QCNEWS
Twenty U.S. quantum companies demoed for lawmakers on July 14, 2026, weeks after Trump's quantum executive orders. The story is who else was in the room.
The QED-C 2026 Quantum Technology Showcase on Capitol Hill on July 14, 2026 looked, on the surface, like an industry trade show moved into a congressional hallway. Twenty-plus U.S. quantum companies set up working machines spanning quantum computing, quantum communications, quantum sensing, and the cryogenics and photonics hardware that supports them. Bipartisan members of Congress walked the floor. The interesting part was who else was in the room.
Treasury's investment-security office, the FBI, and the State Department's Office of Emerging and Critical Technology Policy were not just attending. They were presenting alongside vendors in the same speaker program. The agency speaker line-up included Chris Pilkerton, Assistant Secretary for Investment Security at Treasury; and Heather Goethert, who directs State's Office of Emerging and Critical Technology Policy, alongside Dr. Brad Blakestad of the National Quantum Coordination Office at the White House OSTP and Dr. Erwin Gianchandani from NSF. The U.S. quantum industry has held Hill days before. It has not previously held one with the security establishment sitting in the same conversation as the vendors.
The Showcase landed three weeks after President Trump signed Executive Order 14413, "Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation" in June 2026, and days after the White House Summit on American Quantum Innovation. The White House fact sheet lays out three moves: faster commercialization of U.S. quantum hardware, a new security review apparatus for cross-border quantum deals, and tighter coordination between the agencies that fund research and the ones that gate export and investment. Sidley's Data Matters analysis treats the orders as a paired innovation-plus-security package, with the security side doing real work behind the commercialization rhetoric. That pairing is what matters for builders and operators now.
The on-the-Hill speaker list reads like that pairing in human form. Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, ranking member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, signaled the bipartisan frame. The agency roster, with Treasury investment security and the FBI speaking in the same program as NSF and the National Quantum Coordination Office, signaled something else. The room is now structured to align research funding, export controls, and outbound investment screening around the same text: the National Quantum Initiative reauthorization, which is up for renewal.
QED-C Executive Director Dr. Celia Merzbacher hosted the event, framed in the QED-C recap as the industry's on-the-Hill counterpart to the White House Summit. The format has limits, and the substantive argument lives in the gap between a working system on a folding table and a revenue-generating deployment. The trade write-up is a recap of what the industry brought into the room and who came to look at it; the security-agency presence alongside the vendors is the part of the story that the floor tour does not show on its own.
The watch item is the National Quantum Initiative reauthorization text itself. If the security-co-location pattern holds, the bill's export-control and supply-chain provisions will be where industry and the security agencies have already aligned, and where any daylight between research-funding priorities and commercialization rhetoric will become visible. Nextgov and The Quantum Insider both framed the White House summit as the policy lead-in to that fight. The Capitol Hill showcase is the industry's on-the-record input.