The Quantum Chips Are Stacking Up

Even as the U.S. government tries to hold back China’s semiconductor industry and steal a march on its artificial intelligence capabilities, it is also preparing a much bigger, and more important, battlefield: quantum computing.

Mentions of the technology have been tucked into a recent executive order curbing outbound investment into China, guardrails around funding for the CHIPS and Science Act, and a pair of presidential directives last year aimed at securing America’s own quantum capabilities. 

For everything from encryption to combat communications, winning the quantum war means winning the bigger war. And this battle has just begun.

“For the U.S. and our allies, not getting it first has profound implications,” said Rick Switzer, director of strategy and policy at the State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy for Technology, at the Quantum World Congress in Virginia last week.

Just what is quantum computing? 

The computers we use today operate on a binary system composed of units known as bits, which can hold a value of 0 or 1. They have a switch, like a light, on or off. Quantum computers are different.

Imagine if Schrödinger’s cat were a programmer—or rather, the program. Quantum computing is neither one thing nor the other. Regular computers work on an assembly-line basis—brisk, in many cases—but still Henry Ford style. Quantum computers would allow controlled anarchy into the shop: Instead of an assembly line, you’d have an exponential assembly cloud. 

“Quantum computers are basically strings of qubits, quantum bits,” said Olivia Lanes, the global lead for quantum advocacy at IBM. “When you string these together and you entangle them so basically all of the qubits can talk to one another, the computational power of that processor grows exponentially, as opposed to linearly like it would for our classical computer.” 

Quantum computers can perform complex functions simultaneously and could potentially solve problems that are out of reach of even the most advanced supercomputers of today. Drug discovery, advanced manufacturing, climate change modeling, and other applications could all be supercharged by quantum-enabled computing. Quantum computing will do to traditional computing what Einstein did to Newton. Even if it goes into weird places.

“Eventually, it would help to solve for something that you wouldn’t expect,” said Kristin Gilkes, who leads the global quantum computing lab at the consulting firm EY and whose team is working on quantum applications for DNA sequencing. “Today, 2 plus 2 is 4. In a quantum environment, it’s going to have the probability of being pink.” 

Read More

The United States’ Quantum Talent Shortage Is a National Security Vulnerability

Here’s how to change that.

Argument

|

Sam Howell

The U.S. Wants to Make Sure China Can’t Catch Up on Quantum Computing

Washington is likely to impose new controls in the race for a key technology.

Argument

|

Kevin Klyman

Why Quantum Computing Is Even More Dangerous Than Artificial Intelligence

The world already failed to regulate AI. Let’s not repeat that epic mistake.

Argument

|

Vivek Wadhwa, Mauritz Kop

Are we there yet? 

Not quite. Perhaps unsurprisingly, quantum computers are incredibly complex machines that are difficult to bend to one’s will. Quantum processors consist of chips that are similar in size to those used in laptops and smartphones, but they need to operate at incredibly low temperatures—close to absolute zero, or minus 460 degrees Fahrenheit—to work. That is generally achieved by pumping supercooled fluids such as helium into the chamber that houses the chip. 

Any changes to those conditions introduce errors in the computation, and scaling quantum systems up to a size that is useful is both challenging and befuddling, much like the world’s biggest pop star dating a tight end. 

“The whole field is struggling with trying to maintain these quantum features on a scale that is sufficiently large that would enable us to build truly powerful large-scale quantum computers,” said Daniel Lidar, professor of electrical & computer engineering and director of the Center for Quantum Information Science & Technology at the University of Southern California. 

Some applications are already emerging. IBM is working with Boeing to design new types of airplane wings using quantum computers, and other companies such as PsiQuantum are working with Mercedes-Benz to improve the design of lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles. “We will never be able to simulate the chemistry that’s going on inside those batteries with any conventional computer that we could ever build,” said PsiQuantum’s co-founder and CEO, Jeremy O’Brien. “So now we have an understanding of how to deploy quantum computing for that task.”

But those applications are still largely theoretical, establishing algorithms that can eventually run on a powerful enough quantum computer when, and if, it exists. Today’s quantum computers aren’t quite there yet—IBM’s most powerful device is 433 qubits, and the company has set out a roadmap to achieve 100,000 qubits in the coming years. But that may still be many orders of magnitude short. O’Brien and PsiQuantum, along with many others in the field, contend that quantum computers need at least a million qubits to have genuine commercial applications.

“It’s a little bit like if the goal is the top of the Empire State Building and you’ve got a 10-meter ladder, then by all means, build a 100-meter ladder. But if the goal is the moon, you can build a 1-kilometer ladder, [but] you’re never going to get there,” O’Brien said.

A larger number of qubits isn’t the only thing that determines a quantum computer’s efficacy. Other factors such as fidelity—or how well those qubits work together—also matter significantly. Quantum advantage, an industry term that refers to quantum computers being able to solve problems that are out of reach of existing supercomputers, is considered to still be a ways away. 

Why are governments and countries scrambling to get ahead? 

Like any major technological shift, quantum computing comes with both promises and pitfalls. Quantum sensing, which can measure changes in electrical and magnetic fields, has major implications for military technologies such as autonomous weapons, stealth, and radar.

Quantum computing could also help supercharge other critical technologies such as artificial intelligence that governments around the world are trying to rein in. “When you combine big data science with the power of quantum computing, you can speed up many applications related to artificial intelligence and machine learning,” said Yong Chen, director of the Quantum Science and Engineering Institute at Purdue University.

One of its most significant and potentially troubling implications, however, is its potential to completely upend global cybersecurity. A powerful enough quantum computer is capable of surpassing most forms of existing internet encryption methods, prompting governments around the world to start laying the foundation for establishing post-quantum encryption methods for sensitive data. 

“Assuming you have an ideal quantum computer, you can break the current encryption in a matter of hours versus basically billions of years on ordinary computers,” Lidar said. That could take a few years or as much as a decade, but it’s very much a race against time, and countries such as China are pouring billions of dollars into enhancing their own quantum capabilities. 

“I think the fear factor is meaningful in that basically all of the encryption that we use today—our banks, our internet communications, our email, control of tanks, aircraft, whatever—in all of these systems, there is encryption that would be vulnerable to a large quantum computer,” said Peter Shadbolt, PsiQuantum’s co-founder and chief science officer.