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From Ellsberg to Assange: Jack Teixeira joins list of alleged …

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Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old Massachusetts air national guard member who was charged on Friday with leaking classified Pentagon documents, has joined a long list of individuals who have been prosecuted for allegedly disclosing sensitive US national security intelligence.

Previous leaks have ranged from information about US wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan to details of Russian interference in American elections. Despite the diversity of the subject matter, the treatment of the leakers has shared a common relentlessness on the part of the US government in pursuing those it accuses of breaching its trust.

In March 1971, Ellsberg, a military analyst, leaked a top-secret study to the New York Times. The document, which became known as the Pentagon Papers, spanned US involvement in Vietnam between 1945 and 1967 and exposed covert efforts by successive US presidents to escalate the conflict while hiding deep doubts about the chances of victory.

Ellsberg was prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act a law designed to catch first world war spies and faced a maximum sentence of 115 years in prison. All charges were dropped after the FBIs illegal wiretapping of Ellsberg was revealed.

Early last month, the 92-year-old Ellsberg, who has become revered as the doyen of whistleblowers, revealed that he has terminal cancer and has months to live.

Sterling, a former CIA operations officer, served more than two years of a 42-month sentence after he was prosecuted under the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking information about a botched covert US operation with Iran to the then New York Times journalist James Risen. In 2003, Risen published details of the operation in a book, State of War.

It was not until 2011, under Barack Obamas administration, that Sterling was arrested. Federal prosecutors accused him of leaking details of the Iran engagement out of anger and resentment a reference to an earlier claim from Sterling, who is Black, that he suffered discrimination while at the CIA.

Sterling has denied ever talking to Risen about Iran.

A former senior official with the National Security Agency (NSA), Drake was charged in 2010 with leaking classified information to the Baltimore Sun. He faced 10 counts with a possible 35-year sentence, though the charges were whittled down to a single misdemeanor for which he was given a year of probation.

Drake has always insisted that he had no intention of harming national security, presenting himself as a whistleblower who had been trying to sound the alarm on technical flaws in NSA programs that were wasting billions of dollars.

As a former intelligence analyst posted outside Baghdad during the Iraq war, Manning had access to classified information that shone a light on the vagaries of war there and in Afghanistan. She leaked hundreds of thousands of military records and diplomatic cables via the open information site WikiLeaks in 2010 in one of the largest disclosures of military secrets in US history.

Three years later, she was convicted under the Espionage Act. She was given a 35-year sentence, of which she served seven. In a memoir published last year, README.txt, she wrote: What I did during my enlistment was an act of rebellion, of resistance, and of civic disobedience.

Kiriakou, a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, was sentenced to two years in prison in 2012 for leaking the identity of a covert operative to a journalist. He was the first CIA officer to be imprisoned for doing so.

Prosecutors insisted that they went after Kiriakou to protect the safety of undercover government agents. He countered that he was a whistleblower attempting to expose the use of torture in the so-called war on terror.

Kiriakou was the first former government official to talk in public about waterboarding, the form of controlled drowning used against terrorism suspects in the aftermath of 9/11.

In 2013 Snowden disclosed inside intelligence about the US governments dragnet surveillance of the digital communications of millions of Americans through the Guardian and Washington Post. Working at the time as an NSA contractor, he fled to Hong Kong and from there to Russia, where he was granted asylum.

After he outed himself through the Guardian, a raft of Republican politicians demanded that Snowden be extradited back to the US to face trial as a traitor. Donald Trump called for his execution three years before he was elected US president.

In his support, a number of prominent public figures, including Ellsberg, have lauded Snowden as a pro-democracy hero who should be allowed to come home with a pardon.

The former NSA intelligence contractor and air force linguist was sentenced to more than five years under the Espionage Act in 2018 for leaking a top-secret document on Russian interference in the US presidential election. She pleaded guilty to having handed a copy of a classified report about Russian hacking of voting software suppliers in the 2016 race.

She was released after three years. Having regained her freedom she told CBS: I am not a traitor, I am not a spy. I am somebody who only acted out of love for what this country stands for.

The WikiLeaks founder was initially charged in 2019 with conspiring to hack into a military computer an accusation arising out of the massive leak by Manning to WikiLeaks nine years earlier. The seriousness of prosecutors case against him was dramatically expanded later that year to include 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act.

Assange has been held for the past four years in Belmarsh prison in London as extradition proceedings work their way through British courts. The Joe Biden White House has come under mounting pressure to drop the charges, including from leading news outlets, on grounds that the prosecution is putting a chill on press freedom.

The air national guardsman now finds his name added to the list. He was charged in a Boston federal court on Friday with two counts under the Espionage Act, each carrying a possible 10-year sentence.

Prosecutors allege that they have evidence to prove that Teixeira unlawfully retained and transmitted hundreds of classified defence documents. The FBI has indicated that he enjoyed security clearance for sensitive intelligence marked top secret/sensitive compartmented information.

The leak of the Pentagon documents is believed to have started on the social media platform Discord. Teixeira reportedly visited the platform over several years posting about guns, online games and racist memes, though any motive for the alleged leak remains obscure.

