It had been a bedrock belief of U.S. policy for 40 years that it was possible to bring the People's Republic of China smoothly into the family of nationsand now, one of the architects of that policy was finally acknowledging the obvious.

In a speech six months ago, former World Bank President and Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick reminded listeners of his own famous 2005 call on Beijing to become a "responsible stakeholder." He ticked off a few of the ways in which China had done just that: voting for sanctions on North Korea and limiting missile exports, for instance. But he acknowledged that the project had gone off the rails.

"Xi Jinping's leadership," Zoellick said of the PRC president, "has prioritized the Communist Party and restricted openness and debate in China. China hurts itself by forging a role model for dystopian societies of intrusive technologies and reeducation camps." He added: "The rule of law and openness upon which Hong Kong's 'One Country, Two Systems' model rests may topple or be trampled. If China crushes Hong Kong, China will wound itselfeconomically and psychologicallyfor a long time."

Zoellick had that right. A global pandemic has brought relations between Beijing and Washington to its lowest point since China reopened to the world in 1978even lower even than in those extraordinary days following the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.

What had been a more confrontational, trade-centric relationship since the start of President Donald Trump's term, has now descended into bitterness in the midst of a presidential reelection campaign Trump fears is slipping away. Any chance that the pandemic might spur Washington and Beijing to set differences aside and work together on treatments and other aspects of the pandemicsuch as how exactly it startedis long gone.

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Last week, the Trump administration moved to block shipments of semiconductors to Huawei Technologies. The Commerce Department said it was amending an export rule to "strategically target Huawei's acquisition of semiconductors that are the direct product of certain U.S. software and technology." Previously on May 13, the FBI announced an investigation into Chinese hackers that it believes are targeting American health care and pharmaceutical companies in an effort to steal intellectual property relating to coronavirus medicines. Without specifying how, the Bureau said the hacks may be disrupting progress on medical research.

President Trump had already made it clear just how bitter he is at Beijing on May 7 when meeting with reporters at the White House. "We went through the worst attack we've ever had on our country," he said, "this is the worst attack we've ever had. This is worse than Pearl Harbor, this is worse than the World Trade Center. There's never been an attack like this. And it should have never happened. Could've been stopped at the source. Could've been stopped in China...And it wasn't."

The comparison of a virus, which originated in China and then spread globally, to the two most infamous attacks in U.S. history, stunned Trump's foreign policy adviserseven Beijing hard-liners. It will be impossible, U.S. officials acknowledge, for Trump to soften his hard line toward Beijing should he win reelection in November.

The president is right to reach for historical metaphor, given the weight of the moment. But the aftermath of the Wuhan outbreak more closely resembles the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 than either Pearl Harbor or 9/11. What follows will not be a sharp burst of savage conflict, but a global scramble to shape the new order rising from the rubble of old. As with the Wall, the forces that led to the dispute over the Wuhan outbreak were unleashed years before the events that made history. And the change they represent is likely irreversible, no matter who sits in the White House.

Though Joe Biden has on occasion downplayed Beijing's rise as a threat to the U.S., and for sure would not be so rhetorically reckless as Trump, his foreign policy advisers acknowledge there's no turning back. Since Xi Jinping came to power seven years ago, China has imprisoned more than one million ethnic Muslims in "reeducation" camps, imposed an ever-tightening surveillance state on its own citizens and cracked down on all dissent. Overseas, Beijing's goal is to entice authoritarian regimes in the developing world to view it as a "model'' to be followed. And, of course, selling the technology those leaders need to create their own surveillance states.

"No one on either side of the political aisle in Washington is ignoring any of that," says one Biden adviser. "The era of hope that China might evolve into a normal country is over. No one with any brains denies that."

That notion has fully settled in here. Sixty-six percent of Americans now have a negative view of China, according to a recent Pew Research poll. At the same time, in China, state-owned media and a government-controlled internet whip up nationalism and anti-Americanism to levels unseen since the U.S. accidentally bombed Beijing's embassy in Belgrade during the Balkan wars in 1999.The world's two most powerful nations are now competing in every realm possible: militarily, for one, with constant cat-and-mouse games in the South China Sea and cyber warfare. The competition to dominate the key technologies of the 21st century is intensifying, too. This type of rivalry hasn't been seen since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Thus, a growing number of policymakers, current and former, and China hands old and new, acknowledge the obvious: Cold War 2.0 is here. To the generation of Americans who remember duck-and-cover drills in elementary school at the peak of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the new global struggle will look very different. It will also, many U.S. strategists believe, be much harder for the West to wage successfully. "Another long twilight struggle may be upon us," says former Pentagon China planner Joseph Bosco, "and it may make the last one look easy."Now, U.S. policymakers are trying to discern what that struggle will look like, and how to win it.

New-Age War

The first major difference in the coming Cold War with Beijing is in the military realm. Beijing spends far less than the U.S. on its military, though its annual rate of spending is fast increasing. According to the Center For Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, Beijing spent $50 billion on its military in 2001, the year it joined the World Trade Organization. In 2019 it spent $240 billion, compared to the U.S.' $633 billion.

For a few decades at least, the U.S.-China military competition will look vastly different from the hair-trigger nuclear standoff with Moscow. Instead, China will seek asymmetric advantages, rooted where possible in technology. It has, for example, already developed an arsenal of hypersonic missiles, which fly low and are hard for radar to detect. They are known as "carrier killers" because of their ability to strike U.S. aircraft carriers in the Pacific from long distances. These weapons could be critical in "area denial" operations, as military planners put it. For example, should the day come when Beijing seeks to take Taiwan by force, hyper-sonics could keep U.S. carriers far from the island nation once a war began.

