Export Controls as Innovation Marketing? Sociotechnical Imaginaries in the Ringfencing of Quantum Technologies

Abstract

Why are a host of states, such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands, imposing export controls on quantum computers with technical specifications (e.g. 2000 qubits) that are not yet realisable? No full-fledged ‘useful’ quantum technology (QT) exists yet; instead, the regulatory object of export controls is the network of technological artefacts (equipment, prototype, proof-of-concepts), people and labs (the ‘assemblage’ of quantum innovation) endeavouring to make quantum a reality. Thus, export controls serve mainly as a tool of knowledge regulation over critical knowledge and R&D exchanges taking place to realise the quantum ambition. This article contends that it is not the material reality of quantum innovation – which is still mired in major engineering challenges – that informs export control efforts surrounding QT, but rather the ‘sociotechnical imaginary’ of quantum that serves as the ‘muse’ for law- and policy-makers. Quantum imaginaries are pivotal to understanding the rationales of QT export controls and the narratives in which they are entrenched. It is not necessarily the ‘2000 qubits’ in and of themselves, their technical (non-)feasibility or (non-)realisability, but rather the imaginaries told and believed about their technological possibilities and power that are decisive in the ringfencing performed by export controls on QT.