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Hashtag Trending Apr.24th- Cybersecurity workers burnout; Code generated by ChatGPT and Googles Bard not very secure; Execs would want a robot to make…

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Hashtag Trending Apr.24th- Cybersecurity workers burnout; Code generated by ChatGPT and Googles Bard not very secure; Execs would want a robot to make business decisions for them  IT World Canada

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Hashtag Trending Apr.24th- Cybersecurity workers burnout; Code generated by ChatGPT and Googles Bard not very secure; Execs would want a robot to make...

Edward Snowden On The NSA, His Book ‘Permanent Record’ And Life In …

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Reflecting on his decision to go public with classified information, Edward Snowden says, "The likeliest outcome for me, hands down, was that I'd spend the rest of my life in an orange jumpsuit, but that was a risk that I had to take." Courtesy of Edward Snowden hide caption

Reflecting on his decision to go public with classified information, Edward Snowden says, "The likeliest outcome for me, hands down, was that I'd spend the rest of my life in an orange jumpsuit, but that was a risk that I had to take."

In 2013, Edward Snowden was an IT systems expert working under contract for the National Security Agency when he traveled to Hong Kong to provide three journalists with thousands of top-secret documents about U.S. intelligence agencies' surveillance of American citizens.

To Snowden, the classified information he shared with the journalists exposed privacy abuses by government intelligence agencies. He saw himself as a whistleblower. But the U.S. government considered him a traitor in violation of the Espionage Act.

After meeting with the journalists, Snowden intended to leave Hong Kong and travel via Russia to Ecuador, where he would seek asylum. But when his plane landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, things didn't go according to plan.

"What I wasn't expecting was that the United States government itself ... would cancel my passport," he says.

Snowden was directed to a room where Russian intelligence agents offered to assist him in return for access to any secrets he harbored. Snowden says he refused.

"I didn't cooperate with the Russian intelligence services I haven't and I won't," he says. "I destroyed my access to the archive. ... I had no material with me before I left Hong Kong, because I knew I was going to have to go through this complex multi-jurisdictional route."

Snowden spent 40 days in the Moscow airport, trying to negotiate asylum in various countries. After being denied asylum by 27 nations, he settled in Russia, where he remains today.

"People look at me now and they think I'm this crazy guy, I'm this extremist or whatever. Some people have a misconception that [I] set out to burn down the NSA," he says. "But that's not what this was about. In many ways, 2013 wasn't about surveillance at all. What it was about was a violation of the Constitution."

Snowden's 2013 revelations led to changes in the laws and standards governing American intelligence agencies and the practices of U.S. technology companies, which now encrypt much of their Web traffic for security. He reflects on his life and his experience in the intelligence community in the memoir Permanent Record.

On Sept. 17, the U.S. Justice Department filed suit to recover all proceeds from the book, alleging that Snowden violated nondisclosure agreements by not letting the government review the manuscript before publication; Snowden's attorney, Ben Wizner, said in a statement that the book contains no government secrets that have not been previously published by respected news organizations, and that the government's prepublication review system is under court challenge.

Permanent Record

by Edward Snowden

On how researching China's surveillance capabilities for a CIA presentation got him thinking about the potential for domestic surveillance within the U.S.

I'm invited to give a presentation about how China is hacking the United States intelligence services, defense contractors, anything that we have available in the network, which I know a little bit about but not that much about, because they have the person who is supposed to be giving the presentation drop out. So I go looking ... seeing what exactly is it that China is doing? What are their capabilities? Are they hacking? Are they doing domestic surveillance? Are they doing international surveillance? What is occurring?

And I'm just shocked by the extent of their capabilities. I'm appalled by the aggression with which they use them. But also, in a strange way, surprised by the openness with which they use them. They're not hiding it. They're just open and out there, saying, "Yeah, we're doing this. Yeah, we're hacking you. What are you going to do about it?"

And I think this is a distinction: I think, yes, the NSA is spying of course they're spying but we're only spying overseas, we're not spying on our guys at home. We wouldn't do that. We have firewalls, we have trip wires for people to hit. But surely these are only affecting terrorists, because we're not like China. But this plants the first seeds of doubt where I see if the capability is there.

On what he discovered about U.S. domestic surveillance

Over the final years of my career ... I see that we have the same capabilities as the Chinese government, and we are applying them domestically just as they are. We have an internal strategy at the NSA, which was never publicly avowed, but it was all over their top-secret internal slides, that said the aspiration was to "collect it all." What this means was they were not just collecting and intercepting communications from criminals, spies, terrorists, people of intelligence value they were collecting on everyone, everywhere, all of the time, just in case, because you never know what's going to be interesting. And if you miss it when it's passing by, you might not get another chance.

And so what happened was every time we wrote an email, every time you typed something into that Google search box, every time your phone moved, you sent a text message, you made a phone call ... the boundaries of the Fourth Amendment were being changed. This was without even the vast majority of members of Congress knowing about it. And this is when I start to think about maybe we need to know about this, maybe if Congress knew about this, maybe if the courts knew about this, we would not have the same policies as the Chinese government.

On feeling like he was breaking an oath by keeping quiet about the extent of government surveillance

... when I realize we have been violating, in secret, the Fourth Amendment of that Constitution for the better part of a decade ... that we are committing felonies in the United States under a direct mandate from the White House billions of times a day honestly, I fell into depression.

