be registered in a state system and, in fields on a list the government has not yet published, approved by the FSB [S34][S35][S36][S118]. NATO's summit-level attention to China has fallen at the same time: the 2024 Washington declaration called China a decisive enabler of Russia's war, but China is absent from the 2025 Hague and 2026 Ankara declarations [S44][S46][S48]. [INFER] Public visibility of the partnership is likely to fall; the shorter NATO declarations reflect their format as well as their priorities.
16. [FACT] Russia's largest machines report 95 to 96.5 percent two-qubit fidelity; its best chip reports 99.4 percent on 16 qubits. The ion machines' figure is far below Western systems (Section 6 compares like with like). The headline counts of 70 and 72 "qubit-equivalents" come from 35 ytterbium ions storing four levels each and 26 calcium ions storing seven levels each, and from state press releases in December 2025 rather than peer-reviewed papers [S123][S124][S388].
17. [FACT] Russia's ambitions are funded and scheduled. The 2025-2030 quantum computing roadmap commits more than 29 billion rubles and targets 300-qubit processors, and a draft program runs to 2036 [S84][S126]. That is roughly $290-390 million over six years at 2025-2026 exchange rates of about 75 to 100 rubles to the dollar; about half is federal money (14.6 billion rubles) and half Rosatom's match, and the figure covers computing only, not Russian Railways' quantum communications or Rosatom's sensing program [S150][S270][S397]. [INFER] It is more than the prevailing picture assumes, but far from parity with US or Chinese public quantum spending. Planar traps are its next scaling step (Section 4.4).
18. [FACT] Russia is building a domestic supply chain, and its superconducting chips are its highest-fidelity machines. Bauman University and VNIIA now sell SnowDrop superconducting quantum computers of 4 to 10 qubits from 170 million rubles, cooled by a Russian-built cryostat, and plan 10 to 20 machines a year [S193][S194]. MISIS reported a 16-qubit fluxonium processor averaging 99.4 percent two-qubit fidelity in a December 2025 roadmap test, and Bauman's eight-qubit SnowDrop 8Q, announced July 31, 2026, averages 99.26 percent (99.55 percent on the best pairs), up from 99.11 percent on its four-qubit chip in June 2024 [S428][S429][S425][S427][S433]. [INFER] These chips are a sixth the size of Chinese and US machines that already run at 99.6 percent or better [S303][S435][S436].
19. [FACT] The personal ties are deepening. Wei Zhang spoke at RQC's own international conference in July 2025, co-chaired the 2026 Moscow workshop, and gave one of its two trapped-ion talks, back to back with Semerikov's, in a program that also carried at least five trapped-ion posters; speakers came from BAQIS, Renmin, USTC, Nankai, Xi'an Jiaotong and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and the program closed with an RQC laboratory tour [S4][S116].
20. [FACT] China funds computing and networking as one system. A Tsinghua trapped-ion network-node experiment carries awards from both the national computing and communication programs, and Pan Jianwei's team kept two ion memories entangled over 10 km of spooled laboratory fiber long enough to clear the threshold a working repeater needs [S112][S113].
21. [FACT] China's quantum standards reach into the Russia channel. BAQIS, Wei Zhang's Entity-Listed institution, helped draft China's first national standard for testing quantum computer performance, published April 30, 2026 and in force from November 1, 2026, alongside Huayi and NUDT [S120].
22. [FACT] China already flies quantum hardware in orbit. Its space station carries an optical clock and a cold-atom inertial sensor, and a Chinese calcium-ion optical clock steered ground hydrogen masers at the Beijing Satellite Navigation Center to within about 600 picoseconds of UTC in a six-month experiment [S22][S140][S181].
23. [FACT] The navigation partnership has a new five-year plan. Roscosmos and China's satellite navigation authority signed a GLONASS-BeiDou roadmap for 2026-2030 in November 2025, and Putin and Xi reaffirmed it in their May 20, 2026 joint statement [S41][S131].
24. [FACT] The joint station is on the Moon. Russia and China lead the International Lunar Research Station, with 17 countries and organizations, a basic station by 2035, and a lunar nuclear power plant agreed in May 2025 for 2036 [S128][S129][S170]. No joint orbital station is planned [S168][S169].
25. [FACT] China is putting AI computing in orbit. The Three-Body Computing Constellation had networked satellites and 20 AI models deployed by July 2026, toward a planned 2,800 satellites [S134][S135][S142].
26. [FACT] Reusable launch has arrived in China and is late in Russia. China recovered its first orbital boosters in July and August 2026; Russia's reusable Amur has slipped to 2031, but a 2024 agreement set up a Russia-China reusable-engine laboratory [S162][S163][S165][S166].
27. [FACT] Both are fielding satellite killers. Russia destroyed a satellite with a Nudol missile in 2021, is developing a nuclear anti-satellite capability and shadows US reconnaissance satellites; China tested a direct-ascent weapon in 2007 and practices close maneuvers in orbit [S171][S110][S172][S173][S177][S179][S180].
28. [FACT] Leaked documents show joint planning against Western satellites. Decks from an unpublicized China-Russia military-technical forum, published in July 2026 by The Insider with Der Spiegel and Le Monde, include a plan to neutralize Starlink up to physical destruction, and Russia's Nudol missile relies on a Chinese-made propellant chemical [S157][S158][S160]. [INFER] The documents' existence is established; their authenticity rests on the publishing outlets, and their authority as joint plans is not. The plans are unproven and their feasibility is questioned [S159]. None concerns quantum technology; they matter here because they target the satellites that carry Western timing.
29. [FACT] The leading trackers do not see Russia, and say why. ASPI's Critical Technology Tracker puts Russia in no quantum top five in any edition with public rankings, and MIT's Quantum Index credits it with 3 percent of world quantum papers while omitting its roadmaps and every Russian processor. ASPI states it cannot estimate classified research [S217][S218][S222].
30. [FACT] The two trackers share one publication dataset. MIT's publication figures come from ASPI's Web of Science data, so citing both is citing one source twice [S222]. Both score quantum, AI and space as separate fields, and neither measures links between fields or between countries [S218][S222].
31. [FACT] Russian satellites are the probable source of strong satellite-navigation interference over Europe (preprint). University of Texas and Stanford researchers traced 75 days of GPS interference, 2019-2026, to Russia's early-warning constellation, identifying Cosmos 2546 for one event with near certainty; the work is not yet peer reviewed [S261][S263]. [INFER] Whether this is deliberate jamming is unresolved: an independent analysis finds a GPS-like code at the wrong chip rate, which fits a ranging or sensing emitter better than spoofing, and the interference also degrades China's BeiDou (Section 5.7) [S266].
32. [FACT] Russian users reach China's leading quantum cloud, and a Russian university bought Chinese hardware. China's Origin Wukong cloud, run by an Entity-Listed company, reports 49 million visits from 192 countries; by its own count the United States is its top foreign user, followed by Russia and Japan. A Russian university platform bought a Chinese-made three-qubit teaching machine, and Russia's own clouds are domestic and early (Section 4.12) [S298][S299][S300][S322][S372]. [FACT] The traffic also runs the other way: Russia's Octillion cloud opened its new eight-qubit chip to outside users on August 1, 2026, and several hundred users from Russia, along with users from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Spain and China, connected in its first days [S425][S426]. [INFER] Country-level traffic counts are an access lead, not proof of a collaborative computing program: they do not identify Russian laboratories, submitted jobs, execution on hardware or useful results. In software Russia is mainly a user and buyer of Chinese systems, not a peer, and now also a host for Chinese users.
33. [FACT] The US research-security list misses the hub. The Pentagon's July 2026 Section 1286 list covers the Lebedev Institute, Moscow State University, BAQIS and USTC, but not Renmin University, which hosts the trapped-ion channel (Sections 4.12 and 8.2) [S321].
34. [FACT] A supply deadline is one month away. China's suspension of its export controls on ytterbium, the qubit and clock element of many trapped-ion machines, expires on November 10, 2026; the same list covers erbium for photonic networking; the United States and China extended their wider trade truce to January 10, 2027, and the US Treasury Secretary said its terms, which include China's pause on rare-earth controls, stay in force, though neither government has published new text [S418]; part of the West's enriched-isotope supply still runs through Rosatom, and Rosatom announced exports of chip-grade isotopes, helium-3 among them, to China in April 2026 (Section 11.11) [S355][S357][S358][S377]. [INFER] Machines need only minute quantities, so this is a licensing, cost and lead-time risk rather than a shortage.
35. [FACT] Quantum sensing does not yet threaten ballistic-missile submarines. Every authoritative open analysis found says so, but China is building quantum magnetometers and ocean-wide sensor networks concentrated on the South China Sea (Section 11.10) [S341][S342][S344][S348].
36. [FACT] In quantum sensing Russia is behind and rebuilding. Rostec's sensing roadmap was never funded; Rosatom launched six sensor projects in 2026, four of them for navigation, and Russia has never flown its own quantum payload (Sections 4.11 and 5.8) [S269][S272][S275].

Strand	What the record shows	What it does not show
Computing	A visiting appointment, three China-funded papers, three joint workshops, a top-level memorandum now said to reach algorithms and installations; Russian machines at about 96% two-qubit fidelity	A fabricated joint chip, a joint processor or transfer of protected technology, none of which Russia's 2026 rules would let surface
Joint laboratories	Russian Academy of Sciences-Shanghai Institute of Optics laser and quantum laboratory (2025); MIET-East China Normal University semiconductor laboratory (2026); a Russian-Chinese Institute of Fundamental Research (2026)	Named quantum projects or outputs from them
Navigation	A signed 2026-2030 GLONASS-BeiDou roadmap and a 2022 time-scale agreement	A joint clock payload in orbit
Counterspace	Nudol test, leaked joint planning decks, orbital interference traced to Russian satellites	Proof that the interference is deliberate jamming
Science roadmap	Russia says the 2026-2030 roadmap will be signed by year-end	A signing, or quantum in the text
Software	Russian users among the top foreign users of China's Origin cloud; a Chinese-made computer on a Russian university platform	Who the Russian users are, or any Russia-China cloud agreement
Supply	China's ytterbium controls suspended only to November 10, 2026; a Rosatom plant's large share of world stable isotopes	Western quantum firms using Russian-origin qubit isotopes
Secure terrestrial links	Russian Railways' 7,858 km quantum backbone, licensed to sell services from August 11, 2026	Any quantum link crossing the Russia-China border
Chemistry and biology	Applied quantum chemistry on both sides; US findings on both states' weapons programs	Any link between quantum chemistry and listed weapons institutes
Undersea sensing	Chinese quantum magnetometers and ocean sensor networks	Underwater trials, detection ranges or a quantum component in the networks

What the record shows, and what it does not. Each judgment below should be read against this table.

Part B: What the Evidence Implies

1. [INFER] The partnership's center of gravity is timing and space, not computing. Coordinated navigation clocks, a lunar station and shared counterspace planning will matter to the United States and NATO before any joint quantum computer does [S131][S157][S170].
2. [INFER] Russian specialists accelerate a Chinese state-funded trapped-ion program. China has ion capability of its own, but in a race decided by who fields first, acceleration is the strategic contribution. Expertise moves through people, grants, workshops and now joint laboratories that hardware controls do not reach [S1][S104][S105][S107][S441].
3. [INFER] This is a two-way partnership, not a donor and a client. China supplies what sanctions deny Russia: money, fabrication, a satellite, clouds and inputs. Russia supplies what money cannot buy quickly: trained people, clock and space heritage, nuclear materials, a Eurasian ground segment and counterspace. Each side's dependence on the other is growing (Section 3.5).
4. [INFER] Russia will not challenge US quantum computing leadership soon; gate quality, not qubit count, is its binding constraint. Its large ion machines have reported 95 to 96.5 percent two-qubit fidelity, with no published increase since December 2025, while headline counts rose to 70-72; its best superconducting chip reaches 99.4 percent, but on 16 qubits, and its 2030 roadmap sets a 300-qubit target with no public fidelity target. Its clocks, sensors and specialists remain the assets that matter most to the partnership. That judgment concerns Russia alone: its specialists' know-how flows to China, the serious computing competitor, and the December 2026 test round and any defense-funded work are outside the record [S123][S124][S153][S428][S430][S434].
5. [INFER] China is writing down a trapped-ion stack. A national reference architecture, joint funding of computing and networking, and repeater memories describe one platform. If Russia is invited into that standards work, a non-Western trapped-ion bloc follows [S39][S109][S112][S113].
6. [INFER] China's empty orbit is temporary. The team, the ground segment and reusable launch are in place, and a new satellite is being prepared; when it flies, Russia is the obvious first foreign partner for a restored joint channel [S125][S133][S155][S162].
7. [ARG] The most dangerous combination is counterspace paired with independent timing. A bloc able to degrade GPS and Western satellites while running its own better-clocked navigation systems gains an advantage neither capability gives alone: counterspace now, the timing half on a 2028-2035 horizon [S131][S157][S171][S172].
8. [INFER] Cheap launch turns plans into constellations, and replaces losses fast. Reusable boosters let China field quantum, AI and navigation satellites in numbers and restore them after attack [S134][S162][S167].
9. [INFER] Hardware controls were not built for this channel. Three separate things are happening. Diplomatically, Russia's veto keeps quantum off a common Wassenaar list, so allies have moved to national lists [S32]. Industrially, sanctions have pushed Russia to build its own cryostats and small superconducting machines, far from fault-tolerant scale [S193][S194]. And the trapped-ion channel runs on people, grants and papers, which hardware controls were never designed to stop.
10. [INFER] The open record will thin as cooperation deepens. Registration and FSB approval powers, disclosure bans and undated launches mean fewer co-authored papers or announcements should not be read as a stall (Section 2.4) [S36][S155][S157].
11. [INFER] Rosatom is building a customer base that could adopt non-Western standards. Roadmaps, machine time, training and lunar and nuclear partnerships in India, Vietnam and across BRICS create demand that US suppliers do not yet meet [S71][S75][S84][S128].
12. [ARG] Policy built on today's mainstream assessments will arrive late. In the authors' judgment the most-read reports and the main public US assessments are two to three years behind the record or leave Russia out, and the leading trackers measure only open papers, patents and declared budgets (Sections 2.5 and 16) [S182][S183][S189][S222].
13. [ARG] Incomplete measures produce false reassurance. When rankings that cannot see closed programs are quoted as complete, budgets, alliance planning and export controls are set for a smaller threat than the record shows. A concealing state is rewarded simply for publishing less.
14. [ARG] The advantage is building where no tracker looks: between fields. Ion clocks for navigation, satellite quantum links, orbital AI computing and anti-satellite weapons converge in one architecture. Scoring quantum, AI and space separately misses the combination that matters most (Sections 4.8, 5.4 and 5.6).
15. [INFER] In software and compute, the axis runs mainly through China, and now both ways. Russian users reach Chinese clouds and a Russian university bought Chinese hardware, while Chinese users have joined Russia's Octillion cloud since it opened its eight-qubit chip in August 2026 [S426]; and China's operating system and cloud standards, drafted with PLA institutions, are becoming defaults abroad [S299][S320][S322].
16. [INFER] Supply chains, not processors, are the nearest exposure for Western quantum companies. Ytterbium and erbium can return to Chinese licensing on November 10, 2026, a cost and lead-time risk more than a shortage, part of the West's isotope supply still runs through Rosatom, and US-made etch tools have reached Russian fabs [S355][S357][S365][S366].
17. [INFER] In chemistry and undersea sensing the risk is real but long-horizon. AI, not quantum, drives the near-term chemical and biological concern, and quantum sensing threatens attack submarines in shallow water before ballistic-missile submarines in the open ocean [S324][S325][S353].
18. [ARG] The United States already holds the answers; the deficit is fielding them. It has flown a trapped-ion clock, demonstrated GPS-free optical clocks and an orbiting quantum inertial sensor, and IonQ (Vector Atomic) is building deployable optical clocks and SandboxAQ is flight-testing magnetic navigation, and Executive Order 14413 directs the Pentagon to prioritize at least three next-generation quantum sensor projects for fielding by September 30, 2028; these need to reach allied satellites and platforms in numbers that survive attack (Section 10.4) [S127][S138][S139][S402][S408][S417].

CRITICAL STATEMENT [ARG] Incomplete and outdated data, cited by officials and analysts as the full picture, is itself a national security risk. It tells free nations they are further ahead than they are, at the moment quantum, AI and space are fusing into one contest. [S182][S183][S222]

Part C: What It Means for the United States, NATO and Their Allies

The partnership in five numbers, six verdicts, one risk map and the four places allied capability meets it.

96% vs 99.92% two-qubit fidelity: Russia's 70-72 qubit-equivalent ion machines vs Quantinuum's 98-qubit Helios, full-system average; see Section 6 [S123][S124][S153]

99.4% on 16 Russia's best two-qubit fidelity, on a 16-qubit MISIS chip; China and the US pair 99.6%+ with about 100 qubits [S428][S303][S435]

70-72 qubit-equivalents on 35 and 26 physical ions (4- and 7-level qudits); state releases, Dec 2025 [S123][S124][S388]

3 + 3 China-funded papers pairing Russian and Renmin physicists, and Russia-China quantum workshops since 2024 [S1][S104][S105][S4][S5][S6]

0 announced Chinese quantum-communication satellites in orbit today [S125][S154]

Nov 10, 2026 date China's suspension of ytterbium export controls ends [S355]

VERDICT LOW-MODERATE, RISING

Is the partnership a threat to US quantum computing leadership? Russia alone, no: its large machines are noisy and its highest-fidelity chip has 16 qubits. The partnership is another matter. Russian ion, qudit and microwave-gate know-how flows into China, the serious computing competitor, and Rosatom says joint work with the Chinese Academy of Sciences now reaches algorithms and installations. INFER [S1][S104][S105][S123][S124][S153][S440]

VERDICT MODERATE, RISING

Is it a threat to the United States and NATO in other ways? Yes, concentrated in timing and navigation, secure communications, counterspace, knowledge flow, supply chains, compute access, control-list fragmentation and coalition-building. INFER from Sections 4, 5, 7, 8 and 11

VERDICT TOP RISK

Where is the danger greatest? In the pairing of anti-satellite capability with independent, better-clocked navigation: the power to degrade GPS while keeping one's own time. Rated moderate-high, the highest level this report assigns. ARG [S131][S157][S171][S172]

VERDICT OPEN: NOT RULED OUT

Has Russian trapped-ion technology entered China's processors or standards? Not shown, and not ruled out. Since March 2026 Russian work with foreigners must be registered and, in listed fields, cleared by the FSB, so a transfer would not be expected to surface. The channel that could carry it is documented: a Russian ion group leader inside Renmin's group, a China-funded fast-microwave-gate trap design built on Russian work, and Renmin among the drafters of China's trapped-ion reference architecture. Floor: Russian know-how in a China-funded design. Indicators: Section 13. UNDISC [S1][S2][S36][S109]

VERDICT UNDECLARED

Is there a joint quantum weapon, joint processor or orbital quantum computer? None is declared. Under this report's thesis, that is a floor, not proof of absence. UNDISC; Section 2.4

VERDICT CLOCKS: YES

Do they plan to use trapped-ion technology in space, and does it touch AI? Yes for clocks, on separate national programs feeding coordinated navigation timing; China is also putting AI computing in orbit. No joint trapped-ion or AI space program is declared. FACT [S12][S14][S20][S131][S134]; Section 5

Risk map: where the threat sits

Where the risk sits	Level	Why
GPS-independent timing	MODERATE, RISING	Ion and optical clocks headed for GLONASS and BeiDou; a 2026-2030 joint roadmap [S12][S131]
Counterspace paired with independent timing	MODERATE-HIGH	Nudol, a nuclear anti-satellite program, shadowing satellites, and a joint Starlink plan [S157][S171][S172]
Secure links outside Western reach	MODERATE	Satellite link dormant since Micius, with China preparing new satellites; Russia's 7,858 km terrestrial backbone fielded but national only [S125][S155][S397]
Knowledge flow past sanctions	MODERATE, RISING	A visiting appointment; three China-funded papers; three workshops; a Rosatom-Academy memorandum; new joint laboratories [S1][S2][S4][S422][S440][S441]
Control-list fragmentation	MODERATE	Russian Wassenaar veto and national patchwork; domestic cryostats [S32][S194]
Coalition-building and standards	MODERATE, SLOW	Rosatom roadmaps abroad; China's trapped-ion standards [S71][S109]
Timing for AI and autonomy	MODERATE, LONG	Orbital AI computing plus independent navigation [S131][S134]
Supply chain	LOW-MODERATE, NEAR-TERM	Ytterbium and erbium controls suspended only to November 10, 2026, a licensing rather than shortage risk; Rosatom's isotope share; US-made etch tools in Russian fabs [S355][S357][S365][S366][S368]
Compute access and software	MODERATE	Russian users on an Entity-Listed Chinese cloud; Chinese users on Russia's Octillion cloud, run with a sanctioned nuclear-weapons institute; Chinese cloud standards drafted with PLA institutions [S299][S300][S320][S313][S426]
Undersea deterrence	LOW, WATCH	Chinese quantum magnetometers and ocean networks; no underwater trials published [S341][S344][S346]
Chemical and biological	LOW NOW, LONG HORIZON	No practical quantum advantage today; AI is the near-term driver [S324][S325][S329]
Code-breaking computer	LOW	No evidence; Russian hardware trails [S123][S153]

Where allied capability meets the axis

Timing (PNT) Russia-China Ion and thulium clocks for GLONASS; mercury-ion clocks for BeiDou [S12][S14][S20] US and allies GPS-free optical clocks under DARPA ROCkN; IonQ (Vector Atomic) building 25 deployable optical clocks under a DARPA award, with an unexercised option for 100 more; Infleqtion's optical clock with Safran; SandboxAQ magnetic navigation flight-tested with the US Air Force [S67][S138][S408][S410]

Space Russia-China Lunar station; reusable launch in China; orbital AI [S128][S134][S162] US and allies A trapped-ion clock flown in orbit; a quantum inertial sensor built by Vector Atomic (now IonQ) flown on the X-37B [S127][S139][S396]

Quantum networking Russia-China 2022 Micius link; Russian Railways' 7,858 km backbone; Chinese trapped-ion repeater memories [S23][S113][S397] US and allies IonQ in Poland's national quantum communication network, a NATO frontline state; Qunnect's GothamQ entanglement network in New York [S66][S395][S409]

Trapped-ion computing Russia-China 70-72 qubit-equivalents at ~96%; China's reference architecture [S109][S123][S124] US and allies Quantinuum Helios, 98 qubits at 99.92% full-system two-qubit fidelity; IonQ 99.99% in a smaller demonstration; both in DARPA's benchmarking program [S153][S391][S403]

Several allied examples above are IonQ assets; Section 10.4 names them and lists other suppliers for each capability.

Bottom line [ARG] The partnership does not need to produce a better quantum computer to matter. It is building parallel institutions: shared timing for two navigation constellations, a demonstrated quantum-secured link that Chinese satellites could restore, a China-funded pipeline from a sanctioned Russian trapped-ion center to a Chinese university, and a Global South customer base for Russian quantum capability. No piece needs to be large. Together they reduce US and NATO leverage, and the pieces are multiplying. [ARG] China, meanwhile, is standardizing trapped-ion computing and quantum networking together. The United States should treat processors and networks as one platform problem. It already fields capabilities that answer each vector, from flown and deployable atomic clocks to allied quantum networks and leading trapped-ion computers; policy should field them at scale (Section 12). [ARG] The layers beneath the partnership point the same way. In software Russia is mainly a user and buyer of Chinese systems, and now also a host for Chinese users; in supply the West depends on inputs that pass through China and Rosatom; in chemistry and undersea sensing the risk is real but long-horizon. Each calls for the same response: field allied capability now and audit the dependencies before they are tested (Sections 4.12, 11.9-11.11 and 12).

Part D: What Is at Stake

The partnership matters because the prize is larger than any one device. Sections 11.4 to 11.6 set out the commercial and military cost of losing; the measures below are chosen because none of them depends on a market forecast.

60% China's share of quantum patent filings in 2024 [S222]

13 of 26 experts who put a code-breaking quantum computer within ten years at about even odds or better; the survey's averaged estimate is 28-49% depending on interpretation, an elicitation, not a forecast, and this report rates the near-term threat from this partnership low [S189][S413]

$1B a day modeled cost to the US economy of a total GPS outage [S238]

2030 / 2031 federal deadlines to replace vulnerable encryption [S241]

2027 China's target for a global quantum communication service [S257]

 

CRITICAL STATEMENT [FACT] The US-China Commission reports that adversaries, China among them, are already harvesting encrypted data to decrypt later. [S57][S242] [ARG] That makes data stolen today a quantum loss in waiting: the collection is under way, and the loss arrives with the first code-breaking machine.

2. Method and Source Base

2.1 Three-Language Search

Searches were run in English, Russian and Chinese against institutional sites (RQC, Rosatom, Lebedev Institute, Renmin University, BAQIS, USTC), government portals (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, China's National Public Service Platform for Standards Information, Russian government and legal databases, NATO, US Treasury and Commerce), peer-reviewed journals and preprint servers (MDPI, Springer, Nature Portfolio, the American Physical Society, arXiv), patent records, and think tanks in each country. Grant numbers in paper acknowledgments were traced to published funding records where possible. Search queries used the current date, and results were checked for recency.

2.2 Verification Rule

A claim is treated as cross-language verified when it is supported by sources in at least two languages, at least one of them primary. Where only one language carries a fact (for example, Chinese university pages recording the November 2023 RQC visits), the claim is still tagged FACT but Appendix A shows the single-language status. Russian and Chinese state media are used only for what officials said, never as independent confirmation of capability; where a capability figure rests on state media, the source is flagged.

2.3 Limits

• [FACT] Russian research with foreign participants must now be registered, and research in fields on a still-unpublished list will need FSB approval [S36], and a Chinese scientist involved in the collaboration told the South China Morning Post he had turned down Russian media interviews [S92].
• [INFER] Both effects push the most sensitive work out of public view. (Section 2.4.)
• [UNDISC] The speaker list for the 2025 Hefei workshop was not found. The Russian government has not published its list of research fields requiring FSB approval; a Moscow law firm reports that the list has not yet been formed [S118].

[INFER] The method has been tested once before. As documented in the China Intelligence Validation Report, a companion analysis by the same authors, 39 of the 49 findings in the Friends of IonQ China series of September 21-27, 2026 were confirmed or partly confirmed days later by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' 15th Five-Year Plan, and none was contradicted by it [S196]. That scoring is the authors' own, against criteria set out in that report; it says nothing about Russia and is cited only as a check on the method.

2.4 Why Silence Is Not Absence

Each side conceals in its own way, and Western assessments have repeatedly mistaken the resulting silence for absence.

Actor	Evidence of concealment or blind spots	Sources
Russia	Since March 1, 2026, research with foreign participants must be registered and, in listed fields, cleared by the FSB; the list of fields itself is unpublished. Holders of high-level clearances face exit bans of up to ten years.	[S36][S38][S118]
China	The Micius team said in January 2026 it was preparing fully for a new medium-high-orbit quantum satellite; nine months later no launch has been announced. In 2013 a Chinese team revealed a satellite-to-ground single-photon experiment that used retroreflectors on CHAMP, a German satellite that had re-entered in 2010; the work was disclosed years after the data were taken. Micius's own re-entry drew no official notice.	[S125][S155][S156][S390]
The partnership	A China-Russia military-technical cooperation forum met repeatedly without publicity and barred disclosure; leaked decks published in July 2026 cover space weapons and destroying satellites. A Chinese scientist in the quantum collaboration declined Russian media interviews.	[S92][S157][S158]
Bibliometric trackers	The two most-cited public benchmarks count papers, patents and declared budgets. ASPI's tracker states it cannot estimate classified research; MIT's 2025 index credits Russia with 3 percent of world quantum papers, omits its national program from its policy chapter and names no Russian system in its hardware chapter.	[S217][S218][S222][S223]
US and allied assessments	Leading public US assessments leave Russia out of the quantum picture or describe it as lagging and non-military; NATO's 2025 and 2026 summit declarations, both short texts, dropped China while the Russia-China quantum relationship became institutional.	[S44][S46][S182][S183][S189]
The United States itself	Classified defense and intelligence research and export-controlled results are not published. Unclassified US assessments are short and show what was released, not what is known. The same rule this report applies to Moscow and Beijing applies here.	ARG

[ARG] Because silence is weak evidence, this report also names what would lower its judgments, not only what would raise them; Section 15 lists triggers that would lower them and that can actually occur. [INFER] In this environment the absence of a declared Chinese quantum satellite, a declared Russian orbital ion clock or a declared joint quantum program is weak evidence either way. Intent is better read from money, people, standards, launch capacity and counterspace activity, which this report tracks.

 

Graphic 1. Why silence is not absence: what the public record can and cannot see.

CRITICAL STATEMENT [ARG] Unacknowledged is not nonexistent. Moscow now registers research with foreigners and has created an FSB approval power whose list of fields is not yet published; Beijing leaves launches undated and discloses late; and the two hold forums that bar publicity. Read gaps in the record as gaps, not as absence. [S36][S118][S155][S157]

2.5 Measured Is Not Known: Why the Leading Trackers Cannot See the Axis

The trackers below do what they say they do; the problem is how they are quoted. ASPI states that it cannot estimate classified research, and when a sample of open papers is cited as a ranking of national power, the error belongs to the people quoting it, not to the tracker [S217][S218].

Two public trackers shape much of what officials and investors believe about national quantum standing: the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's Critical Technology Tracker, which ranks countries by their share of the most-cited 10 percent of research papers, and MIT's Quantum Index Report, which builds on the same data and adds patents, investment, policy and hardware. Both are careful, transparent and widely used. MIT says its index is meant to help policymakers and industry make decisions on "investment, adoption, impact and priority setting" [S226], and ASPI's tracker is distributed through the Pentagon's Defense Technical Information Center and was greeted in the defense press as a "wake-up call" [S224][S225]. Neither was built to see Russia, and in the Russian case their silence is easily misread as a measurement.

Measure	Russia in the record	What the measure cannot see
ASPI most-cited papers, quantum computing, communications, sensors, post-quantum cryptography, atomic clocks, gravity and magnetic sensors (2019-2023)	Not in the top five in any of the seven. Across 64 technologies Russia's only top-five place is advanced explosives and energetic materials, at 3.6 percent [S218][S219].	ASPI: "we can't estimate the volume or quality of classified research." Defense-related research is "among the most likely to shift into classified and commercial-in-confidence labs" [S217][S218].
MIT QIR share of world publications (2019-2023)	3 percent in quantum computing and 3 percent in quantum communications, tied with Canada and Italy (and with Japan in communications); China 23 and 39 percent, the US 22 and 12 percent [S222].	Credit for co-authored papers is split fractionally across countries, so Russian authors on China-funded papers with mostly Chinese co-authors count largely as Chinese output [S222][S104][S105].
MIT QIR patents (2024)	Not listed. China 7,308 quantum patent filings in 2024, the US 2,301 [S222].	Counts follow the patent office, not the owner. A Russian utility model such as the welded Paul trap RU216379U1 does not register as Russian quantum output [S214].
MIT QIR public funding	Russia not covered. The chapter lists the US, China, the UK, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and Ireland [S222].	Russia's 24-billion-ruble 2020-2024 roadmap and the 2025-2030 program of more than 29 billion rubles are published, in Russian, but absent [S98][S126].
MIT QIR hardware benchmarks (January 2024-April 2025)	More than 160 processors in commercial, prototype or planned stages, from close to 80 makers in 17 countries; no Russian system named [S222][S223].	It names no Russian machine, including the 50-qubit ion and atom systems of 2024 and the 70-72-qubit systems of December 2025 [S123][S124][S64].

