No major power wants to be left behind in the field of quantum technologies. And all of them have several very compelling reasons to think this way. “The development of quantum computing may represent a strategic advantage for an economy. Having quantum computers, being the owner of that technology and having others depend on you is a bit what happened many years ago with traditional computing.”
This statement by Juan José García Ripoll, researcher at the Institute of Fundamental Physics of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), perfectly condenses the importance that quantum technologies should have for any country that does not want to be left behind in a discipline that, with all probability is going to have enormous importance in the medium term in the scientific and economic fields.
Furthermore, Ripoll points out another very illuminating fact in his statement: “Europe sees that countries like the United States or China are taking the lead in this area and needs to catch up so as not to be left behind as in the field of microelectronics.” You are absolutely right. IBM already has the Heron (5K) platform equipped with error mitigation ready, as well as the Condor superconducting quantum processor, with 1,121 qubits. And China has just announced that it has ready its new 504-qubit Xiaohong quantum chip.
Quantum technologies also have military applications
The US and China are the two countries that get most of the attention in this area because they have both made notable achievements, although Australia, Germany, France, India, the United Kingdom, Russia, Canada, Japan and South Korea are some of the nations that invest the most money in the development of their quantum technologies. After the US and China, that is. It is evident that economic investment is usually aligned with development.
Quantum computers will have the ability to break the most robust encryption systems we currently use.
Be that as it may, beyond the impact that quantum computers will presumably have on the technical and scientific capacity of a country, and also on its economy, all the states that I have mentioned in this article have something else very much in mind. Something crucial. Quantum computers will have the ability to breach the strongest encryption systems that we currently use. In fact, a team of researchers from the University of Shanghai (China) led by Professor Wang Chao has used a D-Wave quantum computer to successfully break SPN encryption (Substitution-Permutation Network).
In any case, the most interesting thing is that these Chinese scientists have concluded that AES-256 and other military-grade encryption algorithms are closer than ever to being breached. This is surely the main reason why all the technological and economic powers, and especially the US and China, have launched a race to be the first to have fully functional quantum computers. Juan José García Ripoll rightly points out what the solution to this challenge is: “The alternative to the fact that many codes can be broken with quantum computers is to use quantum systems for cryptography. It consists, for example, of using quantum systems to generate private keys in different parts of the planet by sending entangled photons to different points, as China has done with its Micius satellite.
USA, United Kingdom, Germany, France, China, Japan, Russia… All the great powers are developing their own quantum encryption technologies. As we have just seen, they are very good at it. When one of these countries, or any other with the necessary resources, has a quantum computer with the appropriate capacity, it will be able easily breach encrypted communications of his rivals. And none of them can afford it. This is a full-fledged race, and in all likelihood we will not have to wait many years to witness the arrival of the first fully functional quantum computer, and, therefore, with the ability to correct its own errors.
Image | IBM
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