Disarmament and International Security Committee

Kuma McCraw

disec@worldmun.org

Kuma McCraw is a sophomore in Kirkland House from Oakland, CA concentrating in Mechanical Engineering. Outside of WorldMUN, he is the Engineering Representative for the Harvard Society of Black Scientists and Engineers and also a member of the Harvard Undergraduate Robotics Club. When he’s not studying, Kuma enjoys trying new restaurants, playing basketball with friends, and playing on his Nintendo Switch.

Topic: Encryption and Quantum Computing

Quantum computing is at the forefront of global discussions surrounding international security. In a 2022 National Security Memorandum published by the Biden Administration, it was said that sufficiently powerful quantum computers could, “jeopardize civilian and military communications, undermine supervisory and control systems for critical infrastructure, and defeat security protocols for most Internet-based financial transactions.” These threats are all due to quantum computing’s potential to upend the current security landscape by rendering previous encryption technologies obsolete. Encryption systems that act as the backbone to civilizations' underlying systems that would take traditional computers hundreds of thousands of years to crack might take a quantum computer merely years, months, days, or even minutes.

There is no international security without robust encryption technology. Similarly, there is no international security if quantum computing capacity eclipses the current complexity of the encryption technology that acts as the backbone of the world’s global security systems.

Besides enabling potential bad actors to breach global financial markets, sensitive military or political communications, or control systems for important infrastructure sectors, quantum computing also has concerning implications for disarmament. While disarmament refers broadly to the limitation of all weaponry for the sake of mitigating the threats that they pose the human life, the DISEC committee gives the highest precedent to reducing the proliferation of nuclear arms throughout the world, with biological weapons and chemical weapons coming in as close second and third in terms of reduction priority. However, nuclear disarmament efforts are futile if a cryptographically relevant quantum computer were to fall into the wrong hands as it could potentially allow them to bypass a foreign entity's nuclear security systems and gain access to sensitive nuclear codes, effectively giving them nuclear power.

Like any emerging technology, quantum computing’s benefits and threats to humanity must be carefully weighed, and regulation should follow these deliberations. As delegates participating in WorldMUN’s DISEC committee, it is your job to craft a thoughtful solution that meticulously factors in various important considerations.

It is my hope that by the end of the conference, all of you will have passed policy resolutions that will guide the DISEC Committee toward its ultimate goals of obtaining world peace and reducing suffering while taking into consideration the complex geopolitical and economic factors present within the topic of Quantum Computing and Encryption.