Publication dates matter as much as data windows. The most-cited figures describe research from years before Russia's 70-72-qubit-equivalent machines, the FSB clearance rule and the China-funded papers documented here.

Tracker and edition	Published	Research window	What has happened since the window closed
ASPI Critical Technology Tracker, original	March 1, 2023	2018-2022	Every Russian system above 50 qubits; the Russia-China workshop series; all three China-funded papers [S217][S1][S4]
ASPI two-decade tracker	August 28, 2024	2003-2023	70-72-qubit Russian systems (December 2025); FSB clearance rule (March 2026) [S218][S123][S36]
ASPI December 2025 update	December 1, 2025	2020-2024 lead window	Russia's planar-trap step (August 2026); GLONASS-BeiDou roadmap reaffirmed (May 2026) [S220][S108][S41]
ASPI March and June 2026 refreshes (latest data)	March 25 and June 19, 2026	2021-2025	Country rankings behind an account login; neither public release mentions Russia or gives quantum country shares [S227][S228][S229]
ASPI patent expansion	Listed for October 2026	Not published	Listed on ASPI's reports page with no link; the patent tracker still reads "coming soon" as of October 6, 2026 [S230]
MIT Quantum Index Report (latest)	June 2025	Papers 2019-2023; hardware January 2024-April 2025	No 2026 edition found. Russia's 70-72-qubit systems (December 2025) came after its cutoff, and its 2024 50-qubit machines, inside the window, are not listed [S222][S64][S123][S124]

OUTDATED BY DESIGN [FACT] The newest MIT index describes research that ended in 2023. ASPI's newest public country rankings for quantum stop at the same year. Russia's quantum record since then is invisible to both. [S218][S222][S227]

[FACT] ASPI's own September 2026 analysis notes "a dramatic increase since 2019" in China-Russia research collaboration on critical and dual-use technologies, but publishes no Russian quantum share [S221]. Russia's registration and FSB clearance rule (Section 2.4) is likely to further suppress the co-authored, English-language papers that both trackers count [S36][S38].

Why the counts undercount Russia [INFER] Four features of the measures, each reasonable on its own, compound in Russia's case. Papers are counted from Web of Science, where ASPI found 98.7 percent of the reports it used were in English [S217]. Classified and commercial-in-confidence work is invisible by design [S217][S218]. Fractional credit gives most of a China-funded paper with mostly Chinese authors to China, even when Russian specialists supply the method [S222]. Funding and hardware chapters rely on official documents and Western-accessible machines, so a program published in Russian and run on sanctioned machines drops out [S222][S223]. [ARG] The trackers are right that Russia is a small producer of highly cited open papers. They are not evidence that Russia is a small quantum power. Its hardware, clocks and secure-link programs are documented elsewhere in this report, and the paper count measures none of them.

CRITICAL STATEMENT [ARG] A 3 percent share of quantum papers sits beside two ion systems of 70-72 qubit-equivalents and one 72-atom system. The paper counts measure openness, not capability. [S222][S123][S124][S64]

CITED AS VERDICTS, BUILT AS SAMPLES [FACT] ASPI states that it cannot estimate classified research. That caveat rarely travels with its rankings. When a sample of open papers is quoted as a ranking of national power, the error belongs to the people quoting it, not to the tracker. [S217][S218]

What the trackers measure is real. It is also a fraction of what a national-security assessment needs. The table below sets the two side by side.

What a full picture must track	Captured by the trackers?	Where this report finds it
Open, highly cited papers	Yes, in fields scored one at a time	Used as one input; Section 6 and Figure 4
Classified and commercial-in-confidence work	No, by the trackers' own account [S217][S218]	Read from money, people, launches and clearance rules (Section 2.4)
Budgets published only in Russian	No; Russia absent from MIT's policy chapter [S222]	24 billion rubles (2020-2024) and more than 29 billion (2025-2030) [S98][S126]
Machines not sold on Western clouds	No; no Russian processor in MIT's hardware index [S222][S223]	70-72-qubit ion and atom systems, SnowDrop superconducting machines [S64][S123][S124][S193]
Partnerships between countries	Only as co-authored papers, credit split fractionally	Three China-funded papers, a visiting appointment, annual workshops, a 2026-2030 science roadmap in drafting [S1][S2][S4][S40]
Links between quantum, AI and space	No; each technology is a separate row	Ion clocks for GLONASS and BeiDou, satellite quantum links, orbital AI computing, anti-satellite plans (Sections 4.8, 5.4, 5.6)
Direction of travel	Five-year windows published years later	Dated milestones through October 2026 (Figure 2)
Concealment itself	No	FSB clearance rule, undisclosed forums, undated launches (Section 2.4) [S36][S155][S157]

ONE DATASET, QUOTED TWICE [FACT] MIT's publication data is ASPI's data. On research output, two trackers agreeing about Russia is one dataset agreeing with itself. [S222]

Why convergence is the blind spot that matters [INFER] Quantum, AI and space are no longer separate races. Precise clocks time navigation constellations; navigation and secure links carry military and AI workloads; reusable launch puts all of it in orbit; anti-satellite weapons threaten the other side's version. Russia and China are building along those joins, and the joint roadmaps for navigation, the lunar station and satellite quantum links are cross-field by design [S41][S128][S131][S134]. [ARG] A tracker that ranks atomic clocks, satellite navigation, quantum communication and AI in separate rows will score each piece and miss the system. For national security, the system is the thing to measure.

THE QUESTION THAT MATTERS [ARG] The question is not who publishes the most quantum papers. It is who is building the timing, links, launch and computing to fight with them, and no public tracker measures that. [S131][S134][S157]

 

Graphic 2. How the most-quoted quantum rankings are built, and what drops out at each step.

3. The Strategic Frame: How the Russia-China Relationship Is Expanding

3.1 Political Architecture, 2025-2026

• [FACT] Xi Jinping attended Moscow's Victory Day events in May 2025 and Vladimir Putin visited Tianjin and Beijing from August 31 to September 3, 2025, for the SCO summit and anniversary commemorations [S39]. Putin visited Beijing again on May 19-20, 2026 [S41].
• [FACT] During Putin's May 2026 visit, Rosatom and the Chinese Academy of Sciences signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Scientific and Technological Cooperation in the Great Hall of the People, witnessed by Xi and Putin and signed by Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev and Academy President Hou Jianguo. It covers controlled fusion, nuclear medicine, accelerator technology and "new photonic and quantum technologies," with joint research, experiments, staff exchanges and seminars [S422][S423]. Likhachev described it as Rosatom's first direct cooperation with the Academy [S424]. [INFER] Rosatom runs Russia's quantum computing roadmap, and several Academy institutions, including USTC and its Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, are on the US Entity List; the memorandum joins the two quantum establishments at the top. [UNDISC] No project under it has been announced.
• [FACT] At the 30th regular heads-of-government meeting in Hangzhou on November 3, 2025, the two premiers agreed to draft a China-Russia Science, Technology and Innovation Cooperation Roadmap for 2026-2030, to open and share large science facilities, and to strengthen cooperation within BRICS and the SCO. They also created an AI cooperation expert committee [S40]. The November 2025 communiqué commits the two sides only to "formulate" the roadmap; the Russian text says «Разработать» ("develop"), not "sign" [S289][S290]. It was still a draft at the June 16, 2026 working-group meeting in Irkutsk [S286]. After the science subcommission met in Wuhan on August 27, 2026, Russia's science ministry said the roadmap "will be signed" by the end of the year, "setting the priorities of joint projects for the next five years" [S287]; China's science ministry reported only "broad consensus" [S288][S284]. The Russian Science Foundation reported that "particular attention was paid to quantum technologies, AI, neuroscience and environmental technologies"; no source says quantum is written into the draft text [S285].
• [FACT] A Russia-China working group on high technology and innovation held its 16th meeting in June 2025; the previous S&T roadmap ran from 2020 to 2025 [S39].

RUSSIA: "WILL BE SIGNED" [FACT] Russia's science ministry, in its own words after the Wuhan subcommission on August 27, 2026: the 2026-2030 roadmap "will be signed" by the end of the year, "setting the priorities of joint projects for the next five years." Moscow has publicly committed to a deadline. [S287] [FACT] In June, the Irkutsk working group had targeted the signing for the 31st heads-of-government meeting in October 2026 or a presidential visit in November [S286]. Those are the windows to watch.

CHINA: "BROAD CONSENSUS" ONLY [FACT] China's science ministry described the same meeting only as reaching "broad consensus." It did not mention the roadmap and made no public commitment to sign it. [S288] [INFER] The deadline is Moscow's announcement, not a joint one; Beijing has said nothing publicly about it.

QUANTUM: ON THE AGENDA, NOT YET ON PAPER [FACT] The Russian Science Foundation's own report on the Wuhan subcommission, published August 31, 2026, states: "Particular attention was paid to quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, neuroscience and environmental technologies." The sentence follows directly after the agreement "to sign by the end of this year" the 2026-2030 roadmap, in the same paragraph on the subcommission's outcomes [S285]. [INFER] Quantum sits at the top of the agreed agenda for the roadmap's first year. [UNDISC] Neither ministry's release names quantum, no source says quantum is written into the draft text, and as of October 9, 2026 no signing has been reported. Watch for the signing and for whether quantum is named in it.

 

Graphic 3. The 2026-2030 science roadmap, step by step: agreed to be drafted, promised, not yet signed.

3.2 Economic Strain

• [FACT] Bilateral trade reached USD 244.82 billion in 2024 but fell 6.9 percent in 2025, which the joint RIAC-Fudan report attributes largely to Chinese fears of secondary sanctions and to limits on dual-use exports [S39].
• [INFER] Commercial caution in China coexists with state-led technology cooperation. Quantum sits on the state-led side.

3.3 Military Signals

• [FACT] The two navies held "Maritime Interaction 2025" in August 2025, and the third joint missile-defense exercise took place in early December 2025 [S39].
• [FACT] Russia's GLONASS and China's BeiDou are dual-use systems coordinated by a standing committee since 2015, with each country hosting the other's ground stations [S16][S18][S52].

3.4 The Science and Technology Machinery

[FACT] The joint Russian-Chinese RIAC-Fudan report (2026) lists the main directions discussed in bilateral science and technology meetings: fourth-generation nuclear power, aerospace, integrated circuits, advanced materials, information security, quantum computing and energy storage [S39]. It also records that China has begun working with the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute for Physics of Microstructures on extreme-ultraviolet sources and optics associated with lithography, and that a JINR-Ministry of Science and Technology committee proposed 23 new joint studies in October 2025 [S39].

[FACT] The academies are now building joint laboratories. In October 2025 the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics opened a joint laboratory in Shanghai for laser systems, advanced optical materials and fundamental aspects of quantum technologies, including quantum sensors and communication systems; Academy President Gennady Krasnikov attended [S441][S442]. It follows a 2019 agreement between the same Shanghai institute and Russia's Institute of Applied Physics to organize a joint laser laboratory [S443]. On June 29, 2026 MIET, the Zelenograd institute that the build-chain analysis in Section 4.5 places in Russia's trap-chip manufacture, signed an agreement with East China Normal University to found a Russian-Chinese joint laboratory for chalcogenide semiconductor materials and devices [S444]. A Russian-Chinese Institute of Fundamental Research, covering physics among other fields and involving Peking University, was launched in Sanya in early 2026 [S445]. [INFER] None of these names a quantum-computing project, but they place Russian laser, materials and fabrication institutions inside standing joint structures with Chinese counterparts.

 

Figure 1. Joint articles and research funding at Shenzhen MSU-BIT University. Source: RIAC-Fudan Report No. 117, citing university leadership [S39].

What Russian and Chinese experts say about their own cooperation [FACT] The joint RIAC-Fudan report states that Chinese partners' interest in scientific-innovation cooperation itself is still small, that only a few specialized structures run real joint projects, and that cooperation often comes down to Russian specialists being invited to work at Chinese universities [S39]. [INFER] That description matches the trapped-ion case exactly: a Russian ion-team leader working inside a Chinese university group, with members of his home laboratory appearing on Chinese-funded papers [S1][S2][S104][S105]. [FACT] The same report relays a Renmin University Chongyang Institute proposal to accelerate China-Russia intelligent-technology cooperation and build a de-Westernized system of technical standards with BRICS and SCO partners, naming quantum computing as a frontier area [S39].

3.5 What Each Side Gives, and Why Each Wants the Other

[INFER] The partnership is often described as Chinese money buying Russian minds. The record shows a wider exchange, and dependence growing on both sides.

What moves	From China to Russia	From Russia to China
People and know-how	Grants that pay for Russian specialists' work (NSFC 92265208) [S1][S107]	Trapped-ion, qudit and microwave-gate specialists inside a Chinese state-funded group [S1][S2]
Facilities	USTC fabrication equipment used for a Russian detector array; a joint laser and quantum laboratory in Shanghai [S291][S441]	Russian laser, materials and fabrication institutes in joint laboratories [S443][S444]
Space	The Micius satellite that carried the 2022 key exchange; Russia has no quantum satellite of its own [S23][S275]	Ground stations, clock heritage and a navigation system that coordinates time with BeiDou [S12][S16][S18][S24]
Compute	Origin's Wukong cloud, where Russians are the second-largest foreign users by visits [S299]	The Octillion cloud, opened to Chinese users in August 2026 [S426]
Materials and inputs	Ytterbium and other rare earths under Chinese licensing; a Chinese-made propellant chemical in the Nudol missile [S355][S160]	Helium-3 and chip isotopes exported to China; a nuclear reactor for the joint lunar station [S377][S170]
Strategic capability	A joint laboratory for reusable rocket engines [S166]	Counterspace: the Nudol test and joint planning against Starlink [S110][S157]

What moves in each direction. Each cell rests on the cited sources; the pattern across cells is the authors' inference.

• [INFER] Why Moscow needs Beijing. Sanctions and export controls cut Russia off from Western suppliers; it had to build its own cryostats because none were sold to it after 2018 [S364]. China supplies money, fabrication access, a satellite and compute that Russia cannot replace quickly [S23][S291][S299].
• [INFER] Why Beijing wants Moscow. Russia offers specialists in niches China is building (ion qudits, space clocks, microwave gates), a ground segment across Eurasia for a restored satellite link, a nuclear partner for the lunar station, counterspace capability, and a co-signer for the non-Western standards that Renmin's Chongyang Institute has proposed [S1][S39][S155][S170].

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] The partnership is unequal in money and mutual in need. China supplies what sanctions deny Russia; Russia supplies what money cannot buy quickly: trained people, clock and space heritage, nuclear materials and a ground segment across Eurasia.

3.6 A Quantum Program Run From Inside the Nuclear-Weapons Complex

• [FACT] Rosatom is the responsible organization for Russia's 2025-2030 quantum computing roadmap [S126][S150].
• [FACT] VNIIA, which co-builds Russia's SnowDrop superconducting processors and cryostats with Bauman University and runs the Octillion quantum cloud with it, describes itself as one of Rosatom's leading research enterprises and is part of Rosatom's nuclear-weapons complex [S193][S312][S364][S446][S447]. It is on the US SDN list [S313].
• [FACT] The Russian Quantum Center, organizer of the Russia-China workshops, was added to the US Entity List for acquiring US-origin items "in support of nuclear explosive activities" [S386].
• [FACT] Rosatom also signed the May 2026 memorandum with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and exports helium-3 and chip-grade isotopes to China [S377][S422].

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] Russia's quantum program is organized under the establishment that designs its nuclear weapons. The institutional setting creates potential military and dual-use pathways, while the scale and performance of undisclosed work remain unknown. The same organization is now Russia's principal quantum channel to China.

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] At working level the cooperation runs on Chinese money and Russian minds: Russian specialists are invited into Chinese universities, and Chinese grants pay for the work. China has an ion base of its own (Section 4.6), so Russian expertise accelerates that program rather than creating it. In a race decided by who fields first, acceleration is the strategic contribution. [S1][S2][S39]

4. The Quantum Partnership in Detail

 

Figure 2. Dated milestones drawn from cited sources. The 2019 marker reflects the year the Russian team began working with Micius as reported in [S24]. Green markers show China's own trapped-ion base and standards work, in which no Russian role was found.

 

Graphic 4. Five years of the axis on three tracks: Russia, China and joint.

4.1 Origins: The November 2023 Visits

• [FACT] On November 21, 2023, Peking University's president Gong Qihuang received an RQC delegation led by co-founder Ruslan Iunusov, with director Alexey Akimov and Ilya Semerikov among its members, and proposed joint research, internships and joint laboratories; Iunusov described RQC as the executor of Russia's national quantum roadmap [S9].
• [FACT] At the same meeting Semerikov presented RQC's trapped-ion quantum computing work, described the ultrastable laser systems and high-speed ion-readout systems his laboratory had developed, and said it planned future work on two-dimensional ion trapping [S9].
• [FACT] The next day, November 22, 2023, an eight-person RQC delegation visited Renmin University's physics department and its Ministry of Education key laboratory. The meeting was chaired by Wei Zhang; the visitors toured laboratories including the ion-trap laboratory, and both sides agreed to pursue personnel exchanges, joint research and training [S8]. The Renmin account does not name every delegation member.

4.2 The Workshop Series

Edition	Dates and host	What the record shows
1st	June 9-13, 2024, RQC, Moscow	Trapped-ion track. Chinese ion speakers included Tsinghua University and Huayi Quantum (HYQ); Renmin/BAQIS presented ion-trap quantum control [S5].
2nd	April 25-30, 2025, USTC, Hefei	Announced by the CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information; contact Xiao-Ye Xu (USTC) [S6]. A USTC organizing-committee member records it as jointly held by his laboratory and the Russian Academy of Sciences [S117]. No program or speaker list was found. Rosatom later reported more than 250 participants across the first two editions [S7].
3rd	June 11-14, 2026, RQC, Moscow	Organizing committee co-chaired by Alexey Akimov (RQC) and Wei Zhang (Renmin/BAQIS); opened by RQC's CEO and Rosatom's director of quantum technologies; back-to-back ion talks by Semerikov and Zhang, and a poster session with at least five trapped-ion entries, among them gate sets on ytterbium ququarts, a Lebedev surface-trap poster (Gerasin, Semerikov, Kolachevsky and colleagues), calcium-ion quantum logic, ytterbium octupole spectroscopy and a trapped-ion memristor; Chinese speakers from BAQIS, Renmin, USTC, Nankai, Xi'an Jiaotong and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China; an RQC laboratory tour on the closing day; started immediately after the first BRICS Quantum Technologies Forum [S4][S7].

4.3 The Trapped-Ion Axis

• [FACT] Wei Zhang has led BAQIS's ion-trap computing team since April 2021, a small team of four [S10]. In 2023 he co-founded an annual young-scholars meeting on ion-trap computing with UESTC's Xiaoting Wang, who later spoke at the 2026 Moscow workshop [S4][S11]. Zhang also spoke at RQC's own International Conference on Quantum Technologies in July 2025 [S116].
• [FACT] Zhang's group is funded under National Natural Science Foundation Key Project 92265208, "digital quantum computing technology and algorithms based on trapped ions," awarded to Renmin University in 2022 under the foundation's Second-Generation Quantum Systems major research plan with RMB 3.4 million in direct funding [S107].
• [FACT] Semerikov's team, which had earlier ion-clock and two-qubit experience at Lebedev, built Russia's ion computing line under the national roadmap from 2019 and reached a 50-qubit-equivalent universal processor in 2024 built on ytterbium-171 qudits (25 ququarts with full connectivity) [S2], and to 70 qubit-equivalents on 35 ions by December 2025, with two-qubit fidelity of 96.1 percent; at a February 2026 press tour the institute gave 95.4 percent for the same machine and said the team had run Grover, Bernstein-Vazirani and GHZ-state preparation as known-answer tests [S123][S430]. The group's peer-reviewed and preprint results on smaller registers report 92.7 percent on eight ions (including state-preparation and measurement errors) and 95 percent on ten [S431][S432]. That machine still uses a conventional three-dimensional (volumetric) trap; planar traps are Russia's next-generation scaling path, not its current architecture [S108][S123]. By November 2024 BAQIS described him as a visiting scholar working with Renmin University's trapped-ion group, when he lectured there on that processor [S2].

WHAT IS A QUDIT? A qubit holds two states, a qutrit three and a ququart four. Russia's Lebedev computer stores two qubits in each ytterbium ion as a ququart, so 35 ions are counted as 70 "qubit-equivalents." RQC's calcium machine goes further: each ion holds a seven-level qudit (values 0 to 6), worth log2(7), about 2.8 qubits, so 26 ions are counted as 72 [S388][S389]. Qudits pack more information into each ion; they do not add error-corrected scale, and their two-qubit-equivalent gates, about 96 percent, are not directly comparable with qubit gates elsewhere (Section 6). The approach is not unique to Russia: Innsbruck demonstrated a universal trapped-ion qudit processor in 2022. [S2][S123][S151]

 

Graphic 6. Qubits, ququarts and seven-level qudits: why 35 and 26 ions are counted as 70 and 72 qubit-equivalents.

[FACT] Three Chinese-funded papers pair members of Semerikov's Lebedev and RQC network with Wei Zhang's Renmin and BAQIS group. All three acknowledge grant 92265208.

Paper	Russian co-authors	Chinese funding acknowledged	Date
In situ Doppler-free spectroscopy with pulsed optical fields (Physical Review A 112, 022825) [S104]	Vasilii Smirnov and Ilya Semerikov (Lebedev; RQC)	NSFC 92265208 and four other NSFC grants; National Key R&D Program 2022YFA1405300	First posted April 2024; published August 29, 2025
Enhanced response at exceptional points in multiqubit systems for sensing (Physical Review A 111, 032203) [S105]	Vasilii Smirnov (Lebedev; RQC)	National Key R&D Program 2022YFA1405301; NSFC 92265208 and 12074428	March 4, 2025
Surface Ion Trap for Fast Microwave Gates (Chips) [S1]	Ilya Gerasin; Ilya Semerikov (Lebedev; RQC; also Renmin)	NSFC 92265208; Beijing Foreign High-level Talent Program C2024003	October 5, 2025

[FACT] None of the three China-funded papers uses qudit encoding. The joint microwave-trap design keeps qubits in the ions' hyperfine splitting and models beryllium and calcium ions, not ytterbium ququarts; the spectroscopy paper stabilizes a laser for ytterbium work; and the sensing paper is a theory of multi-qubit systems [S1][S104][S105]. [INFER] Russia's most distinctive computing skill, multi-level qudit control, has not visibly entered the joint work. What the record shows passing into the Chinese-funded program is surface-trap and microwave-gate engineering.

• [FACT] The surface-trap paper simulates planar traps with chip-integrated microwave conductors and finds two-qubit gate times on the order of 10 microseconds for beryllium and calcium ions. Semerikov is credited with conceptualization, Semerikov and Gerasin with methodology, Gerasin with software and the original draft, Zhang with review and editing, and Zhang and Semerikov with supervision [S1].
• [FACT] It has a Russian precursor. In August 2024, Gerasin, Semerikov and Lebedev colleagues published an optimized surface-trap design for tight confinement and separation of ion chains, with Russian affiliations only and funding from the Russian Science Foundation [S106].
• [FACT] The 2025 paper's analysis centers on two microwave-gate schemes. It credits the first, a single microwave wire, to Oxford Ionics' published paper on all-electronic control of trapped-ion qubits, and the second, two opposed wires, to an Oxford group whose authors include Oxford Ionics' co-founders; it then focuses its design work on those two [S1][S199].
• [FACT] On August 12, 2026, Rosatom announced Russia's first qubit operations on planar ion traps under the national roadmap: Semerikov's Lebedev group trapped and moved ytterbium-171 ions and performed single-qubit operations, and an RQC group did the same with calcium ions. No two-qubit operations were reported [S108].
• [FACT] The August 2026 JETP Letters paper by Gerasin, Semerikov, Kolachevsky and colleagues reports spectroscopy of a ytterbium-171 ion in a planar trap, funded by a Rosatom roadmap contract dated August 21, 2025, using a trap from Skoltech; Gerasin is first and corresponding author, Skoltech's Sherstov is a co-author, and the paper cites the China-funded design with Wei Zhang where it discusses near-field microwave control of qubits; it names ground-state cooling and two-qubit operations as next steps [S3].
• [FACT] The experiment's maturity boundary. The paper reports trapping of a single ion, spectroscopy of the quadrupole qubit transition, Rabi oscillations, secular-frequency measurements and an ion heating rate. It places cooling to the ground vibrational state, two-qubit operations and a narrower qubit line (by compensating fiber noise) in future work. The authors judge the heating, about 0.44 phonons over a characteristic 0.5 ms two-qubit gate, sufficient for one- and two-qubit operations, and expect large reductions from better electrode surfaces and cryogenic operation; the trap's gold electrodes sit on a silicon nitride substrate [S3].
• [FACT] Two details need clarification, not suspicion. The abstract gives a heating rate of 840 ± 100 s⁻¹, while the body text and the subsequent calculations use 880 ± 100 s⁻¹; the uncertainties overlap. The paper's Figure 2 combines a separately acquired image of the electrode structure with the image of a five-ion chain "for greater clarity," so it does not by itself identify the chip used in the measurements [S3].
• [INFER] The technical lineage runs Russian design (2024), China-funded joint design (2025), Russian planar-trap experiments (2026). The documented Russian contributions are to Chinese-funded joint research; implementation in a Chinese processor is not shown, and nothing in the record shows Chinese hardware flowing into Russia's program.
• [INFER] The relationship is wider than one visiting scholar. Besides Semerikov, two other members of his Lebedev and RQC network appear on Chinese-funded work with Zhang's group, one of them on a paper Semerikov did not co-author [S1][S104][S105].
• [INFER] On the China-funded paper Semerikov lists Renmin; on the Rosatom-funded paper he lists Lebedev only [S1][S3]. Funding streams appear to be kept apart on paper.
• [UNDISC] The recipient, host and purpose of Beijing Foreign High-level Talent Program grant C2024003 were not found. This report does not claim it funded Semerikov's appointment.

WESTERN TECHNOLOGY IN RUSSIAN WORK [FACT] Western designs are the template. The China-funded Lebedev-Renmin study builds on microwave-gate schemes published by Oxford Ionics and Russia's planar-trap papers point to Quantinuum's QCCD architecture as the field's leading design. This is study of published work, not documented theft, but it shows whose technology the axis is measuring itself against. Oxford Ionics has been an IonQ subsidiary since September 2025 (Section 10.4). [S1][S3][S199][S200][S392]

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] Russian trapped-ion expertise is flowing into a Chinese state-funded program, from a sanctioned Russian center to an unlisted Chinese university inside an Entity-Listed network, through papers, grants and workshops that no hardware control can stop. [S1][S28][S30][S104][S105]

A detector-fabrication exchange at USTC. The trapped-ion axis is not the only place where the mechanism shows up in laboratory work.

• [FACT] In a May 2026 HSE University interview, doctoral researcher Ilya Venediktov, on a long-term internship at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei through the Chinese Academy of Sciences, describes finding the fabrication equipment his work needed at USTC. The detector array "was fabricated on the first attempt in 1.5 weeks," and "as measurements in Russia showed, most of them were working." The university "provides us with access to technological equipment, and in return receives finished detectors," along with the chance to learn how to make them [S291][S292].
• [FACT] The Russian superconducting-detector maker Scontel has a long-standing partnership with the host group, which has bought Scontel's multichannel detector systems [S292]. Venediktov is also a co-author of the 2025 Zelenograd photonic-integration paper described in Section 4.5 [S294].
• [INFER] This is a reported exchange described in an institutional interview: equipment access for finished devices and fabrication know-how, carried out through laboratory work rather than a hardware sale, and beyond workshops and coauthored papers.

What the USTC account does not show [UNDISC] No matching batch identifier, transfer receipt or Russian measurement file was recovered in the public sources examined. "Most of them were working" has no stated denominator or pass criteria, and electrical response or count-versus-bias data alone would not establish photon-number resolution. The missing chain runs USTC batch and die, Russian receiving label, dated mounting position and channel, native measurement file, per-device outcome (Appendix D). The interview implies, but does not state outright, that the array was made at USTC. [FACT] The devices are fiber-coupled photon-number-resolving detectors. They are not ion-trap hardware and not part of a joint trapped-ion processor [S291][S292].

 

Graphic 5. How the trapped-ion channel works: people, money and papers. No processor or trap hardware is shown crossing a border on the public record, which since March 2026 would not be expected to show it.

4.4 From Space Clocks to Quantum Computers: Russia's Planar-Trap Lineage

Russia's planar-trap work did not begin as a quantum-computing project. The record shows branches, not a single line: a space-clock branch, a Rosatom computing branch and a China-funded design branch, joined by shared people and citations. It descends from a space navigation clock program, and the same people carried it from orbit-bound clocks to Russia's national quantum-computing roadmap. The China-funded collaboration with Wei Zhang is a third branch grafted onto that lineage: it draws on the same people and the same surface-trap know-how, and Russia's own 2026 experiment cites it. That is continuity of engineering work; no record shows the joint design became the 2026 device.

Branch 1: space clocks ■  2017: IBIS onboard ytterbium clock; RKS as industrial partner [S205][S206] ■  2022-23: Skoltech planar traps for compact clocks and computing [S12][S207] ■  2026: Russia's first surface-trapped ion, Skoltech, MEPhI and Lebedev [S208]	Branch 2: Rosatom computing ■  2024: Gerasin and Semerikov numerical QCCD design, citing Skoltech [S106] ■  A Lebedev-designed chip manufactured at MIET [S210] ■  2026: Gerasin's planar-trap experiment and first qubit operations [S3][S108]
Branch 3: China-funded design ■  2025: symmetric microwave-gate design with Wei Zhang [S1] ■  Funded by NSFC and a Beijing talent program [S1] ■  No record that it was ever fabricated	How the branches connect ■  Shared people across clocks and computing [S106][S205] ■  The 2026 experiment cites the 2025 design: a citation, not a build [S3] ■  Ownership, inventorship and fabrication are separate facts

• [FACT] In October 2017 the Lebedev Institute began the IBIS (Ytterbium Onboard Ion Standard) project under a Ministry of Science agreement, with Skoltech, the Institute of Laser Physics and Avesta as co-executors and Russian Space Systems (RKS) as industrial partner. A 2018 paper by Kolachevsky, Khabarova, Zalivako, Semerikov, Borisenko and Skoltech's Sherstov describes RKS as playing a defining role in coordinating the consortium, with the goal of a compact single-ytterbium-ion frequency standard for satellite navigation [S205][S206].
• [FACT] RKS showed a cold-ytterbium-ion optical clock built with photonics at MAKS-2021, with Lebedev as principal developer and Skoltech among partners [S13]. A 2022 paper by the same Lebedev team with Skoltech's Sherstov and Abbasov, supported by the Russian Space Agency, discussed planar traps with integrated photonic couplers as a route toward a space-qualified clock [S12]. Skoltech's 2023 annual report records that "successful work was conducted for 'Russian Space Systems' company to create technologies for compact optical frequency standards with PIC elements in order to develop domestic precision navigation systems" [S295]. The report continues: "The first Russian planar ion trap based on PIC technologies has been created for use in the developed systems of quantum sensors and quantum computing on single ions" [S295]. RKS-contracted clock photonics and the computing trap are named in the same sentence.
• [FACT] Skoltech's 2023 surface-trap design named both satellite-navigation clocks and quantum computation as uses [S207]. In 2026 a Skoltech, MEPhI and Lebedev team reported Russia's first ion trapped in a microfabricated surface trap, a single ytterbium-174 ion, with keywords pointing to frequency standards; the paper reports institutional funding only [S208].
• [FACT] Gerasin and Semerikov's 2024 quantum-computing design cites the Skoltech work and redesigns the trap for QCCD operation: a lower ion height of about 80 micrometers, asymmetric RF electrodes that rotate the motional axes by about 14 degrees, and segmented electrodes to split ion chains [S106]. The 2025 design with Wei Zhang is a further redesign, adding integrated microwave conductors, field-gradient and thermal optimization, and fast two-qubit gate targets [S1].
• [FACT] Rosatom's quantum company owns Russian utility patent RU216379U1, "Welded Paul Trap," filed June 20, 2022 and published January 31, 2023: a compact linear trap with blade electrodes welded to copper-coated alumina plates for quantum computing. Its inventors are Semerikov, Zalivako, Aksenov and Borisenko [S214].
• [INFER] Semerikov is therefore a named inventor on Rosatom-owned ion-trap intellectual property while serving as a visiting scholar in a Chinese state-funded group. No record shows that patented design, or any other Rosatom-owned trap IP, passing to China; the joint 2025 design is a planar microwave trap, not this blade trap [S1][S2][S214].
• [FACT] The 2026 Rosatom-funded experiment led by Gerasin trapped ions in a planar trap, cites the Skoltech trapping result, and cites the joint Zhang design in its discussion of microwave control [S3]. Rosatom announced the first qubit operations on planar traps the same month [S108]. The 2026 experimental trap, the 2024 numerical design and the 2025 symmetric microwave design are different designs and experimental configurations; the two designs are numerical studies and do not themselves establish fabricated devices, and the record does not show the 2026 chip descending from the joint design. The 2026 trap is asymmetric, with 210 µm and 410 µm RF electrodes and a 240 µm center electrode, and holds ions about 220 µm above the surface [S3]; the 2024 design targets about 80 µm [S106], and the joint design's worked example uses an 80 µm center electrode and 40 µm rails [S1].