China's pursuit of preeminence across a wide range of technologies, in areas like quantum computing and artificial intelligence, are central to the economic clash with the U.S. But they also have significant military components. Since the 1990s, when Chinese military planners were stunned by the U.S.' lightning victory in the first Iraq war, they have consistently focused their efforts on developing war-fighting capabilities relevant to their immediate strategic goalsTaiwan is an examplewhile creating the ability to one day leapfrog U.S. military technologies.That may be drawing nearer. Quantum computing is an example. In an era in which digital networks underpin virtually every aspect of war, "quantum is king," says Elsa Kania, a former DOD official who is now a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Take cyber warfarethe ability to protect against an enemy disrupting your own networks, while maintaining the ability to disrupt the adversary's. Quantum networks are far more secure against cyber espionage, and Kania believes China's "future quantum capacity has the potential to leapfrog U.S. cyber capabilities."

That's not the only advantage of quantum technology. Beijing is also exploring the potential for quantum-based radar systems that can defeat stealth technology, a critical U.S. war-fighting advantage. "These disruptive technologiesquantum communications, quantum computing and potentially quantum radarmay have the potential to undermine cornerstones of U.S. technological dominance in information-age warfare, its sophisticated intelligence apparatus, satellites and secure communications networks and stealth technologies," says Kania. "China's concentrated pursuit of quantum technologies could have much more far-reaching impacts than the asymmetric approach to defense that has characterized its strategic posture thus far." That is a big reason why Pan Jianwei, the father of China's quantum computing research effort, has said the nation's goal is nothing less than "quantum supremacy."

Washington, and its allies in East Asia and Europe, are paying attention. In a just-published bookThe Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the WestDavid Kilcullen, a former Australian military officer who served as special adviser to U.S. General David Petraeus in Iraq, writes: "our enemies have caught up or overtaken us in critical technologies, or have expanded their concept of war beyond the narrow boundaries within which our traditional approach can be brought to bear. They have adapted, and unless we too adapt, our decline is only a matter of time."

The book is being widely read in U.S. national security circles.China is not yet a "peer power," as U.S. national defense analysts put it. But the steadily aggressive pursuit of quantum technologiesand a wide array of others that also have dual-use applicationsincreasingly convince Pentagon planners that Beijing will one day be one. China, says Michael Pillsbury, one of Trump's key informal advisers on relations with Beijing, "is nothing if not patient." The year 2049 will mark the Chinese Communist Party's 100th anniversary of taking power in Beijing. That's the year Chinese propaganda outlets have said will see the completion of China's rise to the dominant power on earth.

An Economic Divorce?

The most significant difference in the emerging geopolitical standoff between Washington and Beijing is obvious: China is economically powerful, and deeply integrated with both the developed and developing worlds. That was never the case with the former Soviet Union, which was largely isolated economically, trading only with its east bloc neighbors. China, by contrast, trades with everyone, and it continues to grow richer. It is sophisticated across a wide range of critical technologies, including telecommunications and artificial intelligence. It has set as a national goalin its so-called Made in China 2025 planpreeminence not just in quantum computing and AI, but in biotech, advanced telecommunications, green energy and a host of others.

But the U.S. and the rest of the world have problems in the present as well. The pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of locating supply chains for personal protective equipment as well as pharmaceutical supplies in China. That's a significant strategic vulnerability. If China shut the door on exports of medicines and their key ingredients and raw material, U.S. hospitals, military hospitals and clinics would cease to function within months if not days, says Rosemary Gibson, author of a book on the subject, China Rx. Late last month, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton introduced legislation mandating that U.S. pharmaceutical companies bring production back from China to the U.S.

China's explicit desire to dominate the industries of the future is bad news for foreign multinational companies that have staked so much on the allure of the China market. If China's steep rise up the technology ladder continues, American and other foreign multinationals are likely to get turfed out of the market entirely. "China 2025 is all about replacing anything that American companies sell of any value, just taking the Americans out of that," says Stewart Paterson, author of China, Trade and Power, Why the West's Economic Engagement Has Failed.Donald Trump's tariffs, and China's public desire to dominate key industries, have pushed American multinational and U.S. policymakers to ask: should the U.S. get an economic divorce from Beijing? And if so, what would that look like?

The COVID-19 outbreak and China's response to it has greatly intensified that debate. Trump's trade war had triggered a slow-motion move toward an economic "decoupling," as companies in low-tech, low- margin industries began to move production out of China to avoid tariffs. The textile, footwear and furniture business have all seen significant movement out of China so far. But pre-pandemic, there was no mad rush for the exits and there was no reason to expect one anytime soon. As recently as last October, 66 percent of American companies operating in China surveyed by the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing said "decoupling" would be impossible, so interlinked are the world's two largest economies.

Things have changed. The number who now believe decoupling is impossible, according to the same survey, has dropped to 44 percent. If reelected, Trump's advisers say, the president will likely pressure other industries beyond pharmaceuticals and medical equipment to bring back production. How he would actually do that is unclear, but aides are looking at the example of Japan. The Japanese legislature recently approved a program in which the government will offer subsidiesup to $2.25 billion worthto any company that brings its supply chain back home.

As negative perceptions of China harden in the U.S., executives are faced with a stark choice: as Paterson puts it, "do you really want to be seen doing business with an adversary?"

The answer isn't that easy. In the U.S., a lot of companies simply do not want to reduce their exposure to China. They spent yearsand billionsbuilding up supply lines and are loath to give them up. Consider the semiconductor industry, a critical area in which the U.S. is still technologically more advanced than China. A complete cessation of semiconductor sales to China would mean U.S. firms lose about 18 percent of their global market shareand an estimated 37 percent of overall revenues. That in turn would likely force reductions in research and development. The U.S. spent $312 billion on R&D over the last decade, more than double the amount spent by its foreign competitorsand it's that R&D which allows them to stay ahead of competitors.

Paterson argues that the costs of total divorce from China is often overstated. He calculates that about 2 percent of U.S. corporate profits come from sales in the Chinese market, mostly from companies that manufacture there in order to sell there. Corporate profits overall are 10 percent of U.S. GDP. Eliminating the China portion of that "is a rounding error," he says.

But getting companies such as Caterpillar Inc., which operates 30 factories in China and gets 10 percent of its annual revenue from sales there, is an uphill lift. There are scores of companies like Caterpillar, who have no intention of leaving China, even if relations between Washington and Beijing are at new lows. And there are also scores of companies like Starbucks, which operates 42,000 stores across China, or Walmart, whose revenue in the country is more than $10 billion annually. Those companies don't have critical technology to steal and may be little worry to the U.S. if they continue to operate in China.

