As powerful as today’s computers are, in five to ten years they will be replaced by a different kind of computer, one that is millions of times more powerful. Quantum computers (although they are still very rudimentary) are already showing their superiority, particularly for the really big computational challenges of our era, such as: modeling the entire world’s economy and all of its energy consumption activities to help combat climate change or modeling the entire Ukrainian battlefield to help Zelenskyy’s army combat the Russians. Quantum computers will be better than “classical” ones, even today’s supercomputers.
For China, quantum computers hold another significant attraction—they needn’t run on semiconductor chips. Thus, if China continues to operate under the conditions of a high-performance SC famine due to the US embargo of SCs and equipment that makes them, then there could be a path for China to replace its stunted classical computers with new, unimpeded quantum computers. This could become one of the most intriguing subplots of Cold War 2.0.
The world’s fastest classical computers, “supercomputers,” are being challenged by even faster ones of an entirely different design, called quantum computers (QCs). To understand QCs it helps to appreciate classical supercomputers, which can complete calculations at amazing speeds because they consist of thousands of central processing units (the core logic processors of computers) strung together, like pearls on the biggest necklace imaginable. Then, using very sophisticated management and networking software that orchestrates all the different cores to work together, the entire supercomputer can perform tasks requiring brute computing power that mere stand-alone computers cannot achieve.
An example of a classical supercomputer system is the global network of 170 powerful computers strung together by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (or CERN by its French initials). CERN operates the world’s largest high-energy physics particle accelerator, which fires atoms around a 20-kilometer magnetic underground track, gets the particles into the fastest state capable by humans, and then smashes the atoms into each other in a special chamber. There, thousands of sensors track the emissions of millions of tiny particles. It was here that CERN discovered a new particle, called a Higgs boson. When these experiments are run, the huge volumes of data generated in the chamber are divvied up and sent to its network of 170 partners, so each partner’s computer can do a portion of the computing required; collectively, these 170 computers could be considered a massive supercomputer. The volume of data produced by the CERN accelerator is gargantuan because particles collide in their facility about 1 billion times a second, producing about 1 petabyte of collision data every second. Even with CERN’s many networked computers working on the data, it is still an overwhelming project, and the results are teased out of the collective processing only slowly.
Sugon is another example of a classical supercomputer. It sits in a highly guarded compound in Xinjiang. A province in Western China, Xinjiang is home to about 12 million Uighurs, an Islamic minority who speak a dialect of Turkish. The Chinese government has created a system of surveillance of the Uighur minority that includes facial recognition cameras placed every ten meters on major streets. What the massive computers in Sugon do is analyze simultaneously 1,000 video feeds from these cameras and orchestrate them together with data harvested from: phone calls being made at thousands of Wi-Fi hotspots, cellphone information, live phone conversations over telecom networks, a multitude of e-commerce transactions, and real-time facial recognition tracking. All of this data is integrated with information on each and every Uighur, including displays of religious piety; how many mobile phones they own (one is fine, but no phone, or two phones, might be evidence of some form of anti-state attitude); and whether the subject has family outside of China. The point of this elaborate system of surveillance and monitoring is to be able to predict deviant and anti-government behavior, in effect, to stop what the Chinese government considers a crime before it even happens. This system of surveillance and oppression is one of the more disturbing realities of Cold War 2.0.
The classical supercomputers used by CERN and Sugon, while among the most powerful on earth, are actually insufficient for the incredibly ambitious tasks they are being asked to undertake. Current computers, even with their high-performance semiconductor chips, simply cannot achieve the processing power and speed to successfully complete these two tasks—and many others like them, such as taking into account thousands more factors of our climate forecasting systems to produce much more accurate predictions about the weather. The only realistic hope for these massive computing challenges is a relatively new form of data processing, called quantum computing, as embodied in today’s embryonic quantum computers (QC).
A quantum computer is much (very much) faster (perhaps 200 million times faster) than a classical computer because while today’s computers use bits as their base currency of computing, the QC uses a qubit. A bit is an atomic particle that at any one time is either electrically charged (then it is positive) or not (then it is negative). The qubit, by contrast, can be both positive and negative at the same time! Instead of thinking about bits as either one or other side of a coin (head or tails) when it lands on a table or a floor, think of a qubit as a coin when it’s spinning, thereby exhibiting both heads and tails simultaneously. In physics-speak, this is called “superpositioning.” There is another key difference between the two systems: bits are separate and distinct, but qubits are both separate but then closely coupled together, what the physicists called “entangled.” These are all overly brief and general explanations of the underpinnings of quantum computers, but even seasoned physicists have trouble wrapping their heads around quantum properties. The key point is that quantum physics is very different than classical physics, and the result is a QC that is much (very much) faster than a classical computer.