Russian branch	What the record shows	Sources
Lebedev / RQC ytterbium processor	Semerikov, Zalivako, Borisenko, Gerasin and Kolachevsky; the 70-qubit-equivalent machine and the planar-trap transition; Rosatom roadmap funding.	[S3][S108][S123]
Skoltech, MEPhI and Lebedev Troitsk surface traps	Abbasov and Sherstov; planar trap designs from 2023, Russia's first surface-trapped ion in 2026; roots in the IBIS clock program.	[S12][S207][S208]
RQC calcium surface traps	Lakhmanskiy and Suleimen; surface traps with adjustable ion couplings and integrated single-photon detectors. The work acknowledges Rosatom Quantum Computing Roadmap contract 868-1.3-15/15-2021 of October 5, 2021, which also appears on non-trapped-ion research, and Rosatom contracts Р2185 and Р2178.	[S209][S213]
MIET fabrication	A Lebedev-designed surface Paul trap chip, three gold layers on silicon, was manufactured at the Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology.	[S210]
Rosatom's quantum company	ООО «СП «Квантовые технологии», founded in 2020 by Atomenergoprom and wholly owned by it; a 2020 sole-source contract for 157 equipment items, including electron-beam lithography, cryostats, lasers and ion-trap apparatus; holder of a 2023 patent for a welded blade-electrode Paul trap invented by Semerikov, Zalivako, Aksenov and Borisenko.	[S211][S212][S214]

Boundary	What this report can and cannot say
Documented	Shared people and surface-trap methods across the IBIS space clock program, Skoltech's planar traps, Gerasin and Semerikov's QCCD design and Rosatom-funded planar experiments; a China-funded Zhang design branch that the 2026 experiment cites.
Reasonable inference	The Zhang collaboration took place inside an active Russian national effort to move its trapped-ion architecture to scalable planar and QCCD systems, not as an isolated academic exchange; the documented Russian contributions to Chinese-funded joint research were surface-trap engineering, with strong Russian methodological provenance (Semerikov conceptualization; Semerikov and Gerasin methodology; Gerasin software). Their implementation in a Chinese processor is not shown.
Unproven	Transfer to China of Rosatom-owned trap patents, a specific Russian chip geometry, fabrication package or protected intellectual property; physical fabrication of the joint microwave design. The planar trap now in Russian experiments traces to Skoltech and is not the joint design.

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] Russia's quantum-computing planar traps descend from a space navigation clock program. The same Lebedev and Skoltech people moved from orbit-bound ytterbium clocks to Rosatom's quantum roadmap, and the China-funded design with Wei Zhang is a branch of that work. Space, timing and quantum computing are one technology family in Russia. China's documented link to it is co-authored design work and a citation, not a shared device. [S1][S3][S106][S205][S206]

 

Graphic 7. The planar-trap lineage, from a satellite-navigation clock to Russia's computing program.

4.5 Who Builds the Hardware: Fabrication and Contracted Work

The lineage above traces designs and people. This section traces who built, coated and paid for the hardware. Each fact below is documented; what connects them is not yet.

• [FACT] Named contributions to the detector-trap hardware. RQC's Lakhmanskiy group and the HSE detector group of Goltsman built a surface ion-trap mockup integrated with a superconducting single-photon detector; Kseniya Sedykh is first author of both papers. The 2025 paper presents "an implementation of a surface ion-trap mockup integrated with an SSPD," shielded by an ITO (indium tin oxide) layer, and thanks "A. Zaitsev of MIET for depositing the ITO coating." Funding: Ministry of Science grant FSME-2025-0004 for detector research and the MISIS Priority-2030 "Quantum Internet" strategic project for detector fabrication [S213][S293].
• [FACT] Rosatom contracts on the trap mockup. The 2023 paper, which studies "a mockup of a surface ion trap for a scalable quantum computer," was supported by Rosatom under the Quantum Computing Roadmap: "Contract No. 868-1.3-15/15-2021 dated October 5, 2021 and Contracts No. Р2185, Р2178" [S213]. Р2185 and Р2178 are Rosatom contract numbers; their dates and scope are not public.
• [FACT] Chip manufacture. A Lebedev-designed surface Paul trap chip, three gold layers on silicon, was manufactured at the Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology (MIET) [S210].
• [FACT] Domestic photonic integration in Zelenograd. A 2025 paper by Abanin, Venediktov, Goltsman, Svetukhin and colleagues, with the Technological Centre, MIET, MISIS, HSE, Skoltech and RQC, reports that the silicon oxide and silicon nitride layer processes "were developed at the production facility" of the Technological Centre, that layouts "were created in Python," and that silicon nitride was etched on a "CORIAL-200R" setup. Fabrication was funded by Russian Science Foundation grant 23-91-06308 and design by Ministry grant FNRM-2025-0014 [S294].
• [FACT] Grant 23-91-06308 is a domestic applied-development project with an industrial customer. The Foundation's project card lists it as experimental design work led by MIET's Pyotr Lazarenko, a co-author of the paper, under competition No. 3014 for applied research "within the strategic initiatives of the President of the Russian Federation" in photonic-integrated-circuit production. It targets silicon and silicon-nitride resonant structures "unified for assembly with semiconductor laser modules" at 1.55 µm, CMOS-compatible, and its results are to be delivered "in interaction with the executors of lots 3 and 4" and "the customer organization." No foreign partner is listed [S296].
• [FACT] Commissioned clock photonics. Skoltech's 2023 annual report, under the heading "Quantum sensing and computing, navigation," states that work was "successfully completed by order of JSC Russian Space Systems" (по заказу АО «Российские космические системы») to create compact optical frequency standards with photonic-integrated-circuit elements for domestic precision navigation. The same page says Skoltech designs, produces "at third-party fabs" and tests photonic chips, and built Russia's first library of passive photonic components "as one of the stages of creating a full-function fab in the Russian Federation." The same passage states: "The first Russian planar ion trap based on PIC technologies has been created for use in the developed systems of quantum sensors and quantum computing on single ions" [S295].

A DOMESTIC BUILD CHAIN [INFER] Russia's trapped-ion and clock hardware has a domestic build chain: design at Lebedev and Skoltech, chips and coatings at MIET, photonic layers at Zelenograd's Technological Centre, detectors from the HSE, MISIS and RQC group, RKS commissioning clock photonics, and a presidential strategic initiative funding chip production. A partner who works with these people works alongside that chain, even when no hardware ships. [S210][S293][S294][S295][S296]

Device	Source	Geometry on the record	Status
Skoltech numerical surface-trap design (171Yb+)	2023 [S207]	Parameter sweep: center electrode 200-600 µm, RF electrodes 100-400 µm.	Design study
Gerasin-Semerikov QCCD design	2024 [S106]	Ion height about 80 µm; asymmetric RF electrodes rotating the motional axes about 14 degrees; segmented electrodes.	Numerical design
Joint microwave-gate design with Wei Zhang (NSFC-funded)	2025 [S1]	Widths swept 30-200 µm; worked example with an 80 µm center electrode, 40 µm RF rails and 10 µm gaps; integrated microwave conductors.	Design; no record of fabrication
Skoltech 174Yb+ chip	2026 [S208]	Made and tested in Russia; electrode widths not given in the text.	Russia's first surface-trapped ion
Asymmetric trap in Gerasin's Rosatom-funded experiment	2026 [S3]	"The trap is asymmetrical: the radiofrequency electrodes have widths of 210 and 410 µm, the central electrode is 240 µm." Potential minimum about 220 µm above the electrodes.	Ions trapped and measured; first qubit operations announced [S108]

Five designs and experimental configurations. The publications document different experimental configurations; their relationship at the individual chip level remains unresolved. The device Russia now operates is not the device designed with Chinese funding.

Boundary	What this section can and cannot say
Documented	Named contributors and steps: Sedykh's trap-detector mockups, funded under Rosatom roadmap contracts including Р2185 and Р2178; Zaitsev's ITO deposition at MIET; a MIET-made Lebedev trap chip; Technological Centre layer production under a presidential strategic-initiative grant with a named customer organization; RKS-commissioned photonics at Skoltech.
Not shown	The dates and scope of Rosatom contracts Р2185 and Р2178. No shared specimen identifier connects design release, fabrication, acceptance and MIET coating. The ring-resonator samples are photonic test structures, not the traps. Coating, complete-chip fabrication and commercial supply remain separate facts; no commercial supply of trap chips is on the record.

 

Graphic 8. Russia's working trap and the China-funded design, drawn to the same scale.

 

Graphic 9. Russia's domestic build chain, and the missing link between its steps.

4.6 China's Own Trapped-Ion Base and Its New Standards

• [FACT] Huayi Boao's patent CN115409190A, published November 29, 2022, treats microwave-electrode, gradient-magnetic-field addressing as known technology and rejects it in favor of optical addressing [S114]. That is a year before the first recorded RQC visit to Renmin.
• [FACT] NUDT reports an in-house room-temperature surface-electrode trap with coherent control of chains of up to 20 ions, funded under national major project 2021ZD0301605 (Acta Physica Sinica, 2025) [S115].
• [FACT] Wei Zhang of Renmin University presented "Testing of instantaneous coherent quantum speed limit with trapped ions," an experiment on ytterbium ions, at IQOQI Innsbruck on June 30, 2026; the announcement does not say where the experiment was performed [S297]. [INFER] Zhang's group runs ion experiments of its own, which cuts against reading the Russian channel as China's main source of ion know-how.
• [INFER] China's surface-trap and addressing capability is its own. The Russian contribution visible in the record is narrower: specialist work on fast microwave gates.
• [FACT] On March 6, 2026, China's national quantum standards committee (TC578) was renamed the National Quantum Technology Standardization Technical Committee and its remit widened to computing and simulation, measurement, communication and networks, and enabling technologies, with Pan Jianwei as chair and Zhang Qiang of the Jinan Institute of Quantum Technology as secretary-general [S111].
• [FACT] TC578, whose secretariat, the Jinan Institute of Quantum Technology, is itself on the US Entity List [S30], registered project 20264590-Z-469, a reference architecture for trapped-ion quantum computing systems, was registered on August 29, 2026. Its 20 drafting units are led by Huayi Boao and include the Hefei National Laboratory, NUDT, Tsinghua, Renmin, Peking University, USTC and China Mobile [S109]. A sibling project sets a reference architecture for superconducting systems [S109].
• [FACT] China's first national standard for testing quantum computer performance, GB/T 47468-2026, was published on April 30, 2026, and takes effect on November 1, 2026. Its 30 drafting units include USTC, the Hefei National Laboratory, Huayi Boao, NUDT and BAQIS, Wei Zhang's Entity-Listed institution; Huayi's chief technology officer, Yang Haoxiang (杨蒿翔), is a named drafter [S120][S121].
• [FACT] China funds trapped-ion computing and networking as one system. A Tsinghua trapped-ion network-node experiment, with HYQ and the Hefei National Laboratory, acknowledges national awards from both the computing program (2021ZD0301604) and the communication program (2021ZD0301102) [S112].
• [FACT] In a laboratory demonstration, Pan Jianwei's team reported long-lived entanglement between two trapped-ion memories over 10 km of spooled fiber, lasting longer than the time needed to create the next pair, the threshold a working repeater must clear, and ran proof-of-principle device-independent quantum key distribution over 10 km, with positive key projected to 101 km only in the asymptotic limit (Nature, published online February 2, 2026; issue of April 2) [S113]. It is not a fielded link or an operating repeater network.
• [FACT] Renmin University is a drafting institution on the reference-architecture project. [INFER] Renmin is also home of the Russia-facing trapped-ion group, but no record names that group or any individual Renmin researcher as a drafter, and no record shows Russian content or Russian drafters in the project. This is where the RIAC-Fudan proposal for de-Westernized standards could become concrete if Russia were invited in; there is no sign of that yet [S39].

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] China is writing a trapped-ion stack: a national reference architecture for the computer, with networking funded alongside it, and Renmin University, home of the Russia-facing trapped-ion group, is among the drafting institutions. [S109][S112][S113]

4.7 Quantum Communication

• [FACT] Russian scientists from MISIS, RQC and QSpace began working with China's Micius satellite in 2019; a ground station was set up at Zvenigorod; the first complete Russia-China quantum communication test was run on March 1, 2022, with the Nanshan station near Urumqi [S23][S24].
• [FACT] QSpace was founded in 2017 and was owned in equal shares by RQC and RQC's scientific director as of 2022, with seed funding from Gazprombank [S25]. MISIS and QSpace launched Impuls-1, a laser-communication testbed for future quantum satellites, from Vostochny on June 27, 2023 [S24][S26]. MISIS lists it as a 6U CubeSat, NORAD 57181 [S232]. It carries a classical laser terminal, not quantum hardware; by February 2024 weather had prevented its active laser tests, and its current orbital status could not be confirmed.
• [FACT] Micius re-entered the atmosphere on January 25, 2026, ending the satellite path used in the 2022 test [S125]. China's other quantum satellite, Jinan-1, which linked Beijing and Stellenbosch, South Africa, in a March 2025 Nature paper, had already fallen into the South Pacific on October 17, 2025 [S55][S132][S154]. China has no announced quantum-communication satellite in orbit today.
• [INFER] A BRICS quantum-secured channel is technically demonstrated in pieces. Russian sources also report Rostec joining a BRICS project for an intercontinental quantum communication channel [S101]; that report was not independently verified.

Russia's fielded backbone. The satellite link is dormant; Russia's terrestrial quantum network is not.

• [FACT] Russian Railways' trunk quantum network, a fiber network that opened between Moscow and St. Petersburg in 2021, reached 7,012 km by June 2025 and 7,858 km across 27 regions and 13 cities of over a million people, from St. Petersburg and Moscow to Kazan, Ufa, Perm and Yekaterinburg, by May 2026 [S397][S398]. At its 2021 launch the plan was about 7,000 km by 2024 [S416].
• [FACT] Government Decree No. 970 of August 3, 2026, in force from August 11, adds quantum communications and quantum cryptography over the trunk network to Russian Railways' lines of business, so it can now sell the service; plans drawn up with the communications ministry expect operators to offer secure-communication services to clients by 2030 [S397][S399]. VTB's May 2026 InfoTeCS quantum key distribution test between its Moscow data centers is one early user case [S323].
• [UNDISC] No published plan or report extends the network across the border to China, Kazakhstan or Belarus; Russian- and Chinese-language searches found none. No kilometer target for 2030 was found.
• [INFER] This is Russia's largest fielded quantum capability, and it appears in no paper count or tracker reviewed in Section 2.5. It supports secure links outside Western reach at home; it does not yet connect to China.

CRITICAL STATEMENT [FACT] Neither Russia nor China has an announced quantum-communication satellite in orbit today. China says it is preparing the next one, and when it flies, the Russia-China quantum channel can return. [S125][S154][S155]

4.8 Timing and Navigation: The Strategic Strand

• [FACT] Roscosmos and China's satellite navigation commission formed a joint committee in 2015 with four working groups [S16]. On February 4, 2022, they signed an agreement on complementarity of GLONASS and BeiDou time scales [S17]. GLONASS stations are being placed in Changchun, Urumqi and Shanghai; BeiDou stations in Obninsk, Irkutsk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky [S18]. A new roadmap followed in 2025 [S19].
• [FACT] The US Air Force's China Aerospace Studies Institute calls satellite navigation one of the most robust strands of China-Russia space cooperation [S52].
• [FACT] Roscosmos targets GLONASS accuracy of 2.5 meters by 2028 and decimeter level by 2031, from 7-8 meters today [S97]. Better onboard clocks are a direct lever on that target.
• [FACT] What the 2022 agreement does technically is not public. The committee's September 2022 meeting placed reciprocal measurement stations and a joint information service for users [S400]. Coordinated time scales are routine among navigation systems: Galileo has broadcast its offset from GPS time in its navigation message since 2013 [S401]. [INFER] Read on its own, the agreement is ordinary interoperability. What raises it is the combination: two dual-use systems, both outside Western control, adding better clocks while their partners plan counterspace operations (Sections 5.6 and 5.9).
• [INFER] The risk the partnership adds is marginal to a risk that exists anyway. Two non-GPS constellations would challenge GPS dependence with or without cooperation; coordination makes each more useful to the other's forces, and better onboard clocks, which neither has yet flown (Russia's ytterbium clock is aimed at space tests in the 2030s; China's optical clock flies on its space station, not on BeiDou), would widen the gap [S12][S22].

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] Timing is the strategic strand. Two dual-use navigation constellations with coordinated time scales and better onboard clocks would give both militaries timing that does not depend on GPS. [S12][S17][S131]

4.9 Space Clocks: Parallel National Programs

Program	Status	Link to the ion network
Lebedev transportable Yb+ single-ion optical clock	Prototype of 298 kg in 1 m3, designed toward space qualification; supported by the Russian Space Agency; space tests envisioned in the 2030s; next generation to use planar traps with integrated photonics [S12].	Same team as the ion computer: Semerikov, Zalivako, Khabarova, Kolachevsky; Sherstov (Skoltech) [S12][S3].
Russian Space Systems (Roscosmos) cold-ytterbium-ion frequency generator	Shown at MAKS-2021 as the first ground prototype of a prospective onboard standard; Lebedev was main developer; RKS said it would improve GLONASS positioning by an order of magnitude [S13].	Lebedev.
Lebedev thulium optical clock	In December 2025 the president of the Russian Academy of Sciences told Putin it could raise GLONASS accuracy by an order of magnitude and be used in space [S14].	Lebedev; thulium clock researchers presented at the 2024 workshop [S5].
ILF SB RAS Yb+ standard (Novosibirsk)	Russia's first optical standard on a single Yb-171 quadrupole transition; for GLONASS ground segment and, with modification, the space segment [S15].	Separate institute.
China mercury-ion microwave clock	15-liter prototype with 6.3e-16 long-term stability, aimed at spaceborne use and GNSS [S20]; the Wuhan team that builds BeiDou rubidium clocks named the mercury-ion clock as its next-generation spaceborne clock [S21].	No personnel overlap found.
China Space Station time-frequency payload	Strontium optical clock, hydrogen maser and laser-cooled microwave clock launched October 2022 [S22].	No personnel overlap found.

 

Figure 3. Stated volumes of clock packages. Different physics and different years; the comparison is of deployability, not accuracy [S12][S20][S67].

[INFER] The Lebedev clock team says its next-generation clock will use chip-based surface traps with integrated photonics to shrink the system for space [S12]. That is the same technology family the China-funded paper studies [S1]. No Chinese participation in the clock program was found; the overlap is in the shared technology base and the people.

4.10 Maturity by Domain

Domain	Maturity	Tag	Key evidence
Trapped-ion computing	Joint research, early stage	FACT/INFER	Three China-funded co-authored papers; one visiting scholar; no shared hardware [S1][S2][S104][S105].
Workshops and people	Institutionalized	FACT	Three annual editions; Chinese co-chair in 2026 [S4][S6][S7].
Chinese trapped-ion standards	Chinese national effort; Russian role not found	FACT/UNDISC	TC578 reference-architecture project; Renmin among drafters [S109].
Quantum communication	Demonstrated in 2022; dormant since Micius re-entered	FACT	Full-cycle QKD via Micius, March 2022; satellite re-entered January 2026 [S23][S24][S125].
Navigation timing	Government-level agreement	FACT	Time-scale complementarity agreement, February 2022; mechanism not public [S17][S400].
Terrestrial quantum networks	Fielded in Russia; national only	FACT	Russian Railways' 7,858 km trunk network, licensed to sell services from August 11, 2026 [S397][S399].
Space clocks	Parallel national programs	INFER	No joint hardware found [S12][S20].
Supply chain	Documented exposure for Western industry; no joint supply found	FACT/UNDISC	Ytterbium and erbium controls suspended to November 10, 2026; Rosatom's isotope share; Rosatom helium-3 contracts with China (Section 11.11). No Chinese components found in Russian ion systems [S355][S357][S377].
Policy coordination	Present, indirect	FACT	Russia blocked Wassenaar additions in 2023 and 2024, pushing allies to national quantum controls [S32].

4.11 Russia's Quantum Sensors: Behind, and Rebuilding

[FACT] Quantum sensing is Russia's weakest quantum field. Rostec's 2019 roadmap proposed 41 billion rubles for nineteen sensor types but was sent back for rework, never funded, and dropped in 2023 [S272]. A 2020 draft by MISIS rated Russia two to four technology-readiness levels behind world leaders, and at level 1 against 4-5 abroad for cold-atom gravimeters and accelerometers [S273]. The field has now been restarted under Rosatom.

 

Graphic 10. Russia's six quantum sensor projects and their prototype schedule.

6 Rosatom sensor projects launched in 2026, six more planned for 2027 [S269][S270]

9.68B rubles program budget 2026-2030, half federal (single source) [S270]

TRL 1 vs 4-5 Russia against world leaders in cold-atom gravimeters, 2020 [S273]

0 fielded Russian quantum navigation sensors found in the public record

Rosatom's first six sensor projects (2026)	What it would do
Quantum scalar navigation magnetometer	Autonomous, jam-resistant navigation by the Earth's magnetic field
Relocatable atomic gravimeter	Gravity mapping for navigation and geology
Ultra-compact digital laser gyroscope with quantum-level noise	Inertial navigation
Small inertial measurement module on a nuclear-magnetic-resonance gyroscope	Inertial navigation for aircraft and ships
Sensors and thermometers on superconducting tunnel nanostructures	Precision measurement
Super-resolution spectrometer with quantum-limited noise	Metrology and science

[FACT] The program was approved by Rosatom order on May 8, 2026, and targets aircraft and ship navigation, geological exploration, metrology and telecommunications under the federal project for applied research in the national project for the data economy [S269][S270][S271]. Four of the six projects are navigation sensors.

[FACT] What exists today is laboratory work: a microwave-free diamond magnetometer at about 18 nT/√Hz [S283], a three-pulse rubidium atom-interferometer gravimeter [S282], and nuclear-magnetic-resonance gyroscopes at the modeling stage. Russia's fielded navigation without GLONASS still relies on laser gyroscopes [S280]. Its genuine strengths are superconducting single-photon detectors and optical clocks [S12].

[FACT] The national metrology institute VNIIFTRI is creating a Center for Quantum Measurements, ordered in May 2024, whose stated purpose includes jam-resistant autonomous navigation based on the Earth's gravity and magnetic fields [S274].

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] A not-yet-peer-reviewed study traces strong navigation interference over Europe to Russian early-warning satellites (Section 5.7) [S261], yet at home Russia's navigation without GLONASS still rests on laser gyroscopes [S280]. Its metrology institute and Rosatom's new program aim to close that gap. [S269][S274]

What this means for the partnership [INFER] In sensing, Russia needs China more than China needs Russia. China already flies an optical clock and a cold-atom inertial sensor on its space station and fields quantum sensors at scale [S22][S181]. Russia's contribution to the axis is clocks, single-photon detectors, specialists and jamming, not quantum sensors. A Russia-China sensing agreement would therefore signal Russian dependence, and none has been found. [UNDISC] Classified navigation work at Russia's naval navigation institutes cannot be ruled out. Under this report's thesis, the absence of a fielded Russian quantum sensor in the open record is a floor, not proof.

4.12 Software, Clouds and Who Uses Them

Hardware gets the headlines; software and cloud access decide who can use a machine, whose standards take hold and whose data flows where. On this layer the two countries are not peers. China runs open, global quantum clouds. Russia's are domestic and early, and Russian users rank among the largest foreign users of China's leading cloud, behind the United States.

49M+ remote visits to China's Origin Wukong cloud by June 2026 [S299]

192 countries and regions using it [S299]

Top 3 foreign users: the US first, then Russia and Japan, by Origin's count [S298][S299][S372]

May 2024 Origin Quantum added to the US Entity List [S300]

10,000 users Russia's cloud must reach by 2030 [S306]

• [FACT] China's clouds are global. Origin Quantum's Wukong cloud passed 49 million remote visits from 192 countries and regions and more than one million tasks by June 2026, up from 8 million visits and 120 countries in May 2024 [S382][S383][S384]; Chinese reports in November 2024 and June 2026 name the United States, Russia and Japan as the top foreign users [S298][S299]; these are Origin's own country-level counts and do not identify laboratories, jobs or results. Origin's first export of machine time, in November 2024, went to an unnamed client; its chief scientist later described an export sale to a client in "a major European country" [S298][S318]. China Telecom's Tianyan cloud reports more than 50 million visits from over 60 countries and now offers a 105-qubit superconducting machine and a photonic machine [S303]. Origin's fourth-generation Wukong-180 went online in May 2026 with a reported 99 percent two-qubit fidelity [S385] (Russia's qudit-based figures, about 96 percent, are not directly comparable; Section 6).
• [FACT] Origin owns the software layer, and opened it. Origin's operating system, Origin Pilot, became free to download in February 2026 and runs superconducting, trapped-ion and neutral-atom machines; Origin's chief scientist calls the operating system the "soft heart" of the quantum ecosystem [S301]. Origin, BAQIS, USTC and the Hefei National Laboratory were all added to the US Entity List in May 2024 for "acquiring and attempting to acquire U.S.-origin items in support of advancing China's quantum technology capabilities" [S300].
• [FACT] Commercial quantum in China is consolidating into state and defense-linked hands. Baidu gave its quantum lab and equipment to BAQIS, Wei Zhang's institute, in January 2024; Alibaba gave its lab to Zhejiang University in November 2023 [S304][S305]. Origin's June 2026 pre-IPO round of nearly 3 billion yuan was led by China North Industries Group (中国兵器工业集团), the state ordnance conglomerate known as Norinco, which put in 500 million yuan; the registered subscribing entity is not public [S302]. Tencent, whose quantum lab built the TenCirChem chemistry package, was placed on the Pentagon's list of Chinese military companies in January 2025 [S307].
• [FACT] The military helps write the rules. China's national standard on quantum computing terminology was drafted with the National University of Defense Technology and the PLA Strategic Support Force Information Engineering University among its units [S308]. China's first national standard for quantum computing service platforms, GB/T 47177.1-2026, issued February 27, 2026 and in force since September 1, 2026, lists Origin Quantum and the PLA Cyberspace Force Information Engineering University (the same university listed under the former Strategic Support Force) among its drafters [S320]. The plan record for the performance-test standard lists the Wuxi Jiangnan Institute of Computing Technology, a military-linked supercomputing institute on the US Entity List, among its drafters [S309].
• [FACT] Russia's clouds are domestic and early. Rosatom's roadmap cloud, built by RQC and the Lebedev Institute, completed its first generation in 2024 and gives access to the ytterbium-ion machine; Rosatom still described it as in development in January 2026 [S310][S311]. Russia's most open platform, Octillion, runs Bauman University's 4- and 8-qubit superconducting chips and has been open to "anyone who wants" since December 2025 [S312]. On August 1, 2026 it opened the new SnowDrop 8Q chip, at 99.26 percent average two-qubit fidelity, to remote users; BFM reported several hundred users from Russia, along with users from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Spain and China, already connected [S425][S426]. It is run with VNIIA, a Rosatom nuclear-weapons design institute on the US sanctions list [S312][S313]. A smaller university platform, Quantum MIREA, added a three-qubit computer in August 2026: a Chinese-made SpinQ Triangulum, a nuclear-magnetic-resonance teaching machine. It shows procurement of Chinese hardware, not dependence on Chinese compute [S322].
• [FACT] Russia's software is thin and unbranded. Its roadmap review lists an emulator, a transpiler from the standard circuit language (QASM) to native ion gates, benchmarking tools and an algorithm library, but no public SDK; no RQC or Rosatom open-source organization was found [S314]. Russia's quantum standards work sits in a working group of technical committee TC 194, which mirrors the international ISO/IEC JTC 3 committee [S315].
• [FACT] Rosatom is its own first customer. By February 2026 it reported more than 30 pilot projects and 47 algorithms, and said quantum computing "is already used" in Proryv, its fast-reactor and closed-fuel-cycle program; other pilots cover reactor fuel supply, radiopharmaceuticals and medical AI [S316]. Russia's banks are buying quantum-safe communications rather than quantum computing: VTB tested InfoTeCS quantum key distribution between its Moscow data centers in May 2026 [S323]. The 2025-2030 roadmap requires 54 new algorithms, at least 100 tested business uses and a cloud with at least 10,000 users [S306].
• [FACT] Washington has closed one door and not the other. Since October 15, 2022 (under a determination of September 15), US persons may not provide quantum computing services to anyone in Russia, and RQC and Rosatom's quantum company are on the sanctions list [S317]. [INFER] No rule was found that specifically addresses US users submitting jobs to an Entity-Listed Chinese quantum cloud. That is not a general exemption: Entity List license requirements attach to exports, reexports and transfers of items subject to US export rules to the listed company, so uploading controlled software or technology could require a license, and sanctions and end-use restrictions apply separately; the answer turns on the facts of each use [S300].
• [FACT] The Pentagon's research-security list now covers much of this network. The July 2026 Section 1286 list includes the Lebedev Institute, Moscow State University, Bauman University, MIPT, MIREA and the Kurchatov Institute in Russia, and BAQIS and USTC in China [S321]. It also lists Skoltech, HSE University, VNIIFTRI and UESTC. Renmin University, whose trapped-ion group hosts Semerikov and holds the grant behind the three joint papers, is not on it [S321].

 

Graphic 12. Who the US Entity List and Section 1286 list cover, and who they miss.