Edward Snowden

My very first day entering into duty for the CIA, I was required to pledge an oath of service. Now, a lot of people are confused, they think there's an oath of secrecy, but this is important to understand. There's a secrecy agreement. This is a civil agreement with the government, a nondisclosure agreement called Standard Form 312. ... It says you won't talk to journalists, you won't write books as I have now done, but when you give this oath of service it's something very different. It's a pledge of allegiance, not to the agency, not to a government, not to a president, but to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.

And so when I realize we have been violating, in secret, the Fourth Amendment of that Constitution for the better part of a decade, the rate of violation is increasing, the scope of the violation is increasing with every day, that we are committing felonies in the United States under a direct mandate from the White House billions of times a day honestly, I fell into depression. And I tried to think, how can I just get by? And this leads to a period where I resign from what would be considered direct mission-related work out in Japan, in the foreign field, as we call it, and I returned to ... a purely corporate position for Dell as a sales official at CIA headquarters.

On deciding to share classified material with journalists and setting conditions for the publication of the material

I tried to reconstruct the system of checks and balances by using myself to provide documents to the journalists, but never to publish them myself. People don't realize this, but I never made public a single document. I trusted that role to the journalists to decide what the public did and did not need to know. Before the journalists published these stories, they had to go to the government, and this was a condition that I required them to do, and tell the government, warn them they're about to run this story about this program and the government could argue against publication and say, "You've got it wrong," or "You've got it right." But if you publish this is going to hurt somebody. In every case I'm aware of, that process was followed, and that's why in 2019 we've never seen any evidence at all presented by the government that someone's been harmed as a result of these stories. (Editor's note: A 2016 report by the House intelligence committee cited more than 20 examples of which, it said, Snowden damaged national security. The details of those instances were redacted.)

On being detained in the Moscow airport for 40 days before being granted temporary asylum in Russia

Had I cooperated with the Russian government right if you think I'm a Russian spy I would have been in that airport for five minutes before they drove me out in a limo to the palace where I'd be living for the rest of my days, before they throw the parade where they call me a hero of Russia. Instead I was trapped in this airport for 40 days. ...

The U.S. government worked quite hard to make sure I didn't leave Russia. ... Why did the U.S. government work so hard to keep me in Russia? We don't have a clear answer, and we may never have that until more people in the Obama administration start writing memoirs, but it's either they panicked or they realized this would be an evergreen political attack where they could just use guilt by association, people's suspicion of the Russian government to try to taint me by proxy.

On his life in Russia and whether he receives any kind of financial support from the Russian government

I have my own apartment. I have my own income. I live a fully independent life. I have never and will never accept money or housing or any other assistance from the Russian government. ...

People ask how I make my living, and I give lectures. I speak publicly for the American Program Bureau and places book me to speak about the future of cybersecurity, what's happening with surveillance, and about conscience and whistleblowing. I've never been the nightclub type. I'm a little bit of an indoor cat. Whether I lived in Maryland or New York or Geneva or Tokyo or Moscow, I always spend the majority of my time looking into a screen, because I think the thing that's on the other side of it is beautiful. It has the promise of human connection. And although the Internet is very much a troubled place ... I think it is something worth fighting for, and something that they can improve.

On how he secures his personal cellphone

I try not to use one as much as possible, and when I do use one, I use a cellphone that I have myself modified. [I've] performed a kind of surgery on it. I open it up with special tools and I use a soldering iron to remove the microphone and I disconnect the camera so that the phone can't simply listen to me when it's sitting there. It physically has no microphone in it. And when I need to make a call I just connect an external microphone through the headphone jack. And this way the phone works for you rather than you working for the phone.

We need to be regulating the collection of data, because our phones, our devices, our laptops even just driving down the street with all of these systems that surround us today is producing records about our lives. It's the modern pollution.

Edward Snowden

You need to be careful about the software you put on your phone, you need to be careful about the connections it's making, because today most people have got a thousand apps on their phones; it's sitting there on your desk right now or in your hand and the screen can be off but it's connecting hundreds or thousands of times a second. ... And this is this core problem of the data issue that we're dealing with today. We're passing laws that are trying to regulate the use of data. We're trying to regulate the protection of data, but all of these things presume that the data has already been collected. ... We need to be regulating the collection of data, because our phones, our devices, our laptops even just driving down the street with all of these systems that surround us today is producing records about our lives. It's the modern pollution.

On coming back to the U.S. to face trial

My ultimate goal will always be to return to the United States. And I've actually had conversations with the government, last in the Obama administration, about what that would look like, and they said, "You should come and face trial." I said, "Sure. Sign me up. Under one condition: I have to be able to tell the jury why I did what I did, and the jury has to decide: Was this justified or unjustified." This is called a public interest defense and is allowed under pretty much every crime someone can be charged for. Even murder, for example, has defenses. It can be self-defense and so on so forth, it could be manslaughter instead of first-degree murder. But in the case of telling a journalist the truth about how the government was breaking the law, the government says there can be no defense. There can be no justification for why you did it. The only thing the jury gets to consider is did you tell the journalists something you were not allowed to tell them. If yes, it doesn't matter why you did it. You go to jail. And I have said, as soon as you guys say for whistleblowers it is the jury who decides if it was right or wrong to expose the government's own lawbreaking, I'll be in court the next day.

Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited the audio of this interview. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the Web.

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Edward Snowden On The NSA, His Book 'Permanent Record' And Life In ...

