Policymakers in Washington seem to be waking up to concerns that the United States is lagging behind China and other countries when it comes to investing in quantum computing, a technology that threatens to unravel the encryption that currently secures blockchains and cryptocurrencies.
After a hearing in May in which numerous experts urged Congress to move with haste in developing a coordinated national strategy to fund quantum-related research and education efforts, legislation will soon be released in the U.S. House of Representatives that would do just that.
Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, is expected to soon introduce a bill, dubbed the National Quantum Initiative Act, that would establish a new federal program to advance quantum technologies and related applications over a 10 year period.
In a statement, Smith framed the issue as one of technological but also geostrategic importance:
“Quantum computing could work up to millions of times faster than our conventional computing systems and solve problems we thought were unsolvable. The United States must get there first.”
Similarly, the White House last week announced the formation of a new quantum information science arm within its Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Game Changer?
Quantum computers are not simply a logical evolution of classical computers; rather they run not by running processes faster but by implementing new types of algorithms that relay phenomena from the quantum world.
In standard computing, information is stored in bits denominated in zeros or ones. In quantum computing, the quantum bits – known as qubits – can be zero, one or any other combination of zero and one at the same time, and must only assume a definite value when being directly observed.
This phenomenon creates previously unachievable storage and processing capacity that exponentially reduces the difficulty of simulating certain processes.
Suppose a computer is tasked with determining which of 100 hypothetical roads to Rome is the correct road to travel. A classical computer tasked with finding that road would simply try each possible road sequentially in linear fashion; a quantum computer would take a substantially different approach.
“Some people would think that having a quantum computer would allow us to do exactly the same but faster. What really happens is something much more powerful,” said Marcos Allende Lopez, a physicist and technology consultant with the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C.:
“A quantum computer can evaluate all the roads together, generating a probability of success for each road. So the only thing we need to do is to wait until the computer gives us the most probable road.”
Though still in their formative stages, these computers will be able to solve problems that could never be solved using traditional computing processes, offering tremendous potential application and utility in fields such as medicine and logistics, and in solving difficult mathematical problems.
Of particular interest to the blockchain and cryptocurrency industries, quantum algorithms currently that can find hashes by performing quadratically fewer steps, as well as algorithms that can make revealing digital signatures and symmetrical keys exponentially easier – thus potentially jeopardizing the cryptography that functions as the glue that holds these systems together in trusted fashion.
While observers have for years been issuing general warnings about the longer-term risks posed by this incipient incipient technology, experts are now hinting that the quantum era may be closer than previously thought.
“Within the next several years, we are going to see small quantum computers with up to about 100 quantum bits,” Chris Monroe, a physicist at the University of Maryland, told Congress at the May hearing, emphasizing that:
“It sounds pretty small, but even with 100 quantum bits, it can, in a sense, deal with information that eclipses that of all the hard drives in the world.”
“Anyone that wants to make sure that their data is protected for longer than 10 years should move to alternate forms of encryption now,” Arvind Krishna, director of IBM Research, said recently.
Playing Catch Up
While the U.S. has led the way in the initial development of quantum technologies, its lack of a coordinated national strategy for continued research and development in the area now stands out like a sore thumb, especially when compared to the aggressive actions being undertaken other nations.
China, for instance, has publicly stated its intent to surpass the U.S. on the quantum front over the next decade. It recently invested $10B into a new quantum laboratory in Hefei, east of Shanghai, and in 2016 launched a satellite for use in “unhackable” quantum communication protocols that were debuted in 2017 to generate the quantum key used in a quantum videocall between scientists in China and Austria.
Chinese companies Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu are also pursuing projects of their own, with Alibaba announcing a 10 qubit quantum cloud computer earlier this year.
The United Kingdom has outlayed $400M over five years to a new Quantum Hub Network, the Netherlands is providing $150M over 10 years to a similar initiative, and the European Union has devoted $1.3B over 10 years to the E.U. Flagship Quantum Program. Other efforts are underway in Canada and Australia.
“This explosion of activity worldwide should be a call for action in the United States,” Monroe told Congress.
“It is imperative that the U.S. retain its leadership in this technological frontier.”
Filling the Gaps
Diana Franklin, a computer science professor at the University of Chicago, told Congress in May that while private sector investment into quantum technologies from corporate research and development labs and venture capital has surged over the last 18 months, shortages of federal funding have left the U.S. “scrambling to stay ahead.”
The funding squeeze has created sizable gaps when it comes to connecting theoretical quantum algorithms with usable quantum applications, as well as university research efforts with actual commercial development.
“At the university side, I am sorry to say that most engineering and computer science departments haven’t really embraced this field,” Franklin explained, adding:
“The students are keen to get a high-paying job right after they graduate. Quantum computing, not that it is not a high paying job, but it is a very speculative field. And it is hard to identify exactly what the marketplace is.”
“The marketplace is also a challenge because we don’t know exactly what the killer app for quantum computers, in particular, will be,” Monroe echoed, noting that while first generation quantum technologies are currently being developed in the U.S., “There is a limited engineering workforce to fabricate and test this new type of technology and a severe shortage of quantum software developers to bring quantum computers and devices to users.”
Franklin argued that in the 17 years since the inception of quantum computing as a discipline, 200 PhD students could have been produced from U.S. universities had sufficient funding been made available.
“However, only eight of those 17 years have been funded, wreaking havoc on both the research progress and the graduate student training pipeline, and resulting in only 10 PhD students, and undergraduate programs are only now being created,” she explained.
In light of these difficulties, policymakers appear to be lending a sympathetic ear to voice from the quantum industry, even if they have difficulty grasping exactly what it is and what the implications are.
On paper, the proposed NQIA legislation would direct the federal government to tackle these issues by devoting funding for research and implementation gaps, supporting quantum standards development, mandating cross-agency coordination at the federal level and encouraging U.S. tech companies, like Google and IBM, that are already investing in quantum to contribute their resources to this “national effort.”
“The National Quantum Initiative takes advantage of the best of government, industry and academia to maintain strong U.S. leadership in the field,” explained Smith. “This bill will be a quantum leap in the right direction.”