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] In software, Russia is mainly a user and buyer of Chinese systems, and now also a host. Russian users rank among the top three foreign users of China's leading quantum cloud, behind the US, and a Russian university bought a Chinese-made teaching machine; since August 2026 Chinese users have joined Russia's Octillion cloud, run with a sanctioned nuclear-weapons institute, to use a chip close to China's leading cloud machines on gate quality. A visit is not a job and not an institution, and neither side names its users. [S298][S299][S322][S372][S313][S426]

Why open clouds matter [ARG] A cloud open to 192 countries is an instrument as well as a service. It shows its owner who is working on what, which algorithms they run and how, and it makes its owner's operating system and toolchain the default for students and companies across the Global South. US users have ranked first among its overseas visitors [S372]. [INFER] Russia is building the opposite: a closed national cloud for its own institutions, with a 2030 user target and Vietnam already promised access to Russian quantum computing infrastructure [S306][S319]. [FACT] Allied software that is not tied to one machine exists. Horizon Quantum, a Singapore-based company listed on Nasdaq since March 2026, offers Triple Alpha, a hardware-agnostic development environment, and runs a testbed with its own superconducting system, an IonQ trapped-ion system and European partners [S411][S412]. Infleqtion pairs its neutral-atom computer with its Superstaq software platform [S410].

Boundary	What this section can and cannot say
Documented	Origin's and Tianyan's usage figures and country counts; Octillion's opening to foreign users, Chinese among them, and SnowDrop 8Q's reported fidelity; Entity List and sanctions status; Origin's operating system release; Baidu and Alibaba transfers; PLA and Entity-Listed drafters of Chinese standards; Rosatom's cloud, pilots and 2030 targets; Octillion's operator.
Not shown	Who the Russian users of Origin's cloud are, or what they ran; the identity of the European buyer of exported machine time; any named PLA user of a Chinese quantum cloud; any Russia-China software or cloud agreement; a branded Russian SDK.

 

Graphic 11. Growth of China's Origin Wukong quantum cloud.

5. Space: Trapped-Ion Technology, Joint Programs and the AI Link

This section draws together the space strands that appear elsewhere in the report and asks five questions: what Russia and China intend to put in orbit, which space programs they share, which shared technology suits space and why, how it connects to AI, and what it means for the United States and its allies.

5.1 What the Record Shows About Intent

• [FACT] Neither government has said it intends to put a trapped-ion quantum computer in orbit. Russia's 2025-2030 quantum computing roadmap, which targets 300-qubit processors and more than 29 billion rubles in funding, contains no space element [S126]. No Chinese statement on quantum computing in orbit was found.
• [FACT] Russia's stated space intent is for ion and optical clocks and for quantum communication. The Lebedev transportable ytterbium-ion clock was designed toward space qualification, with space tests envisioned in the 2030s [S12]; the Lebedev thulium clock was presented to Putin in December 2025 as able to improve GLONASS accuracy by an order of magnitude and to be used in space [S14]; Russian Space Systems showed a cold-ytterbium-ion frequency generator as a prospective onboard standard [S13]. Moscow State University's quantum center expects a Russian satellite quantum communication system by 2030 [S136].
• [FACT] China's stated space intent is similar and further along. The Wuhan team that builds BeiDou's rubidium clocks named the mercury-ion clock as its next-generation spaceborne clock [S21], and a 15-liter mercury-ion prototype is aimed at spaceborne use [S20]. China's space station has carried an optical clock, hydrogen maser and laser-cooled microwave clock since October 2022, and a cold-atom inertial sensor, a quantum sensor for navigation, since late 2022 [S22][S181]. A Chinese report of June 2026 describes a calcium-ion optical clock steering ground hydrogen masers at the Beijing Satellite Navigation Center, holding them within about 600 picoseconds of UTC in a six-month experiment [S140].
• [FACT] China has flown two dedicated quantum key distribution satellites, and both have left orbit. Jinan-1, which exchanged keys in real time with Beijing and Stellenbosch, South Africa, 12,900 km apart (Nature, March 2025), fell into the South Pacific on October 17, 2025 after more than three years in orbit, by China's account (some tracking catalogs list an April 2025 decay); Micius re-entered on January 25, 2026 [S125][S132][S154]. In January 2026 the Micius team said it would keep preparing fully for the launch of a new medium-high-orbit quantum satellite; no launch has been announced [S155]. Pan Jianwei has described a geostationary quantum satellite for around 2027 [S133].
• [INFER] The declared intent is narrow: trapped ions go to space as clocks first, quantum communication goes to space on Chinese satellites, and quantum computing stays on the ground.
• [ARG] Declared intent may understate plans. China is preparing a quantum satellite it has not dated and has delayed disclosure of quantum space work before; Russia now registers research with foreigners and has created an FSB approval power [S36][S118][S155][S156]. Planners should assume orbital ambitions on both sides exceed what either has stated (Section 2.4).

5.2 Joint Space Programs, Current and Planned

Program	Status	Quantum or timing relevance
GLONASS-BeiDou cooperation	Joint committee since 2015; time-scale complementarity agreement, February 2022; reciprocal ground stations; a 2026-2030 roadmap for compatibility and complementarity signed November 3, 2025 and reaffirmed in the Putin-Xi joint statement of May 20, 2026 [S16][S17][S18][S41][S131].	Direct. Better onboard clocks feed straight into coordinated timing.
Russia-China satellite quantum communication	Full-cycle test via Micius on March 1, 2022 [S23][S24]. Micius re-entered on January 25, 2026, after Jinan-1 in October 2025, so neither of China's announced quantum-communication satellites remains in orbit [S125][S154]. No successor joint link was found.	Direct, but dormant until a new satellite is shared.
International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), the planned joint station	Founded by Russia and China in 2021; 17 countries and organizations by April 2025; basic model at the lunar south pole by 2035 [S128]. The two signed a lunar nuclear power plant agreement in May 2025, and Roscosmos has contracted the plant for 2036, with Rosatom involved [S129][S170].	Indirect. Lunar operations will need navigation and timing that do not depend on GPS.
Russian Orbital Station (ROS)	Deployment to begin in 2028. Russia offered BRICS partners, China included, a research module in 2023; no Chinese participation has been agreed, and no joint Russia-China orbital station is planned [S168][S169].	Indirect; a possible future channel.
Chang'e-7 and Chang'e-8	Chang'e-7 carries a Russian lunar dust and field instrument; Chang'e-8 is to carry two. Chang'e-7's August 2026 launch was postponed with no new date [S130].	Indirect; shows hardware integration on Chinese missions.
BRICS remote-sensing constellation	Agreed in 2021 with Chinese, Russian, Brazilian and Indian satellites; heads of space agencies met in June 2026 with ten member countries [S141].	None directly; a multilateral channel that already includes both.

5.3 The Shared Technology That Suits Space, and Why

• [FACT] A trapped-ion clock has already proven itself in orbit. NASA's Deep Space Atomic Clock, a mercury-ion clock, flew from 2019 to 2021, drifted less than 4 nanoseconds over more than 20 days, and was more than an order of magnitude more stable than GPS clocks [S127].
• [INFER] That is why ions matter for navigation: a clock that holds time for weeks lets a satellite keep accurate time without constant correction from the ground, which also makes the constellation more resilient if ground control or uplinks are disrupted.
• [FACT] Size is the obstacle, and both sides are working on it with the same technology family. The Lebedev clock team says its next-generation clock will use chip-based surface traps with integrated photonics to shrink the system for space [S12]. The China-funded Lebedev-Renmin paper studies surface traps with chip-integrated microwave conductors that replace some laser control [S1].
• [FACT] Russia's planar ion traps grew out of exactly this need: the IBIS program for an onboard ytterbium-ion clock for satellite navigation, coordinated by Russian Space Systems from 2017, led to Skoltech's planar traps and then to the quantum-computing designs (Section 4.4) [S205][S206][S207].
• [INFER] Fewer lasers and more on-chip electronics mean smaller, lighter and more robust packages, the properties that matter in orbit. The joint research therefore sits in the technology family both countries would need to fly ion clocks, even though no Chinese role in Russia's clock program was found.
• [FACT] The shared base also includes coordinated time scales for GLONASS and BeiDou [S17], clock researchers presenting at the joint workshop series [S5], and China's trapped-ion network nodes and memories, which are ground systems today [S112][S113].
• [UNDISC] No record shows trapped-ion memories or repeaters planned for orbit. Under this report's thesis that is not evidence of no plan: China is building trapped-ion network nodes on the ground while preparing new quantum satellites [S112][S113][S155].

5.4 How This Connects to AI

• [FACT] China is putting AI computing in orbit. The Three-Body Computing Constellation launched 12 satellites in May 2025, each running AI models with laser links between them, toward a planned 2,800 satellites [S134]. By February 2026 the satellites were networked and ten AI models had been verified in orbit [S135]; by July 2026 more satellites had joined and 20 models were deployed [S142].
• [FACT] Russia has no comparable orbital AI program on the public record. Rosatom has offered SCO states data centers built on new computing principles [S83], and Russia and China created an AI cooperation expert committee in November 2025 [S40].
• [FACT] Precise timing is infrastructure for digital systems. A US executive order describes space-based PNT as a largely invisible utility for power grids, communications and all modes of transportation [S137].
• [INFER] AI connects to this work in three ways. Distributed AI, in orbit or on the ground, needs precise timing to synchronize links and data. Autonomous vehicles, drones and weapons need positioning and timing, and better clocks on GLONASS and BeiDou would let them keep working when GPS is jammed. Quantum-secured links would protect model and data traffic.
• [UNDISC] No joint Russia-China program for AI in space or for AI in satellite navigation was found.

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] China is putting AI computing in orbit, and precise timing is the infrastructure underneath it. [S134][S137][S142] [ARG] Whoever controls clocks, links and launch controls the pace of AI in space.

5.5 Reusable Launch

• [FACT] China recovered its first orbital booster on July 10, 2026, catching a Long March 10B stage at sea; LandSpace landed a Zhuque-3 booster on land on August 18-19, 2026, though it caught fire after landing [S162][S163]. The Long March 12A stage is built to a 50-flight reuse standard [S164]; no reflight of a recovered Chinese booster had been announced as of early October 2026 [S162].
• [FACT] Russia's reusable Amur rocket has slipped to 2031 [S165]. In July 2024 Russia's Keldysh Center, MIPT and the Shanghai Institute of Space Propulsion agreed to set up an international laboratory for reusable engines and other propulsion work [S166].
• [FACT] A NASA analysis finds commercial launch has cut the cost of reaching low Earth orbit roughly twentyfold, and notes that cheaper launch lets militaries rapidly replace compromised space assets [S167].
• [INFER] Cheap, fast launch is what turns China's plans into constellations: replacement quantum satellites, the Three-Body AI constellation, and spares for satellites lost to attack. Russia trails, but it has a Chinese channel into reusable-engine research.

5.6 Satellite Killers

• [FACT] Russia destroyed its own Cosmos 1408 satellite with a Nudol missile on November 15, 2021, creating more than 1,500 pieces of trackable debris [S171][S110]. In February 2024 the White House confirmed Russia is developing an anti-satellite capability, which US officials linked to Cosmos 2553 and a nuclear program [S172]. Russia has placed satellites in the orbits of US reconnaissance satellites (Cosmos 2576 in 2024, Cosmos 2588 in 2025) and has new inspectors in geostationary orbit [S173][S174][S176]. On April 24, 2024 Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution against nuclear weapons in space; China abstained [S175].
• [FACT] Leaked Russian defense-industry documents show the Nudol missile relies on Chinese-made Centralite II, a propellant stabilizer, with producers ordered to find domestic substitutes by the end of 2026 [S160].
• [FACT] China destroyed a weather satellite with an SC-19 missile in 2007 [S177]. Its Shijian-21 towed a dead satellite out of the geostationary belt in 2022, Shijian-25 appears to have refueled Shijian-21 in 2025 (by Western observers' analysis; China has not confirmed a transfer), and the US Space Force has described Chinese satellites practicing "dogfighting" maneuvers in orbit [S178][S179][S180]. The Secure World Foundation's 2026 review records a possible new Chinese direct-ascent interceptor [S180].
• [FACT] Leaked decks from the unpublicized China-Russia military-technical forum, published in July 2026 by The Insider with Der Spiegel and Le Monde, include a Chinese-drafted plan to neutralize Starlink that escalates from legal pressure and jamming to cyberattacks and low-cost satellite-killing weapons [S157][S158]. A US congressional commission has cited the plan [S161]. The documents record plans, not demonstrated capability, and their feasibility has been questioned [S159]. [INFER] The existence of the documents is a fact; their authenticity rests on the outlets that published them, and their standing as agreed joint plans is not established. None concerns quantum technology; Starlink matters here because it carries Western communications and timing that the partners' own systems would replace.

CRITICAL STATEMENT [ARG] The most dangerous combination is the power to degrade GPS and Western satellites paired with navigation systems that keep their own time. Neither alone is decisive; together they shift the balance. [S131][S157][S160][S171][S172]

5.7 Jamming From Orbit

[FACT] Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Stanford traced a powerful source of satellite-navigation interference over Europe to Russia's EKS missile early-warning constellation. Across 75 event days from October 2019 to the study's May 2026 data cutoff, data from 165 reference stations in Europe, Greenland and Canada showed simultaneous drops in GPS signal strength, of 5 dB or more at one station at least, largest around the Baltic region [S261][S262]. The signal sits about 2 MHz above the GPS L1 frequency and also degrades Galileo and BeiDou; a second emission strikes BeiDou's B1I band [S261].

75 event days, 2019-2026 (preprint) [S261]

165 reference stations whose data were analyzed (preprint) [S261]

1577.5 MHz interference centered next to GPS L1 [S261]

Cosmos 2546 identified for one event with near certainty (preprint) [S261]

~1 MW single-author order-of-magnitude estimate (preprint) [S266]

 

Graphic 13. Jamming from orbit: how the interference was traced to a Russian early-warning satellite.

How the source was found

Pattern 3-5 second bursts on business days and hours [S261]

▶

Geometry Visible to every affected station: high orbit [S261]

▶

Recording Wideband captures in Amsterdam and Trondheim [S261]

▶

Timing Arrival-time residuals for Cosmos 2546 within about 1.2 m [S261]

VERDICT VERY LIKELY

Is the source a Russian satellite? For the February 11, 2026 event, the authors call the probability that Cosmos 2546 was the source "numerically indistinguishable from unity." FACT [S261]

VERDICT PROBABLE

Is the whole early-warning constellation responsible? The authors judge it "highly probable"; Cosmos 2546 launched in 2020 and cannot explain the 2019 events. FACT [S261]

VERDICT UNRESOLVED

Is it deliberate? The business-hours pattern "suggests human involvement"; the study's senior author, Todd Humphreys, is "leaning toward this being a periodic test of a capability that would be very damaging if it was deployed in anger" [S421]. A Russian forces expert doubts anyone would add a jamming mission to early-warning satellites. FACT [S261][S263][S265]

VERDICT NO

Does switching to Galileo or BeiDou help? No. They share the affected band. The L5 band was not affected, so multi-frequency receivers help, but are not a guarantee. FACT [S261]

[FACT] The finding comes from a preprint that has not yet been peer reviewed; an independent single-author analysis of the same data reached the same satellite and estimated transmit power on the order of a megawatt, which it reads as "a directed, operated emitter" [S266]. Russia's embassy in Washington declined to comment [S263].

Emission	Center frequency	Band affected	Code analysis
Primary	About 1577.5 MHz, 2 MHz above GPS L1	GPS L1 and Galileo E1; also degrades BeiDou	Not characterized in the source paper [S261]
Second	1558.5 MHz	BeiDou B1I	GPS C/A G1 sequence at 4 million chips per second, matching no GPS satellite code [S266]

[FACT] The power estimate is the effective radiated power: transmitter power multiplied by antenna gain. [INFER] A large high-gain antenna on a high-orbit satellite reaches such figures with far less transmitter power, and the source paper does not give the antenna assumptions behind it [S266]. The same independent analysis reports that the 1558.5 MHz waveform is the GPS C/A G1 maximal-length sequence at 4 million chips per second, "matching no GPS PRN," which it reads as "favoring ranging/sensing or denial-by-in-band-power and disfavoring matched-code spoofing"; its power, about 30 dB above a GPS satellite, is "strongly inconsistent with incidental leakage" [S266]. [INFER] A ranging or sensing emitter that also degrades BeiDou fits a coordinated bloc strategy of navigation denial less neatly than a purpose-built jammer would. The geometry is established; the purpose is not.

[FACT] The orbital source sits on top of a documented ground campaign. The ITU's Radio Regulations Board found that interference from Russia was "deliberately caused" and urged it to "immediately cease" [S267]. Six nations reported to ICAO that about 123,000 flights in the Baltic region were affected between January and April 2025 [S268].

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] A jammer on the ground reaches tens or hundreds of kilometers. A transmitter in orbit can degrade satellite navigation across a continent at once. The only full answer is navigation that does not listen to satellites at all. [S261][S264]

Why this matters for the axis [INFER] Russia's early-warning satellites interfere with BeiDou as well as GPS [S261], so the partners are not immune to each other. But a bloc that can degrade satellite navigation from orbit while building coordinated GLONASS-BeiDou timing and, in China's case, satellite-independent navigation, gains the asymmetry this report rates as its top risk [S131][S181]. [ARG] The allied answer already exists in test: SandboxAQ's magnetic navigation, flight-tested with the US Air Force on C-17 and C-130J transports and in 2026 on a Northrop Grumman drone; a quantum inertial sensor built by Vector Atomic (now IonQ) with Honeywell, flown on the X-37B; and deployable optical clocks [S139][S247][S396][S408]. The space-based jamming evidence moves them from resilience projects to requirements.

5.8 Russia's Own Space-Quantum Record

[FACT] Russia has never put its own quantum payload in orbit. Its one satellite quantum key exchange, in 2022, used China's Micius [S23][S24]. Impuls-1 carries a classical laser terminal [S232].

Item	Status	Sources
Satellite quantum key distribution	A 16U CubeSat from Moscow State University's quantum center, planned for 2029, with ground stations in Moscow and Kislovodsk; contractors not yet named	[S136][S275]
Satellite channel funding	1.8 billion rubles of federal money for a satellite-channel quantum backbone by 2030 under the 2020 roadmap	[S279]
Russian Orbital Station	RSC Energia and QSpace agreed in 2023 to test quantum communication on the station; its first module is now due in 2028	[S276][S277]
GLONASS clocks	A passive hydrogen maser flew on GLONASS-K2 No. 13 in 2023; the ytterbium optical clock is aimed at space tests in the 2030s	[S278][S12]
GLONASS expansion	A 240-satellite low-orbit augmentation segment from 2030	[S281]

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] Russia has never put its own quantum payload in orbit, and its first quantum satellite is planned for 2029. China flew Micius in 2016. In space quantum, Russia is roughly a decade behind its partner. [S275][S23]

5.9 Risks to the United States and Allies

Risk	Mechanism	Evidence	Level
1. Timing advantage under GPS denial	Ion or optical clocks on GLONASS and BeiDou, with coordinated time scales, let Russian and Chinese forces and autonomous systems keep accurate time while GPS is jammed or spoofed.	FACT: clock programs, time-scale agreement, 2026-2030 roadmap [S12][S14][S17][S131]	Moderate, rising (2028-2035)
2. Timing for AI in orbit and autonomy	China pairs orbital AI computing with its own navigation system; Russia gains access through GLONASS-BeiDou interoperability.	INFER from [S131][S134]	Moderate, long horizon
3. Secure links outside Western reach	The joint channel lapsed with Micius, and Jinan-1 is gone too; the medium-high-orbit and geostationary satellites China is preparing could restore it and extend it to Russia and BRICS partners.	FACT [S125][S133][S154][S155]; INFER on extension	Moderate
4. Lunar and deep-space foothold	ILRS and a nuclear power plant give the two a shared presence where future lunar navigation and timing conventions will be set.	FACT [S128][S129]; INFER on standards	Low-moderate, 2030s
5. Space-ground networks	China is building trapped-ion network nodes and repeater memories that could later shape space-ground quantum networks.	FACT [S112][S113]; INFER on reach	Low-moderate
6. Counterspace paired with timing independence	Russian and Chinese anti-satellite capabilities can degrade GPS and allied satellites while GLONASS and BeiDou coordinate their own time.	FACT [S157][S160][S171][S172][S180]; INFER on pairing	Moderate-high
7. Fast replacement through reusable launch	China's first booster recoveries point to cheap, rapid launch of replacement quantum, AI and navigation satellites.	FACT [S162][S163][S164]; INFER on use	Moderate, rising

[ARG] Allied answers to each risk already exist, from a flown trapped-ion clock and deployable optical clocks to satellite-independent navigation (Section 10.4) [S127][S138][S396][S408][S417]. The gap is operational: these capabilities need to move into allied constellations and platforms before Russia and China fly theirs, spread across enough satellites to survive anti-satellite attack.

6. Capability Benchmarks: Russia, China and the United States

[ARG] Trapped ions sit at the center of this report because they carry both Russia's clock line and the Russia-China channel, not because they lead every computing race. China's main computing programs are superconducting and photonic, covered in the China series, and Russia's SnowDrop superconducting machines are its domestic substitute [S61][S193].

	Russia	China	United States and allies
Trapped-ion computing	70 qubit-equivalents on 35 Yb-171 ions (Lebedev, four-level qudits) and 72 on 26 Ca-40 ions (RQC, seven-level qudits), both about 96 percent two-qubit fidelity [S123][S124][S388]; first single-qubit operations on planar traps announced August 2026 [S108]	HYQ-B100 with 100+ qubits, per a funding announcement [S62]; Tsinghua resolved 300 ion qubits in a 512-ion simulator [S60]; NUDT surface trap controlling 20-ion chains [S115]	Quantinuum Helios, 98 barium-ion qubits in a QCCD architecture, 99.92 percent two-qubit fidelity averaged across the system [S122][S153]; IonQ reported 99.99 percent two-qubit fidelity in a smaller demonstration using Oxford Ionics' electronic control (October 2025) and a 256-qubit system contracted for the University of Cambridge [S66][S391]
Other platforms	MISIS fluxonium processor, 16 qubits, 99.4 percent average two-qubit fidelity (December 2025) [S428][S429]; SnowDrop 8Q superconducting chip, 8 qubits, 99.26 percent average (99.55 percent best pairs), on the Octillion cloud since August 2026 [S425][S427]; 72-qubit neutral-atom system (MSU), 94 percent two-qubit accuracy [S186][S187]; seven processors in all [S65]	Zuchongzhi 3.0, 105 superconducting qubits at 99.62 percent two-qubit fidelity; Tianyan-287, 105 data qubits at 99.6 percent [S61][S436][S303]	Google's 105-qubit Willow, mean two-qubit error 0.33 percent, showed below-threshold error correction (2024); IBM targets 200 logical qubits by 2029; QuEra ran up to 96 logical qubits on neutral atoms; PsiQuantum is building photonic sites in Chicago and Brisbane [S404][S405][S406][S407][S435]
Quantum communication	Russian Railways' 7,858 km trusted-node fiber backbone [S397]; ground stations; Impuls-1 laser-communication testbed; satellite QKD expected by 2030 [S26][S136]	Flew Micius and Jinan-1, both now re-entered; new satellites in preparation; national networks [S54][S125][S154][S155]; trapped-ion repeater memories over 10 km of laboratory fiber [S113]	IonQ reports deploying Poland's national quantum communication network; Qunnect's 34 km GothamQ entanglement network in New York, 99.84 percent uptime over 15 days [S66][S395][S409]
Deployable optical clocks	Prototype of about 1 m3 (2022) [S12]	15-liter mercury-ion prototype [S20]	IonQ (Vector Atomic) Evergreen-05 optical clock, 5 liters: 25 under a DARPA award, option for 100 more [S417]; Infleqtion's optical clock in a timing partnership with Safran [S67][S68][S410]
Standards	No trapped-ion standard found	Trapped-ion computing reference architecture in drafting [S109]	Not benchmarked here
Share of world quantum papers, 2019-2023	3 percent in computing and in communications; outside every ASPI quantum top five [S218][S222]	23 percent in computing, 39 percent in communications; leads five of seven ASPI quantum and sensing fields [S218][S222]	22 percent in computing, 12 percent in communications; leads quantum computing and atomic clocks in ASPI's count [S218][S222]
National program money	About 24 billion rubles under the 2020-2024 roadmap; more than 29 billion for 2025-2030 [S98][S126]	Hefei National Laboratory and national programs [S94]; NSFC 92265208 alone RMB 3.4 million [S107]	Federal programs; DARPA, SDA, MDA awards [S66][S67]

• [FACT] Some Russian scientists estimate China is about ten years ahead of Russia in quantum, according to a 2023 South China Morning Post report on the collaboration [S92].
• [FACT] Fidelity figures are measured differently and should be compared like with like. Helios's 99.921 percent is an average across a 98-qubit commercial system; IonQ's 99.99 percent is a two-qubit demonstration; Russia's 95.4 to 96.5 percent figures are for entangling gates in qudit machines, reported in state press releases; no peer-reviewed paper gives full-system benchmarking or an error budget for the 70- or 72-qubit-equivalent registers [S123][S124][S153][S391][S430]. [INFER] As an arithmetic comparison of reported infidelities, not a controlled head-to-head benchmark, Russia's large ion machines report about 45 to 58 times Helios's two-qubit infidelity; Russia's best chip, MISIS's 16-qubit processor at 99.4 percent, reports about seven times Helios's and nearly twice that of Google's 105-qubit Willow or China's 105-qubit Zuchongzhi 3.0 (Graphic 14 and the table below) [S428][S435][S436]. These ratios do not measure actual errors per operation across machines tested differently, and gate fidelity alone cannot establish fault-tolerant or cryptanalytic readiness.
• [FACT] Russian outlets frame the trade differently: one December 2025 headline argued that Rosatom's 70 qubits "may be more useful than a thousand Google qubits" [S414].
• [INFER] Russia's paper footprint and its hardware tell different stories. MIT's index puts Russia at 3 percent of world quantum papers, level with Canada and Italy, while Russia fields two ion systems of 70-72 qubit-equivalents and one 72-atom system [S222][S64][S123][S124]. Section 2.5 explains why the paper counts understate a closed program.
• [INFER] Russia brings qudit theory, ytterbium-ion, microwave-gate and clock know-how, and physicists. China brings money, laboratory capacity, scale and a trap base of its own. Expertise flows from Russian specialists into Chinese-funded work. No processor or trap hardware is visible moving between the two programs; the one reported movement of devices is the USTC detector exchange (Section 4.3), and no verified Chinese hardware has entered Russia's trapped-ion program.

 

Figure 4. Share of world quantum publications by country, 2019-2023, from the MIT Quantum Index Report 2025, which uses ASPI's Web of Science data with fractional credit for co-authored papers [S222]. The figure measures open, highly visible research output, not capability.

 

Graphic 14. Expected errors per 1,000 two-qubit operations implied by each machine's reported fidelity, with machine size: an arithmetic comparison of reported infidelities, not a controlled head-to-head benchmark. On the figures as published, Russia has not yet combined high fidelity and large size in one machine.

Machine	Reported figure	Gate definition and method as stated	Register size	Date	Source type
Lebedev ytterbium ions	95.4% (96.1% in Dec 2025)	Two-qubit entangling gate in a four-level qudit machine; benchmark method not published	35 ions (70 qubit-equiv.)	Feb 11, 2026	Press tour and state science press [S430][S123]
RQC calcium ions	96.5%	Two-qubit gate in a seven-level qudit machine; method not published	26 ions (72 qubit-equiv.)	Dec 29, 2025	Press report [S124]
MISIS fluxonium chip	99.4%	Average two-qubit fidelity in a roadmap control experiment	16 qubits	Dec 2025 (reported Feb 12, 2026)	State science press [S428]
Zuchongzhi 3.0	99.62%	Two-qubit gate fidelity; method not given in the cited report	105 qubits	Mar 2025	Media report [S436]
Google Willow	99.67%	Mean two-qubit CZ error 0.33% across the device	105 qubits	Dec 9, 2024	Company specification sheet [S435]
Quantinuum Helios	99.921%	Two-qubit fidelity, average across the system	98 qubits	Nov 5, 2025	Company release [S153]
IonQ	99.99%	Two-qubit gate, single demonstration	Two-qubit demonstration	Oct 21, 2025	Company release [S391]

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] Russia's qudit encoding does two things. It is a real research line, not a counting trick: RQC calls its seven-level calcium machine the first of its kind and Lebedev runs four-level ytterbium ququarts across 35 ions, exactly the multi-level control a Chinese partner would want [S123][S124][S388]. And it closes the headline-count gap without closing the quality gap. Its large ion machines, 35 and 26 ions at 95 to 96.5 percent two-qubit fidelity as last reported, show no published increase since December 2025 and trail Helios's 98 qubits at 99.92 percent badly; its best chip reaches 99.4 percent on 16 qubits, a sixth the size of Chinese and US machines at 99.6 percent or better. Headline scale has grown faster than gate quality, no Russian machine combines the two, and Russia's 2030 roadmap sets a qubit target but no public fidelity target. [S123][S124][S153][S303][S428][S430][S434][S435]

How current are these numbers? [FACT] They are snapshots on a schedule. Russia's computing figures come mainly from Rosatom's yearly roadmap test rounds: the 50-qubit machines were confirmed in December 2024, and the 70- and 72-qubit-equivalent machines and the MISIS chip in December 2025 [S438][S439][S124][S428]. What this report gives is roughly last December's state. Two releases two months apart cannot show a trend, so the report says "no published increase," not "plateau." [FACT] They are chosen, not complete. Laboratories release their best result on a selected machine, and Russia's peer-reviewed record is thinning: the only peer-reviewed or preprint ion results found are from 2024-2025 on 8 to 10 ions, and research with foreign participants has needed registration, and in listed fields FSB approval, since March 2026 [S431][S432][S36]. A better device still in testing, or work funded by defense, would not appear; VNIIA, which co-builds the SnowDrop chips, is a nuclear-weapons design institute [S313]. [INFER] Incentives point different ways, so the likely errors do too. Qubit counts are probably flattering: Rosatom reports roadmap progress to the government, scores its own roadmap at 107 percent of targets, sells quantum access abroad and counts qudits as qubit-equivalents [S150][S71][S87]. Civilian fidelity figures are best-case results for the machines shown. Rosatom's Lebedev machine was reported at 96.1 percent in December 2025 and 95.4 percent in February 2026; different tests, configurations or reporting conventions could explain the change, so it does not by itself validate the reporting [S123][S430]. Capability in clocks, sensing, secure links and defense work is the most likely to be understated, because there the incentive is to conceal (Section 2.4). [INFER] China follows the same split, more sharply. Prestige computing results are published and peer reviewed, and are probably accurate and current; work nearer the military is delayed or undated, as with the 2013 satellite experiment disclosed years later and today's undated quantum satellite launches [S390][S155]. [ARG] Western figures are curated too. The US numbers used here are company releases and specification sheets, though they come with peer-reviewed papers and independent access [S153][S435]. The fair reading of every country's figures is "as last published." On that record Russia has not combined quality and size; a December 2026 test round or a classified program could change that, and Section 13 lists the indicator that would show it.

7. Russia's Wider Quantum Network Beyond China

[FACT] Rosatom says Russia has seven quantum processors on priority platforms and is ready to use them in cooperation with BRICS partners [S65][S95]. Its CEO said in late 2025 that he expected Rosatom's first international quantum agreements in 2026, naming Egypt, Vietnam, Pakistan, Malaysia and India [S87].