209-359-17.. located in Merced.. Find Info before it disappears…

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Supreme Court case Verizon Communications Inc. v. FCC, a 2014 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia case This disambiguation. Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the. Verizon Communications Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission was a 2014 U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit case vacating portions of the FCC. Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States and roughly covers 11% of the US population that is provided by Verizon Communications. Verizon was one of the first major. Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia. Today, three of the companies are owned by Verizon Communications: The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company. Corporate headquarters of New York Telephone and its successor Verizon Communications. The building, being adjacent to the original World Trade Center. 642, is a 2010 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia case holding that the Federal Communications Commission does not have ancillary. 2017, it was reported that Verizon Communications was in talks with Charter to discuss a possible buyout. President and CEO of Liberty Media, Greg Maffei. Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin Verizon: Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania. January 14, 2014, Verizon won their lawsuit over the FCC in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Court. Verizon was suing over. Part of Verizon Communications Pacific Telesis, acquired by SBC in 1997, now part of ATT Inc. Ameritech, acquired by SBC in 1999, now part of ATT Inc. Verizon Wireless brought suit against the NSA, the Department of Justice, Verizon Communications, President Barack Obama, Eric Holder, the United States Attorney. Alltel's local telephone service merged with Valor Communications Group out of part of GTE local telephone business in the Southwestern. Some form of Net Neutrality regulation. On January 14, 2014 in Verizon v. FCC the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated. Surveillance Court in which the court compelled Verizon to produce telephony metadata records from all of its subscribers' calls and deliver those records. Vast quantities of domestic telephonic communications.

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Dozens of Australian politicians urge US to abandon Julian Assange …

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Australian federal politicians from across the political spectrum have jointly asked the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, to abandon attempts to extradite Julian Assange from the UK.

The 48 MPs and senators including 13 from the governing Labor party warned that the pursuit of the WikiLeaks founder set a dangerous precedent for press freedom and would damage the reputation of the US.

Assange, an Australian citizen, remains in Belmarsh prison in London as he fights a US attempt to extradite him to face charges in connection with the publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked documents about the Afghanistan and Iraq wars as well as diplomatic cables.

In an open letter published on Tuesday, the Labor, Coalition, Greens and crossbench politicians implored Garland to drop the extradition proceedings and allow Mr Assange to return home.

If the extradition request is approved, Australians will witness the deportation of one of our citizens from one Aukus partner to another our closest strategic ally with Mr Assange facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison, the letter said.

This would set a dangerous precedent for all global citizens, journalists, publishers, media organizations and the freedom of the press. It would also be needlessly damaging for the US as a world leader on freedom of expression and the rule of law.

The letter said the charges which include 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act pertained to Assanges actions as a journalist and publisher in publishing information with evidence of war crimes, corruption and human rights abuses.

The MPs and senators contrasted the ongoing pursuit of Assange with the case of the former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who was released in 2017 when Barack Obama commuted her 35-year military prison sentence for leaking the information.

The letter said Assange who initially took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London has been effectively incarcerated for well over a decade in one form or another, yet the person who leaked classified information had their sentence commuted and has been able to participate in American society since 2017.

The independent MP Andrew Wilkie, who co-chairs the Parliamentary Friends of Julian Assange Group, initiated the letter. It coincides with the fourth anniversary of Assange being detained in Belmarsh prison.

Wilkie said the 48 Australian federal parliamentarians were acting in concert with similar letters from parliamentarians from around the world and together they represented millions of constituents.

This is no small matter and must not be dismissed, Wilkie said. Nor should it be ignored that the outpouring of political concern spans the political spectrum and is based on a diverse range of reasons.

Assanges father, John Shipton, said his son had been living under a pall of shame and disgrace.

Shipton said the decision by the new Australian high commissioner to the UK, Stephen Smith, to visit Belmarsh prison last week marked the beginning of the end of this bleak, severe frost on truth and destruction of Julian Assange.

Greg Barns SC, a legal adviser to the Assange campaign, said the US attempt to prosecute Assange was dangerous because it meant any journalist or publisher anywhere in the world could face extradition to the US for exposing material Washington doesnt want you to know about.

The Australian foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, warned late last month that there were limits to what diplomacy could achieve.

But she said Australia would continue to express the view to both the US and UK governments that the case against Assange has dragged on long enough and should be brought to a close.

The 13 Labor MPs to sign Tuesdays letter were Michelle Ananda-Rajah, Mike Freelander, Julian Hill, Peter Khalil, Tania Lawrence, Zaneta Mascarenhas, Brian Mitchell, Alicia Payne, Graham Perrett, Susan Templeman, Maria Vamvakinou, Josh Wilson and Tony Zappia.

The highest profile Coalition signatories were the former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce and the MP for Bass, Bridget Archer.

The Greens leader, Adam Bandt, was joined by many of his party colleagues in signing it, while independent MPs and senators were also well represented.

Comment was sought from the US embassy in Canberra, but the White House has previously said Joe Biden was committed to an independent Department of Justice when asked about the Assange case.

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Quantum Computing Is Coming. What Can It Do? – Harvard Business Review

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Digital computing has limitations in regards to an important category of calculation called combinatorics, in which the order of data is important to the optimal solution. These complex, iterative calculations can take even the fastest computers a long time to process. Computers and software that are predicated on the assumptions of quantum mechanics have the potential to perform combinatorics and other calculations much faster, and as a result many firms are already exploring the technology, whose known and probable applications already include cybersecurity, bio-engineering, AI, finance, and complex manufacturing.

