avalanche of liability claims, and it is plausible that legislation and regulation will fail to keep pace with quantum developments, resulting in a loss of faith in legal or state protection. The ultimate risk of sudden, mass decryption and breaking of authentication would be a systemic collapse of digital trust. Societal implications could be significant enough to lead to a mass shift away from the digital world for sensitive services such as banking or in healthcare, creating enormous disruption and, perhaps ironically, inefficiency and a reversal of progress. To the extent that public services or elections are affected, this could further deepen mistrust in government institutions and generate serious societal instability. Economic flashpoints Economic impacts would be felt not only in terms of the costs of increased cyberattacks, but also from the re-allocation of resources from productive activities towards protective measures – particularly if this occurs in a crisis should quantum breakthroughs occur sooner than expected. Moreover, with some businesses implementing quantum-safe cryptography before others, this could affect supply-chain stability. Trade could be interrupted if digital signatures are compromised. Decryption of data in critical financial infrastructure could lead to significant economic losses.130 However, the economic risks associated with quantum go beyond cryptography. Quantum computing could prove too fast and powerful for some existing systems to handle. Financial markets are a particular vulnerability, with regulations generally not yet having been adapted. How, for example, can regulators hope to observe inside the “black box” that will be portfolio optimization using quantum computing?131 Trading algorithms, including high-frequency trading algorithms, will also become more powerful, complex and faster.132 This might lead to more frequent flash crashes or market melt-ups, with a heightened need for circuit breakers to prevent downside market moves that are too sudden and sharp.133 Confidence in global finance could be tested if this happens. Breakthroughs in quantum computing could also rapidly accentuate economic and industrial inequalities among countries. Disparities in access to existing technologies have already created a digital divide, which is likely to become deeper with quantum.134 Between 2019 and 2023, China and the United States together were responsible for nearly half of the published research in quantum computing and quantum communications, and around 40% in quantum sensing and post-quantum cryptography.135 “Quantum” is set to become a large new industry in itself, creating a new manufacturing supply chain, new quantum service business models (e.g. subscriptions to access quantum computing time) and generating a new set of high-skilled jobs. Linkages between this new quantum industry and all the other industries that stand to benefit would need to be built. These economic benefits would accrue mostly in countries where breakthroughs in quantum technologies take place. While these countries would experience a “fifth industrial revolution”, other countries risk being left behind unless they have strategies for participating in the quantum economy. Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia lack such strategies for the quantum era.136 In the EOS, executives report perceptions of Adverse outcomes associated with frontier Rupixen, Unsplash Global Risks Report 2026 56