Tony Blair has said “history won’t forgive us” if the UK falls behind in the race to harness quantum computing, a frontier technology predicted to trigger the next wave of breakthroughs in everything from drug design to climate modelling.
The former British Labour prime minister, whose thinktank and consultancy, the Tony Blair Institute, is backed by tech industry leaders including the Oracle founder, Larry Ellison, warned: “The country risks failing to convert its leadership in quantum research.”
In a report calling for a national strategy for quantum computing, Blair and William Hague, a former Conservative party leader, compared the situation to the recent history of artificial intelligence, where the UK was responsible for important research breakthroughs but then ceded power to other countries, including the US, leading to a scramble to build “sovereign” AI capacity.
“As we have seen with AI, a strong research and development base is not enough: it is the countries that have the infrastructure and capital for scale that capture technology’s economic and strategic benefits,” they said. “While the UK is home to the second highest number of quantum startups in the world, it lacks the necessary high-risk capital and infrastructure to scale those startups.”
Quantum computing differs from classical computing in strange and mind-bending ways. In a standard computer, information is represented through transistors being on or off: ones or zeros. In quantum mechanics, things can be in multiple places at the same time. A transistor can be on and off at the same time, in a phenomenon known as quantum superposition.
The effect is to create such a massive increase in computing power that a single quantum computer could, in theory, take on a task that would require billions of the most powerful supercomputers. The science is not yet at a stage to prove useful on a widespread basis, but the potential for simulating molecular structures to create new materials and drugs is enormous. The value of quantum computing, when it arrives in a usable form, has been estimated at nearly $1.3tn alone to the chemicals, life sciences, automotive and finance industries.
Fears centre on the potential for super-powerful quantum machines to break all encryption exposing national infrastructure to cyber-attacks.
“The quantum era will arrive whether Britain leads it or not,” Blair and Hague said. “But history will not forgive us if we again fumble the chance to lead a transformative technology.”
The warning comes after the Cambridge-educated Briton John Clarke won the 2025 Nobel prize in physics for his work into quantum computing science, and as UK quantum firms continue to be bought up by US companies.
In June, a spinout quantum company from Oxford University, Oxford Ionics, was sold for $1.1bn to the US company IonQ. Meanwhile, PsiQuantum, a spinout from Bristol University and Imperial College London, grew mostly in California after finding investors there most enthusiastic, and its first large-scale quantum computer will be built in Brisbane, Australia.
A report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change critical of the UK’s current quantum strategy warns that not only are China and the US “racing ahead” but Germany, Australia, Finland and the Netherlands are also making big strides.
A government spokesperson said: “Quantum is a gamechanging technology with the potential to overhaul everything from healthcare, to our access to affordable clean energy. The UK already ranks second globally for quantum investment, and we have world-leading strengths in the supply chain in areas such as photonics – but we are determined to go further.
They said: “We have provided a first-of-its-kind 10-year funding commitment for the National Quantum Computing Centre. We will be setting out plans for other areas of our national programme in due course.”
In June, Labour announced £670m to accelerate the application of quantum computing as part of its industrial strategy to create new drugs for incurable diseases and better carbon capture technologies.
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