Quantum technology is approaching the mainstream. Goldman Sachs recently announced that they could introduce quantum algorithms to price financial instruments in as soon as five years. Honeywell anticipates that quantum will form a $1 trillion industry in the decades ahead. But why are firms like Goldman taking this leap especially with commercial quantum computers being possibly years away?

To understand whats going on, its useful to take a step back and examine what exactly it is that computers do.

Lets start with todays digital technology. At its core, the digital computer is an arithmetic machine. It made performing mathematical calculations cheap and its impact on society has been immense. Advances in both hardware and software have made possible the application of all sorts of computing to products and services. Todays cars, dishwashers, and boilers all have some kind of computer embedded in them and thats before we even get to smartphones and the internet. Without computers we would never have reached the moon or put satellites in orbit.

These computers use binary signals (the famous 1s and 0s of code) that are measured in bits or bytes. The more complicated the code, the more processing power required and the longer the processing takes. What this means is that for all their advances from self-driving cars to beating grandmasters at Chess and Go there remain tasks that traditional computing devices struggle with, even when the task is dispersed across millions of machines.

A particular problem they struggle with is a category of calculation called combinatorics. These calculations involve finding an arrangement of items that optimizes some goal. As the number of items grows, the number of possible arrangements grows exponentially. To find the best arrangement, todays digital computers basically have to iterate through each permutation to find an outcome and then identify which does best at achieving the goal. In many cases this can require an enormous number of calculations (think about breaking passwords, for example). The challenge of combinatorics calculations, as well see in a minute, applies in many important fields, from finance to pharmaceuticals. It is also a critical bottleneck in the evolution of AI.

And this is where quantum computers come in. Just as classical computers reduced the cost of arithmetic, quantum presents a similar cost reduction to calculating daunting combinatoric problems.

Quantum computers (and quantum software) are based on a completely different model of how the world works. In classical physics, an object exists in a well-defined state. In the world of quantum mechanics, objects only occur in a well-defined state after we observe them. Prior to our observation, two objects states and how they are related are matters of probability.From a computing perspective, this means that data is recorded and stored in a different way through non-binary qubits of information rather than binary bits, reflecting the multiplicity of states in the quantum world. This multiplicity can enable faster and lower cost calculation for combinatoric arithmetic.

If that sounds mind-bending, its because it is. Even particle physicists struggle to get their minds around quantum mechanics and the many extraordinary properties of the subatomic world it describes, and this is not the place to attempt a full explanation. But what we can say is quantum mechanics does a better job of explaining many aspects of the natural world than classical physics does, and it accommodates nearly all of the theories that classical physics has produced.

Quantum translates, in the world of commercial computing, to machines and software that can, in principle, do many of the things that classical digital computers can and in addition do one big thing classical computers cant: perform combinatorics calculations quickly. As we describe in our paper, Commercial Applications of Quantum Computing, thats going to be a big deal in some important domains. In some cases, the importance of combinatorics is already known to be central to the domain.

As more people turn their attention to the potential of quantum computing, applications beyond quantum simulation and encryption are emerging:

The opportunity for quantum computing to solve large scale combinatorics problems faster and cheaper has encouraged billions of dollars of investment in recent years. The biggest opportunity may be in finding more new applications that benefit from the solutions offered through quantum. As professor and entrepreneur Alan Aspuru-Guzik said, there is a role for imagination, intuition, and adventure. Maybe its not about how many qubits we have; maybe its about how many hackers we have.

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Quantum Computing Is Coming. What Can It Do? - Harvard Business Review

How Quantum Computing Will Transform Our World

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One of the secrets to building the worlds most powerful computer is probably perched by your bathroom sink.

At IBMs Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York States Westchester County, scientists always keep a box of dental flossReach is the preferred brandclose by in case they need to tinker with their oil-drum-size quantum computers, the latest of which can complete certain tasks millions of times as fast as your laptop.

Inside the shimmering aluminum canister of IBMs System One, which sits shielded by the same kind of protective glass as the Mona Lisa, are three cylinders of diminishing circumference, rather like a set of Russian dolls. Together, these encase a chandelier of looping silver wires that cascade through chunky gold plates to a quantum chip in the base. To work properly, this chip requires super-cooling to 0.015 kelvinsa smidgen above absolute zero and colder than outer space. Most materials contract or grow brittle and snap under such intense chill. But ordinary dental floss, it turns out, maintains its integrity remarkably well if you need to secure wayward wires.

But only the unwaxed, unflavored kind, says Jay Gambetta, IBMs vice president of quantum. Otherwise, released vapors mess everything up.

Photograph by Thomas Prior for TIME

Buy a print of the Quantum cover here

Its a curiously homespun facet of a technology that is set to transform pretty much everything. Quantums unique ability to crunch stacks of data is already optimizing the routes of thousands of fuel tankers traversing the globe, helping decide which ICU patients require the most urgent care, and mimicking chemical processes at the atomic level to better design new materials. It also promises to supercharge artificial intelligence, with the power to better train algorithms that can finally turn driverless cars and drone taxis into a reality. Quantum AI simulations exhibit a degree of effectiveness and efficiency that is mind-boggling, U.S. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis tells TIME.