How much faster is a QC? In 2019, Google announced that its Sycamore qubit SC carried out a processing task in 200 seconds that would have taken a classical computer 10,000 years to complete. In 2021, China’s leading quantum physicist, Pan Jianwei, working with the Zuchongzhi 2.1 QC, a 56 qubit QC, reported being able to complete an incredibly complex calculation in 1.5 hours that would have taken a classical computer eight years. Moreover, leaving aside speed, in some applications a QC can simply do calculations and solve problems that a classical computer cannot, or not as accurately.1
For China, especially, there is a further very significant advantage in QCs: several of the proposed quantum hardware architectures don’t use traditional SCs, of the sort discussed in the previous chapter. Accordingly, while the use of traditional SCs will present China with a real strategic and tactical problem in the coming years and decades because of the embargo the key SC producing democracies have placed on the devices vis-à-vis China and other autocracies, the QC presents a very important possible solution to this computing conundrum for the Chinese leadership. In effect, in a few years time the impact of the SC sanctions might diminish dramatically for China if it can get the same, if not better, performance from a QC than it could from a 7, 5, or even 3 nm process SC. It would be a momentous development in computing, and in Cold War 2.0 if today’s SC eventually became a legacy ancestor to the QC.2
It is, however, too early to predict anything in this regard because there are still a number of potential quantum architectures competing with one another for overall acceptance as the new quantum standard. IBM and Google are going down the path of “superconducting,” while Honeywell and IonQ are pursuing the approach of “trapped ions.” Yet other suppliers, such as PsiQuantum, are trying out a photonics-based technical platform, which is partly of interest because it may be compatible with classical semiconductor chip technology and fiber optics. This is one reason why Intel is showing interest in this latter approach.
In effect, what all this diversity in scientific and technological innovation illustrates is competitive displacement on steroids. Indeed, the competition and potential substitution is happening on two levels. First, it will be fascinating to observe whether, and to what extent QCs replace classical computers. And if they do, it will be interesting to see which specific QC model wins the QC race.
In terms of their approach to coming up with a QC solution, it is also telling that the US has generated such a multiplicity of players, with a diversity of technological approaches, while China is largely betting on one key scientist, Pan Jianwei, who is then receiving a significant funding stream from the Chinese government to pursue one key technological avenue to achieve quantum computing success, namely photonics. Once again the funding model for new technology in the leading democracy and the leading autocracy stand in stark contrast. The Chinese approach has not produced to date a positive outcome in SC manufacturing equipment; it will be interesting to see whether the government backing one superstar scientist with one approach in the quantum domain with the same state-oriented, top-down model can produce for China a different, more successful outcome in the nascent QC industry.
The computational advantage of QCs has most civilian and military users of classical supercomputers looking very seriously at the promise of this new technology. The following is just a sampling of the use cases that are being considered for QC at the moment:3
At the same time, of course, militaries are very interested in quantum computing as well. Many of the above-noted civilian use cases resonate in the military world as well. For example, the military is very sensitive to weather conditions,8 and having a system that is 99 percent accurate rather than only 80 percent accurate would be a huge tactical advantage on the battlefield. In addition, though, there are particular QC use cases that would be limited to the military:
Every computer system, whether traditional or quantum, has its limitations. There are several very material shortcomings with QC systems. Qubits are very finicky, and very unstable. They can easily be knocked out of their peculiar spin, in which case the power and accuracy of the QC drops dramatically. To counter these weaknesses, the qubit chamber, where the qubit super positioning and entanglement happens in current superconducting QC designs, are kept very cold, down to 20 millikelvin. This means there will not be a personal QC smartphone or PC any time soon.