Country	What the record shows	Depth	Ion/Lebedev link
Vietnam	September 2026 roadmap with the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology: national strategy, training, shared research infrastructure, full computing capacity; a quantum center in Vietnam; Vietnamese researchers to work directly on Russian machines [S71][S72][S73][S74]. MISIS's Alexey Ustinov is honorary director of the Institute of Quantum Technologies at Vietnam National University's Hanoi hi-tech park [S71].	Roadmap; access	Kolachevsky in the talks [S72]
India	Rosatom says Indian specialists are involved in Russia's quantum project and the BRICS platform [S75]; India shows the strongest interest of any BRICS partner, per Rosatom's CEO in Tianjin [S76]. Sadiq Rangwala, an ion-trap physicist and senior professor at Bengaluru's Raman Research Institute, spoke online at RQC's 2023 conference on ion qubits and computing architectures, the same morning Kolachevsky spoke [S88][S119]. A DRDO lab director appeared on RQC's 2025 program [S90].	People in program	Ion speaker at RQC, 2023 [S88]
Uzbekistan	Three memoranda in 2024 including Samarkand State University; first international Quantum Week in Samarkand, Jizzakh, Tashkent and Almalyk (MISIS branch) in December 2024; specialist exchanges [S77][S78].	Memoranda	Not found
Kazakhstan	Working meeting at al-Farabi Kazakh National University, October 30, 2025, with Rosatom Quantum Technologies, RQC and Rosatom's Central Asia office [S79].	Talks	Not found
Belarus	Rosatom science division and the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus signed an S&T agreement, March 2024 [S80].	Agreement	Not found
Egypt	Separate Egyptian request for research cooperation in quantum technologies, alongside El Dabaa and floating reactors (August 2026) [S81].	Request	No
Pakistan	A Pakistani official said Pakistan is preparing to work with Rosatom on quantum technologies [S82].	Intent	No

 

Graphic 15. Russia's quantum sphere of influence and the depth of each relationship.

7.1 The Multilateral Layer

• [FACT] The first BRICS Quantum Technologies Forum was held in Moscow in June 2026, organized by Rosatom and the Ministry of Science; Prime Minister Mishustin addressed it, and delegations adopted a joint statement [S65][S102].
• [FACT] BRICS science ministers meeting in Chennai welcomed the forum, called for joint research projects and allowed for annual quantum forums in the chair country [S85]. A BRICS nuclear platform whose members include CNNC (China), NECSA and Eskom (South Africa), NPPD (Iran), Brazil's ABDAN and NBEPar, Bolivia's ABEN, Ethiopia's innovation ministry and Egypt's NPPA endorsed joint quantum computing work [S86].
• [FACT] On September 2, 2026, Rosatom's CEO offered SCO states cooperation in quantum topics and in data centers built on new computing principles [S83]. Russia's draft quantum-computing program to 2036 calls for international work through BRICS, the SCO, UNESCO, ASEAN and others [S84]. A network Quantum University led by MEPhI took its first 25 master's students in September 2026 [S103].
• [FACT] Individual Western co-authorship persisted into 2024: a quantum paper by physicists from Russia, Germany and the UAE was supported by Rosatom's roadmap [S99]. RQC's quantum information group describes ongoing interaction with teams in Germany, France, Austria and China [S91].

[ARG] China is Russia's research peer. Every other partner is a customer for Russian training, roadmaps and machine time. The model mirrors Rosatom's reactor exports and travels with them.

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] Rosatom sells quantum the way it sells reactors: roadmaps, training and machine time, bundled for the Global South. Every customer is a potential adopter of non-Western standards. [S71][S75][S84][S87]

8. Controls, Sanctions and Concealment

8.1 Russia's Controls on Its Own Researchers

Control	Effective	Applies to China work?	Source
FSB oversight law: all planned research with foreign participation registered in a state system; FSB approval in fields the government lists	Signed June 24, 2025; main provisions September 1, 2025; FSB approval from March 1, 2026; full rollout September 1, 2028	Yes, if the field is listed	[S34][S35][S36]
Ministry of Science letter: clear trips to events in 49 "unfriendly" countries	February 2026	No; China is not on the list	[S37]
Exit bans for holders of high-level security clearances (10 or 5 years after last access)	February 1, 2024	Yes, for cleared staff, to any country	[S38]
Dual-use export lists	Ongoing	Probably no quantum-specific entries (Wassenaar additions blocked)	[S32]

• [INFER] The design throttles contact with the West and screens contact with China. Since March 1, 2026, any state-funded Russia-China quantum work should be visible to the FSB.
• [UNDISC] The list of fields requiring FSB approval has not been published. The law and Resolution No. 1894 refer to it, but a Moscow law firm reports that it has not yet been formed [S36][S118]. Whether quantum computing will be on it is unknown.

8.2 Western Restrictions on the Partnership's Institutions

Entity	Restriction	Date	Role in this report
Russian Quantum Center (International Center for Quantum Optics and Quantum Technologies LLC)	US Entity List, for acquiring US-origin items in support of nuclear explosive activities; EU list of entities under export restrictions (Annex IV, Regulation 833/2014); OFAC SDN (RUSSIA-EO14024). A Canadian listing is reported by a sanctions database but was not confirmed in Canada's regulations	Entity List effective February 24, 2022 (published March 3); EU February 25, 2022; SDN September 15, 2022	Organizer of the workshops; employer of Semerikov and other co-authors of the China-funded papers; 50 percent owner of QSpace as of 2022 [S25][S28][S386][S387]
Russia's quantum computing sector	OFAC sectoral determination; ban on US persons providing quantum computing services to persons in Russia	September 15, 2022 (services ban effective October 15, 2022)	Applies to any US quantum vendor [S27]
Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences	US Entity List; NDAA FY2019 Section 1286 list	May 2024	Wei Zhang's institution; host of Semerikov's 2024 lecture [S30][S31][S93]
USTC; CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information; Hefei National Laboratory	US Entity List	May 2024	USTC lab hosted the 2025 workshop; Hefei and USTC draft China's trapped-ion reference architecture [S6][S30][S31][S94][S109]

[FACT] The Lebedev Institute and Renmin University are on neither the Entity List nor the SDN list; Lebedev is on the Pentagon's Section 1286 research-security list and Renmin is not [S321]. [INFER] The trapped-ion channel therefore runs from a sanctioned Russian center and its Lebedev partners to an unlisted Chinese university, inside a Chinese network whose institutions BAQIS and USTC are on the Entity List. That does not make the research illegal under Russian or Chinese law. The Russian end is sanctioned partly on nuclear grounds, which ties it to the Rosatom thread in Section 11.11.

8.3 Control-List Fragmentation

• [FACT] Because of Russia's opposition, the Wassenaar Arrangement could not agree significant control-list additions in the 2023 and 2024 cycles; quantum computing was among the technologies discussed, and allies moved to national controls instead [S32]. The US issued its own worldwide quantum controls in September 2024 [S33].
• [INFER] Russia's veto protects both partners. A patchwork of national rules is easier to route around than a common list.
• [INFER] The lists are also aimed at the wrong channel for this partnership. They control hardware, while the trapped-ion link runs on people, grants and papers; the hardware that matters most to Western industry now is supply, where China's ytterbium controls and Rosatom's isotopes sit outside any Western list (Section 11.11).

8.4 Following, Replacing and Acquiring Western Technology

The public record shows Russian work following Western quantum designs, replacing Western products and, through smuggling networks, acquiring Western equipment. It shows no documented case of Russia stealing or reverse-engineering a specific Western quantum product.

Pattern	What the record shows	Sources
Following published designs	The China-funded Lebedev-Renmin trap study builds on microwave-gate schemes from Oxford Ionics' published paper and from an Oxford group including Oxford Ionics' co-founders. Lebedev's planar-trap papers cite Quantinuum's 98-qubit QCCD system as the leading architecture, the path Russia's own planar traps now take.	[S1][S3][S199][S200]
Replacing Western products	Russian dilution refrigerators were developed explicitly to replace Bluefors (Finland) and Oxford Instruments (UK) after sanctions cut supply; Bauman University benchmarks its units against Bluefors and ICE Oxford models and now sells superconducting quantum computers built around its own cryostat.	[S193][S194][S201]
Acquiring through smuggling networks	US prosecutors charged networks supplying Russian end users, including "nuclear and quantum research facilities" and items used in quantum cryptography, and a Russian procurement ring whose items had uses in quantum computing. No Western quantum company's product is named.	[S202][S203]
Intelligence targeting	The FBI's 2024 quantum protection guidance focuses on China and notes China and Russia agreed to deepen scientific cooperation in 2023. No public case of Russian intelligence targeting a Western quantum company was found.	[S204]

WESTERN TECHNOLOGY IN RUSSIAN WORK [ARG] The record shows Russia studying Western quantum designs, replacing Western hardware and buying Western parts through smuggling networks. No public case shows Russia stealing a Western quantum product. Under this report's thesis, that is a floor: the targets to protect are the published architectures of Oxford Ionics and Quantinuum that Russian and Chinese teams are already measuring themselves against. Oxford Ionics has been an IonQ subsidiary since September 2025; the point applies to every Western trapped-ion architecture that is published. [S1][S3][S199][S202][S392]

9. What the Think Tanks Say

Military-affiliated and civilian research institutes in five regions were reviewed. The table records each institution's core finding and how it bears on quantum.

Institute (country)	Finding	Bearing on this report
China Aerospace Studies Institute, Air University (US)	Satellite navigation is one of the most robust strands of China-Russia space cooperation [S52]. In nuclear cooperation, China has repeatedly used Russian imports to indigenize [S53].	Supports the PNT focus; suggests China will absorb Russian clock know-how over time.
US Air Force Academy, Institute for Future Conflict (US)	Sino-Russian military-technological cooperation is often one-sided in China's favor; Russian scholars cite a lack of mutual trust for complex fields [S51].	Explains the asymmetry seen in the ion work.
Georgetown CSET (US)	In AI, Sino-Russian collaboration showed gaps between aspiration and reality [S49].	Same pattern in quantum: much announced, little joint hardware.
CNAS (US)	The high-tech partnership could be a force multiplier if it delivers; it also noted a 2020 Russian arrest over alleged passing of submarine-detection information to China [S50].	Trust deficits coexist with cooperation; quantum sensing for submarine detection is a NATO priority [S42].
US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (US)	Identifies trapped-ion leaders as IonQ and Quantinuum in the US and USTC and Tsinghua in China [S57].	Frames the ion competition this report tracks; both Chinese leaders now draft China's trapped-ion standards [S109].
Congressional Research Service (US)	Notes NATO Secretary General Rutte's warning that Russia could be ready to use force against NATO by 2030 [S47].	Sets the time horizon for NATO PNT resilience.
MERICS (Germany)	dates a China-Russia quantum satellite link to December 2023, when it was announced (the test was on March 1, 2022; Section 4.7); media speculate it could extend to BRICS; China's cryogenics depend on helium-3, produced in Russia and the US [S54].	Adds a supply-chain vector: Russia as a potential helium-3 supplier.
RSIS (Singapore)	Sino-Russian dual-use cooperation in lunar research, AI and quantum is driving geopolitical bifurcation; notes the China-South Africa quantum link [S55].	Supports the coalition-building vector.
ISDP (Sweden)	Describes a division of labor: China supplies manufacturing and scale; Russia supplies theoretical research and aerospace [S56].	Matches the ion and clock evidence.
Sasakawa Peace Foundation (Japan)	Proposes NATO-IP4 quantum cooperation; NATO's quantum strategy covers sensing, PNT, communications and computing [S58].	Supports an allied response that includes Japan and Korea.
The Soufan Center (US)	NATO's strategy frames quantum as a front line of strategic competition [S59].	Consistent with Section 10.
RIAC with Fudan University (Russia/China)	Quantum computing is a named direction; Chinese interest in science cooperation is still small; real joint projects are few; proposes de-Westernized standards via BRICS and SCO [S39].	The most candid primary source; written jointly by Russian and Chinese authors.
Chongyang Institute, Renmin University (China), via RIAC	Calls for China and Russia to accelerate intelligent-technology cooperation and build their own standards [S39].	Renmin is also the ion partner's university and a drafter of China's trapped-ion reference architecture [S109].

Where the think tanks agree and disagree [INFER] Agree: the partnership is asymmetric, trust-limited and strongest in space and navigation; it is producing institutions faster than joint hardware. [INFER] Disagree: on trajectory. US military institutes stress China's habit of absorbing and indigenizing Russian technology; Russian-Chinese authors stress joint standards and Global South markets. Both outcomes are consistent with the evidence and can happen together.

10. NATO Deep Dive

10.1 What NATO Has Committed To

• [FACT] NATO foreign ministers approved the Alliance's first quantum strategy on November 28, 2023; a summary was released on January 17, 2024 [S43]. It aims at a quantum-ready Alliance and names sensing, imaging, PNT, communications, computing, submarine detection and a shift to quantum-resistant cryptography [S42][S43].
• [FACT] The strategy says Allies must accelerate quantum development to prevent new capability gaps as peer competitors adopt quantum technologies [S42]. Six of the first 44 companies in NATO's DIANA accelerator specialized in quantum [S43].

10.2 How NATO's Political Attention Has Moved

Summit	China language	Source
Washington 2024	China described as a decisive enabler of Russia's war against Ukraine	[S48]
The Hague 2025	China absent from the declaration	[S46]
Ankara 2026 (July 7-8)	China not expected and absent; a six-paragraph declaration on defense investment and "more than $50 billion in new procurements"; the summit also endorsed an Innovation Scale-Up Package, launched a Front Door for Industry and agreed counter-drone spending	[S44][S45][S46]

[INFER] The Hague and Ankara declarations were deliberately short texts built around spending pledges, so China's absence reflects their format as well as their priorities; NATO's working-level quantum and DIANA work continues. The coincidence is still notable: summit-level focus on China receded across the same period (2024-2026) in which the Russia-China quantum relationship moved from a first workshop to a standing institution with Chinese co-chairs, an S&T roadmap to 2030, and a BRICS quantum forum.

10.3 Where the Russia-China Axis Touches NATO

NATO priority (strategy)	Russia-China development	Tag
PNT resilience	Coordinated GLONASS-BeiDou time scales; ion and thulium clocks aimed at GLONASS; mercury-ion clocks for BeiDou [S12][S14][S17][S20]	INFER
Quantum-resistant and quantum-secured communications	2022 Micius link, dormant since the satellite re-entered; Chinese quantum satellites in preparation; BRICS channel ambitions; Chinese trapped-ion repeater work [S23][S101][S113][S125][S132]	FACT/INFER
Submarine detection and sensing	Rosatom entered quantum sensing R&D in 2026 [S65]; trust disputes over submarine-detection data recorded [S50]	FACT/UNDISC
Allied technological edge	China-funded joint work builds on microwave-gate schemes published by Oxford Ionics (an IonQ company) and an Oxford University group [S1][S199][S392]	FACT
Export-control coherence	Russian Wassenaar veto [S32]	FACT

10.4 Allied Assets Already in Place

• [FACT] IonQ reports that it has deployed Poland's national quantum communication network, in a NATO frontline state, and contracted a 256-qubit trapped-ion system for the University of Cambridge [S66]. Separately, ID Quantique, now majority-owned by IonQ, installed quantum key distribution systems on a 380 km Poznan-Warsaw link of Poland's research network in 2022 [S394][S395].
• [FACT] Several other allied examples in this report are IonQ assets: the deployable optical clocks under DARPA's It's About Time program (25 firm, with an unexercised option for 100 more) come from Vector Atomic, acquired by IonQ in October 2025, and the quantum inertial sensor flown on the X-37B was built by Vector Atomic with Honeywell before the acquisition, and one of the two microwave-gate schemes the China-funded study builds on was published by Oxford Ionics, acquired in September 2025 (the other by an Oxford University group including its co-founders) [S67][S392][S393][S396].
• [ARG] NATO's quantum strategy needs fielded allied systems, not only research. Allied national networks, deployable clocks and satellite-independent navigation are the fastest route to closing the PNT and communications gaps the strategy names, and every capability below has more than one allied supplier.

HOW COMPANIES APPEAR IN THIS REPORT Companies appear in this report wherever they are the source of a fact or the clearest example. IonQ's subsidiaries Vector Atomic, Oxford Ionics and ID Quantique are named as IonQ assets. The table below lists several suppliers for each capability so that no conclusion rests on one company; inclusion is not an endorsement, and nothing here is a product recommendation.

Capability	Where the axis stands	US and allied suppliers on the record
Deployable optical clocks and timing	Ion and thulium clocks for GLONASS; mercury-ion clocks for BeiDou (Section 4.9)	IonQ (Vector Atomic): 25 Evergreen-05 clocks under a DARPA award, option for 100 more [S393][S417]; Infleqtion: Tiqker optical clock, partnered with Safran for timing in GNSS-challenged environments [S410]; DARPA ROCkN program clocks [S138]
Navigation without satellites	Russia rebuilding; China flies a cold-atom sensor on its station (Sections 4.11 and 5.1)	Vector Atomic (now IonQ): quantum inertial sensor, built with Honeywell, flown on the X-37B [S396]; SandboxAQ: AQNav magnetic navigation, flight-tested with the US Air Force for over three years and on a Northrop Grumman drone in 2026 [S408]; Infleqtion, collaborator on NASA JPL's quantum gravity gradiometer pathfinder [S410]
Quantum networking	Dormant Micius link; Russian Railways' 7,858 km backbone; Chinese repeater memories (Sections 4.6 and 4.7)	IonQ: Poland's national quantum communication network [S66], and its ID Quantique unit's 2022 Poznan-Warsaw link [S394][S395]; Qunnect: GothamQ in New York, 34 km, 99.84 percent uptime over 15 days [S409]
Trapped-ion computing	70-72 qubit-equivalents at about 96 percent (Section 6)	IonQ: 99.99 percent two-qubit demonstration; Oxford Ionics electronic control; Cambridge 256-qubit contract [S66][S391][S392]; Quantinuum: Helios, 98 qubits at 99.92 percent across the system [S153]; both companies in DARPA's benchmarking initiative, Stage B [S403]
Other computing platforms	China's Zuchongzhi and Wukong; Russia's SnowDrop and 72-atom MSU system (Sections 4.12 and 6)	IBM: Starling, 200 logical qubits by 2029 in Poughkeepsie [S404]; Google Quantum AI: Willow, below-threshold error correction [S405]; QuEra: up to 96 logical qubits on neutral atoms [S406]; PsiQuantum: photonic sites in Chicago and Brisbane, chips made in New York [S407]; Atom Computing, IBM and QuEra also in QBI Stage B [S403]
Software and cloud access	China's free Origin Pilot and global clouds; Russia's thin domestic stack (Section 4.12)	Horizon Quantum (Singapore; Nasdaq), hardware-agnostic Triple Alpha environment [S411][S412]; Infleqtion: Superstaq software [S410]; IBM's Qiskit, the most-used open-source quantum library in a 2022 community survey (81 percent of respondents) [S420]

Allied suppliers by capability. Entries are limited to sourced, dated facts; inclusion is not an endorsement, and absence is not a judgment.

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] NATO stopped naming China at the summit level in the same years the Russia-China quantum relationship became an institution. The texts were short by design; the coincidence is still worth noting. [S44][S46][S48]

11. Threat Assessment and the Cost of Losing

11.1 Threat Vectors

Vector	Mechanism	Evidence	Level	Horizon
1. GPS-independent timing	Better clocks in two coordinated dual-use constellations reduce reliance on GPS and resilience to GPS denial	FACT: time-scale agreement; clock programs [S12][S17][S20]	Moderate, rising	2028-2035
2. Secure communications outside Western reach	Satellite QKD between Russia and China; dormant since Micius re-entered, restorable with Chinese satellites; possible BRICS extension; Russia's terrestrial backbone is national only	FACT: 2022 test; re-entries; new Chinese satellites in preparation [S23][S125][S154][S155]; INFER on extension	Moderate	Now-2030
3. Knowledge flow past sanctions	Published papers, visiting appointments, Chinese grants and workshops move expertise that hardware controls do not cover	FACT: three China-funded papers with Lebedev/RQC co-authors, one building on Oxford Ionics' published microwave-gate scheme; three workshops; a Rosatom-Academy memorandum; new joint laboratories [S1][S104][S105][S4][S422][S440][S441]	Moderate, rising	Now
4. Control-list fragmentation	Russian veto of Wassenaar additions; national patchwork	FACT [S32]	Moderate	Now
5. Coalition-building and standards	Russia offers machine access and roadmaps; China writes national trapped-ion standards and proposes de-Westernized standards via BRICS and SCO	FACT [S39][S71][S84][S109]	Moderate, slow	2027-2035
6. Supply chain	China's ytterbium and erbium licensing; Rosatom isotopes and helium-3 contracts with China; US-made tools in Russian fabs	FACT [S355][S357][S365][S377]; Section 11.11	Low-moderate	Near-term
7. Code-breaking quantum computer	Joint machine that threatens public-key cryptography	No evidence; Russian hardware trails. Expert surveys put the field-wide odds higher (Part D), but not for this partnership	Low from this partnership	Beyond 2030
8. Timing for AI and autonomy	Coordinated GLONASS-BeiDou timing and Chinese orbital AI computing support autonomous systems under GPS denial	FACT [S131][S134][S135]; INFER on use	Moderate, long	2028-2035
9. Counterspace paired with independent timing	Russian and Chinese anti-satellite programs, and a planned joint approach to Starlink, threaten the satellites that carry Western timing while GLONASS and BeiDou coordinate their own time	FACT [S157][S171][S172][S180]; INFER on pairing	Moderate-high	Now; pairing 2028-2035
10. Compute access and software	Russian users on an Entity-Listed Chinese cloud; Chinese users on Russia's Octillion cloud, run with a sanctioned institute; Chinese cloud standards drafted with PLA institutions	FACT [S299][S300][S320][S426]	Moderate	Now
11. Undersea deterrence	Chinese quantum magnetometers and ocean sensor networks; no underwater trials published	FACT [S341][S344][S346]	Low, watch	2030s
12. Chemical and biological	Quantum chemistry on both sides; no practical quantum advantage today; AI is the near-term driver	FACT [S324][S325][S329]	Low now	Long horizon

Levels follow the scale defined under How to Read This Report; the same twelve vectors appear in the Part C risk map.

11.2 Scenarios (No Probabilities Assigned)

Scenario	Description	Signposts
A. Baseline drift	Workshops, papers and agreements continue; national programs advance separately; timing coordination deepens quietly.	Annual workshops; 2026-2030 roadmap text; more GLONASS-BeiDou statements; further China-funded papers from the same core researchers.
B. Accelerated integration	Joint laboratories, shared facilities and Chinese components in Russian systems; more Russian specialists in Chinese-funded work; ion clocks fly on GLONASS or BeiDou; a BRICS QKD network goes live.	Chinese affiliations on Lebedev clock papers; further Lebedev or RQC specialists on Chinese grants; Russian names on Chinese trapped-ion standards; clock payload announcements; BRICS QKD service.
C. Stall	FSB rules, sanctions fear and Chinese caution slow joint work; China pursues its own path and treats Russia as a market.	Fewer co-authored papers; workshop downgrades; RIAC-style complaints about low Chinese interest.

[ARG] The United States and NATO should plan against Scenario B while expecting Scenario A. Scenario C would lower risk but would not remove China's own capability, which is the larger factor.

11.3 What Is Not a Threat

• [INFER] A Russia-China quantum computer that overtakes the US. Nothing in the public record points to it; the computing risk is China's own program, accelerated by Russian know-how.
• [INFER] A trapped-ion quantum computer in orbit. No plan by either country was found; the orbital strands are clocks and QKD.
• [INFER] Chinese planar-trap hardware powering Russia's program. The 2026 Russian results follow a Russian design line [S3][S106][S108].

What this axis itself puts at risk [INFER] The Russia-China channel documented here puts three things at risk: allied operations that depend on GPS, through coordinated non-GPS timing paired with counterspace; the West's trapped-ion talent edge, through specialist know-how contributed to a Chinese state program; and standards, through a non-Western trapped-ion stack that Russia could join. [INFER] Russia alone does not put US computing leadership at risk on the published record: its highest-fidelity chip has 16 qubits and its large machines are noisy. The axis does add to China's program, which is the serious competitor: Russian ion, qudit and microwave-gate specialists work inside it, and the academies now run joint laboratories. The stakes set out below are mainly China's, and the China series treats them in full; they are included here because the axis feeds them.

11.4 What Is at Stake

[INFER] Sections 11.4 to 11.7 set out stakes that are mainly China's, which the China series treats in full. The Russia-China channel bears on them in three ways: Russian specialists add to China's trapped-ion and clock base (Section 4.3), Rosatom's partner network widens the bloc that would adopt China's standards (Section 7), and coordinated navigation timing is one of the stack's layers (Section 4.8). Each application below should be read with that link in mind.

[FACT] The US-China Commission states the stakes plainly: the country that leads in quantum and AI "will control the encryption of the digital economy; enable breakthroughs in materials, energy, and medicine; and gain asymmetric and likely persistent advantage in intelligence and targeting," and "whoever gets there first could lock in irreversible strategic superiority" [S57]. The US intelligence community warns that early developers will gain "an extraordinary technological advantage" [S183].

[ARG] The figures most often quoted to size that prize are market forecasts. McKinsey puts quantum's value to companies at $1.3 to 2.7 trillion by 2035, and BCG at $450 to 850 billion by 2040 [S233][S236]. This report treats them as a lower bound on value.

Tier	What it covers	Examples	In the market forecasts?
Market value	Revenue from quantum in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, finance and logistics	The McKinsey and BCG ranges [S233][S236]	Yes, partly
Security losses	What falling behind costs the economy	About $1 billion a day in a modeled total loss of GPS, not the partial interference in Section 5.7 [S238]; $2.0-3.3 trillion in one modeled quantum attack on US payments [S239]; $7.1 billion to migrate federal civilian systems [S244]	No
Strategic advantage	What the leader keeps	Standards, supply chains, partner blocs, intelligence and targeting edge; "irreversible strategic superiority" [S57]	No, and it cannot be priced

PRICED IS NOT VALUED [ARG] The most-quoted market forecasts price quantum as an industry. It is a contest for encryption, navigation, standards and supply chains, and none of those appear on a revenue forecast. [S233][S236]

What the market forecasts leave out [ARG] They price markets, not power. Military advantage, intelligence collection, exposed encryption and GPS-independent navigation sit outside their scope [S233][S236]. [ARG] They add industries one by one. The value of owning the full stack, where each layer strengthens the next, is the value China is building and the forecasts cannot capture. [INFER] They lag the field. [FACT] McKinsey's own estimate moved from "up to $2 trillion" in 2024 to $0.9-2.0 trillion in 2025 and $1.3-2.7 trillion in 2026; start-up investment reached $12.6 billion in 2025, 6.3 times the year before [S233][S234][S235]. The estimated size of a code-breaking machine fell from 20 million qubits in 2019 to under one million in 2025 [S240], and expert odds of one within ten years reached their highest level in the survey's history [S189]. [FACT] They leave out the losses. None prices data stolen now and decrypted later, a GPS outage or a quantum attack on payments [S238][S239]. [FACT] Their authors call them rough. McKinsey describes its numbers as approximate, not definitive, and notes that Chinese activity lacks transparency [S234]; BCG says concrete applications "remain scarce" [S237].

CRITICAL STATEMENT [ARG] Every year the forecasts rise to meet a field that has already moved. Policy set to last year's estimate arrives late. [S233][S234][S235]

11.5 The Commercial Cost: Seven Applications

[INFER] The applications below are those where reputable sources expect quantum to matter most. Chemistry and materials are the most credible near-term targets; claims for broad optimization and machine learning are weaker, and this report says so [S258].

If the allies lead, and if China leads

	If the US and allies lead	If China leads
Pharmaceuticals and life sciences	Allied firms own the molecular-simulation platforms, the patents and the drug candidates.	Allied drugmakers license discovery platforms and run proprietary chemistry on foreign machines; candidates and IP move with them.
Chemicals, materials and batteries	Allied industry designs the catalysts and battery chemistries; FeMoco, the nitrogen-fixation enzyme behind fertilizer, is a benchmark target [S259].	The country that designs the next catalysts and electrolytes owns the supply chains built around them.
Finance	Allied banks price risk and settle payments on systems they control.	Critical calculations run on a rival's hardware or cloud, and payment systems face the exposure modeled at $2.0-3.3 trillion [S239].
Logistics, manufacturing and aerospace	Efficiency gains compound across allied supply chains.	A centrally directed state applies them at national scale, adding an industrial cost advantage. Evidence here is the weakest of the seven [S258].
Energy and the grid	Allied utilities set the reference designs for grid optimization and quantum-secured substations.	China pairs quantum with its state grid and exports the reference designs.
Cybersecurity and communications	The world adopts post-quantum standards set through NIST and allied bodies.	China fields its own post-quantum standards within three years and pushes them through international bodies; incompatible "quantum-secure" blocs follow [S253].
Sensing, timing and navigation	Allied industry sells resilient timing to telecom, finance and transport.	The leader sells the clocks and sensors that keep economies running when GPS fails; a modeled total GPS outage costs about $1 billion a day [S238].

How a lead becomes lock-in

Research Papers and talent [S218]

▶

Patents China filed 60% in 2024 [S222]

▶

Standards National and international bodies [S253]

▶

Supply chain Localized, then exported [S249]

▶

Partner bloc Customers wired to one system [S252]

CRITICAL STATEMENT [ARG] The first nation to field the full stack sets the standards everyone else must buy. [S222][S250][S253]

11.6 The Military Cost

[INFER] The military stakes below are China's capabilities; the Russia-China link enters through coordinated timing, counterspace planning and Russian specialists. [FACT] The 2024 China Military Power Report states that "PLA leaders view quantum sensing capabilities as tools to improve submarine detection" and that the PLA may use quantum networks and key distribution to reinforce command and control [S246]. RAND judges China an impressively fast follower and the world leader in quantum communications [S248]. The risk map below separates what is already happening from what remains contested.

Military consequences of an adversary quantum lead

Where the risk sits	Level	Why
Data stolen now, decrypted later	UNDER WAY	Adversaries are already harvesting; NSA warns of potentially devastating impact [S57][S242]
Navigation without GPS while GPS is denied	FEW YEARS	Quantum PNT could be fielded within a few years; joint GLONASS-BeiDou timing to 2030; Russian early-warning satellites linked to GPS interference from orbit [S247][S131][S261]
Quantum-secured networks that close off signals intelligence	DEPLOYED	PLA may harden command and control; NSA doubts QKD's security, but the loss of access is the risk [S246][S231]
Decryption of archives and forged signatures	2030s	Machine size estimates falling; half of surveyed experts give even odds or better within ten years, field-wide [S240][S189][S413]
Submarine detection	CONTESTED	PLA intent is stated; physics limits range, and skeptics see no near-term threat [S246][S254]
Quantum-accelerated AI for targeting and command	SPECULATIVE	USCC links quantum to targeting advantage; RAND finds no guaranteed near-term applications [S57][S248]
Quantum radar against stealth aircraft	LOW CREDIBILITY	Defense Science Board: no upgraded capability for DoD [S255]

Status labels in this table describe maturity, not this report's risk levels.

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] A navigation system that keeps time while GPS is jammed is a battlefield advantage before any quantum computer exists. [S131][S247]

Where the skeptics are right, and where they are not [FACT] Skeptics have the stronger case on submarine detection at strategic range and on quantum radar [S254][S255]. RAND's Parker argues a secret code-breaking machine is unlikely because its footprint would be visible [S256]. [INFER] The falling size of code-breaking machines weakens that footprint argument [S240], and the three most credible risks, harvested data, navigation without GPS and closed networks, do not depend on any contested breakthrough. This report does not claim the speculative risks; it claims the ones already under way.