But other companies do. Tesla, to take one example, is a company whose advanced technology should be protected at all costs. Which is why some in Washington are scratching their heads at both Elon Musk and the Trump administration. Musk said on May 10th that he was so angry at the shutdown orders in the state of California, he might move the Tesla factory in Fremont to Texas. Meanwhile, he manufactures his cars in Shanghai, which is an obvious target for intellectual property theft and industrial espionage, given that electric vehicles are one of the industries targeted in the China 2025 plan. "California bad, Shanghai good is not a formulation that's going to hold up well in the post-COVID environment," says Paterson.

A smarter U.S. strategy than "divorce" is "economic distancing," says John Lee, a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank. The goal of U.S. industrial policy should be "ensuring that China is not in a position to dominate key technologies and assume the leading role in dominating supply and value chains for these emerging technologies," he says. Rationing access to large and advanced markets is critical. "It becomes much more challenging [for Beijing] if China's access to markets in the U.S. Europe and East Asia is restricted, and it is denied key inputs from those areas."

That presumes coordination with allies, which has not been a Trump administration strong suit. But that would change under a President Joe Biden. Even before the pandemic, key European and Asian allies were souring on their relations with China. That includes Canada as well. A former senior Canadian official said Ottawa wanted to work with Trump and the Europeans to map out a tougher, united front on trade. The only problem? "You were sanctioning our steel exports on 'national security grounds,'" this official says. "We are a NATO ally, for godssake!"

The opportunity to work more closely to form a united front versus Beijing is something Biden advisers are intent on doing. A reconfigured Trans Pacific Partnership, which Barack Obama pushed, is likely the first order of business in a Biden administrationthis time more explicitly targeted at excluding Beijing from free trade deals among U.S. allies.That is, if there is a Biden administration.

What's Next?

In the context of the new Cold War, the move toward a smart economic distancing, as Hudson's Lee and others call for, will gain momentum. "Washington put too much faith in its power to shape China's trajectory. All sides of the policy debate [in the U.S.] erred," says Kurt Campbell, former assistant secretary of state under Obama. Biden's people are already spreading the word that there will be no return to the laissez faire attitudes that governed Washington's approach to China. The U.S. may also have to overtly subsidize companies in the Made in China 2025 industries that Beijing has targeted.

Beijing had resisted suspending its own industrial subsidies to state-owned industries in the Trump trade negotiations and had shown few signs of backing off from the goals expressed in Made in China 2025. In the wake of the global fury kicked up by the coronavirus, an economic rapprochement appears unthinkable.Militarily and geopolitically, no matter who wins the next election, the U.S. will work hard to bring India, which has hedged its bets between Washington and Beijing as China rose, more closely into the fold of a "free and open Indo-Pacific," as the Trump administration has called its policy toward Asia. The ability to work more closely with allies, both in East Asia and in Europe, in creating a united front against Beijing has never been stronger.

"No one that we talk to is happy," says Rand Corporation's Scott Harold.

What many look for is steadier and clearer public messaging from Washington. As Harold puts it, as the ideological competition with Beijing intensifies, "the defenders of the liberal international order, like-minded democracies, should grow more active in defense of their interests and values.''

In the wake of the pandemic, the U.S. is suffering a defeat that should be unthinkable: it is losing the propaganda war, particularly in the developing world. Both internally and abroad, the Chinese Communist party's propaganda outlets, digital and broadcast, are trumpeting Xi Jinping's handling of COVID-19, and contrasting it with the Trump administration's shambolic efforts to deal with the virus. State media outlets chronicled how badly the U.S. and others have managed the crisis. Their message: Those countries should copy China's model.

As competition between the United States and China grows, the information wars will be critical. In this, the "America First" Trump administration has been mostly AWOLthe President has not been able to rouse himself to support pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong, so desperate was he for a trade deal with Xi Jinping. But, Trump and Biden have some good role models and, thus, there's hope. U.S. presidents have defended the country's values quite well, and steadily, throughout the last Cold War, none more ably than Ronald Reagan, who left office a year before the Berlin Wall came down.

We will see, of course, if the next administration is up for the fight. Washington has at least recognized, as Kurt Campbell observes, that it overvalued its ability to influence China's development" Presumably it won't make that mistake again. Instead, Washington and its allies need to focus more on how to cope effectively with a powerful rival.

The mission: Wage the 21st century's Cold War, while ensuring it never turns hot.

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America Is in a New Cold War and This Time the Communists Might Win - Newsweek

Quantum computers perform calculations based on the probability of an object's state before it is measured - instead of just 1s or 0s - which means they have the potential to process exponentially more data compared to classical computers.

Classical computers carry out logical operations using the definite position of a physical state. These are usually binary, meaning its operations are based on one of two positions. A single state - such as on or off, up or down, 1 or 0 - is called a bit.

In quantum computing, operations instead use the quantum state of an object to produce what's known as a qubit. These states are the undefined properties of an object before they've been detected, such as the spin of an electron or the polarisation of a photon.

Rather than having a clear position, unmeasured quantum states occur in a mixed 'superposition', not unlike a coin spinning through the air before it lands in your hand.

These superpositions can be entangled with those of other objects, meaning their final outcomes will be mathematically related even if we don't know yet what they are.

The complex mathematics behind these unsettled states of entangled 'spinning coins' can be plugged into special algorithms to make short work of problems that would take a classical computer a long time to work out... if they could ever calculate them at all.

Such algorithms would be useful in solving complex mathematical problems, producing hard-to-break security codes, or predicting multiple particle interactions in chemical reactions.

Building a functional quantum computer requires holding an object in a superposition state long enough to carry out various processes on them.

Unfortunately, once a superposition meets with materials that are part of a measured system, it loses its in-between state in what's known as decoherence and becomes a boring old classical bit.

Devices need to be able to shield quantum states from decoherence, while still making them easy to read.