Read More: DeepMinds CEO Helped Take AI Mainstream. Now Hes Urging Caution

Quantums earliest adopters are asset-management firmsfor which incorporating quantum calculations involves few increased overhead costsbut commercial uses arent far behind. Spanish firm Multiverse Computing has run successful pilot projects with multinational clients like BASF and Bosch that show its quantum algorithms can double foreign-exchange trading profits and catch almost four times as many production-line defects. Quantum deep-learning algorithms are completely different from classical ones, says Multiverse CEO Enrique Lizaso Olmos. You can train them faster, try more strategies, and they are much better at getting the correlations that matter from a lot of data.

Quantum chandeliers may look spectacular but they arent practical for next generation computers. IBM has instead designed flexible cabling to replace the looped wires.

Thomas Prior for TIME

Data received from quantum computers must be fed to rack of classical control electronic systems to process the calculations.

Thomas Prior for TIME

Tech giants from Google to Amazon and Alibabanot to mention nation-states vying for technological supremacyare racing to dominate this space. The global quantum-computing industry is projected to grow from $412 million in 2020 to $8.6 billion in 2027, according to an International Data Corp. analysis.

Whereas traditional computers rely on binary bitsswitches either on or off, denoted as 1s and 0sto process information, the qubits that underpin quantum computing are tiny subatomic particles that can exist in some percentage of both states simultaneously, rather like a coin spinning in midair. This leap from dual to multivariate processing exponentially boosts computing power. Complex problems that currently take the most powerful supercomputer several years could potentially be solved in seconds. Future quantum computers could open hitherto unfathomable frontiers in mathematics and science, helping to solve existential challenges like climate change and food security. A flurry of recent breakthroughs and government investment means we now sit on the cusp of a quantum revolution. I believe we will do more in the next five years in quantum innovation than we did in the last 30, says Gambetta.

But any disrupter comes with risks, and quantum has become a national-security migraine. Its problem-solving capacity will soon render all existing cryptography obsolete, jeopardizing communications, financial transactions, and even military defenses. People describe quantum as a new space race, says Dan OShea, operations manager for Inside Quantum Technology, an industry publication. In October, U.S. President Joe Biden toured IBMs quantum data center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., calling quantum vital to our economy and equally important to our national security. In this new era of great-power competition, China and the U.S. are particularly hell-bent on conquering the technology lest they lose vital ground. This technology is going to be the next industrial revolution, says Tony Uttley, president and COO for Quantinuum, a Colorado-based firm that offers commercial quantum applications. Its like the beginning of the internet, or the beginning of classical computing.

Quantum chips are extremely sensitive. This decade-old IBM quantum processor was used in an experiment that proved how background microwaves affect qubits.

Thomas Prior for TIME

If anything, its surprising that traditional computing has taken us so far. From the trail-blazing Apple II of the late 1970s to todays smartphones and supercomputers, all processors break down tasks into binary. But life is so complex that rendering information in such a rudimentary manner is like playing a Rachmaninoff concerto in Morse code.

Quantum is also more in tune with nature. Moleculesthe building blocks of the universeare multiple atoms bound together by electrons that exist as part of each. The way these electrons essentially occupy two states at once is what quantum particles replicate, presenting applications for natural and material sciences by predicting how drugs interact with the human body, or substances perform under corrosion. Traditional manufacturing takes calculated guesses to make breakthroughs through trial and error; by mirroring the natural world, quantum should allow advances to be purposefully designed.

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While the worlds biggest companies, alongside hundreds of startups, are clamoring to harness quantum, IBM has emerged in recent years as the industry leader. Today, the firm has over 60 functioning quantum computersmore than the rest of the world combinedand a roster of collaborators that include titans of practically every industry from Exxon-Mobil to Sony. Its a welcome return to technologys zenith for the storied firm, founded over a century ago to produce tabulating machines fed with punch cards. In recent years, IBM had fallen behind rivals like Apple and Microsoft by not seizing the initiative with cloud computing and AI. Quantum offers some redemption. Its great to be back at the top again, says one executive. Its no secret that we let things slip by not jumping on cloud.

In November, IBM unveiled its new 433-qubit Osprey chipthe worlds most powerful quantum processor, the speed of which, if represented in traditional bits, would far exceed the total number of atoms in the known universe. IBM has more than 20 quantum computers available on its open-source quantum tool kit Qiskit, which has been downloaded more than 450,000 times to date. In order to build an industry around quantum, some machines are free to use, while paying clients such as startups and scholars can access more powerful ones remotely on a lease basis. IBM has a bold road map to launch a 1,121-qubit processor this year and, by 2025, surpass 4,000 qubits by creating modular quantum circuits that link multiple processor chips in the same computer. Modularity is a big inflection point, says Dario Gil, IBM senior vice president and director of research. We now have a way to engineer machines that will have tens of thousands of qubits.

Inside the IBM research lab in Yorktown Heights, New York

Thomas Prior for TIME

IBM research lab in Yorktown Heights, New York.

Thomas Prior for TIME

Quantums industrial uses are boundless. Inside BMWs headquarters in Munich there stands a wall that gives vehicle designers sleepless nights. Creating a new car model from scratch takes at least four years. First, designers use computer-aided styling to sketch an exterior that combines beauty with practicality. Next, a scale model is carved in clay and placed in a wind tunnel to assess aerodynamics. After countless decisions on interior, engine performance, and so on comes the ultimate test: a prototype is driven at 35 m.p.h. into that fabled wall to test how it performs in a crash. Should the car fail to meet various safety criteria, its back to the drawing board.