11.7 What Owning the Full Stack Adds

 

Figure 5. China's quantum stack by layer, as the public record shows it. Sources: USCC, RUSI, SCSP, MERICS and Chinese standards records [S57][S249][S251][S252].

[FACT] US export controls pushed China to build its own dilution refrigerators and microwave components, and Chinese laser makers now sell to US laboratories [S249]. Chinese quantum computers are being exported, including an agreed computing center in Malaga, Spain, and dilution refrigerators prepared for export to Belt and Road countries including Russia and Iran [S252]. The Special Competitive Studies Project finds the US lead "slight... but eroding" [S251].

Archives ■  Once read, stolen data cannot be secured again ■  Diplomatic, military and commercial secrets with long lives [S242]	Standards ■  Once adopted, standards last decades ■  China is building its own post-quantum and quantum-network standards [S253]
Supply chains ■  Once localized, they are beyond sanctions ■  Then they are exported [S249][S252]	Partner blocs ■  Once wired to one network, partners stay ■  Rosatom roadmaps and Chinese quantum exports point the same way [S71][S252]

CRITICAL STATEMENT [ARG] China does not need to win every layer. It needs to own enough of them that it cannot be sanctioned, and to sell the rest to its partners. Russia supplies specialists, timing and customers to that project. [S249][S252][S71]

11.8 The Migration Clock

 

Figure 6. US migration deadlines against the expert window for a code-breaking quantum computer [S189][S241][S242][S243][S245][S257].

[FACT] Executive Order 14412 of June 22, 2026, "Securing the Nation Against Advanced Cryptographic Attacks," leaves national security systems to the NSA, which must report annually on their migration; its companion, Executive Order 14413 of the same date, orders an updated National Quantum Strategy, a quantum computer for scientific discovery at a Department of Energy facility, a national test center, at least three next-generation quantum sensor projects for fielding by September 30, 2028, and an FBI proposal to expand its quantum counterintelligence protection team [S241][S402]. The NSA requires new national security system purchases to support quantum-resistant algorithms from January 2027 [S242]. Executive Order 14412 requires high-value and high-impact federal systems to move key exchange to post-quantum algorithms by the end of 2030 and signatures by the end of 2031 [S241]. NIST's draft transition plan retires RSA and elliptic-curve encryption after 2030 and bans them after 2035 [S243]. The federal civilian migration alone is estimated at $7.1 billion [S244].

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] The United States has set its deadlines for 2030 and 2031, and experts surveyed put the odds of a code-breaking machine before about 2036 at up to one in two. That is an elicitation, not a forecast, and this report rates near-term code-breaking low; but if the experts are right, the margin between deadline and threat is thin. [S189][S241]

11.9 Chemistry and Biology: What Quantum Changes, and When

Both Russia and China are applying quantum computing to chemistry and medicine, and both have records that give that work strategic weight. This section sets out the honest timeline first, then the history, then the questions the public record can answer.

THE HONEST TIMELINE [FACT] Quantum computing today gives no practical advantage over classical computing in any application; quantum simulation is expected to support chemical and biological modeling later [S324]. The near-term change is artificial intelligence: in 2022 researchers showed that a drug-discovery model, turned around, generated forty thousand candidate toxic molecules in under six hours [S325].

• [FACT] The applied work exists on both sides. Rosatom lists radiopharmaceuticals and medical AI among its quantum pilots [S316]. Russia's ion processor has simulated small molecules such as hydrogen and lithium hydride [S338], and in May 2025 the Russian Quantum Center described a quantum algorithm for generative AI meant to speed up drug development [S340]. Rosatom said in June 2025 that a model built by the Center with the Singapore startup Gero predicted more than four thousand potentially synthesizable drug substances [S381]. In China, Origin Quantum and Bengbu Medical University agreed in 2024 to develop a quantum molecular-docking application, and Wukong applications for drug design and drug-toxicity prediction followed in 2025 [S336][S337]; Tencent's lab built the TenCirChem quantum-chemistry package [S307].
• [INFER] None of this is near a weapons-relevant capability today. What matters is the trajectory, the institutions around the work and the records of the two states.

Record	What US and international bodies have found	Sources
Soviet program	Biopreparat was the civilian component of the Soviet biological weapons program; Yeltsin acknowledged an offensive program in 1992. The 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax outbreak came from an aerosol escape at a military facility.	[S326][S327]
Russia, biological	The United States assesses that Russia maintains an offensive biological weapons program in violation of Articles I and II of the Biological Weapons Convention. The 2025 report finds that the knowledge Russia retained from the Soviet program "enabled it to develop a highly capable state BW program, able to produce and deploy BW agents to support a range of military objectives"; that key Soviet-era military biological facilities "remain inaccessible and not transparent"; that Russian law criminalizes disclosure about the former Soviet program; and that modernization at the 48th institute raises "serious concerns."	[S328][S329]
Russia, chemical	OPCW laboratories confirmed the UK's identification of the chemical used in Salisbury in 2018 and found a cholinesterase inhibitor in Navalny's samples in 2020. The United States certified Russia in non-compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention and in 2024 determined that Russia used chloropicrin against Ukrainian forces.	[S330][S331][S332][S333]
Russian institutes	The 33rd Scientific Research and Testing Institute and the 48th Central Scientific Research Institute were placed on the Entity List in 2020 as defense ministry facilities associated with Russia's chemical and biological weapons programs. On May 1, 2024 the United States designated three Russian government entities tied to the chemical and biological weapons programs, the 48th institute among them, and four supporting companies.	[S334][S339][S329]
China	The 2025 report finds that in 2024 "Chinese military medical institutions conducted toxin and biotechnology research and development with potential BW applications," raising concern under Article I, and that China possessed an offensive biological weapons program from the 1950s to at least the late 1980s with no information showing it was eliminated. It adds that China "probably is capable of using publicly available artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) tools to advance efforts related to BW applications." The Academy of Military Medical Sciences and eleven institutes were placed on the Entity List in 2021.	[S329][S335]

• [FACT] China rejects the findings. China's Foreign Ministry called the 2025 report one the United States "concocts year after year" and named the United States the system's "biggest saboteur," without addressing the biological findings [S376]. No Russian response naming the 2025 report was found; Russian officials instead accuse the United States of military-biological activity in Ukraine.

Why the treaty lists matter [FACT] The OPCW found that the chemical used against Navalny was "not listed in the Annex on Chemicals to the Convention" [S331]. [FACT] The Convention does not ban only listed chemicals. Its general-purpose criterion defines chemical weapons as toxic chemicals and their precursors, except where intended for purposes not prohibited, whether or not they are scheduled [S449]. [INFER] The schedules drive declarations and routine verification, so the useful concern is that novel, computationally designed compounds could challenge detection, verification and attribution, not that they escape the treaty by avoiding a list. That is why AI already matters to arms control. The State Department now judges that China can probably use public AI tools for biological-weapons-related efforts [S329]. Fault-tolerant quantum chemistry would sharpen the same problem later; it does not create it.

Question the public record can answer	Would signal	Where to look
Co-authorship, grant acknowledgments or cloud access linking quantum or AI chemistry groups to Russia's 33rd or 48th institutes or China's Academy of Military Medical Sciences	Advanced computational chemistry reaching listed weapons-related institutes	Paper acknowledgments; cloud user reports; Entity List records
Partners in Rosatom's medical and radiopharmaceutical quantum pilots	Who in Russia's medical sector is gaining quantum and AI chemistry tools	Rosatom and ComNews releases
Users of toxicity-prediction and molecular-design applications on Chinese quantum clouds	Whether military medical institutions use them	Origin and Bengbu releases; Chinese medical journals

 

Graphic 16. When the chemical and biological risk arrives: AI now, quantum later.

11.10 Submarines and Deterrence: What Quantum Sensing Can and Cannot Find

Ballistic-missile submarines are the most survivable leg of nuclear deterrence. If quantum sensors could find them, deterrence would become less stable. China is building quantum magnetometers and gravimeters and an ocean-wide sensor network; the question is what that adds up to.

THE HONEST ASSESSMENT [FACT] Every authoritative open analysis we found concludes that quantum sensing poses no meaningful near-term threat to survivable ballistic-missile submarines [S341][S342][S343]. The physics is the reason: a submarine's magnetic signal fades with the cube of distance, so a tenfold gain in sensor sensitivity yields only slightly more than a doubling of detection range [S343]. [INFER] That holds for a single sensor and a dipole field; gradiometers and networked arrays change the trade, which is why China's ocean networks matter more than any one magnetometer.

• [INFER] China's claims are real research with military framing added by the press. [FACT] A drone-mounted atomic magnetometer from China's space-industry corporation was reported in 2025 as reaching picotesla sensitivity and as able to "eliminate 'blind zones' in the South China Sea" [S344]; the Chinese paper itself describes geomagnetic mapping with flight tests over nearshore waters, reports survey accuracy of about 0.85 nanotesla after error compensation and does not mention submarines [S371]. A superconducting gravity-gradient detector in 2026 and a compact rubidium magnetometer from USTC, the Hefei National Laboratory and a shipbuilding-industry laboratory followed; the latter was tested on a geomagnetic storm, subway trains and a buried magnet, with "no underwater trials, operational detection distances or false-alarm rates for military targets" [S345][S346]. The gravity detector is a superconducting weak-force measurement system that the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Mechanics said passed a field test in March 2026; the submarine reading comes from the Hong Kong press [S345][S378]. China's 2016 claim of a 100-kilometer quantum radar remains unproven [S347].
• [FACT] China is building the network the sensors would plug into. A 2-billion-yuan seabed observation network for the East and South China Seas was approved in 2017, and China's "Transparent Ocean" program is described as a layered seabed-to-space observation system [S348][S349]. No source we found shows a quantum component in either.
• [FACT] Russia's quantum sensing is aimed at navigation. Rosatom's six 2026 sensor projects list "autonomous, jam-resistant navigation by the Earth's magnetic field," mineral exploration, space uses and support for GLONASS; one Russian outlet adds civil air and sea navigation, and none names a naval or anti-submarine role (Section 4.11) [S269][S270]. The earlier Rostec roadmap listed submarine detection among possible defense uses but was never funded [S272].
• [FACT] Allies are moving on the same ground. AUKUS Pillar II is developing quantum clocks that could go into next-generation attack submarines, the Defense Innovation Unit is field-testing quantum magnetic-anomaly detection and gravimetry, and Japan's defense ministry has requested fiscal 2027 research funds for a quantum magnetic sensor for submarine-hunting drones, aiming to develop it by fiscal 2031 [S350][S351][S352].

Where the real risk sits [INFER] The near-term risk is to attack submarines in shallow, sensor-dense waters, not to ballistic-missile submarines in the open ocean [S353]. That is exactly where China is concentrating: the South China Sea is both its own missile-submarine bastion and the water US attack submarines must enter. [ARG] The deterrence risk is perception before capability. A state that believes the other side's submarines are becoming detectable may act early in a crisis. Published detection ranges, underwater trials or a fielded airborne quantum detector would be the signals that matter.

 

Graphic 17. Why a better magnetometer barely extends detection range.

11.11 Supply Chokepoints: Ytterbium, Isotopes, Helium-3 and Tools

Quantum machines and clocks depend on a few scarce inputs. Several of them run through China or through Rosatom, the same company that runs Russia's quantum program.

Nov 10, 2026 China's suspension of ytterbium export controls expires [S355]

~69% China's share of world rare-earth mining, 2025 [S356]

> 1/3 Russian plant's share of the world stable-isotope market [S357]

2028 first phased operation of the US stable-isotope center [S359]

Input	What the record shows	Sources
Ytterbium	The qubit and clock element of Russia's leading ion machines and of US trapped-ion systems. China announced ytterbium export controls on October 9, 2025, to take effect November 8, then suspended them on November 7, before they took effect, until November 10, 2026. On September 28, 2026 China's commerce ministry said the Kuala Lumpur trade arrangement with the United States now runs to January 10, 2027, but the statement mentions neither rare earths nor export controls, and no later instrument had been located by October 11, 2026. The last located legal instrument is MOFCOM-GAC Announcement No. 70 of 2025, suspending Announcement No. 57 until November 10, 2026, and the ministry restated that date on April 9, 2026 [S448]; November 10 is a dated watchpoint, to be rechecked on the day this report is published or distributed; the US Treasury Secretary said on September 23 that the truce terms continue to January 10, 2027 [S418]. The same October 2025 list covers erbium, used in fiber-optic components for quantum networks. China mined about 69 percent of the world's rare earths in 2025 and processes up to 90 percent. [INFER] A trapped-ion machine needs only minute amounts of enriched ytterbium, so the exposure is licensing, cost and lead time rather than shortage, and barium-based systems avoid it.	[S354][S355][S356][S367][S368][S369][S370]
Enriched isotopes	Russia's Electrochemical Plant in Zelenogorsk, a Rosatom company, held more than a third of the world stable-isotope market by one 2021 account and over 40 percent by TVEL's own 2021 account [S419], delivering to more than 25 countries. A second Rosatom plant, Elektrokhimpribor in Lesnoy, separates isotopes electromagnetically and is described as the only enterprise producing ytterbium-176 in industrial quantities. Ytterbium-176 is a target for the medical isotope lutetium-177, not a qubit isotope; it matters here only because it shows electromagnetic separation of ytterbium at industrial scale in a Rosatom plant, while the qubit and clock isotope is ytterbium-171. The US Department of Energy names ytterbium-171 for quantum memory and warns the United States will remain dependent on supply chains from countries such as Russia; Oak Ridge already harvests small amounts of ytterbium-171, and its new stable-isotope center starts phased operation in 2028. No US or EU ban on Russian stable isotopes was found.	[S357][S358][S359][S379][S380]
Helium-3	Needed for the dilution refrigerators that cool superconducting machines. US supply comes from the nuclear-weapons tritium program; Russian supply has been effectively excluded from Western markets since 2022. Prices run from about $2,000 to over $10,000 a liter, and Western cooling makers have signed for lunar helium-3 from 2028. In April 2026 Rosatom announced contracts to supply China with germanium-72, helium-3 and a silicon isotope, isotopes it says are used in semiconductors, quantum computers and cryogenics.	[S360][S361][S377]
Cooling systems	Since September 2024, US export rules (ECCN 3A904) require a license to all destinations, unless an exception such as License Exception IEC applies, for cryogenic cooling systems rated at 600 microwatts or more at or below 0.1 kelvin for more than 48 hours, and for specified two-stage pulse-tube cryocoolers; applications for Country Groups D:1 and D:5, which include China and Russia, face a presumption of denial. Other cooling equipment and other countries' controls are outside this statement. Both now build their own: China's Origin and QuantumCTek offer domestic dilution refrigerators, and Russia unveiled its first quantum cryostats in 2025, with Bauman's Ilya Rodionov saying cryostats stopped being sold to Russia in 2018.	[S362][S363][S364]
Fabrication tools	Russia's 2025 Zelenograd photonics paper etched silicon nitride on a CORIAL-200R, a tool from Corial, owned since 2018 by Plasma-Therm of St. Petersburg, Florida. Ukraine's military intelligence lists a Corial etcher at the Salyut defense electronics plant and cites a Russian procurement notice of June 2020, before the 2022 sanctions. The Zelenograd tool's date and route are not public.	[S294][S365][S366]

 

Graphic 18. Supply chokepoints: inputs that run through China or Rosatom.

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] The allied quantum industry faces a licensing deadline, not a shortage. The ytterbium suspension still legally ends on November 10, 2026; the wider trade arrangement was extended to January 2027, but the control text was not. Machines need tiny quantities that can be stockpiled, so the near-term cost is price, paperwork and lead time; the larger exposures are erbium for photonic networking and the share of Western isotope supply that still runs through Rosatom. [S355][S356][S357][S368]

 

Graphic 19. The ytterbium clock: dates that matter before and after November 10, 2026.

12. Recommendations

12.1 For the US Government

1. [ARG] Field allied PNT now, from more than one supplier. Fund production and integration of deployable optical clocks and satellite-independent navigation, with priority on platforms exposed to GPS denial. IonQ (Vector Atomic) is building 25 optical clocks under DARPA's It's About Time program, with an unexercised option for 100 more, Infleqtion offers an optical clock for timing in GNSS-challenged environments, and SandboxAQ has flight-tested magnetic navigation with the US Air Force; Executive Order 14413 already directs the Pentagon to prioritize at least three next-generation quantum sensor projects for fielding by September 30, 2028 [S402][S408][S410][S417]. Spread clocks and quantum-secured links across many satellites, ground stations and terrestrial backups so that no single anti-satellite strike or jamming campaign removes them [S157][S171][S172]. (Section 10.4 lists other suppliers.)
2. [ARG] Make post-quantum cryptography the security baseline. Complete migration of federal and allied systems to post-quantum algorithms on the mandated timelines, and judge quantum key distribution and entanglement networks mission by mission, for authentication, trusted-node exposure, denial of service and cost. The NSA does not currently recommend QKD for national security systems [S231].
3. [ARG] Move proven clocks into orbit. The United States has already flown a trapped-ion clock and tested optical clocks and a quantum inertial sensor for GPS-free operation [S127][S138][S139]. Fund flight of next-generation ion and optical clocks on allied navigation and military satellites before GLONASS and BeiDou fly theirs.
4. [ARG] Treat trapped-ion processors and quantum networking as one platform problem, because China is standardizing the computer and funding computing and networking together [S109][S112]. Funding, standards work and procurement should cover compute, memories and interconnects as one stack.
5. [ARG] Close the knowledge channel, with guardrails. Extend Section 1286-style risk screening to conference co-participation, co-authorship and grant acknowledgments for federally funded researchers, limited to SDN-listed quantum institutions and to grants that fund their staff. Screening co-authorship raises open-science and First Amendment questions; it should be limited to federal funding conditions and should not restrict publication or open science with neutral partners.
6. [ARG] Make national quantum controls interoperable among the countries that adopted them after the Wassenaar deadlock, so the patchwork cannot be routed around [S32][S33].
7. [ARG] Offer emerging markets a US package of clocks, QKD networks and compute access, drawing on US and allied suppliers, to compete with Rosatom's bundled offer [S71][S87].
8. [ARG] Stop treating publication rankings as capability assessments. Agencies, Congress and allied ministries should cite bibliometric trackers as measures of open output only, and commission a fused, recurring assessment of Russian and Chinese quantum, AI and space programs that tracks money, people, standards, launch, partnerships and direction of travel, in Russian and Chinese sources as well as English [S217][S222].
9. [ARG] Size the stakes in strategic terms, not only market terms. Commission a recurring net assessment of what an adversary quantum lead would cost in security and strategic advantage, alongside market forecasts, so that budgets are not set to a revenue estimate. The US-China Commission's call for a national "Quantum First" goal by 2030 points the same way [S57][S233][S260].
10. [ARG] Set rules for adversary quantum clouds. US persons are barred from providing quantum services to Russia but face no rule on sending code and data to Entity-Listed Chinese quantum clouds, and the United States is among the largest foreign users of one. Agencies, contractors and universities should be told what may run there. Russia's Octillion cloud, run with VNIIA, a sanctioned nuclear-weapons institute, opened to foreign users in August 2026; US persons are generally barred from dealings with SDN-listed entities, and research institutions should get compliance guidance on whether using this platform falls under that bar [S299][S300][S313][S317][S426].
11. [ARG] Close the gap in the research-security list. The 1286 list covers BAQIS, USTC, Lebedev and Moscow State University but not Renmin University, the host of the documented Russia-China trapped-ion channel. Review Renmin's quantum group for listing under the evidentiary standard the 1286 process already uses, which looks for documented links to military, defense or talent-recruitment programs, not co-authorship alone [S1][S2][S321].
12. [ARG] Bring computational chemistry into arms-control planning. Support the OPCW Scientific Advisory Board and UNIDIR work on AI and quantum tools, and screen AI-chemistry and quantum-cloud access for institutes already listed over chemical and biological weapons [S331][S334][S335].
13. [ARG] Secure the inputs. Treat November 10, 2026 as a deadline for ytterbium: build allied stockpiles and non-Chinese supply, accelerate the Oak Ridge isotope center and private enrichment of quantum isotopes, and phase out reliance on Rosatom isotopes for quantum and clock programs as US capacity comes online; the Oak Ridge center begins phased operation only in 2028, so stockpiles must cover the gap [S355][S358][S359].
14. [ARG] Audit tools in Russian quantum and photonics fabs. Determine when and how US-owned etch tools reached Zelenograd and Russian defense plants, and close the routes [S294][S365][S366].
15. [ARG] Task the intelligence community to track GLONASS and BeiDou clock payloads, Chinese affiliations on Russian clock and trap papers, and drafting rosters of China's trapped-ion standards.

12.2 For NATO

1. [ARG] Restore China to the quantum agenda at working level even if summit language stays short; the strategy's PNT and communications goals cannot be met while ignoring the Russia-China timing coordination [S42][S46].
2. [ARG] Use DIANA and the Innovation Scale-Up Package to procure allied deployable clocks, satellite-independent navigation and national quantum networks from several suppliers, building on deployments such as Poland's (IonQ, through ID Quantique) and testbeds such as New York's GothamQ (Qunnect) [S45][S66][S395][S409].
3. [ARG] Bring IP4 partners in (Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand) on quantum PNT and QKD, as Japanese analysts propose [S58].
4. [ARG] Coordinate allied positions in international quantum standards bodies, so Chinese national trapped-ion standards do not become the default reference abroad [S109].

12.3 For Western Quantum Companies and Research Institutions

1. [ARG] Screen counterparties. Run supply-chain and partner audits against the Entity List and SDN list for the institutions named in Section 8.2, and place any open integration with them on compliance hold pending counsel review. This is a precaution, not an allegation of any completed prohibited transaction [S28][S29][S30].
2. [ARG] Treat publication as a transfer channel. Published Western trap and microwave-gate designs are already the reference for Russian and China-funded work; companies should review patent and trade-secret posture before publishing architecture details [S1][S3][S199].
3. [ARG] Watch for restricted-entity citations of Western architectures and for Russian or Chinese affiliations on work that builds on them.
4. [ARG] Offer the alternative where Rosatom is selling. Western suppliers of clocks, quantum networks and computing access should be visible in India, Vietnam and other markets Rosatom is courting [S71][S75].

12.4 Questions Quantum Industry Leaders Should Be Asking

The findings in this report translate into questions that boards and executives of Western quantum companies can put to their own teams. They are grouped by type of technology rather than by company; each points to the section where the evidence sits.

FOR BOARDS AND EXECUTIVES [ARG] Every quantum company now carries exposure this report documents: to Chinese supply and licensing, to Russian isotopes, to adversary clouds, to standards written without it and to talent channels that hardware controls do not reach. None of it shows up in a technology roadmap. All of it can be audited.

Technology	Questions to ask
Trapped-ion computing and clocks	Where do our ytterbium, barium and enriched isotopes come from, and what happens to cost and lead time if China's ytterbium and erbium suspension lapses on November 10, 2026 (Section 11.11), and is a multi-year stockpile of enriched material in place? Does any of our isotope supply trace to Rosatom? Do the China-funded microwave-gate trap designs, or Russia's QCCD and qudit work, track our own roadmap (Sections 4.3-4.5)? Are our published trap designs cited by Entity-Listed groups?
Superconducting computing	How fast are China's Zuchongzhi, Tianyan and Wukong machines replicating our error-correction milestones (Sections 4.12 and 6)? Is our helium-3 and dilution-refrigerator supply secure, and are our cooling and amplifier exports licensed under the 2024 controls (Section 11.11)? Which sanctioned groups use or have forked our open-source software?
Neutral atoms, sensors and navigation	Who is buying Chinese and Russian clocks, gravimeters and magnetometers in markets we want to win (Sections 4.8-4.11)? Are we positioned for allied undersea and GPS-free navigation programs, where the near-term demand sits (Section 11.10)? What is our rubidium and cesium supply?
Photonic computing and photonic chips	How close are China's Jiuzhang line and Russia's silicon-nitride photonics in Zelenograd to our technology (Section 4.5)? Is any of our process equipment, or our suppliers' equipment, inside Russian or Chinese photonic fabs?
Optimization and annealing	Which Chinese and Russian state companies are running optimization pilots, and on whose machines (Section 4.12)? Are military logistics users among them?
Software, compilers and operating systems	Is China's free Origin Pilot operating system becoming the default in markets we serve (Section 4.12)? Are China's new national standards for quantum cloud platforms, drafted with PLA institutions, shaping interfaces we will have to meet? Who in our user base also runs work on Entity-Listed Chinese clouds?
Foundries and fabrication tools	Are our tools, or our suppliers' tools, in Russian quantum or defense fabs, and when did they get there (Section 11.11)? Is our trusted-foundry status a target for intellectual-property theft?

• [ARG] Questions for every company. Are sanctioned entities reaching our cloud through front companies or third countries? Are our staff being approached by Chinese talent programs or by visiting-scholar arrangements of the kind documented in Section 4.3? Are we absent from China's quantum standards committee while our methods appear in its standards? Are we competing for the Global South customers that Rosatom's bundle and China's open clouds are winning (Sections 7 and 4.12)? Have we checked state-sponsored cyber reporting for attacks on quantum firms?
• [ARG] Research partners. Does any partner university or lab have ties to institutions on the Pentagon's Section 1286 list, or to Renmin University's trapped-ion group, which that list does not cover (Sections 4.12 and 8.2)?

13. Indicators and Warnings

Indicator	Would signal	Where to look
Renmin or BAQIS affiliation on a Lebedev clock or photonic-trap paper	Chinese participation in Russia's space clock line	JETP Letters; Quantum Electronics; arXiv
Further Lebedev or RQC trapped-ion specialists on Chinese grants or with Chinese affiliations	Group-level integration deepens	Paper acknowledgments; NSFC 92265208 and successor grants
The joint fast-microwave trap design reproduced in a Chinese patent, processor or experiment	Russian contribution enters Chinese hardware	Chinese patent records; Huayi, NUDT and Renmin papers
Further interference events traced to EKS satellites, or a peer-reviewed confirmation of the Cosmos 2546 attribution	Space-based jamming confirmed as a standing capability	NAVIGATION journal; IGS station data; ITU Radio Regulations Board
Which Rosatom sensor projects reach field tests, and for which customers	Russia closing its satellite-independent navigation gap	Rosatom, CNews, ComNews; VNIIFTRI releases
Contractor selection or launch of the Moscow State University quantum CubeSat	Russia's first quantum payload in orbit	NTI, Izvestia, Roscosmos launch manifests
A Russia-China agreement on quantum sensing or navigation	Russian dependence on Chinese sensing	Joint statements; MOST and Rosatom releases
Qudit or ququart encoding in ytterbium ions in a Chinese paper or patent with Russian co-authors, Lebedev or RQC affiliations, or grant 92265208	Russia's most distinctive computing skill, multi-level qudit control, enters the China-funded program	arXiv; Physical Review; Chinese patent records; Renmin, BAQIS and Huayi papers
Named Russian institutions running work on Origin, Tianyan or Quafu, or a Russia-China quantum cloud agreement	The axis extends into compute access	Chinese cloud reports; Rosatom and RQC releases; BRICS forum outcomes
Quantum or AI chemistry work acknowledging Russia's 33rd or 48th institutes or China's Academy of Military Medical Sciences	Computational chemistry reaching listed weapons-related institutes (Section 11.9)	Paper acknowledgments; cloud user reports
China extends, lets lapse or tightens its ytterbium suspension on November 10, 2026	Whether trapped-ion supply chains come back under Chinese licensing	MOFCOM announcements
Published underwater trials, detection ranges or a fielded airborne quantum magnetometer in China	Quantum anti-submarine sensing moving from research to operations	Chinese instrument journals; SCMP; PLA Navy releases
A Russian register of 50 or more qubits or qubit-equivalents reported above 99 percent two-qubit fidelity, or peer-reviewed full-system benchmarking of the 70-72 qubit-equivalent machines	Russia combining quality and scale; independent confirmation of its figures	arXiv; Physical Review; JETP Letters; Rosatom roadmap reports
Named Chinese institutions using Russia's Octillion cloud, or SnowDrop 8Q results reproduced in a peer-reviewed paper	Two-way compute access, and independent confirmation of Russia's best gate fidelity	Bauman and VNIIA releases; CNews; arXiv
Foreign users admitted to Rosatom's cloud, starting with Vietnam	Russia exports compute access as part of its bundle	Rosatom, MISIS and partner-ministry releases
Russian names or affiliations among drafters of China's trapped-ion standards	Russian content in Chinese national standards	National Public Service Platform for Standards Information
A Chinese QKD satellite exchanging keys with a Russian ground station	The joint quantum channel restored	CAS, USTC, MISIS, RQC releases
Ion or optical clock payload announced for GLONASS-K2 or GLONASS-V	Clock flight in Russia	Roscosmos, RKS, ISS Reshetnev releases
Clock hardware named in GLONASS-BeiDou committee outputs	Joint timing hardware	GLONASS-IAC; beidou.gov.cn
Chinese photonic chips or lasers in Russian surface-trap papers	Supply-chain integration	Methods sections
Records linking the USTC detectors from batch to Russian measurement, or a Russian planar trap from released design to the chip used in published spectroscopy	Device-level confirmation of the exchange and of Russia's trap build chain	Paper methods and supplements; theses; institutional releases
Text of the 2026-2030 S&T roadmap naming quantum	Formal joint quantum program	MOST, Ministry of Science and Higher Education
A named joint project, laboratory or exchange under the Rosatom-Chinese Academy of Sciences memorandum in quantum or photonics	The top-level memorandum turns into funded joint work	Rosatom, CAS and USTC releases; Atomic Energy 2.0
A named installation, algorithm project or test bed built jointly under Rosatom's cooperation with the Chinese Academy of Sciences	Joint quantum hardware, the step Rosatom's chief has already described	Rosatom, CAS and USTC releases; TASS; Atomic Energy 2.0
Named projects, staff or papers from the Russian Academy of Sciences-Shanghai Institute of Optics laboratory in quantum sensing or communication	Joint quantum work in a standing laboratory	SIOM and RAS releases; Chinese and Russian journals
MIET's joint laboratory with East China Normal University extending to photonic layers or trap fabrication	China inside Russia's trap build chain	MIET and ECNU releases
BRICS QKD service announced	Operational secure network	Rosatom, Rostec, China Telecom
Rosatom's first signed foreign quantum contract	Russia's export model goes commercial	Rosatom, TASS
Publication of the government list of FSB-controlled research fields	Whether quantum work with China needs FSB approval	Russian official legal publication portal

14. Honest Concessions

• [INFER] The trapped-ion strand on its own rests on one visiting appointment, three China-funded co-authored papers and three workshops. That strand is thin, as open sources under Russia's new rules would be expected to make it. The relationship as a whole is not: it rests on a memorandum signed before both presidents, a navigation roadmap, a tested satellite link, joint laboratories, shared clouds and joint military-technical planning (Part A).
• [INFER] China's surface-trap and addressing capability is its own (Section 4.6). The Russian channel accelerates that program rather than creating it; in a race decided by who fields first, acceleration still carries strategic weight.
• [INFER] The planar-trap paper shows single-ion spectroscopy, Rabi oscillations and heating measurements, not two-qubit gates, which it names as future work; its abstract and body give different heating-rate values within overlapping uncertainties [S3]. The detector exchange rests on an institutional interview; no batch, receipt or measurement record is public. Such gaps are treated as open questions, expected under Russia's 2026 disclosure rules (Section 2.4), not as proof of concealment.
• [ARG] The thesis that unacknowledged is not nonexistent is a planning judgment. This report does not claim any specific hidden capability; it argues that the public record understates both sides and should be read that way.
• [INFER] The space and AI judgments in Section 5 rest on capability and stated clock plans, not on any announced joint plan. China's orbital AI constellation is a civil commercial project.
• [INFER] The PNT judgment links facts that sit in separate programs; no joint clock hardware was found. The link is through coordinated time scales and shared technology families, not proven joint engineering.
• [FACT] Several capability figures come from company or state releases rather than peer review, including Russia's 70- and 72-qubit-equivalent counts and their 95.4 to 96.5 percent two-qubit figures (no peer-reviewed full-system benchmarking found; figures are as last published, mostly from December test rounds, and Section 6 explains which are likely overstated and which understated), the MISIS and SnowDrop chip fidelities, the HYQ-B100 count, Rosatom's planar-trap announcement and US company disclosures [S62][S66][S108][S123][S124][S428][S430].
• [INFER] Western think tanks may overweight military framing, and Russian and Chinese ones may overweight harmony. The joint RIAC-Fudan report's candor about weak Chinese interest cuts against the threat case and has been given full weight here.
• [INFER] The software findings rest on Chinese state media figures for cloud use; the ranking of US, Russian and Japanese users is Origin's own, and no Russian user is named. The chemistry and biology section finds no evidence of weapons-relevant quantum work in either country, and the submarine section finds Chinese sensor progress without underwater trials (Sections 4.12, 11.9 and 11.10).
• [FACT] Several Russian research databases blocked automated access during this research, including the state R&D registry (rosrid.ru), elibrary.ru and mathnet.ru. Contract-level records such as Rosatom contracts Р2185 and Р2178 surface only in paper acknowledgments, and some procurement claims could not be checked at all. This report's view of Russian state contracts is therefore partial, and the gap runs in one direction: it hides activity, it does not invent it.
• [FACT] IonQ's own disclosures are the source for several allied examples (Section 10.4); company-reported figures should be read as such. This report makes no company or product recommendation, and Section 10.4 lists other suppliers for each capability.
• [INFER] The strongest evidence against a deepening axis is set out here so readers can weigh it. Russian and Chinese experts themselves describe Chinese interest in science cooperation as small and joint projects as few [S39]. Bilateral trade fell 6.9 percent in 2025, largely from Chinese fear of secondary sanctions [S39]. No Chinese co-author appears on any Russian clock paper found [S12][S206]. The authors still conclude the channel is institutional because the workshop series, the visiting appointment, the grant and the navigation roadmap have each continued through those frictions [S4][S2][S107][S131].