Different processes are tackling this challenge from different angles, whether it's to use more robust quantum processes or to find better ways to check for errors.

For the time being, classical technology can manage any task thrown at a quantum computer. Quantum supremacy describes the ability of a quantum computer to outperform their classical counterparts.

Some companies, such as IBM and Google, claim we might be close, as they continue to cram more qubits together and build more accurate devices.

Not everybody is convinced that quantum computers are worth the effort. Some mathematicians believe there are obstacles that are practically impossible to overcome, putting quantum computing forever out of reach.

Time will tell who is right.

All topic-based articles are determined by fact checkers to be correct and relevant at the time of publishing. Text and images may be altered, removed, or added to as an editorial decision to keep information current.

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How Do Quantum Computers Work? - ScienceAlert

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Seeqc, the Digital Quantum Computing company, today announced its UK team has been selected to receive two British grants totaling 1.8 million from Innovate UKs Industrial Challenge Strategy Fund.

Quantum Foundry

The first 800,000 grant from Innovate UK is part of a 7M project dedicated to advancing the commercialization of superconducting technology. Its goal is to bring quantum computing closer to business-applicable solutions, cost-efficiently and at scale.

Seeqc UK is joining six UK-based companies and universities in a consortium to collaborate on the initiative. This is the first concerted effort to bring all leading experts across industry and academia together to advance the development of quantum technologies in the UK.

Other grant recipients include Oxford Quantum Circuits, Oxford Instruments, Kelvin Nanotechnology, University of Glasgow and the Royal Holloway University of London.

Quantum Operating System

The second 1 million grant is part of a 7.6 million seven-organization consortium dedicated to advancing the commercialization of quantum computers in the UK by building a highly innovative quantum operating system. A quantum operating system, Deltaflow.OS, will be installed on all quantum computers in the UK in order to accelerate the commercialization and collaboration of the British quantum computing community. The universal operating system promises to greatly increase the performance and accessibility of quantum computers in the UK.

Seeqc UK is joined by other grant recipients, Riverlane, Hitachi Europe, Universal Quantum, Duality Quantum Photonics, Oxford Ionics, and Oxford Quantum Circuits, along with UK-based chip designer, ARM, and the National Physical Laboratory.

Advancing Digital Quantum Computing

Seeqc owns and operates a multi-layer superconductive electronics chip fabrication facility, which is among the most advanced in the world. The foundry serves as a testing and benchmarking facility for Seeqc and the global quantum community to deliver quantum technologies for specific use cases. This foundry and expertise will be critical to the success of the grants. Seeqcs Digital Quantum Computing solution is designed to manage and control qubits in quantum computers in a way that is cost-efficient and scalable for real-world business applications in industries such as pharmaceuticals, logistics and chemical manufacturing.

Seeqcs participation in these new industry-leading British grants accelerates our work in making quantum computing useful, commercially and at scale, said Dr. Matthew Hutchings, chief product officer and co-founder at Seeqc, Inc. We are looking forward to applying our deep expertise in design, testing and manufacturing of quantum-ready superconductors, along with our resource-efficient approach to qubit control and readout to this collaborative development of quantum circuits.

We strongly support the Deltaflow.OS initiative and believe Seeqc can provide a strong contribution to both consortiums work and advance quantum technologies from the lab and into the hands of businesses via ultra-focused and problem-specific quantum computers, continued Hutchings.

Seeqcs solution combines classical and quantum computing to form an all-digital architecture through a system-on-a-chip design that utilizes 10-40 GHz superconductive classical co-processing to address the efficiency, stability and cost issues endemic to quantum computing systems.

Seeqc is receiving the nearly $2.3 million in grant funding weeks after closing its $6.8 million seed round from investors including BlueYard Capital, Cambium, NewLab and the Partnership Fund for New York City. The recent funding round is in addition to a $5 million investment from M Ventures, the strategic corporate venture capital arm of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

About Seeqc:

Seeqc is developing the first fully digital quantum computing platform for global businesses. Seeqc combines classical and quantum technologies to address the efficiency, stability and cost issues endemic to quantum computing systems. The company applies classical and quantum technology through digital readout and control technology and a unique chip-scale architecture. Seeqcs quantum system provides the energy- and cost-efficiency, speed and digital control required to make quantum computing useful and bring the first commercially-scalable, problem-specific quantum computing applications to market.

The company is one of the first companies to have built a superconductor multi-layer commercial chip foundry and through this experience has the infrastructure in place for design, testing and manufacturing of quantum-ready superconductors. Seeqc is a spin-out of HYPRES, the worlds leading developer of superconductor electronics. Seeqcs team of executives and scientists have deep expertise and experience in commercial superconductive computing solutions and quantum computing. Seeqc is based in Elmsford, NY with facilities in London, UK and Naples, Italy.

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Seeqc UK Awarded 1.8M In Grants To Advance Quantum Computing Initiatives - Business Wire

Dario Gil from IBM Research

In this video, Dario Gil from IBM shares results from the IBM Quantum Challenge and describes how you can access and program quantum computers on the IBM Cloud today.

From May 4-8, we invited people from around the world to participate in the IBM Quantum Challengeon the IBM Cloud. We devised the Challenge as a global event to celebrateour fourth anniversary of having a real quantum computer on the cloud. Over those four days 1,745people from45countries came together to solve four problems ranging from introductory topics in quantum computing, to understanding how to mitigate noise in a real system, to learning about historic work inquantum cryptography, to seeing how close they could come to the best optimization result for a quantum circuit.

Those working in the Challenge joined all those who regularly make use of the 18quantum computing systems that IBM has on the cloud, includingthe 10 open systemsand the advanced machines available within theIBM Q Network. During the 96 hours of the Challenge, the total use of the 18 IBM Quantum systems on the IBM Cloud exceeded 1 billion circuits a day. Together, we made history every day the cloud users of the IBM Quantum systems made and then extended what can absolutely be called a world record in computing.