This is where quantum can help by accurately predicting how complex materials of different shapes will perform under stress. Robust simulated crash tests can save up to six months in the whole process, says Carsten Sapia, vice president of strategy, governance, and IT security at BMW Group, which has partnered with French quantum firm Pasqal. Quantum computing will also help us find the new optimum between design, maximum interior space, and best aerodynamics.

Thats just the start. Modern business teems with optimization problems that are ideally suited to quantum algorithms and could save time, energy, and resources. Were not just building the technology, we have to enable the workforce to use it, explains Katie Pizzolato, IBMs director of quantum strategy and applications research.

Sapia says finding uses for the technology is easy; the challenge will be ensuring that all divisions of BMW are able to utilize it. Already, BMW is unable to communicate from Europe to its cars in China for driving software maintenance and monitoring because of increasingly strict curbs on the transfer of data across borders. In the future, we will rely on everywhere in the world having access to quantum technology to run our business, Sapia says. So how can we set it up so no matter what happens on a geopolitical scale that we still have access to this technology?

The full chandelier inside a quantum computer.

Thomas Prior for TIME

Over the past few years quantum has moved from a footnote to the top of the global security agenda. To date, 17 countries have national quantum strategies and four more are developing them. China has invested an estimated $25 billion in quantum research since the mid-1980s, according to Quantum Computing Report. Its top quantum scientist, Pan Jianwei, led the launch of the worlds first quantum satellite in 2016 and in 2021 unveiled a then record-breaking 56-qubit quantum computer. Chinas 14th Five-Year Plan, published in March 2021, made mastery of quantum a policy priority. The blurred line between industry and national security in China gives them an advantage, says David Spirk, former chief data officer at the Department of Defense.

In response, the White House in May published a National Security Memorandum that ordered all federal agencies to transition to post-quantum security owing to significant risks to economic and national security. Given that upgrading critical infrastructure can take decades, and literally everything connected to the internet is at risk, the impetus is to act now. We realized that while [quantum is] wonderful for humanity, the first thing people are going to do is weaponize these systems, says Skip Sanzeri, founder and COO of QuSecure, a post-quantum cybersecurity firm enlisted by the U.S. military and federal government to handle what he says could be a $1 trillion cybersecurity upgrade.

Still, Spirk worries that the U.S. risks falling behind and is calling for a Manhattan Projectlike focus on quantum. Of the over $30 billion spent globally on quantum last year, according to the World Economic Forum, China accounted for roughly half and the E.U. almost a quarter. The U.S. National Quantum Initiative, meanwhile, spent just $1.2 billiona figure Spirk calls trivial against $1 trillion in total defense spending. This is not a coming wave, he says, its here.

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The stakes couldnt be higher. Today, practically all cybersecuritywhether WhatsApp messages, bank transfers, or digital handshakesis based on RSA, an asymmetric cryptography algorithm used to safely transfer data. But while a regular computer needs billions of years to crack RSA, a fast quantum computer would take just hours. In December, a team of scientists in China published a paper that claimed it had a quantum algorithm that could break RSA with a 372-qubit computer (though its conclusions are hotly debated). The race is now on to devise postquantum securitya job that falls to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST. In 2016, NIST announced a competition for programmers to propose new post-quantum encryption algorithms. The results were mixed: one of the finalists announced on July 5, 2022, has since been cracked by a regular laptop in a little over an hour.

In some ways, its already too late. Even though quantum computers powerful enough to crack RSA are a few years away from being openly available, hackers are already seizing and storing sensitive data in the knowledge that they will be able to access it via quantum very soon. Every day that you dont convert to a quantum-safe protocol, theres no recovery plan, Gil says.

The glass shell around the quantum computer allows IBM to tightly control the temperature inside. This is critical for the quantum chip, which has to be kept at a fraction above absolute zero.

Thomas Prior for TIME

The war in Ukraine has also served as a wake-up call. It is historys first hot conflict to begin with cyber-attacks, as Russia targeted vital -communications and infrastructure to lay the groundwork for its military assault. Public services, energy grids, media, banks, businesses, and nonprofit organizations were subjected to a cyberblitzkrieg, impacting the distribution of medicines, food, and relief supplies. Modern warfare and nationalsecurity mechanisms are grounded in the speed and precision of decisionmaking. If your computer is faster than theirs, you win, its pretty simple, says Spirk. Quantum is that next leap.

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But malign intentions are just one hazard. With the U.S. embroiled in a new Cold War, its also unclear if China and Russia would adopt new NIST protocols, not least since in the past, RSA cryptography has allegedly been breached by the U.S. National Security Agency. In September, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said quantum would have an outsized importance over the coming decade, adding that export controls could be used to maintain U.S. advantage. Competing post-quantum security standards across Washingtons and Beijings spheres of influence have the potential to cleave the world into divergent blocs, with grave implications for global trade. [The] balkanization of what we know today as a free and open internet is distinctly possible, Inglis says.

The trepidation surrounding quantum doesnt stem solely from security risks. We trust classical computers in part because we can verify their computations with pen and paper. But quantum computers involve such arcane physics, and deal with such complex problems, that traditional verification is extremely tricky. For now, its possible to simulate many quantum calculations on a traditional super-computer to check the outcome. But soon will come a time when trusting a quantum computer will require a leap of faith. Trust building across the entire ecosystem right now is really important, says Uttley.

