The quantum computing revolution is no longer the stuff of science fiction. It‘s happening now, and is going to change everything from medicine and the study of climate change to the internet, space exploration, and how we envision national security.
Late last year leading articles in the Financial Times and Reuters finally acknowledged what some of us, particularly here at the Quantum Alliance Initiative at Hudson Institute, have been arguing for years: that the nation that enjoys quantum supremacy, will dominate the future of the global system.
Likewise, the nation that fails to protect its data and networks against a future quantum computer attack, is putting its economic and social future at risk.
Today, quantum‘s two most important superpowers, U.S. and China, are locked in a race for quantum supremacy. Fortunately, the United States has some powerful allies, including the Republic of Korea, who can help them prevail in the contest for the future of the planet.
And if you thought AI was going to change everything about how you live and think about the future, just wait until AI and quantum computers start communicating with each other. That Brave New World is coming, ready or not: and being ready has to be a top priority for countries, companies, and individuals, in the next decade.
The power of a quantum computer rests on the physics of quanta of energy, the most basic building block of matter. Quantum computer scientists have devised a way to use the quanta‘s mysterious quality of joining together if only for a fraction of a nanosecond, called entanglement, to process bits of information just as digital computers use bits: except these bits can exist in multiple states at once, thanks to their physics. While a normal digital bit can either be a O or 1, a quantum bit can be a O and 1 at the same time, or a 1 and a O, or 1 or a O standing alone: four different states in one qubit.
That means boosting the computing power of a quantum-based system in exponential ways. For example, we know a 60-qubit quantum computer can do computations faster than the fastest supercomputer. When we get to 300 entangled bits, it will offer as many different states for doing a single computation as there are atoms in the universe. It will be like reading all the books in the American Library of Congress all at once, instead of one at a time.
That kind of computing power will not only bring breakthroughs in solving complex math problems, and deep modeling for risk analysis. It will also allow codebreakers to factorize the large prime numbers that underlie all our public encryption systems, from banks and credit cards to major corporate and government agencies who rely on encryption to protect their data and networks. Even blockchain, with its supposedly invulnerable Distributing Ledger Technology, won‘t be safe from the quantum hacker. Instead, using Shor’s algorithm developed by quantum physicist Richard Shor in the 1990‘s, a quantum hacker can decrypt these systems not just one at a time but all virtually at once.
The impact will be devastating. All encryption, public and private (by using a similar algorithm known as Grove‘s algorithm), will be swept aside, without warning or leaving a trace.
A landmark study we did at the Quantum Alliance Initiative here at the Hudson Institute, demonstrated that a single attack on the Federal Reserve‘s system for wiring inter-bank transactions could cause a drop of 10 to 17 percent in annual real GDP, and cost between $2 and $3.3 trillion in indirect losses. A similar QAI study done on a quantum computer hack of the U.S. power grid, would mean months of disruption and shutdowns, and years of economic chaos.
When we first drew attention to this threat five years ago and created the Quantum Alliance Initiative, even quantum experts assumed the threat of “Q-Day” i.e. the day when quantum computers make current encryption methods useless, lay years, even decades, away. This is because of the difficulty of combining enough of the elusive qubits long enough, to generate the desired calculations. While leading quantum computing companies like IBM are working to pass the 1000 qubit threshold, a code-breaking version would theoretically require tens of thousands, even millions of qubits.
But that complacency about the future threat of quantum computers is fading fast. That‘s thanks to hybrid solutions to the problem, which bring together classical and quantum computing components into one system. As one of our most recent studies shows, the advent of hybrid systems will speed up the timeline for the quantum computer by a decade or more. Hybrid ystems have already been able to break RSA: we know Chinese quantum scientists are working on the next phase, when more complex encryptions can be deciphered. The US only belatedly awakening to the threat; and the new timetable it offers.
In 2022, after repeated warnings and studies like ours, the White House took steps to require a timetable to quantum readiness, a part of its Zero Trust Cyber Initiative. Now we wonder if the timetable it set for government agencies, i.e. 2027. will be soon enough.