Every day we extend the science of quantum computing and advance engineering to build more powerful devices and systems. Weve put new two new systems on the cloud in the last month, and so our fleet of quantum systems on the cloud is getting bigger and better. Well be extending this cloud infrastructure later this year by installing quantum systems inGermanyand inJapan. Weve also gone more and more digital with our users with videos, online education, social media, Slack community discussions, and, of course, the Challenge.

Dr. Dario Gil is the Director of IBM Research, one of the worlds largest and most influential corporate research labs. IBM Research is a global organization with over 3,000 researchers at 12 laboratories on six continents advancing the future of computing. Dr. Gil leads innovation efforts at IBM, directing research strategies in Quantum, AI, Hybrid Cloud, Security, Industry Solutions, and Semiconductors and Systems. Dr. Gil is the 12th Director in its 74-year history. Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Gil served as Chief Operating Officer of IBM Research and the Vice President of AI and Quantum Computing, areas in which he continues to have broad responsibilities across IBM. Under his leadership, IBM was the first company in the world to build programmable quantum computers and make them universally available through the cloud. An advocate of collaborative research models, he co-chairs the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, a pioneering industrial-academic laboratory with a portfolio of more than 50 projects focused on advancing fundamental AI research to the broad benefit of industry and society.

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Video: The Future of Quantum Computing with IBM - insideHPC

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Registration is now open for the inaugural IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE20), a multidisciplinary event focusing on quantum technology, research, development, and training. QCE20, also known as IEEE Quantum Week, will deliver a series of world-class keynotes, workforce-building tutorials, community-building workshops, and technical paper presentations and posters on October 12-16 in Denver, Colorado.

"We're thrilled to open registration for the inaugural IEEE Quantum Week, founded by the IEEE Future Directions Initiative and supported by multiple IEEE Societies and organizational units," said Hausi Mller, QCE20 general chair and co-chair of the IEEE Quantum Initiative."Our initial goal is to address the current landscape of quantum technologies, identify challenges and opportunities, and engage the quantum community. With our current Quantum Week program, we're well on track to deliver a first-rate quantum computing and engineering event."

QCE20's keynote speakersinclude the following quantum groundbreakers and leaders:

The week-long QCE20 tutorials program features 15 tutorials by leading experts aimed squarely at workforce development and training considerations. The tutorials are ideally suited to develop quantum champions for industry, academia, and government and to build expertise for emerging quantum ecosystems.

Throughout the week, 19 QCE20 workshopsprovide forums for group discussions on topics in quantum research, practice, education, and applications. The exciting workshops provide unique opportunities to share and discuss quantum computing and engineering ideas, research agendas, roadmaps, and applications.

The deadline for submitting technical papers to the eight technical paper tracks is May 22. Papers accepted by QCE20 will be submitted to the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. The best papers will be invited to the journalsIEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering(TQE)andACM Transactions on Quantum Computing(TQC).

QCE20 provides attendees a unique opportunity to discuss challenges and opportunities with quantum researchers, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, developers, students, practitioners, educators, programmers, and newcomers. QCE20 is co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Communications Society, IEEE Council on Superconductivity,IEEE Electronics Packaging Society (EPS), IEEE Future Directions Quantum Initiative, IEEE Photonics Society, and IEEETechnology and Engineering Management Society (TEMS).

Register to be a part of the highly anticipated inaugural IEEE Quantum Week 2020. Visit qce.quantum.ieee.org for event news and all program details, including sponsorship and exhibitor opportunities.

About the IEEE Computer SocietyThe IEEE Computer Society is the world's home for computer science, engineering, and technology. A global leader in providing access to computer science research, analysis, and information, the IEEE Computer Society offers a comprehensive array of unmatched products, services, and opportunities for individuals at all stages of their professional career. Known as the premier organization that empowers the people who drive technology, the IEEE Computer Society offers international conferences, peer-reviewed publications, a unique digital library, and training programs. Visit http://www.computer.orgfor more information.

About the IEEE Communications Society The IEEE Communications Societypromotes technological innovation and fosters creation and sharing of information among the global technical community. The Society provides services to members for their technical and professional advancement and forums for technical exchanges among professionals in academia, industry, and public institutions.

About the IEEE Council on SuperconductivityThe IEEE Council on Superconductivityand its activities and programs cover the science and technology of superconductors and their applications, including materials and their applications for electronics, magnetics, and power systems, where the superconductor properties are central to the application.

About the IEEE Electronics Packaging SocietyThe IEEE Electronics Packaging Societyis the leading international forum for scientists and engineers engaged in the research, design, and development of revolutionary advances in microsystems packaging and manufacturing.

About the IEEE Future Directions Quantum InitiativeIEEE Quantumis an IEEE Future Directions initiative launched in 2019 that serves as IEEE's leading community for all projects and activities on quantum technologies. IEEE Quantum is supported by leadership and representation across IEEE Societies and OUs. The initiative addresses the current landscape of quantum technologies, identifies challenges and opportunities, leverages and collaborates with existing initiatives, and engages the quantum community at large.

About the IEEE Photonics SocietyTheIEEE Photonics Societyforms the hub of a vibrant technical community of more than 100,000 professionals dedicated to transforming breakthroughs in quantum physics into the devices, systems, and products to revolutionize our daily lives. From ubiquitous and inexpensive global communications via fiber optics, to lasers for medical and other applications, to flat-screen displays, to photovoltaic devices for solar energy, to LEDs for energy-efficient illumination, there are myriad examples of the Society's impact on the world around us.

About the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management SocietyIEEE TEMSencompasses the management sciences and practices required for defining, implementing, and managing engineering and technology.

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Registration Open for Inaugural IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE20) - thepress.net

Graves, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, since 1986, is an expert in plasma applications in semiconductor manufacturing. He will become the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratorys (PPPL) first associate laboratory director for Low-Temperature Plasma Surface Interactions, effective June 1. He will likely begin his new position from his home in Lafayette, California, in the East Bay region of San Francisco.

He will lead a collaborative research effort to not only understand and measure how plasma is used in the manufacture of computer chips, but also to explore how plasma could be used to help fabricate powerful quantum computing devices over the next decade.