15. What Would Change This View

Condition	Change to the verdict
C1a. Component or sample exchange documented at device level (for example batch, receipt and measurement records for the USTC detectors)	Strengthens the collaboration and knowledge-flow assessment; does not by itself raise the computing or PNT threat levels.
C1b. Joint system integration (a shared processor or clock payload, or Chinese components integrated into Russian ion systems)	Raises the computing and PNT vectors to moderate-high.
C1c. Demonstrated performance of a joint system (a benchmarked joint processor, or a jointly built clock operating in orbit)	Raises the computing or PNT vector to high.
C2. Ion or optical clocks confirmed in orbit on GLONASS or BeiDou with announced time-scale interoperability	Raises the PNT vector to high and moves its horizon forward.
C3. A documented Russian contribution traced into a Chinese standard, patent or processor, or further Russian specialists placed in Chinese-funded trapped-ion work	Raises the knowledge-flow vector toward moderate-high.
C4. Restricting rules applied by Russia's FSB to China exchanges, or the workshop series ending or losing its Chinese co-chair in 2027	Lowers the partnership assessment toward Scenario C.
C5. Western allies agree a common quantum control list outside Wassenaar	Lowers the control-list fragmentation vector.
C6. Peer review rejects the attribution of the GNSS interference to Cosmos 2546 or the early-warning constellation	Removes orbital interference from the counterspace judgment.
C7. The 2026-2030 science roadmap is signed and omits quantum	Lowers the state-level quantum channel toward laboratory level only.
C9. Russia's planar-trap papers stop citing the joint design	Weakens the link between the joint branch and Russia's program.
C10. Russia publishes an FSB field list that excludes quantum	Lowers the concealment judgment for quantum research with foreigners.
C11. China extends its ytterbium suspension or ends the controls	Lowers the supply-chain vector; reimposed or tightened controls raise it.
C12. Russian defense or weapons-linked institutes named as users of Chinese quantum clouds	Raises the compute-access vector and links it to the chemical and biological judgment.
C13. Chinese underwater trials or published detection ranges for quantum magnetometers	Raises the undersea deterrence vector.
C8. Work under NSFC 92265208 with Russian co-authors stops: no new paper under it or a successor grant by the end of 2027	Lowers the knowledge-flow vector to low-moderate.
C16. A jointly built quantum installation or test bed under the Rosatom-Chinese Academy of Sciences cooperation is announced	Raises the computing vector to moderate and the knowledge-flow vector to moderate-high.
C14. No Russian names or affiliations on TC578's trapped-ion standards when they are published	Lowers the standards and coalition vector.
C15. GLONASS-K2 launches through 2028 carry no optical or ion clock	Lowers the GPS-independent timing vector and pushes its horizon past 2030.

16. How Widely Read Reports Compare With This Evidence

Three sets of assessments are checked here against this report's cited evidence: the ten most widely circulated public accounts of Russia's quantum activity, ten government, think-tank and Russian state assessments supplied to the authors for review, and the two benchmark trackers most often used to rank national quantum standing. Each entry records where the account is outdated, wrong or silent, and where it is consistent.

16.1 Ten Widely Circulated Reports

These were selected by syndication, citation by other outlets and prominence in English and Russian search results. No major Western think tank has published a dedicated report on Russia's quantum program; the most-read sources are science journals, the South China Morning Post, industry trackers and the Russian technology press.

Report	What it says	Assessment against this report's evidence
1. Nature news, "Russia joins race to make quantum dreams a reality" (Schiermeier, December 2019) [S143]	Russia will spend about 50 billion rubles (US$790 million) over five years on quantum technologies; Fedorov: Russia is "5 to 10 years behind."	Superseded on the budget, outdated on the gap. The 50-billion-ruble figure was the multi-roadmap proposal at the time; the 2020-2024 computing roadmap was funded at about 24 billion rubles, 13.3 billion from the budget, and later reporting puts it at 12.5 billion state plus an equal Rosatom match [S98][S145][S150]. Russia now reports 70- and 72-qubit-equivalent ion systems, but two-qubit fidelity near 96 percent against 99.92 percent for Quantinuum's Helios shows the gap is in quality, not count [S123][S124][S153].
2. Fedorov et al., "Quantum technologies in Russia," Quantum Science and Technology (October 2019) [S144]	A five-year roadmap under the Digital Economy program, its budget "not yet defined," with experts requesting "close to 1 billion EUR"; built on open international collaboration.	Outdated. The expected budget did not materialize at that scale [S145][S150]. Since 2022 RQC has been on the Entity List and SDN list, its international advisory board members resigned, and Russian research with foreign participants now needs FSB clearance in listed fields [S28][S29][S34][S152].
3. The Insider, "Rosatom decided to build a quantum computer for 24 billion rubles" (November 2019) [S145]	24 billion rubles, 13.3 billion from the budget; four types of 50-100-qubit computers by 2024; Russia had built only two-qubit systems.	Accurate at the time; now outdated. Russia reached 50 qubits on ions and atoms in 2024 and 70-72 on three platforms by December 2025, a year after the target date [S123][S124][S64]. The 2025-2030 roadmap now targets 300 qubits [S126].
4. South China Morning Post, "Quantum entanglement: how US-led sanctions are turning Russia's genius scientists to China for collaboration" (Chen, 2023) [S92]	Sanctions push Russian quantum scientists toward Chinese partners and markets; some Russians estimate China is about ten years ahead.	Consistent in direction, outdated in scale. The relationship has since become institutional: a visiting appointment at Renmin, three China-funded co-authored papers under NSFC 92265208, an annual workshop with a Chinese co-chair, and a 2026-2030 science roadmap now in drafting [S1][S2][S4][S40][S104][S105].
5. South China Morning Post, "China and Russia test 'hack-proof' quantum communication link for Brics countries" (Bela, December 2023) [S146]	A 3,800 km Russia-China quantum link via Micius was tested "last year"; a BRICS quantum network is "technically achievable."	Accurate on the test; outdated on the channel. The test took place on March 1, 2022 [S23][S24]. Micius, the satellite it used, re-entered on January 25, 2026, and no successor Russia-China link was found [S125]. Russia's own Impuls-1 was a laser-communication testbed, and a Russian satellite QKD system is expected only by 2030 [S26][S136].
6. The Quantum Insider, "Report: China and Russia Test Quantum Communication Link" (January 2, 2024) [S147]	Repeats SCMP's "last year," which in a January 2024 article reads as 2023.	Wrong on the date. The test was completed on March 1, 2022 [S23][S24]. The BRICS-network framing is outdated for the same reason as item 5 [S125].
7. The Quantum Insider, "Russia Unveils Its 50-Qubit Rubidium Neutral Atom Prototype Quantum Computer" (December 29, 2024) [S148]	50-qubit MSU-RQC atom system; plans for more than 100 qubits; repeats a US$790 million roadmap figure.	Outdated on scale; wrong on funding. MSU reached 72 qubits and two ion platforms reached 70-72 qubit-equivalents in December 2025 [S64][S123][S124]. The US$790 million figure repeats the 2019 proposal, not the funded roadmap [S145][S150].
8. 3DNews and Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk on Lebedev's 50-qubit ion processor (July 2025) [S149]	50 qubits on 25 ytterbium-171 qudits; methods described as having no foreign equivalent.	Outdated, and one claim contested. Lebedev reported 70 qubit-equivalents on 35 ions in December 2025 [S123]. Universal qudit processing with trapped ions was demonstrated in Innsbruck in 2022 [S151], so the approach is not unique to Russia, whatever Lebedev's specific methods.
9. ComNews and 3DNews on the 2025-2030 quantum computing roadmap (July-August 2025) [S126][S150]	State funding of 14.6 billion rubles matched by Rosatom; processors to grow from 50 qubits in 2024 to 300 in 2030; the previous roadmap met 107 percent of targets.	Consistent and current. The 107 percent figure is the roadmap's own assessment. The draft program to 2036 [S84] and the August 2026 planar-trap step [S108] postdate it.
10. DatacenterDynamics, "Moscow State University deploys 72-qubit quantum computer in partnership with Rosatom" (January 2026) [S64]	72-qubit neutral-atom system, the third Russian system of 70 qubits or qubit-equivalents or more; several hundred qubits targeted by 2030.	Consistent. It gives no fidelity; the 94 percent two-qubit figure is reported by [S186][S187].

16.2 Ten Government, Think-Tank and Russian State Assessments

These ten were supplied for review. Each was read in its latest available version; where only a summary of it was available, the entry says so.

Assessment	What it says about Russia	Assessment against this report's evidence
1. Congressional Research Service, Emerging Military Technologies (R46458; versions 2020-2024) [S182]	Russian quantum development "lags significantly" behind the US and China, likely five to ten years in computing; a $790 million plan; initiatives "not military-specific," with limited open information on military use. Wording confirmed in the April 6, 2022 version of the report.	Outdated and wrong on funding. The $790 million repeats the 2019 proposal [S145][S150]. Russia now fields 70-72-qubit-equivalent systems [S123][S124], and its ion and optical clocks are being prepared for GLONASS, a dual-use system [S12][S14]. "Limited information" is the concealment Section 2.4 describes, not evidence of a civilian-only program.
2. ODNI, Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community (March 2026) [S183]	A quantum computing section warns that early developers gain an extraordinary advantage and that no country has yet built a cryptographically relevant quantum computer; it names the US, China, the EU, Japan and the UK as investing billions. Russia is not mentioned in it.	Silent on Russia. The assessment omits a country running seven processors, three of 70 qubits or more [S65], with specialists from a sanctioned Russian center working inside a Chinese state-funded program [S1][S28]. It does not mention harvest-now, decrypt-later collection by Russia or anyone else.
3. Congressional Research Service, Federal Quantum Information Science: An Overview (IF10872, July 2018) [S184]	Russia, Germany and Austria are "making strides" in quantum "even without explicit" national initiatives.	Outdated. Russia adopted a national roadmap in 2019, a 2025-2030 program targeting 300 qubits, and a draft program to 2036 [S84][S126]. The brief predates sanctions and the Russia-China partnership.
4. RAND, Commercial and Military Applications and Timelines for Quantum Technology (2021) [S185]	Russia appears once, as $33 million of quantum research investment in 2015.	Outdated and silent. Russia's 2020-2024 roadmap was funded at about 24 billion rubles and its 2025-2030 program at more than 29 billion [S98][S126]. The report does not assess Russian capability.
5. The Quantum Insider (December 27, 2025) and Quantum Computing Report (January 4, 2026) on the 72-qubit MSU prototype [S186][S187]	72 rubidium-atom qubits, Russia's third system of 70 qubits or more; 94 percent two-qubit accuracy; a three-zone register of which two zones were used; several hundred high-fidelity qubits targeted by 2030. Both rest on TASS and note the figures are unverified.	Consistent. Matches this report's evidence [S64][S65]. Quantum Computing Report's body text carries a January 2025 date for a January 2026 article.
6. Global Risk Institute, Quantum Computing: A New Threat to Cybersecurity (2016) and Quantum Threat Timeline Report 2025 [S188][S189]	Expert surveys on when anyone could build a cryptographically relevant quantum computer; China is the only state named. Russia does not appear.	Silent, and on code-breaking broadly consistent. This report also rates a Russia-China code-breaking machine as a low threat (Section 11.1). The surveys miss Russia's role in timing, secure links, sanctions evasion and coalition-building.
7. Institute for Defense Analyses, Assessment of the Future Economic Impact of Quantum Information Science (2017) [S190]	An economic study; Russia is listed among the "other foreign countries" reviewed and is cited mainly as the Russian Quantum Center's source for a quantum key distribution unit costing about $100,000.	Outdated. It predates Russia's roadmap and sanctions; the Russian Quantum Center it cites has been on the US Entity List and SDN list since 2022 [S28][S29]. The study does not cover defense or Russia's Digital Economy program.
8. Rosatom Newsletter, Russia's Quantum Leap (January 2026) and Quantum Prospects (February 2026) [S191][S192]	Platforms: 70 qubits on ytterbium ions, 50 on neutral atoms, 16 superconducting and 35 photonic (January issue); 34 algorithms; the 2030 goal is moving the technology from lab to industry.	Consistent on counts; silent where it matters. The state's own account omits two-qubit fidelity near 96 percent [S123][S124], the China-funded collaboration [S1][S104][S105] and sanctions [S28]. It does not state a fault-tolerance target for 2030.
9. Bauman University and VNIIA, SnowDrop superconducting computers and Quantum Park (2025-2026) [S193][S194]	Superconducting SnowDrop systems of 4, 8 and 10 qubits, upgradable to 48, on sale from 170 million rubles through Quantum Park, with the domestic Yaranga cryostat; 10 to 20 machines a year planned; a public cloud since 2025; the eight-qubit SnowDrop 8Q at 99.26 percent average two-qubit fidelity, opened to foreign users on August 1, 2026 [S425][S426].	New to the record, and supports the thesis. It shows Russia building a domestic superconducting supply chain, including ultra-low-temperature cryostats, that Western assessments do not mention. Bauman's tantalum resonators with quality factors above ten million are in a peer-reviewed journal [S195]. Its 99.26 percent two-qubit figure is second only to MISIS's 16-qubit processor at 99.4 percent among Russian machines; neither is peer reviewed [S428].
10. Russian Quantum Center and Rosatom briefings: Iunusov interview (January 2025) and the on-chip squeezed-light source (July 2026) [S197][S198]	A 75-qubit computer targeted for 2025; useful economic tasks by 2030; error rates must fall below 1 percent; international restrictions named as a challenge. Rosatom announced Russia's first on-chip squeezed-light source.	Consistent, with one claim unverified. Russia reached 70-72 qubit-equivalents by December 2025 [S123][S124], close to the 2025 target. The announced squeezed-light chip is documented only in press reports, but the same Bilenko-Chermoshentsev group has published about 1 dB of squeezing in an integrated ring microresonator in a peer-reviewed journal [S216].

16.3 Two Benchmark Trackers

These trackers do not assess Russia directly, but their rankings are widely quoted as if they did. Each was read in its latest public edition; ASPI's full country rankings for 2021-2025 now sit behind an account login, so the figures here come from its published reports.

Tracker	What it shows about Russia	Assessment against this report's evidence
11. ASPI Critical Technology Tracker (March 2023; two-decade edition August 2024; December 2025 update; March and June 2026 data refreshes; September 2026 quantum analysis) [S217][S218][S219][S220][S221][S227][S228][S229]	Russia is in no quantum, sensing or timing top five in any edition with public rankings. The March and June 2026 refreshes, covering 2021-2025, do not mention Russia or give quantum country shares; full country rankings now require an account. The original edition says only that Russia is in the top five "for one or two technologies"; by 2019-2023 its sole top-five place across 64 technologies is advanced explosives. The 2026 analysis notes a "dramatic increase since 2019" in China-Russia collaboration on critical and dual-use technologies.	Accurate as a paper count; misleading if read as capability. ASPI itself says it cannot see classified research and that defense work is most likely to move out of the open literature [S217][S218]. The China-funded quantum work this report documents is part of the collaboration it notes [S1][S104][S105]. Its China findings on quantum communications and sensors are consistent with Sections 4 and 5.
12. MIT Quantum Index Report 2025 (June 2025) [S222][S223]	Russia at 3 percent of world quantum computing and quantum communications papers, a "secondary cluster" with Canada and Italy. Absent from patents, venture funding, the policy chapter and the hardware benchmarks.	Silent where it matters. It omits Russia's published roadmaps of about 24 billion and more than 29 billion rubles [S98][S126] and every Russian processor, including the 50-qubit ion and atom machines of 2024 [S123][S124][S64]. No 2026 edition was found, so its newest research data ends in 2023.

CRITICAL STATEMENT [INFER] The Western government and think-tank assessments among these twenty either leave Russia out of quantum or call it lagging and civilian, and the two leading trackers measure only its open papers. [ARG] Policy built on them will arrive late, by the authors' estimate two to three years. [S182][S183][S189][S222]

What the twenty assessments miss [INFER] None of the twenty covers the China-funded papers with Russian co-authors, the Renmin visiting appointment, the annual Russia-China workshop, China's trapped-ion standards, the FSB approval rule or the re-entry of China's quantum satellites. The US government assessments either leave Russia out of quantum or describe it as lagging and civilian. In the authors' judgment, measured by the newest events each assessment misses, the public picture of Russian quantum activity is two to three years behind the record set out in this report; none mentions Russian Railways' 7,858 km quantum backbone [S397]. [INFER] The most repeated errors are a budget figure carried forward from a 2019 proposal, treatment of the 2022 Micius test as a standing channel, and silence read as absence.

OUTDATED DATA IN OFFICIAL USE [FACT] A Russian quantum budget proposed in 2019, never funded at that scale, has been carried as Russia's plan in Congressional Research Service analysis and repeated in the trade press. The US intelligence community's 2026 threat assessment leaves Russia out of its quantum section. The leading trackers omit Russia's roadmaps and machines. [S145][S148][S182][S183][S222] [ARG] The public data that decision-makers cite is incomplete and outdated.

Appendix A. Verification Matrix (English, Russian, Chinese)

Claim	English	Russian	Chinese	Status
Russian users among the top foreign users of China's Origin quantum cloud	n/a	[S373] (Chinese state media in Russian)	[S298][S299][S372]	Single origin: all figures are Origin's own, relayed by Chinese media in Chinese and Russian; the US ranks first
Origin Quantum, BAQIS, USTC, the CAS Key Laboratory and Hefei National Laboratory on the US Entity List, May 2024	[S30][S300]	n/a	n/a	Confirmed (US primary)
China's ytterbium export controls, suspended until November 10, 2026	[S354][S355]	n/a	[S368][S369]	Confirmed, 2 languages (Chinese primary)
Trade arrangement extended to January 10, 2027, without mention of rare earths	[S367]	n/a	[S370]	Confirmed, 2 languages
Section 1286 list includes Lebedev, Moscow State University and Bauman but not Renmin	[S321]	[S374]	n/a	Confirmed, 2 languages
May 1, 2024 US designations include the 48th Central Research Institute	[S329][S339]	[S375]	n/a	Confirmed, 2 languages
Build-chain steps: MIET coating, Zelenograd layers, RKS-commissioned photonics (link between steps not shown)	[S295][S294]	[S293][S294][S296]	n/a	Confirmed (Russian primary; bilingual documents)
Detector fabrication with USTC equipment in exchange for detectors	[S292]	[S291]	n/a	Single source (HSE interview, Russian original with English translation)
Rosatom's 2026 sensor projects are civil and navigation-focused	n/a	[S269][S270]	n/a	Confirmed (Russian primary)
Ytterbium-176 produced industrially at Elektrokhimpribor, Lesnoy; Zelenogorsk's stable-isotope share	n/a	[S357][S379][S380]	n/a	Confirmed (Russian primary)
CAS gravity detector passed a field test, March 2026	[S345] (press framing)	n/a	[S378]	Chinese institute headline confirmed; submarine framing is the press's
Rosatom-Gero model predicted more than four thousand drug substances	n/a	[S381]	n/a	Confirmed (Russian primary; company figure)
Chinese drone magnetometer paper does not mention submarines	[S344] (press framing)	n/a	[S371]	Confirmed; submarine framing is the press's
US findings on Russian and Chinese biological weapons activity	[S329]	No official response found	[S376] (general rejection)	US finding; China rejects
Semerikov is a visiting scholar at Renmin and co-authored a China-funded paper	[S1]	[S3] (Lebedev affiliation only)	[S2]	Confirmed, 3 languages
Lebedev/RQC physicists co-authored three papers funded under NSFC 92265208	[S1][S104][S105]	n/a	[S107] (grant record)	Confirmed, 2 languages
Russian-funded 2024 surface-trap design precedes the joint design	[S106]	n/a	n/a	Confirmed (English primary)
Planar-trap lineage from the IBIS space clock program	[S12][S206][S207][S208]	[S205]	n/a	Confirmed, 2 languages
Russia's first planar-trap qubit operations, August 2026	[S3] (trap only)	[S108]	n/a	Confirmed (Russian primary); [S3] documents the trap, not the qubit operations
2nd workshop held at USTC, Hefei, April 2025, with the Russian Academy of Sciences	[S6] notice in English	[S7]	[S6][S117]	Confirmed
Wei Zhang co-chaired the 2026 workshop and leads BAQIS's ion team	[S4]	[S7] (organizers)	[S10]	Confirmed
RQC delegation visited Renmin and PKU, November 2023	Not found	Not found	[S8][S9]	Single language (primary)
China's trapped-ion standards and TC578 reorganization	n/a	n/a	[S109][S111]	Confirmed (Chinese primary)
GB/T 47468-2026 drafters include Huayi, NUDT and BAQIS	n/a	n/a	[S120][S121]	Confirmed (Chinese primary)
China's own surface-trap and addressing capability	n/a	n/a	[S114][S115]	Confirmed (Chinese primary)
Full-cycle Russia-China QKD via Micius, March 1, 2022	[S55]	[S24][S415] (MISIS primary)	[S23]	Confirmed in 3 languages; single origin (MISIS and RQC)
Micius re-entered January 25, 2026	[S125][S215]	n/a	Not found	Two independent tracking records; no official Chinese notice found
Jinan-1 fell into the South Pacific, October 17, 2025	n/a	n/a	[S154]	Chinese report; some tracking catalogs list an April 2025 decay for the object they identify as Jinan-1
Russia's 70- and 72-qubit-equivalent ion systems, December 2025	n/a	[S123][S124]	n/a	Confirmed (Russian)
GLONASS-BeiDou 2026-2030 roadmap	n/a	[S131]	n/a	Confirmed (Russian)
GLONASS-BeiDou time-scale agreement and committee	[S16][S17][S52]	[S39]	Not found as primary	Confirmed, 2 languages (Russian: joint report only)
Decision to draft a 2026-2030 S&T roadmap, November 2025	Not found	[S39]	[S40]	Confirmed, 2 languages
FSB approval of foreign research participation from March 1, 2026	[S118]	[S34][S35][S36]	n/a	Confirmed, 2 languages (Russian primary)
Russian two-qubit fidelities: ion machines 95.4-96.5 percent; MISIS 16-qubit 99.4 percent; peer-reviewed or preprint ion results 92.7 and 95 percent on 8-10 ions	[S431][S432]	[S123][S124][S428][S429][S430][S437]	n/a	Confirmed, 2 languages (press figures single origin: the labs and Rosatom)
SnowDrop 8Q: 99.26 percent average and 99.55 percent best two-qubit fidelity; Octillion cloud open from August 1, 2026, with users from China	[S427] (citing CNews)	[S425][S426]	n/a	Confirmed, 2 languages (single origin: Bauman and VNIIA)
Rosatom-Chinese Academy of Sciences memorandum covering photonic and quantum technologies, May 20, 2026	n/a	[S423]	[S422] (CAS primary); [S424] (Likhachev, via state media)	Confirmed, 2 languages (Chinese primary)
RQC sanctioned: Entity List effective February 24, 2022 on nuclear-explosive grounds; EU February 25, 2022; SDN September 15, 2022	[S28][S386][S387]	n/a	n/a	Confirmed (US and EU primary)
RQC's 72-qubit-equivalent machine uses seven-level qudits on 26 calcium ions	[S389] (Xinhua in English)	[S124][S388]	n/a	Confirmed, 2 languages
Russian Railways' trunk quantum network: 7,858 km, 27 regions; services licensed from August 11, 2026	n/a	[S397][S398][S399]	Searched; no cross-border link found	Confirmed (Russian primary and press)
GLONASS-BeiDou 2022 meetings: reciprocal measurement stations; time-scale mechanism not public	[S17][S401] (GGTO comparison)	[S400]	Searched; not found	Confirmed in part; mechanism undisclosed
2013 Chinese experiment used the German CHAMP satellite, deorbited 2010	[S156][S390]	n/a	n/a	Confirmed (English)
IonQ assets named in the report: Oxford Ionics (Sep 2025), Vector Atomic (Oct 2025), ID Quantique (majority), X-37B sensor by Vector Atomic	[S392][S393][S394][S396]	n/a	n/a	Confirmed (company and DIU primary)
Lebedev Yb+ clock supported by Russian Space Agency	[S12]	[S13]	n/a	Confirmed, 2 languages
China mercury-ion clock aimed at space use	[S20]	n/a	[S21]	Confirmed, 2 languages
Vietnam-Rosatom quantum roadmap, September 2026	[S71][S72][S73][S74] (Rosatom English release)	n/a	n/a	Confirmed (English: Rosatom, MISIS and Vietnamese press)
Quantum computing named as a Russia-China S&T direction	n/a	[S39]	[S39] (Chinese co-authors)	Confirmed (joint report)
China absent from NATO 2025 and 2026 declarations	[S44][S46]	n/a	n/a	Confirmed (English)

Appendix B. Chronology

Date	Event	Source
2015	Russia-China satellite navigation committee formed	[S16]
2017	QSpace founded by RQC and its scientific director	[S25]
Oct 2017	Lebedev-led IBIS onboard ytterbium-ion clock project begins, with RKS as industrial partner	[S205][S206]
2019	Russian team begins work with Micius	[S24]
Apr 2021	BAQIS ion-trap computing team formed under Wei Zhang	[S10]
Jul 2021	RKS shows cold-Yb-ion frequency generator at MAKS-2021	[S13]
Oct 5, 2021	Rosatom roadmap contract later acknowledged by RQC surface-trap research	[S209]
Nov 15, 2021	Russia destroys Cosmos 1408 with a Nudol anti-satellite missile	[S171][S110]
Feb 4, 2022	GLONASS-BeiDou time-scale complementarity agreement	[S17]
Mar 1, 2022	First full-cycle Russia-China QKD test	[S23]
Feb 24, 2022	RQC added to US Entity List (published Mar 3); EU lists it Feb 25	[S386][S387]
Sep 15, 2022	OFAC quantum sector determination; RQC to SDN list	[S27][S28][S29]
2022	NSFC Key Project 92265208 awarded to Wei Zhang at Renmin	[S107]
Oct 2022	Lebedev and Skoltech publish transportable Yb+ clock with a planar, photonic next generation	[S12]
Nov 29, 2022	Huayi patent CN115409190A published, choosing optical over microwave addressing	[S114]
Jan 31, 2023	Rosatom's quantum company publishes patent for a welded Paul trap invented by Semerikov's team	[S214]
Jul 2023	Skoltech surface-trap design names navigation clocks and quantum computing	[S207]
2023	Skoltech completes work for RKS on compact optical frequency standards with photonic integrated circuit elements	[S295]
Jun 27, 2023	Impuls-1 laser-communication testbed launched	[S26]
Nov 21-22, 2023	RQC delegation at PKU and Renmin; Semerikov presents at PKU; delegation tours Renmin labs	[S8][S9]
Mar 2024	Rosatom-Belarus Academy of Sciences agreement	[S80]
Apr 2024	China-funded Renmin/BAQIS spectroscopy preprint with Lebedev/RQC co-authors	[S104]
Apr 24, 2024	Russia vetoes UN resolution against nuclear weapons in space; China abstains	[S175]
May 2024	BAQIS, USTC and CAS Key Lab QI added to Entity List	[S30]
Jun 9-13, 2024	1st Russian-Sino workshop, Moscow	[S5]
Jul 2024	Russia-China agreement on a reusable-engine laboratory	[S166]
Aug 23, 2024	Russian-funded optimized surface-trap design (Gerasin, Semerikov)	[S106]
Sep 2024	US worldwide quantum export controls	[S33]
Nov 21, 2024	Semerikov lectures at BAQIS as Renmin visiting scholar	[S2]
Dec 2024	First international Quantum Week, Uzbekistan	[S77]
Mar 4, 2025	China-funded sensing paper with Smirnov and Wei Zhang published	[S105]
Mar 2025	Jinan-1 quantum link between Beijing and South Africa published	[S132]
Apr 25-30, 2025	2nd workshop, USTC Hefei	[S6]
May 2025	Russia and China sign lunar nuclear power plant agreement	[S170]
May 14, 2025	China launches first 12 satellites of the Three-Body Computing Constellation	[S134]
Jun 24, 2025	FSB oversight law signed	[S34]
Jul 22, 2025	Wei Zhang speaks at RQC's International Conference on Quantum Technologies	[S116]
Aug 2025	Russia's 2025-2030 quantum computing roadmap approved (300-qubit target)	[S126]
Oct 5, 2025	China-funded Lebedev-Renmin surface-trap paper	[S1]
Oct 2025	Russian Academy of Sciences and Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics open a joint laser and quantum laboratory in Shanghai	[S441][S442]
Oct 17, 2025	Jinan-1 falls into the South Pacific after more than three years in orbit	[S154]
Oct 30, 2025	Russia-Kazakhstan quantum meeting	[S79]
Nov 3-4, 2025	Heads-of-government meeting agrees to draft a 2026-2030 S&T roadmap; GLONASS-BeiDou 2026-2030 roadmap signed	[S40][S131]
Dec 19-29, 2025	Lebedev reports 70-qubit-equivalent ytterbium processor; RQC reports 72-qubit-equivalent calcium processor	[S123][S124]
Dec 2025	Chinese 15-liter mercury-ion clock paper; thulium clock pitched to Putin for GLONASS; Tsinghua dual-funded trapped-ion network node paper	[S14][S20][S112]
Jan 4, 2026	Micius team says it is preparing fully for a new medium-high-orbit quantum satellite	[S155]
Jan 25, 2026	Micius re-enters the atmosphere; no official Chinese notice found	[S125]
Jan 29-Feb 1, 2026	Russian-Chinese Institute of Fundamental Research launched in Sanya	[S445]
Jan 29, 2026	Roscosmos contracts a lunar power station for 2036	[S129]
Feb 2, 2026	Pan Jianwei team reports long-lived ion-ion entanglement over 10 km (Nature, online)	[S113]
Mar 1, 2026	FSB approval rules take effect	[S36]
Mar 6, 2026	TC578 reorganized and widened, Pan Jianwei chair	[S111]
Apr 30, 2026	GB/T 47468-2026 published; drafters include Huayi, NUDT and BAQIS	[S120]
May 8, 2026	HSE interview describes a Russian detector array fabricated with USTC equipment in exchange for finished detectors and know-how	[S291]
May 16, 2026	Skoltech, MEPhI and Lebedev report Russia's first ion in a microfabricated surface trap	[S208]
May 19-20, 2026	Putin visits Beijing	[S41]
May 20, 2026	Rosatom and the Chinese Academy of Sciences sign a science and technology memorandum covering photonic and quantum technologies	[S422][S423]
Jun 8, 2026	First BRICS Quantum Technologies Forum, Moscow	[S65]
Jun 11-14, 2026	3rd workshop, Moscow, organized by RQC and Rosatom; Chinese co-chair; trapped-ion talks and posters	[S4][S7]
Jun 29, 2026	MIET and East China Normal University agree a joint semiconductor laboratory	[S444]
Jul 8, 2026	NATO Ankara declaration (no China language)	[S44][S46]
Jul 9-10, 2026	Leaked China-Russia forum decks published; China's first orbital booster recovery	[S157][S162]
Jun 22, 2026	Executive Orders 14412 (post-quantum migration deadlines) and 14413 (quantum innovation, sensor fielding by 2028)	[S241][S402]
Feb 10-12, 2026	Lebedev Institute gives 95.4 percent two-qubit fidelity for its 70-qubit-equivalent machine; MISIS shows Rosatom a 16-qubit fluxonium processor at 99.4 percent	[S430][S428]
Jul 24, 2026	Rosatom's chief says cooperation with the Chinese Academy of Sciences reaches algorithms and installations	[S440]
Jul 31, 2026	Bauman University and VNIIA announce SnowDrop 8Q: 8 superconducting qubits at 99.26 percent average two-qubit fidelity	[S425][S427]
Aug 1, 2026	Russia's Octillion cloud opens SnowDrop 8Q to remote users; users from China, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Spain connect	[S425][S426]
Aug 6, 2026	DARPA awards IonQ $28 million for 25 deployable optical clocks, with a $30 million option for 100 more	[S417]
Aug 11, 2026	Decree No. 970 lets Russian Railways sell quantum-communication services over its trunk network	[S399]
Aug 12, 2026	Rosatom announces Russia's first planar-trap qubit operations	[S108]
Aug 2026	Chang'e-7 launch, carrying a Russian instrument, postponed	[S130]
Aug 18-19, 2026	Zhuque-3 booster lands on land	[S163]
Aug 22, 2026	JETP Letters planar-trap spectroscopy paper, citing joint paper	[S3]
Aug 29, 2026	Trapped-ion computing reference architecture registered	[S109]
Sep 2, 2026	Rosatom offers SCO quantum cooperation	[S83]
Sep 2026	Vietnam-Rosatom quantum roadmap; BRICS ministers back annual quantum forum	[S71][S85]

Appendix C. Key People and Institutions

People are listed because of their public professional roles. Inclusion is not evidence of wrongdoing.

