FBI Leading QIST Ecosystem, AI Protection
by Federal Bureau of Investigation
August 16, 2026

The FBI protects emerging and advanced technologies, such as quantum information science and artificial intelligence.

Quantum information science and technology (QIST) ... based on the field of quantum mechanics ... has the potential to create revolutionary advances in science and engineering.

But while these advancements have promising applications ... from military to medicine to economic ... that promise also makes them an attractive target for adversaries who seek to damage U.S. national and economic security.

In response to the global race to develop quantum technologies, a new executive order, Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation, calls for a government-wide effort to expand and protect the U.S. quantum ecosystem through quantum innovation, private sector cooperation, and international partnership in pursuit of a quantum computer ... which could theoretically process calculations exponentially faster than any existing computer.

The new executive order has tasked the FBI to lead and expand the Quantum Information Science and Technology Counterintelligence Protection Team (QCPT) to improve and coordinate protections against adversarial and cybersecurity threats to the QIST ecosystem, coordinate public messaging and outreach related to those threats, and enhance sharing of threat information with federal, industry, and academic QIST research and development entities.

"Historically, the FBI is very good at solving theft of trade secrets and economic espionage cases, and working with DOJ to prosecute them," explained Supervisory Special Agent Wes Wollard. "However, the goal of our team is to proactively posture ourselves ‘left of theft’ to help prevent theft of quantum research and technologies."

"At a simple level, quantum information science and technology has the potential for very significant economic and national security impact."

Wes Wollard, supervisory special agent

What is quantum?

Quantum mechanics examines the properties and behaviors of the smallest particles that make up everything around us.

In the quantum world ... at the scale of molecules, atoms, and electrons ... the laws of physics become peculiar and behave differently than in the physical world we can see. GPS systems, MRI technology, and the lasers that enable today's internet are examples of technology developed thanks to quantum mechanics.

But in the emerging field of QIST, researchers are further exploring how to control the behavior of these quantum systems to create next-generation technologies for imaging, sensing, computing, modeling, and communication.

QIST could give rise to the quantum computer ... computers that can perform certain mathematical computations impossible for traditional computers ... which scientists theorize could advance research in communication networks, new drugs, new materials, more defined medical imaging, microelectronics, and semiconductors. The full range of potential applications of quantum computers and technology is unknown.

"At a simple level, QIST has the potential for very significant economic and national security impact. The greatest threat is the potential for adversarial development of a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC) ... one which could break current widely-used encryption methods ... which would allow our adversaries to elicit everything from the most sensitive secrets of our nation, to secure financial transactions and communications, and even decrypt previously harvested encrypted data," said Wollard.

"As a result, there’s a sense of immediacy for us to address these risks."

Safeguarding Emerging Technologies

The QCPT serves as an interagency team tasked with protecting the U.S. quantum information science and technology ecosystem.

"The QCPT was created via White House policy as a new approach to partnering with industry, academia, and federal partners to ensure U.S. leadership in quantum research and development," said Wollard. "With academia and industry leading innovation in this field, the U.S. government recognized that we needed to partner with those entities in a new way."

Partnerships are vital ... the threat from foreign intelligence adversaries has become increasingly complex as they employ an all-tools approach that includes non-traditional collectors, economic and academic influence, and other asymmetric intelligence operations. As a result, no single U.S. counterintelligence agency can fully understand or mitigate these operations on its own.

Wollard explained that the FBI’s role in leading the QCPT is to "bring together key counterintelligence and security agencies protecting quantum under one team with unified lines of effort and a strategy to ultimately protect the U.S. quantum ecosystem from adversarial threats.”

The FBI works to achieve this by:

• Hardening the ecosystem through threat awareness and promotion of best practices across security disciplines

• Actioning intelligence to mitigate vulnerabilities and threats

• Promoting collaboration and information sharing within the U.S. government and with like-minded nations

The QCPT is embedded within and the National Counterintelligence Task Force (NCITF), which brings the counterintelligence and security components of the U.S. government under one roof, allowing QCPT to collaborate with the full suite of the U.S. government's protection apparatus.

"As a field counterintelligence agent, a lot of our time is spent doing two things, protecting classified information of state secrets and protecting economic information and intellectual property," said Supervisory Special Agent Sean Miner. "Quantum really covers both of those areas. And so, it fits really snugly right into what makes up the bulk of a field counterintelligence agent in the FBI protection responsibilities."

********************

What is artificial intelligence?

Broadly speaking, AI systems are used to replicate or emulate certain aspects of cognition. We interact with AI almost every day in modern life, from the use of online search engines to video games, digital assistants commonly accessed through smart phones and smart devices, and automated cruise control functions in vehicles.