This is the apex of our thrust into becoming a multipurpose lab, said Steve Cowley, PPPL director, who recruited Graves. Working with Princeton University, and with industry and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), we are going to make a big push to do research that will help us understand how you can manufacture at the scale of a nanometer. A nanometer, one-billionth of a meter, is about ten thousand times less than the width of a human hair.

The new initiative will draw on PPPLs expertise in low temperature plasmas, diagnostics, and modeling. At the same time, it will work closely with plasma semiconductor equipment industries and will collaborate with Princeton University experts in various departments, including chemical and biological engineering, electrical engineering, materials science, and physics. In particular, collaborations with PRISM (the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials) are planned, Cowley said. I want to see us more tightly bound to the University in some areas because that way we get cross-fertilization, he said.

Graves will also have an appointment as professor in the Princeton University Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, starting July 1. He is retiring from his position at Berkeley at the end of this semester. He is currently writing a book (Plasma Biology) on plasma applications in biology and medicine. He said he changed his retirement plans to take the position at PPPL and Princeton University. This seemed like a great opportunity, Graves said. Theres a lot we can do at a national laboratory where theres bigger scale, world-class colleagues, powerful computers and other world-class facilities.

Exciting new direction for the Lab

Graves is already working with Jon Menard, PPPL deputy director for research, on the strategic plan for the new research initiative over the next five years. Its a really exciting new direction for the Lab that will build upon our unique expertise in diagnosing and simulating low-temperature plasmas, Menard said. It also brings us much closer to the university and industry, which is great for everyone.

The staff will grow over the next five years and PPPL is recruiting for an expert in nano-fabrication and quantum devices. The first planned research would use converted PPPL laboratory space fitted with equipment provided by industry. Subsequent work would use laboratory space at PRISM on Princeton Universitys campus. In the longer term, researchers in the growing group would have brand new laboratory and office space as a central part the Princeton Plasma Innovation Center (PPIC), a new building planned at PPPL.

Physicists Yevgeny Raitses, principal investigator for the Princeton Collaborative Low Temperature Plasma Research Facility (PCRF) and head of the Laboratory for Plasma Nanosynthesis, and Igor Kavanovich, co-principal investigator of PCRF, are both internationally-known experts in low temperature plasmas who have forged recent partnerships between PPPL and various industry partners. The new initiative builds on their work, Cowley said.

A priority research area

Research aimed at developing quantum information science (QIS) is a priority for the DOE. Quantum computers could be very powerful in solving complex scientific problems, including simulating quantum behavior in material or chemical systems. QIS could also have applications in quantum communication, especially in encryption, and quantum sensing. It could potentially have an impact in areas such as national security. A key question is whether plasma-based fabrication tools commonly used today will play a role in fabricating quantum devices in the future, Menard said. There are huge implications in that area, Menard said. We want to be part of that.

Graves is an expert on applying molecular dynamics simulations to low temperature plasma-surface interactions. These simulations are used to understand how plasma-generated ions, atoms and molecules interact with various surfaces. He has extensive research experience in academia and industry in plasma-related semiconductor manufacturing. That expertise will be useful for understanding how to make very fine structures and circuits at the nanometer, sub-nanometer and even atom-by-atom level, Menard said. Davids going to bring a lot of modeling and fundamental understanding to that process. That, paired with our expertise and measurement capabilities, should make us unique in the U.S. in terms of what we can do in this area.

Graves was born in Daytona Beach, Florida, and moved a lot as a child because his father was in the U.S. Air Force. He lived in Homestead, Florida; near Kansas City, Missouri; and in North Bay Ontario; and finished high school near Phoenix, Arizona.

Graves received bachelors and masters degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona and went on to pursue a doctoral degree in the subject, graduating with a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1986. He is a fellow of the Institute of Physics and the American Vacuum Society. He is the author or co-author of more than 280 peer-reviewed publications. During his long career at Berkeley, he has supervised 30 Ph.D. students and 26 post-doctoral students, many of whom are now in leadership positions in industry and academia.

A leader since the 1990s

Graves has been a leader in the use of plasma in the semiconductor industry since the 1990s. In 1996, he co-chaired a National Research Council (NRC) workshop and co-edited the NRCs Database Needs for Modeling and Simulation of Plasma Processing. In 2008, he performed a similar role for a DOE workshop on low-temperature plasmas applications resulting in the report Low Temperature Plasma Science Challenges for the Next Decade.

Graves is an admitted Francophile who speaks (near) fluent French and has spent long stretches of time in France as a researcher. He was named Matre de Recherche (master of research) at the cole Polytechnic in Palaiseau, France, in 2006. He was an invited researcher at the University of Perpignan in 2010 and received a chaire dexcellence from the Nanoscience Foundation in Grenoble, France, to study plasma-graphene interactions.

He has received numerous honors during his career. He was appointed the first Lam Research Distinguished Chair in Semiconductor Processing at Berkeley for 2011-2016. More recently, he received the Will Allis Prize in Ionized Gas from the American Physical Society in 2014 and the 2017 Nishizawa Award, associated with the Dry Process Symposium in Japan. In 2019, he was appointed foreign expert at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China. He served as the first senior editor of IEEE Transactions on Radiation and Plasma Medical Science.

Graves has been married for 35 years to Sue Graves, who recently retired from the City of Lafayette, where she worked in the school bus program. The couple has three adult children. Graves enjoys bicycling and yoga and the couple loves to travel. They also enjoy hiking, visiting museums, listening to jazz music, and going to the theater.

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David Graves to Head New Research at PPPL for Plasma Applications in Industry and Quantum Information Science - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing...

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet with one of Googles quantum computers. Source: AFP PHOTO / GOOGLE/HANDOUT

Scientific researchers are hard at work around the planet, feverishly crunching data using the worlds most powerful supercomputers in the hopes of a speedier breakthrough in finding a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

Researchers at Penn State University think that they have hit upon a solution that could greatly accelerate the process of discovering a COVID-19 treatment, employing an innovative hybrid branch of research known as quantum machine learning.