Name	Role	Relevance
Ilya Semerikov	Head, RQC scalable ion computing group; Lebedev lab head; Renmin visiting scholar	Central figure in the ion channel [S1][S2][S3][S104]
Wei Zhang	Professor, Renmin University; leads BAQIS ion-trap team; principal investigator, NSFC 92265208	Chinese co-author and 2026 co-chair [S1][S4][S10][S107]
Ilya Gerasin	Lebedev Physical Institute	First author of the 2024 QCCD trap design, the joint paper and, as corresponding author, the Rosatom-funded planar-trap result [S1][S3][S106]
Vasilii Smirnov	Lebedev Physical Institute and RQC	Co-author on two China-funded papers with Zhang's group, one without Semerikov [S104][S105]
Nikolai Kolachevsky	Director, Lebedev Institute; scientific lead of the national roadmap	Clock and ion lead; in Vietnam talks; BRICS forum [S12][S65][S72]
Alexey Akimov	Director, RQC	2026 co-chair; in 2023 delegation [S4][S8][S9]
Ruslan Iunusov	RQC co-founder	Led 2023 delegation [S8][S9]
Alexey Fedorov	RQC and MISIS	Micius link; Western co-authorship [S92][S99]
Ekaterina Solntseva / Marina Avilova	Rosatom quantum leadership	Vietnam roadmap; workshop opening [S4][S74]
Pan Jianwei	USTC and Hefei National Laboratory; chair of TC578	Leads China's quantum standards committee; trapped-ion repeater result [S111][S113]
Xiao-Ye Xu	USTC	2025 workshop contact; 2026 speaker [S4][S6]
Timur Abbasov	Skoltech	Lead author of Russia's first surface-trapped ion and the 2023 trap design [S207][S208]
Kirill Lakhmanskiy	RQC	Leads RQC's calcium surface-trap work under the Rosatom roadmap [S108][S209]
Ilia Zalivako	Lebedev	Processor team; IBIS clock program; MIET-fabricated trap review [S206][S210]
Ivan Sherstov	Skoltech	Trap supplier for the planar-trap result; clock co-author [S3][S12]

Appendix D. Evidence Gaps at Specimen Level

The report documents institutions, people, grants, papers and announced results. It does not document individual devices from design to measurement. The chains below set out what a specimen-level finding would require; none has been completed from public sources.

Thread	Chain needed for a specimen-level finding	Status
Ion traps	Released design, wafer or die, received label, dated mounting interval, spectroscopy and heating-rate acquisitions, analysis revision	Not completed
Figure 2 of the 2026 experiment	Authors' submission manifest, incoming figure file, production file, original images, acquisition sessions, mounted specimen	Not completed; the paper states the figure is a composite [S3]
Domestic fabrication	Layout revision, fabrication traveler and etch run, acceptance package, MIET coating receipt	Not completed
USTC detectors	Batch, receipt, mounting and channel assignment, native measurement exports, per-device outcomes	Not completed; one institutional interview [S291][S292]

WHAT THE GAPS MEAN [INFER] These gaps limit what can be said about particular devices. They do not weaken the broader evidence of cooperation, which rests on institutions, funding, people and publications rather than on any single specimen.

Appendix E. Source Citation List

All sources accessed between October 1 and 9, 2026. Language codes: EN English, RU Russian, ZH Chinese, PT Portuguese.

[S1] Gerasin, Semerikov, Zhang, 'Surface Ion Trap for Fast Microwave Gates', Chips 4(4):41. MDPI, Oct 5, 2025. EN. https://doi.org/10.3390/chips4040041

[S2] Baiwang Forum No. 66: Ilya Semerikov (Renmin University) lecture; speaker biography. Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (BAQIS), Nov 21, 2024. ZH. https://www.baqis.ac.cn/events/detail/?cid=2139

[S3] Gerasin et al., 'Optical Spectroscopy and Measurement of Ion Heating Rates in a Planar Trap', JETP Letters 124:28-33. Springer / Pleiades, Aug 22, 2026. EN/RU. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S0021364026607177

[S4] 3rd Russian-Chinese Workshop on Quantum Science and Technology: organizers (RQC and Rosatom), co-chairs, speakers, program and poster session (trapped-ion posters on ytterbium ququart gate sets, surface ion traps, calcium-ion quantum logic, ytterbium octupole spectroscopy and a trapped-ion memristor). Russian Quantum Center, Jun 11-14, 2026. RU/EN. https://workshop.rqc.ru/

[S5] 1st Russian-Sino Workshop on Quantum Science and Technology: program. Russian Quantum Center, Jun 9-13, 2024. EN. https://workshop.rqc.ru/

[S6] Notice on Holding the 2nd Sino-Russian Workshop on Quantum Science and Technology. CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, USTC, Feb 21, 2025. ZH/EN. http://lqcc.ustc.edu.cn/notice1158.html

[S7] 'III Russian-Chinese seminar on quantum science and technology to be held in Moscow with Rosatom support'. Energyland.info (Rosatom release), Jun 11, 2026. RU. https://energyland.info/news-show--atom-283804

[S8] 'Russian Quantum Center delegation visits Department of Physics'. Renmin University of China, School of Physics, Nov 22, 2023. ZH. http://www.phys.ruc.edu.cn/info/1059/2004.htm

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[S379] Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 'How an isotope producer in the Urals is entering civil markets' (Elektrokhimpribor: 210 stable isotopes of 47 elements; ytterbium-176 enriched to 99.6 percent for lutetium-177). Sep 30, 2021. RU. https://rg.ru/2021/09/30/reg-urfo/kak-proizvoditel-izotopov-na-urale-osvaivaet-grazhdanskie-rynki.html

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[S381] RIA Novosti, 'Russia has created a quantum model to predict drugs' (Russian Quantum Center with Gero; more than four thousand potentially synthesizable drug substances). Jun 6, 2025. RU. https://ria.ru/20250606/nauka-2021217480.html

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[S383] Xinhua, Origin Wukong: 29 million+ visits from 143 countries and regions. Jun 11, 2025. ZH. https://www.news.cn/tech/20250611/fd8ed26fa5b447a28f5f455a70722362/c.html

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[S385] C114, Wukong-180 launched online (180 computing qubits; 99.9% single-qubit and 99% two-qubit fidelity). Jun 8, 2026. ZH. https://m.c114.com.cn/w5285-1311804.html

[S386] Bureau of Industry and Security, 'Implementation of Sanctions Against Russia Under the Export Administration Regulations (EAR)', 87 FR 12226 (adds International Center for Quantum Optics and Quantum Technologies LLC to the Entity List 'for acquiring and attempting to acquire U.S.-origin items in support of nuclear explosive activities'; effective Feb 24, 2022). Federal Register, Mar 3, 2022. EN. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2022-03-03/html/2022-04300.htm

[S387] Council Regulation (EU) 2022/328 of 25 February 2022 amending Regulation (EU) No 833/2014 (Annex III, replacing Annex IV of Regulation 833/2014, lists 'International Center for Quantum Optics and Quantum Technologies (the Russian Quantum Center)'). EUR-Lex, Feb 25, 2022. EN. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A32022R0328

[S388] 'In Russia the world's first quantum computer on kusepts (seven-level qudits) was created' (RQC; 26 calcium ions; values 'from 0 to 6'; 72-qubit equivalent; the 'world's first' claim is RQC's own). 3DNews, Dec 30, 2025. RU. https://3dnews.ru/1134641/

[S389] 'Russian scientists build 1st domestic quantum computer with 7-level qubits' (Xinhua, citing TASS and RQC). NAMPA, Dec 29, 2025. EN. https://www.nampa.org/text/22819354

[S390] 'China Unveils Secret Quantum Communications Experiment' (USTC team used retroreflectors on the German CHAMP satellite, deorbited 2010; results posted 2013). IEEE Spectrum, Jun 2013. EN. https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-unveils-secret-quantum-communications-experiment

[S391] 'IonQ Achieves Landmark Result, Setting New World Record in Quantum Computing Performance' (99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity). IonQ, Oct 21, 2025. EN. https://investors.ionq.com/news/news-details/2025/IonQ-Achieves-Landmark-Result-Setting-New-World-Record-in-Quantum-Computing-Performance/default.aspx

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[S393] 'IonQ Completes Acquisition of Vector Atomic, the Global Leader in Advanced Quantum Sensing'. IonQ, Oct 2025. EN. https://ionq.com/news/ionq-completes-acquisition-of-vector-atomic-the-global-leader-in-advanced

[S394] 'IonQ acquires majority stake in ID Quantique'. Converge Digest, 2025. EN. https://convergedigest.com/ionq-acquires-majority-stake-in-id-quantique/

[S395] 'A new 380 km long intercity QKD infrastructure in Poland' (Poznan-Warsaw, PSNC and ID Quantique on the PIONIER network). ID Quantique, Sep 5, 2022. EN. https://www.idquantique.com/a-new-380-km-long-intercity-qkd-infrastructure-in-poland/

[S396] 'Advancing quantum sensing for the DoD from lab to orbit within months' (quantum inertial sensor for X-37B OTV-8 built by Vector Atomic with Honeywell Aerospace). Defense Innovation Unit, Jul 29, 2025. EN. https://www.diu.mil/latest/advancing-quantum-sensing-for-the-dod-from-lab-to-orbit-within-months

[S397] 'Russian Railways' trunk quantum network united 27 regions of Russia' (7,858 km; 13 cities of over one million). Snob, May 22, 2026. RU. https://snob.ru/news/magistralnaia-kvantovaia-set-rzhd-obedinila-27-regionov-rossii/

[S398] 'Russian Railways plans to provide quantum communication services to external subscribers from 2026' (7,012 km network). ComNews, Jun 20, 2025. RU. https://www.comnews.ru/digital-economy/content/239791/2025-06-20/2025-w25/1012/rzhd-planiruyut-2026-goda-pereyti-k-okazaniyu-uslug-sfere-kvantovykh-kommunikaciy-dlya-vneshnikh-abonentov

[S399] 'Government Decree No. 970 of 03.08.2026 on a new type of activity of Russian Railways in quantum communications' (in force Aug 11, 2026). PPT.ru, Aug 2026. RU. https://ppt.ru/obzory/vstupaet-v-silu/postanovlenie-pravitelstva-rf-03-08-2026-970

[S400] Ninth meeting of the Russian-Chinese satellite navigation committee, Sep 27, 2022 (reciprocal measurement stations: GLONASS in Changchun, Urumqi and Shanghai). Habr, Sep 2022. RU. https://habr.com/ru/news/t/690386

[S401] 'Galileo and GPS synchronise watches: new time offset helps working together' (GGTO broadcast in the Galileo navigation message). ESA, May 2013. EN. https://esa.int/Applications/Navigation/Galileo_and_GPS_synchronise_watches_new_time_offset_helps_working_together

[S402] Executive Order 14413, 'Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation'. The White House, Jun 22, 2026. EN. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/ushering-in-the-next-frontier-of-quantum-innovation/

[S403] 'DARPA Selects 11 Participants for Quantum Benchmarking Initiative Stage B' (Atom Computing, Diraq, IBM, IonQ, Nord Quantique, Photonic, Quantinuum, Quantum Motion, QuEra, Silicon Quantum Computing, Xanadu). HPCwire, Nov 7, 2025. EN. https://www.hpcwire.com/2025/11/07/darpa-selects-11-participants-for-quantum-benchmarking-initiative-stage-b/

[S404] 'IBM Offers Roadmap Toward Large-Scale, Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computer at New IBM Quantum Data Center' (Starling: 200 logical qubits, 100 million operations, Poughkeepsie, 2029). The Quantum Insider, Jun 10, 2025. EN. https://thequantuminsider.com/2025/06/10/ibm-offers-roadmap-toward-large-scale-fault-tolerant-quantum-computer-at-new-ibm-quantum-data-center/

[S405] 'Meet Willow, our state-of-the-art quantum chip' (105 qubits; below-threshold error correction, Nature). Google, Dec 9, 2024. EN. https://blog.google/technology/research/google-willow-quantum-chip/

[S406] 'QuEra Computing marks record 2025 as the year of fault tolerance' (four Nature papers; 3,000-qubit array run continuously for over two hours; up to 96 logical qubits; AIST installation). QuEra, Dec 9, 2025. EN. https://www.quera.com/press-releases/quera-computing-marks-record-2025-as-the-year-of-fault-tolerance-and-over-230m-of-new-capital-to-accelerate-industrial-deployment

[S407] 'PsiQuantum Raises $1 Billion to Build Million-Qubit Scale, Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computers' (sites in Brisbane and Chicago; chipsets made at GlobalFoundries Fab 8, New York). The Quantum Insider, Sep 10, 2025. EN. https://thequantuminsider.com/2025/09/10/psiquantum-raises-1-billion-to-build-million-qubit-scale-fault-tolerant-quantum-computers/

[S408] 'SandboxAQ Tests GPS-Free Navigation on Northrop Grumman Drone' (AQNav magnetic navigation; more than three years of USAF flight tests on C-17 and C-130J). The Quantum Insider, Sep 9, 2026. EN. https://thequantuminsider.com/2026/09/09/sandboxaq-tests-gps-free-navigation-on-northrop-grumman-drone/

[S409] 'Qunnect Achieves Record-Breaking Performance for Distributing Polarization Qubits on GothamQ Network in NYC' (34 km; 99.84% uptime over 15 days). Photonics Online, Apr 15, 2024. EN. https://www.photonicsonline.com/doc/qunnect-achieves-record-polarization-qubits-on-gothamq-network-in-nyc-0001

[S410] Infleqtion, Inc. Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1 (Q1 2026 results: Tiqker optical clock with Safran; NASA JPL Quantum Gravity Gradiometer Pathfinder; Sqale neutral-atom computer; Superstaq software). SEC EDGAR, May 14, 2026. EN. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0002007825/000119312526224350/d89415dex991.htm

[S411] 'Horizon Quantum Goes Public via SPAC, Raises $120 Million' (Nasdaq: HQ). The Quantum Insider, Mar 19, 2026. EN. https://thequantuminsider.com/2026/03/19/horizon-quantum-goes-public-via-spac-raises-120-million/

[S412] 'In Nasdaq Debut, Horizon Quantum Reports It's Scaling Up Software and Hardware Strategy' (Singapore-based; Triple Alpha IDE; testbed with Ember-1 and an IonQ trapped-ion system; AQT and Alice & Bob partnerships). The Quantum Insider, May 5, 2026. EN. https://thequantuminsider.com/2026/05/05/in-nasdaq-debut-horizon-quantum-reports-its-scaling-up-software-and-hardware-strategy/

[S413] 'Quantum Threat Timeline Report 2025' analysis (10-year estimate 28-49% depending on interpretation; 13 of 26 experts at or above about 50 percent). PostQuantum, 2026. EN. https://postquantum.com/security-pqc/quantum-threat-timeline-report-2025/

[S414] Antipov, 'Google takes it with numbers, Rosatom with the elite: why Rosatom's 70 qubits may be more useful than a thousand Google qubits'. SecurityLab, Dec 19, 2025. RU. https://www.securitylab.ru/news/567369.php

[S415] 'Quantum communication in space: Russian scientists set up a protected channel with China' (key distribution over 3,800 km via Micius; encrypted 256x64-pixel images exchanged between Zvenigorod and Nanshan). NUST MISIS, Dec 1, 2023. RU. https://misis.ru/news/8845/

[S416] 'The first "quantum call" between Moscow and St. Petersburg took place' (Russian Railways line of about 700 km; 7,000 km planned by 2024). BFM.ru, Jun 8, 2021. RU. https://www.bfm.ru/news/473972

[S417] 'UPDATED: DARPA Selects IonQ to Produce Next-Generation Atomic Clocks' ($28 million modification for manufacturing development and 25 Evergreen-05 clocks; $30 million option, not yet exercised, for 100 more; DARPA It's About Time program; U.S. government customers). IonQ, Aug 6, 2026. EN. https://ionq.com/news/updated-darpa-selects-ionq-to-produce-next-generation-atomic-clocks

[S418] 'US, China to extend trade war truce by 2 months' (Treasury Secretary Bessent: truce extended to Jan 10, 2027; terms of the prior agreement, including China's pause on rare-earth export controls, remain in effect). Supply Chain Dive, Sep 24, 2026. EN. https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/us-china-to-extend-trade-war-truce-by-2-months/831251/

[S419] 'Electrochemical Plant's revenue from stable isotopes rises by 14%' (global stable-isotope market share 'remains over 40%', per TVEL). World Nuclear News, Feb 26, 2021. EN. https://world-nuclear-news.org/articles/rosatom-revenue-from-stable-isotopes-rises-by-14

[S420] '8 Key Takeaways From The Quantum Open Source Software Survey Results' (Unitary Fund 2022 survey: IBM's Qiskit the most popular library, used by 81% of respondents). The Quantum Insider, Nov 8, 2022. EN. https://thequantuminsider.com/2022/11/08/8-key-takeaways-from-the-quantum-open-source-software-survey-results/

[S421] 'Russian Satellites Are Jamming GPS Signals, Study Says' (Todd Humphreys: 'I'm leaning toward this being a periodic test of a capability that would be very damaging if it was deployed in anger'). Gizmodo, Jun 2026. EN. https://gizmodo.com/russian-satellites-are-jamming-gps-signals-from-space-study-says-2000769972

[S422] Chinese Academy of Sciences, 'CAS and Rosatom sign cooperation document' (Memorandum of Understanding on Scientific and Technological Cooperation between the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Rosatom, signed by CAS President Hou Jianguo and Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev in the Great Hall of the People, witnessed by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin; controlled fusion, nuclear medicine, accelerator technology, new photonic and quantum technologies). May 20, 2026. ZH. https://www.cas.cn/houjianguo/hd/202605/t20260521_5110253.shtml

[S423] 'Russia and China signed three interdepartmental agreements on nuclear and fusion energy' (Rosatom memoranda with CAEA, MOST and the Chinese Academy of Sciences; the CAS memorandum covers 'new photonic and quantum technologies'). Atomic Energy 2.0, May 21, 2026. RU. https://www.atomic-energy.ru/news/2026/05/21/165840

[S424] Sputnik China, 'Rosatom will sign a quantum research cooperation agreement with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' (Likhachev: first direct cooperation with CAS; besides fusion, 'photonics and quantum directions'). May 19, 2026. ZH. https://sputniknews.cn/20260519/1071386466.html

[S425] 'A new-generation quantum processor: Bauman's SnowDrop goes to cloud access' (SnowDrop 8Q, 8 superconducting qubits; average two-qubit fidelity 99.26%, 99.55% on the best pairs; average simultaneous single-qubit fidelity 99.929%; Octillion cloud access from Aug 1, 2026; Bauman University and VNIIA). www1.ru, Aug 1, 2026. RU. https://www1.ru/news/2026/08/01/426049-superkompiuter-novogo-pokoleniia-kvantovyi-processor-snowdrop-ot-baumanki-zapuskaiut-v-oblacnyi-dostup.html

[S426] 'Russian scientists can test the SnowDrop 8Q quantum coprocessor free of charge' (free access to Aug 20; several hundred users from Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Spain and China already connected; Ilya Rodionov). BFM.ru, Aug 2, 2026. RU. https://www.bfm.ru/news/613967

[S427] 'Russia's Pentagon-Blacklisted Quantum Lab Hits 99.55% Fidelity, Opens Cloud' (SnowDrop 8Q: peak 99.55%, average 99.26% +/- 0.19% across 10 connected pairs; Octillion beta Aug 1-20, 2026; citing CNews). TechTimes, Jul 31, 2026. EN. https://www.techtimes.com/articles/322434/20260731/russias-pentagon-blacklisted-quantum-lab-hits-9955-fidelity-opens-cloud.htm

[S428] 'Rosatom's head shown Russia's first superconducting quantum computer on fluxoniums' (MISIS 16-qubit processor; average two-qubit fidelity 99.4%, simultaneous single-qubit 99.8%; roadmap control experiment, December 2025). Scientific Russia, Feb 12, 2026. RU. https://scientificrussia.ru/articles/glave-rosatoma-v-ramkah-vizita-v-misis-pokazali-pervyj-v-rossii-sverhprodnikovyj-kvantovyj-komputer-na-flaksoniumah

[S429] '16-qubit quantum computer on fluxoniums created at MISIS' (average two-qubit 99.4%; Rosatom as curator). www1.ru, Feb 22, 2026. RU. https://www1.ru/news/2026/02/22/16-kubitnyi-kvantovyi-kompiuter-na-flaksoniumax-sozdali-v-misis.html

[S430] 'The most powerful quantum computer in Russia: press tour at FIAN' (35 ytterbium ions; two-qubit 95.4%, single-qubit 99.92%; Grover, Bernstein-Vazirani and GHZ-state preparation run as known-answer tests). Scientific Russia, Feb 11, 2026. RU. https://scientificrussia.ru/articles/samyj-mosnyj-kvantovyj-komputer-v-rossii-press-tur-v-fian

[S431] Zalivako, Chernyavskiy, Nikolaeva, Borisenko, Semenin, Galstyan, Korolkov, Grebnev, Kiktenko, Khabarova, Fedorov, Semerikov, Kolachevsky, 'Experimental factoring integers using fixed-point-QAOA with a trapped-ion quantum processor' (ten 171Yb+ ions; single-qubit 99.95%, two-qubit 95%). arXiv:2503.10588, Mar 2025. EN. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.10588

[S432] Lebedev Institute group, 'Towards a Multiqudit Quantum Processor Based on a 171Yb+ Ion String: Realizing Basic Quantum Algorithms' (8 ions; two-qudit gate fidelity 92.7% +/- 0.7% including SPAM errors). Quantum Reports 7(2):19, MDPI; arXiv:2402.03121. EN. https://ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html/2402.03121

[S433] 'First Russian high-precision superconducting quantum processor works' (SnowDrop 4Q, four qubits, average two-qubit fidelity 99.11%; Bauman University and VNIIA). www1.ru, Jun 27, 2024. RU. https://www1.ru/news/2024/06/27/zarabotal-pervyi-rossiiskii-vysokotocnyi-sverxprovodnikovyi-kvantovyi-processor.html

[S434] Kommersant special project for Rosatom, 'Chapter 3. Quantum computing' (2025-2030 roadmap approved August 2025: 300-qubit computer, 'hundreds of qubits' by decade's end; no fidelity or error-correction target stated). 2025. RU. https://special.kommersant.ru/rosatom-progress/chapter-3.html

[S435] Google Quantum AI, Willow spec sheet (105 qubits; mean two-qubit CZ error 0.33% +/- 0.18%). Dec 9, 2024. EN. https://quantumai.google/static/site-assets/downloads/willow-spec-sheet.pdf

[S436] ITHome, Zuchongzhi 3.0 (105 qubits; two-qubit gate fidelity 99.62%, up from about 99.2% on Zuchongzhi 2). Mar 2025. ZH. https://www.ithome.com/0/818/292.htm

[S437] Gazeta.ru, 'Russia's first ion quantum computer on kusepts created' (RQC; 26 calcium ions; single-qubit 99.92%, two-qubit 96.5%; RQC calls the two-qubit accuracy a record for systems of this scale). Dec 29, 2025. RU. https://www.gazeta.ru/science/news/2025/12/29/27509077.shtml

[S438] 'Russia's first 50-qubit cold-atom quantum computer launched' (MSU; roadmap control experiment confirmed operation on December 19, 2024; no two-qubit fidelity given; debugging to raise two-qubit accuracy to begin). 3DNews, Dec 26, 2024. RU. https://3dnews.ru/1115968

[S439] Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 'Russian quantum computer: 70 qubits and almost 100% accuracy' (roadmap control experiment; FIAN 35 ytterbium ions; single-qubit 99.98%, two-qubit 96.1%). Dec 18, 2025. RU. https://rg.ru/2025/12/18/rossijskie-uchenye-sozdali-70-kubitnyj-kvantovyj-kompiuter.html

[S440] 'Russia and China are expanding cooperation in quantum technologies' (Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev, citing TASS: cooperation with the Chinese Academy of Sciences 'at the level of practical application, development of algorithms and creation of corresponding installations'). ABC.az, Jul 24, 2026. RU. https://abc.az/ru/news/209576/rossiya-i-kitai-narashhivayut-sotrudnicestvo-v-kvantovyx-texnologiyax

[S441] 'From optics to quanta: what is being created in Shanghai' (joint laboratory of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics; laser systems, optical materials and quantum effects, including quantum sensors and communication systems). MoneyTimes, Oct 12, 2025. RU. https://www.moneytimes.ru/news/rossiya-kitay-lazernaya-laboratoriya/109810/

[S442] 'Opening of a Russian-Chinese laboratory of laser systems held in Shanghai' (Russian Academy of Sciences and the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics; laser systems, advanced optical materials and fundamental aspects of quantum technologies; RAS President Gennady Krasnikov attended; citing Scientific Russia). ProGorod Samara, Oct 11, 2025. RU. https://progorodsamara.ru/russia/view/v-sanhae-proveli-otkrytie-rossijsko-kitajskoj-laboratorii-lazernyh-sistem

[S443] Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 'IAP RAS signed a cooperation agreement with the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics' (high-power lasers and ultra-strong fields; a joint laser laboratory). IAP RAS, Nov 12, 2019. RU. https://m.vk.ru/@ipfran-ipf-ran-podpisal-dogovor-o-sotrudnichestve-s-shanhaiskim-ins

[S444] 'MIET signed the agreement to establish Russian-Chinese laboratory for chalcogenide semiconductors' (with East China Normal University; signed Jun 29, 2026). MIET, Jul 8, 2026. EN. https://eng.miet.ru/news/198389

[S445] 'HSE scientists will take part in the work of the Russian-Chinese Institute of Fundamental Research' (launched in Sanya, Jan 29-Feb 1, 2026; mathematics, physics, chemistry, life and Earth sciences; Peking University involved). Vedomosti (press release), Feb 10, 2026. RU. https://www.vedomosti.ru/press_releases/2026/02/10/uchenie-niu-vshe-primut-uchastie-v-rabote-rossiisko-kitaiskogo-instituta-fundamentalnih-issledovanii

[S446] 'Putin changes status of eight Rosatom entities with weapons know-how' (VNIIA, VNIIEF, VNIITF and five others 'form part of Rosatom's nuclear weapons complex'). World Nuclear News, Jul 1, 2014. EN. https://world-nuclear-news.org/articles/putin-changes-status-of-eight-rosatom-entities-wit

[S447] VNIIA, 'About the Institute' ('one of the leading research enterprises of the State Atomic Energy Corporation ROSATOM'). Accessed Oct 10, 2026. EN. https://vniia.ru/eng/about/about.php

[S448] Securities Times (STCN), MOFCOM spokesperson He Yadong: export control measures announced October 9, 2025 suspended until November 10, 2026. Apr 10, 2026. ZH. https://www.stcn.com/article/detail/3739225.html

[S449] Chemical Weapons Convention, Article II(1)(a) and II(2), definitions of chemical weapons and toxic chemical (text as scheduled to Canada's implementing bill C-87). EN. https://parl.ca/Content/Bills/351/Government/c-87/c-87_4/7255sE.html

Disclosure

This report is published by Friends of IonQ, a group of researchers and analysts focused on IonQ activity, the quantum ecosystem at large, and how quantum technology can enhance the human condition while fortifying the national security of the United States and its allies.

Friends of IonQ owns equity positions in several quantum technology companies.

This report is based solely on public sources. It is not investment advice and not a solicitation to buy or sell any security. Nothing in it is legal advice; compliance questions should be referred to counsel.