Verdict: Split — Reject phrase · Fund migration
Published June 2026
"Our product is quantum safe."
Claim class: Post-quantum security marketing — the broadest and most common claim in the market. Graded as the generic formulation, not any specific vendor or product.
Hardware reality
NOT DEMONSTRABLE
No hardware exists to test this claim. Any live "quantum resistance demo" validates nothing — treat it as a negative signal.
Signal integrity
PARTIAL
Mathematical evidence exists: security reductions, NIST competition, continuous cryptanalysis. Honest translation: "no known attack — yet." Proprietary algorithms that skipped public scrutiny are near-automatic reject.
Post-processing
WHERE IT DIES
Side-channel leakage, key management, hybrid-mode composition, classical dependencies. Most real "quantum safe" claims fail an audit for entirely classical reasons.
Threat relevance
REAL — ACT
Harvest-now-decrypt-later is the actual risk. Federal PQC deadline Dec 31, 2030. The threat model is sound even though the safety claim is untestable.
Business decision
SPLIT
Reject the phrase; fund the migration. The property you can actually buy: cryptographic agility — the ability to swap algorithms when cryptanalysis moves. Agility is a property. "Quantum safe" is a snapshot.
Scorecard 002 · In review
Q3 2026
"Quantum advantage will be demonstrated in 2026."
Claim class: Milestone interpretation — an earnings-call assertion that partners will achieve the first examples of quantum advantage in 2026, supported by a hybrid quantum–HPC chemistry result (77-qubit QPU paired with the full Fugaku supercomputer on iron-sulfur cluster electronic structure), cited as evidence of "reliable tools for pharmaceutical discovery."
Under test: Quantum-ablation baseline (does the identical classical pipeline collapse without the QPU samples?), best-classical comparison on the same accuracy target, wall-clock decomposition, endpoint selection timing, and the claim graded against the vendor's own published definition of quantum advantage.
Grades publish only after the tests run — the claim gets the same treatment ours did. No verdict is pre-announced.
IN PROGRESS · Primary sources: IBM/RIKEN publication · Q1 2026 earnings call transcript · IBM–Pasqal advantage definition white paper
Scorecard 003 · Pending
Q3 2026
Self-audit: HHL end-to-end execution on NISQ hardware.
Claim under review: End-to-end HHL executed on IBM Torino via the ancilla-free construction — executability claim, not utility claim. Depths near decoherence, 2-bit clock precision, hardware noise acknowledged. Currently in the audit queue; result will replace this placeholder when complete.
The instrument that grades market claims must grade our own claims first. This entry will carry either Verified · Scoped or a correction notice — whichever the evidence supports.