When it comes to a computer science-driven approach to identifying a cure, most methodologies harness machine learning to screen different compounds one at a time to see if they might bond with the virus main protease, or protein.

This process is arduous and time-consuming, despite the fact that the most powerful computers were actually condensing years (maybe decades) of drug testing into less than two years time. Discovering any new drug that can cure a disease is like finding a needle in a haystack, said lead researcher Swaroop Ghosh, the Joseph R. and Janice M. Monkowski Career Development Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Engineering at Penn State.

It is also incredibly expensive. Ghosh says the current pipeline for discovering new drugs can take between five and ten years from the concept stage to being released to the market, and could cost billions in the process.

High-performance computing such as supercomputers and artificial intelligence (AI) canhelp accelerate this process by screeningbillions of chemical compounds quicklyto findrelevant drugcandidates, he elaborated.

This approach works when enough chemical compounds are available in the pipeline, but unfortunately this is not true for COVID-19. This project will explorequantum machine learning to unlock new capabilities in drug discovery by generating complex compounds quickly.

Quantum machine learning is an emerging field that combines elements of machine learning with quantum physics. Ghosh and his doctoral students had in the past developed a toolset for solving a specific set of problems known as combinatorial optimization problems, using quantum computing.

Drug discovery computation aligns with combinatorial optimization problems, allowing the researchers to tap the same toolset in the hopes of speeding up the process of discovering a cure, in a more cost-effective fashion.

Artificial intelligence for drug discovery is a very new area, Ghosh said. The biggest challenge is finding an unknown solution to the problem by using technologies that are still evolving that is, quantum computing and quantum machine learning. We are excited about the prospects of quantum computing in addressing a current critical issue and contributing our bit in resolving this grave challenge.

Joe Devanesan | @thecrystalcrown

Joe's interest in tech began when, as a child, he first saw footage of the Apollo space missions. He still holds out hope to either see the first man on the moon, or Jetsons-style flying cars in his lifetime.

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Could quantum machine learning hold the key to treating COVID-19? - Tech Wire Asia

Written by AZoQuantumMay 13 2020

The amount of energy needed to make or disintegrate a molecule can now be calculated more accurately than traditional methods using a new machine learning tool. Although the new tool can only deal with simple molecules at present, it opens the door to gain future insights into quantum chemistry.

Using machine learning to solve the fundamental equations governing quantum chemistry has been an open problem for several years, and theres a lot of excitement around it right now.

Giuseppe Carleo, Research Scientist, Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute

Carleo, who is the co-creator of the tool, added that better insights into the formation and degradation of molecules could expose the inner workings of the chemical reactions crucial to life.

Carleo and his colleagues Kenny Choo from the University of Zurich and Antonio Mezzacapo from the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, published their study in Nature Communications on May 12th, 2020.

The tool developed by the researchers predicts the energy required to put together or break apart a molecule, for example, ammonia or water. For this calculation, it is necessary to determine the electronic structure of the molecule, which comprises the collective behavior of the electrons binding the molecule together.

The electronic structure of a molecule is complex to find and requires determining all the possible states the electrons in the molecule could be in, along with the probability of each state.

Electrons interact and entangle quantum mechanically with each other. Therefore, researchers cannot treat them individually. More electrons lead to more entanglements, and thus the problem turns exponentially more challenging.

There are no exact solutions for molecules that are more complex compared to the two electrons found in a pair of hydrogen atoms. Even approximations are not so accurate when more than a few electrons are involved.

One of the difficulties is that the electronic structure of a molecule includes states for an infinite number of orbitals that move further away from the atoms. Moreover, it is not easy to differentiate one electron from another, and the same state cannot be occupied by two electrons. The latter rule is the result of exchange symmetry, which governs the consequences when identical particles change states.

Mezzacapo and the team at IBM Quantum devised a technique for reducing the number of orbitals considered and enforcing exchange symmetry. This technique is based on approaches developed for quantum computing applications and renders the problem more analogous to scenarios in which electrons are restricted to predefined locations, for example, in a rigid lattice.

The problem was made more manageable by the similarity to rigid lattices. Earlier, Carleo trained neural networks to remodel the behavior of electrons restricted to the sites of a lattice.

The researchers could propose solutions to Mezzacapos compacted problems by extending those techniques. The neural network developed by the team calculates the probability for each state. This probability can be used to predict the energy of a specific state. The molecule is the most stable in the lowest energy level, also called the equilibrium energy.

Thanks to the innovations of the researchers, the electronic structure of a basic molecule can be calculated quickly and easily. To demonstrate the accuracy of their approaches, the researchers estimated the amount of energy required to break a real-world molecule and its bonds.

The researchers performed calculations for lithium hydride (LiH), dihydrogen (H2), water (H2O), ammonia (NH3), dinitrogen (N2), and diatomic carbon (C2). The researchers estimates for all the molecules were found to be highly accurate even in ranges where current methods struggle.

The aim of the researchers is to handle larger and more complex molecules by employing more advanced neural networks. One objective is to tackle chemicals such as those found in the nitrogen cycle, where nitrogen-based molecules are made and broken by biological processes to render them usable for life.

We want this to be a tool that could be used by chemists to process these problems.

Giuseppe Carleo, Research Scientist, Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute

Carleo, Choo, and Mezzacapo are not the only researchers seeking to use machine learning to handle problems in quantum chemistry. In September 2019, they first presented their study on arXiv.org. In the same month, a research group in Germany and another one at Googles DeepMind in London reported their studies that involved using machine learning to reconstruct the electronic structure of molecules.

The other two groups made use of a similar method that does not constrain the number of orbitals considered. However, this inclusiveness is more computationally laborious, a disadvantage that will only worsen when more complex molecules are involved.

Using the same computational resources, the method employed by Carleo, Choo, and Mezzacapo produces higher accuracy; however, the simplifications performed to achieve this accuracy could lead to biases.

Overall, its a trade-off between bias and accuracy, and its unclear which of the two approaches has more potential for the future. Only time will tell us which of these approaches can be scaled up to the challenging open problems in chemistry.