Instead, all QC services will be delivered by the cloud model of computing. Large computer services companies, like Alibaba, Amazon (AWS), Baidu, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and TenCent will operate QCs, and a user will access the QC over the Internet, or likely a proprietary network if they are looking for a secure connection. The military will invariably have their own QC running in one of their own data centers, or at a data center hosted by one of the big commercial computer services providers—but with the military having sole access to its computing power (known as a “private cloud”). In this hosted-cloud model, the data center operator will layer on the requisite AI applications as well, providing an entire packaged solution for the customer (civilian or military). The cost will not be cheap. But the services will be very powerful. Whoever gets the model right and can operate these remote services at very high availability will have a distinct advantage in Cold War 2.0.
One particular application of the QC is very troublesome. Currently, encryption is the most popular means for ensuring security and privacy on traditional computers and over digital networks. There are many types of encryption products and services, but generally they work the same way. The files that are intended to be protected are encrypted by a mathematical algorithm that uses incredibly large prime numbers. The encrypted file can only be opened by using the “private key” that contains the specific prime number that corresponds with the “public key” that was used to encrypt the file in the first place. Given the nature of very large prime numbers, the public key that is protecting the sensitive information cannot be broken by even the most powerful current computers—the supercomputers discussed above—in a relevant time frame. (It would take even the world’s most powerful supercomputer something in the order of several million years to break the encryption code.)
Then, along come QCs. Their entire value proposition is that they can accomplish in a matter of hours what traditional computers would take years to do. While this amount of computing power is very attractive to an organization’s chief technology officer, from the perspective of the security profile of the CTO’s encrypted systems the threat posed by QCs is actually quite stunning. It means that once QCs are powerful enough, they will be able to take down today’s encryption locks, unless countermeasures are innovated and implemented by then.
The information technology industry has been buffeted by predictions of Armageddon before. In the mid- to late 1990s it came out that computers and most software programs weren’t programmed to accommodate the date change to the year 2000, the new millennium. They only went as high as 1999, and then the program wouldn’t work when the date actually changed to 2000. The QC encryption problem feels a lot like the so-called Y2K scare, but actually much worse. It was relatively easy to fix the Y2K problem in an existing software program, or, worst case, the user organization could buy a new program that did contain 2000 and subsequent dates (and the user had been meaning to upgrade their software anyhow).
The QC challenge to encryption is more serious. One stark difference between Y2K and “Y2Q” is that the world knew precisely how much time it had left to solve the Y2K crisis. (Action-forcing deadlines have always been very useful in remedying technology challenges.) The Y2Q problem, though, doesn’t have a date or deadline per se, so the crisis might just creep up on the world and then explode with a big bang when some unsavory autocracy, terrorist or criminal group releases its QC-based classical computer encryption killer program. Presumably some alternative security solutions will be coming to the market (ideally soon, as time is of the essence) that will be able to resist QC-originated attacks on them.
Still, even if an initial solution is available to alleviate the risk in this encryption doomsday scenario, how long will this solution be good for? As QC computers get better and better, it is likely that the defense will be overwhelmed by the offense, just as cyberattacks by computer hackers today are causing so much disruption in the current entirely classical computing world. Hackers generally are also favored by the odds of their penetration business model; they have to be successful only once, while the defending organizations have to be successful all the time. The militaries in the leading democracies and autocracies are working diligently on this challenge, both defensively, to protect their own companies and organizations, and offensively, to be able to crack the encryption defenses currently used by the other camp. There is one system, based on quantum key distribution (QKD), that is already being used in China, Japan, South Korea, and Europe, but to date the US military has not adopted it due to what it perceived to be technical limitations.
One more quantum application is worth mentioning, namely “quantum sensing.” The concept behind quantum sensing is to use the inherent properties of subatomic particles to determine various aspects of physical position or duration/time. We already use an atomic clock to officially keep time. It works on the basis of measuring the oscillations of certain atoms in precise environmental conditions, most important, temperature. The standard atomic clock, for instance, knows that an electron from a cesium atom vibrates at 9,123,123,123 times per second. Therefore, so long as the perfect conditions are maintained, a “cesium atomic clock” will be accurate forever, overcoming the deficiency of measuring time relative to orbiting bodies like the moon, or Earth’s orbit around the sun. Every few thousand years this latter approach would be off by a second or two.
