EP. 121 | Q Day Is Closer Than You Think: Quantum, Crypto, and National Security with Sanjeev Bhasker

Sanjeev Bhasker was a federal prosecutor, Digital Currency Counsel at DOJ, cyber counsel in the Biden White House, and acting general counsel in the second Trump administration. He is now at K&L Gates. He joins Ari for his second TRM Talks.Sanjeev tried nearly a hundred cases as a prosecutor and used BSA reporting to trace dark-web crypto cases back through exchanges. At the White House he worked on the GENIUS Act, the AI Action Plan, the one-dollar LLM contracts with GSA, and the post-quantum cryptography executive order. On quantum he is direct: nation states are already stealing encrypted data to crack later, NIST has published PQC standards, and boards should not wait for Q Day around 2029 to act.This conversation is not just about crypto, or quantum, or AI. It is about how the three intersect, and why we are now in an age where these technologies have to be viewed together, from a national security perspective and as a matter of policy. That is how Sanjeev approached them in government, and it runs through everything here, from the Bitcoin reserve to AI washing to Genesis Mission grant money.