Giuseppe Carleo, Research Scientist, Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute

Choo, K., et al. (2020) Fermionic neural-network states for ab-initio electronic structure. Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-15724-9.

Source: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/

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New Tool Could Pave the Way for Future Insights in Quantum Chemistry - AZoQuantum

Quantum technology will revolutionise many industrial sectors, and will already begin spawning new, nationally significant business and research opportunities over the next few years. Advancements in quantum technology and, in particular, the technological leap afforded by quantum computers aka the quantum leap will enable unprecedented computing power and the ability to solve problems that are impossible for todays supercomputers.

Building this quantum computer will provide Finland with an exceptional level of capabilities in both research and technology, and will safeguard Finlands position at the forefront of new technology. The goal is to create a unique ecosystem for the development and application of quantum technology in Finland, in collaboration with companies and universities. VTT hopes to partner with progressive Finnish companies from a variety of sectors during the various phases of implementation and application.

The development and construction of Finlands quantum computer will be carried out as an innovation partnership that VTT will be opening up for international tender. The project will run for several years and its total cost is estimated at about EUR 2025 million.

The project will progress in stages. The first phase will last for about a year and aims to get a minimum five-qubit quantum computer in working order. However, the ultimate goal is a considerably more powerful machine with a larger number of qubits.

In the future, well encounter challenges that cannot be met using current methods. Quantum computing will play an important role in solving these kinds of problems. For example, the quantum computers of the future will be able to accurately model viruses and pharmaceuticals, or design new materials in a way that is impossible with traditional methods, says Antti Vasara, CEO of VTT.

Through this project, VTT is seeking to be a world leader in quantum technology and its application.

The pandemic has shocked not only Finlands economy but also the entire world economy, and it will take us some time to recover from the consequences. To safeguard economic recovery and future competitiveness, its now even more important than ever to make investments in innovation and future technologies that will create demand for Finnish companies products and services, says Vasara.

VTT has lengthy experience and top expertise in both quantum technology research and related fields of science and technology, such as superconductive circuits and cryogenics, microelectronics and photonics. In Otaniemi, VTT and Aalto University jointly run Micronova, a world-class research infrastructure that enables experimental research and development in quantum technologies. This infrastructure will be further developed to meet the requirements of quantum technologies. Micronovas cleanrooms are already equipped to manufacture components and products based on quantum technologies.

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VTT to acquire Finland's first quantum computer seeking to bolster Finland's and Europe's competitiveness - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source

Businesses eager to embrace cutting-edge technology are exploring quantum computing, which depends on qubits to perform computations that would be much more difficult, or simply not feasible, on classical computers. The ultimate goals are quantum advantage, the inflection point when quantum computers begin to solve useful problems. While that is a long way off (if it can even be achieved), the potential is massive. Applications include everything from cryptography and optimization to machine learning and materials science.

As quantum computing startup IonQ has described it, quantum computing is a marathon, not a sprint. We had the pleasure of interviewing IonQ CEO Peter Chapman last month to discuss a variety of topics. Among other questions, we asked Chapman about quantum computings future impact on AI and ML.

The conversation quickly turned to Strong AI, or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which does not yet exist. Strong AI is the idea that a machine could one day understand or learn any intellectual task that a human can.

AI in the Strong AI sense, that I have more of an opinion [about], just because I have more experience in that personally, Chapman told VentureBeat. And there was a really interesting paper that just recently came out talking about how to use a quantum computer to infer the meaning of words in NLP. And I do think that those kinds of things for Strong AI look quite promising. Its actually one of the reasons I joined IonQ. Its because I think that does have some sort of application.

In a follow-up email, Chapman expanded on his thoughts. For decades, it was believed that the brains computational capacity lay in the neuron as a minimal unit, he wrote. Early efforts by many tried to find a solution using artificial neurons linked together in artificial neural networks with very limited success. This approach was fueled by the thought that the brain is an electrical computer, similar to a classical computer.

However, since then, I believe we now know the brain is not an electrical computer, but an electrochemical one, he added. Sadly, todays computers do not have the processing power to be able to simulate the chemical interactions across discrete parts of the neuron, such as the dendrites, the axon, and the synapse. And even with Moores law, they wont next year or even after a million years.

Chapman then quoted Richard Feynman, who famously said Nature isnt classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, youd better make it quantum mechanical. And by golly, its a wonderful problem because it doesnt look so easy.

Similarly, its likely Strong AI isnt classical, its quantum mechanical as well, Chapman said.

One of IonQs competitors, D-Wave, argues that quantum computing and machine learning are extremely well matched. Chapman is still on the fence.

I havent spent enough time to really understand it, he admitted. There clearly [are] a lot of people who think that ML and quantum have an overlap. Certainly, if you think of 85% of all ML produces a decision tree, and the depth of that decision tree could easily be optimized with a quantum computer. Clearly, there [are] lots of people that think that generation of the decision tree could be optimized with a quantum computer. Honestly, I dont know if thats the case or not. I think its still a little early for machine learning, but there clearly [are] so many people that are working on it. Its hard to imagine it doesnt have [an] application.

Chapman continued in a later email: ML has intimate ties to optimization: Many learning problems are formulated as minimization of some loss function on a training set of examples. Generally, Universal Quantum Computers excel at these kinds of problems.

He listed three improvements in ML that quantum computing will likely allow:

Whether Strong AI or ML, IonQ isnt particularly interested in either. The company leaves that to its customers and future partners.

Theres so much to be to be done in a quantum, Chapman said. From education at one end all the way to the quantum computer itself. I think some of our competitors have taken on lots of the entire problem set. We at IonQ are just focused on producing the worlds best quantum computer for them. We think thats a large enough task for a little company like us to handle.

So, for the moment were kind of happy to let everyone else work on different problems, he added. We just dont have extra bandwidth or resources to put into working on machine learning algorithms. And luckily, there [are] lots of other companies that think that there [are] applications there. Well partner with them in the sense that well provide the hardware that their algorithms will run on. But were not in the ML business, per se.

Link:
IonQ CEO Peter Chapman on how quantum computing will change the future of AI - VentureBeat