One expert, Tilo Kunz, has even said that “Q-day” may come as early as 2025. If that still seems unlikely, being quantum ready by 2025, is not.
That‘s because if large-scale quantum computers, and the threat they pose, are still a long way off, the solutions are already at hand.
One is what‘s called (somewhat misleadingly) post-quantum cryptography, or cryptographic algorithms large and complex enough to resist future quantum intrusion. Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have working on these since 2016, and the three finalists were announced last year. There already exist a number of commercial products that adhere to the NIST standards, which will protect not only against future quantum hackers but conventional hackers today.
Still, the effectiveness of PQC is only theoretical, since there are no large-scale quantum computers to test them against. NIST was embarrassed when one of its early finalists was hacked―not by a supercomputer but a hacker using a laptop.
The other option is quantum-based. It uses entanglement to create hack-proof communications, with randomly generated keys or QKD, or photon-based quantum links, which create the same hack-proof result. China has been working on this approach since mid 2000‘s, including a quantum communication satellite launched in 2016, and another in 2022. US is only slowly and belatedly coming to realize the potential of quantum-based or entanglement-based encryption, while in Europe it is already used for corporate clients, and some government institutions.
But no one has taken a better lead in using QKD to protect data and networks than the Republic of Korea. SK Telecom has used QKD to create its hack-proof communication network in the capital of Seoul, while plans are underway to create a Korean QKD network infrastructure will secure the communication network of 48 government organizations across Korea.
As with quantum computers, the optimal security solution will be a hybrid version, that combines PQC with quantum-based solutions. SK Telecom is already moving in that direction, by setting the global standard for integration of the two technologies. Some U.S. companies, like QuSecure, have been implementing the same blending of PQC and QC.
Like the hybrid quantum computer, the hybrid quantum security package represents the future of quantum technology. It also means the Quantum Age is going to be upon us, a lot faster than anyone expected.
So what‘s next for quantum?
First is the move into space. The hackproof of quantum-based cryptography works best where there‘s no atmosphere to interfere with its point-to-point communications, which makes space the perfect test bed for the future of quantum. China proved that with its first quantum satellite launched in 2016. The European Union is launching its own version of the quantum satellite, while a Singapore-based consortium and UK-Canada consortium are doing the same thing. The United States so far has no plans for putting quantum in space, although NASA was included as one of the agencies to start developing quantum technology in the latest reauthorization of National Quantum Initiative―the first major federal effort to invest in the research and development of quantum technology.
China, by contrast, has been pouring almost five times more government money into funding for quantum research, $15.3 billion compared to $3.7 billion in the U.S. In addition, Beijing has been mobilizing its biggest private companies like Ali Baba behind the national effort. Until now, the US government has relied on Big Tech companies like Google and IBM and Microsoft, to take the lead in quantum technology. That may have to change as China‘s strategy is becoming clearer and clearer: to harden its data and cyber networks using quantum-based systems, while investing heavily in codebreaking quantum computers, including hybrid systems.
Part of the answer may come through teaming up with allies like the Republic of Korea and Japan, who are more advanced in quantum cryptography research and applications that represent the future of quantum communications: even a future quantum Internet.
But even those changes will pale compared to the transformations when AI and quantum join forces.
Quantum computers will be able to deepen and make more precise the data analysis that comes out of AI applications, from designing new drugs to advanced climate change modeling. Artificial intelligence, on the other side, can speed up solutions to the problems of how eliminate “noise” (i.e. false readings generated by the fluctuations of unentangled qubits) from existing quantum computers, and create better designs for future ones.
This will be the dawn of a new world, a true post-digital age with not only a quantum Internet but Quantum Cities springing up around the globe―even in space. The only question is, will this post-digital Quantum Age be dominated by China or by the U.S. and its allies like Korea, Japan, and the other Five Eyes―all of whom are major centers of innovative quantum research.
All will have important parts to play in a Quantum Arsenal of Democracies to safeguard the future. Indeed, the future of the world‘s economies, even freedom itself, may hang in the balance.