Quantum sensing could be used, for instance, in detecting items underground but without having to dig them up. Or a similar system could “sense” something coming around a mountain pass, which the driver of the vehicle could not see around. These sorts of applications have obvious civilian and military applications. It will be a number of years, however, before these quantum sensing devices are ready for release into the commercial world, as they require quite a few engineering refinements, such as producing quantum devices at hand-held scale. Already, though, the scientists and technologists are working on positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) applications for military use. One of the first PNT products will likely be a navigational device for submarines that does not require the craft to surface to check its location; an accurate underwater location tracker would revolutionize submarine operations.
Here are the current public companies, and private companies which have raised around $100 million in outside private financing, working on developing a quantum computer, including showing the specific type of quantum technology being used and the current strength (in qubits) of their most advanced product offering:
Democracies |
Funding |
Tech Approach |
No. of qubits |
United States |
|
|
|
IBM-Q |
public |
superconducting |
433 |
public |
superconducting |
70 |
|
Microsoft |
public |
topological |
20 |
Intel |
public |
superconducting |
49 |
Amazon (AWS) |
public |
(pass through QuEra) |
79 |
IonQ |
public |
trapped ion |
32 |
Rigetti |
public |
superconducting |
79 |
PsiQuantum |
$665 M |
photonic |
indefinite |
Atom Computing |
$81 |
photonic—neutral atoms |
100 |
Quantinuum |
$325 |
trapped ions |
32 |
Other Democracies |
|||
D-Wave—CAN |
public |
annealing |
indefinite |
Xanadu—CAN |
$265 |
photonic |
216 |
Fujitsu/Riken—JPN |
public |
superconducting |
64 |
Pascal—FRA |
$139 |
neutral atom |
100 |
Atos/Bullsequana—FRA |
public |
quantum simulator |
41 |
IQM—FIN |
$255 |
superconducting |
54 |
Planqc—GER |
$32 |
neutral atom |
100 |
Autocracies |
|||
China |
|||
Jiuzhang 2.0 (Chinese Academy of Sciences—CAS) |
government funded |
photonic |
76 |
Zuchongzhi 2.1 (CAS) |
government funded |
superconducting |
176 |
Alibaba/CAS |
public |
superconducting |
11 |
Baidu |
public |
superconducting |
10 |
Origin Quantum Computing |
$148 M |
superconducting |
24 |
A number of qualifications need to be made about the figures on this list. First, the number of qubits is merely one indicator of useful computing power. Other important details are how fault-tolerant the QC is; how long the qubits sustain coherence; whether the particular qubits produced by the device produce a lot of “noise” or only a little; how scalable the device is (one current trend is to network QCs, much as classical supercomputers are built by connecting hundreds of processors); how complex they are; and how complex (or relatively simple) is the entire device. There is then the question of whether the device is in the field actually solving practical problems for real-life users, or still largely performing rather esoteric functions for scientists alone.
A third consideration is the most important. Most of the funding for the Chinese quantum companies has come from the government, or investment funds that are owned by the government, while most of the financial backing of companies in the democracies comes from venture capital, private equity, and other private sources. In the US, for instance, private investment in tech companies is 1,350 percent higher than in China. This distinction about the public and private sources of investment money is critical. The Chinese top-down model of funding new innovation entities largely through public money, especially regional/municipal funds, has not produced very good results.
By contrast, the model in the democracies, where experienced industry players drive investment decisions with their own money very much on the line, produces companies of the highest caliber. What has happened with the SC domain (where the superior position of companies in the democracies is quite pronounced) is repeating itself in the QC space. Even if some specific science related to quantum comes out of a Chinese university lab showing great promise, the subsequent funding decisions made by central and regional government bureaucrats in China simply don’t foster the commercial and marketplace savvy needed to make the venture a success.
For example, consider that the lead investor in Origin Quantum Computing, the great hope of quantum computing in China, is a public fund (namely Shenzhen Capital), and several other public funds are big equity investors as well. This profile of investor in turn causes the company to underperform, destroying a lot of actual and potential wealth creation, and then to also “rob” the full potential of the technology from its implementation in the military in the service of national security. Compare, by contrast, the investors in IonQ, which include Google Ventures, Lockheed Martin (the world’s largest defense contractor, also privately owned), Hyundai, Kia Motors, and Fidelity (one of the largest private asset managers in the world). When all is said and done, this single defect in the Chinese innovation system—too much influence of bureaucrats—serves to confer a huge competitive advantage in favor of the democracies that will ultimately cause the democracies to prevail in Cold War 2.0, so long as they don’t fritter away this advantage.