Boeing, for one, has been working with IBMs quantum team since 2020 on designing new materials for its next generation of aircraft. But given the colossal reputational stakes, the firm is in no rush. The modeling tools that we use to design our airplanes are closely monitored, says Jay Lowell, chief engineer for disruptive computing and networks at Boeing. To turn [quantum] into an operational code is a huge, huge hurdle.

One that IBM knows only too well. But by making its quantum computers open source, and welcoming academics and entrepreneurs from all over, the firm hopes to mitigate the hesitancy. As Gil puts it, this is a new frontier of humanity.

With reporting by Leslie Dickstein

Correction, Jan. 28

The original version of this story misstated the name of a French quantum firm. It is Pasqal, not Pascal.

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How Quantum Computing Will Transform Our World

Quantum Computing Is Coming, And Its Reinventing The Tech … – Forbes

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Quantum computing is an idea that has long been in the realm of science fiction. However, recent developments have made it seem more and more like a reality.

The rise of easily accessible quantum computing has significant implications for the tech industry and the world as a whole. With potential impacts in things like cybersecurity, simulations and more, investors are watching this industry closely (and getting invested).

Quantum computing relies on quantum mechanics, a fundamental theory of physics that describes how the world works at the level of the atom and subatomic particles, to solve problems that traditional computers find too complex.

Most quantum computers rely on the quantum bit or qubit. Unlike traditional bits in a computer, which are set to 0 or 1, qubits can be set to zero, one or a superposition of 0 and 1. Though the mechanics behind this is highly complex, qubits allow quantum computers to process information in a fraction of the time a traditional computer could.

To offer an idea of the scale, 500 qubits can represent the same information as 2^500 normal bits. While a typical computer would need millions of years to find all the prime factors of a 2,048-bit number (a number with 617 digits), a quantum computer can do the job in minutes.

Modern quantum theory was developed in the 1920s. Computers appeared shortly after that, and both technologies played a role in World War II. Over time, physicists began to merge the two fields of quantum theory and computing to create the field of quantum computing.

1998 saw the development of a two-bit quantum computer, which serves as a proof of concept for the technology. Further developments have increased the bit count and reduced the rate of errors.

Researchers believe that problems currently too large to be solved by traditional computers can be solved using quantum computers.

Given the substantial improvements that quantum computing can provide to computing power, research into quantum computers has been going on for decades. However, important breakthroughs have been seen in recent years.

Last week, Australian engineers announced the discovery of a way to control electrons within quantum dots that run logic gates without the need for a large, bulky system. This could help with building quantum computers that are reasonably sized.

Also, researchers at MIT recently developed an architecture for quantum computers that will allow for high-fidelity communication between quantum processors, allowing for the interconnection of multiple processors.

This allows for modular implementations of larger-scale machines built from smaller individual components, according to Bharath Kanna, a co-lead author of the research paper describing this breakthrough.

The ability to communicate between smaller subsystems will enable a modular architecture for quantum processors, and this may be a simpler way of scaling to larger system sizes compared to the brute-force approach of using a single large and complicated chip.

Furthermore, a Maryland-based company IonQ recently announced a 65,000-square-foot facility that it will use for manufacturing and production. The factory will be located in Bothell, WA and is the first dedicated quantum computer manufacturing facility in the United States.

Quantum computing could have massive impacts on the tech industry and the world.

One of the biggest impacts will be in the world of cybersecurity. The Department of Homeland Security believes that a quantum computer could be able to break current encryption methods as soon as 2030.

Without major developments in cryptography or a slowdown in quantum computing technology advances, we could be less than a decade away from malicious actors being able to view everything from peoples personal information to government and military secrets.

Some groups are already participating in Store Now, Decrypt Later attacks, which steal encrypted data and store it with the expectation that theyll be able to crack the encryption at a later date.

Quantum computing could also have major effects on the medical industry. For example, quantum machines could be used to model molecular processes. This could assist with breakthroughs in disease research and speed up the development of life-saving drugs.

These simulations could have similar impacts in industries that rely on materials science, such as battery making. Even the financial sector could benefit from the technology, using simulations to perform risk analysis more accurately and optimize investment portfolios.

Given its world-changing capabilities, its no surprise that governments have made major investments in the technology, with more than $30 billion going into research programs across the globe.

Quantum computing has the potential to impact almost every industry across the globe. Beyond impacting the tech industry, it could create shockwaves in the medical and financial industry while leading to the development of new products or materials that become a part of everyday life.

Given the relative youth of the technology, it can be challenging for investors to find ways to invest directly in quantum computing. Instead, they may look for investments in businesses that have an interest in quantum computers and that are poised to benefit from their development, such as pharmaceutical companies.

The rise of quantum computing could mean that the world will look very different just a few years from now. Investors will be looking for ways to profit from this game-changing technology, and the opportunities will be plentiful.

If you want to try a different type of high-tech investing, consider working with Q.ai. Its artificial intelligence can help you build a portfolio for any purpose that will succeed in any economy. With Investment Kits, Q.ai makes investing fun.

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Quantum Computing Is Coming, And Its Reinventing The Tech ... - Forbes