The FBI uses the definition established in the fiscal year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (FY19 NDAA),which states that artificial intelligence includes:

any artificial system that performs tasks under varying and unpredictable circumstances without significant human oversight or that can learn from experience and improve performance when exposed to data sets
an artificial system developed in computer software, physical hardware, or other context that solves tasks requiring human-like perception, cognition, planning, learning, communication, or physical action
an artificial system designed to think or act like a human, including cognitive architectures and neural networks
a set of techniques, including machine learning (ML), that is designed to approximate a cognitive task
an artificial system designed to act rationally, including an intelligent software agent or embodied robot that achieves goals using perception, planning, reasoning, learning, communicating, decision making, and acting

Is artificial intelligence good or bad?

The FBI recognizes the value add of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. AI changes the threat landscape by automating tasks that previously required more time, effort, and labor. The availability, low cost, and short time it takes to train new AI that learn from existing models, combined with the availability of large data sets and lack of regulation, create opportunities for bad actors to acquire and use these tools against U.S. interests.

The use of AI is not a crime. Criminals or other malicious actors can, however, use AI in the furtherance of criminal acts or acts that threaten U.S. national security. As the public and private industry adoption of AI increases, the AI/ML attack surface will correspondingly increase, along with the potential physical and economic costs of a successful attack.
Inside the FBI Podcast: Defending Against AI Threats
Inside the FBI Podcast: Defending Against AI Threats

The FBI is hyper-focused on these kinds of attacks and specifically on what can ... and will ... go wrong. The FBI is working to identify and defend against threats from those who use AI for criminal activity and against those who attack or degrade AI systems being used for legitimate, lawful purposes.
How does the FBI approach artificial intelligence?

Our approach to AI fits into three different buckets:

identifying and tracking adversarial and criminal use of AI: The FBI is focused on anticipating and defending against threats from those who use AI and ML to power malicious cyber activity, conduct fraud, propagate violent crimes, and threaten our national security; we’re working to stop actors who attack or degrade AI/ML systems being used for legitimate, lawful purposes.

protecting American innovation: The FBI defends the innovators who are building the next generation of technology here in the U.S. from those who would steal it. This effort is also related to defense against malicious cyber activities, since all too often our adversaries are stealing our trade secrets, including AI, to turn it against the U.S. and U.S. interests.

FBI AI governance and ethical use: The FBI is also looking at how AI can help us further exercise our authorities to protect the American people ... for instance, by triaging and prioritizing the complex and voluminous data we collect in our investigations, ensuring we’re using those tools responsibly and ethically under human control and consistent with law and policy.

How can I defend against synthetic content?

Synthetic content is commonly referred to as deepfakes; however, synthetic content can also refer to anonymized, artificial data.

Several factors have decreased the resources, time, and effort required to create or use convincing synthetic content. Methods once limited to those with the necessary computing power and expertise can now be employed by a broader customer base via user-friendly applications. One consequence of this trend is that synthetic content creation has been essentially commoditized and scaled beyond once limited use cases.

Content consumers can look for ... visual distortions and warping in images and video ... such as unsettling silences and distorted decibels, video inconsistencies or unnatural movement, and poor video, lighting, and audio quality. These inconsistencies may be indicators of synthetic images, particularly in social media profile avatars.

Content consumers can look for...

visual distortions and warping in images and video, such as unsettling silences and distorted decibels: Audio deepfakes generate delays and unnatural pauses in the process of converting the text to audio or manipulating the audio. Additionally, choppy sentences, unusual inflections, abnormal phrasing, or incongruent background noise could help spot their synthetic origins. AI-driven deepfake facial profile images can look distorted, blurred, or unsettling.

video inconsistencies or unnatural movement: Video deepfakes often have subtle inconsistencies or unnatural movements which do not match their subjects’ speech or facial features; denote a subject’s blinking, either too much or too little; having eyebrows that do not fit their face; hair in the wrong spots; skin that does not match their age or abnormal skin colors; and awkward head and body positioning.

Poor video, lighting, and audio quality: Video deepfakes tend to have unnatural shadows, colors, and lighting patterns. Deepfakes often use synthetic audio that can sound unnatural or inconsistent, such as background noise or voice pitch; listen closely to the audio to determine if it sounds authentic.

Wait … the FBI is using AI?

AI gives the FBI new tools and capabilities ... like vehicle recognition, triage of voice samples for language identification, and generation of text from speech samples ... that process data to detect, deter, and defeat criminal activity and national security threats more quickly. For instance, the FBI uses AI to sift through large amounts of data to conduct video analytics. The FBI only uses information generated from these techniques for investigative leads.

A human being is ultimately accountable for the actions taken, not an AI. This includes ensuring a trained investigator or analyst is responsible for assessing the output of our AI systems before any further substantive actions are taken.

The FBI is aware of the benefits of AI, but we also recognize its limitations. The FBI's policies and procedures for the collection, analysis, and use of data for its investigations are designed to meet the highest standards of privacy, civil liberties, ethics, and adherence to the U.S. Constitution. AI must be developed, acquired, or deployed with attention to responsible and ethical use. Our investigations require an extremely high degree of certainty, and we currently verify and validate all AI-generated leads with human experts.

----------------------
Note... Two FBI articles combined into one without impacting facts.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) | U.S. Department of Justice