Given the enormous potential for quantum computing to change the way we forecast, model and understand the world, many are beginning to question whether it could have helped to better prepare us all for a global pandemic such as the Covid-19 crisis. Governments, organisations and the public are continuing the quest for answers about when this crisis will end and how we can find a way out of the current state of lockdown, and we are all continuing to learn through incremental and experimental steps. It certainly seems plausible that the high compute simulation capabilities of our most revolutionary technology could hold some of the answers and enable us to respond in a more coherent and impactful way.

Big investments have already been made in quantum computing, as countries and companies battle to create the first quantum supercomputer, so they can harness the power of this awesome technology. The World Economic Forum has also recognised the important role that this technology will play in our future, and has a dedicated Global Future Council to drive collaboration between public and private sector organisations engaged in the development of Quantum Computing. Although its unlikely to result in any overnight miracles, its understandable that many are thinking about whether these huge efforts and investments can be turned towards the mutual challenge we face in finding a solution to the Covid-19 pandemic.

There are already some ground-breaking use-cases for quantum computing within the healthcare industry. Where in the past some scientific breakthroughs such as the discovery of penicillin came completely by accident, quantum computing puts scientists in a much stronger position to find what they were looking for, faster. Quantum raises capacity to such a high degree that it would be possible to model penicillin using just a third of the processing power a classical computer would require to do the job meaning it can do more with less, at greater speed.

In the battle against Covid-19, the US Department of Energys Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is already using quantum supercomputers in its search for drug compounds that can treat the disease. IBM has also been using quantum supercomputers to run simulations on thousands of compounds to try and identify which of them is most likely to attach to the spike that Covid-19 uses to inject genetic material into healthy cells, and thereby prevent it. It has already emerged with 77 promising drugs that are worth further investigation and development progress that would have taken years if traditional computing power had been used.

Other businesses are likely to be keen to follow in the footsteps of these examples, and play their own part in dealing with the crisis, but to date its only been the worlds largest organisations that have been using quantum power. At present, many businesses simply dont have the skills and resources needed to fabricate, verify, architect and launch a large-scale quantum computer on their own.

It will be easier to overcome these barriers, and enable more organisations to start getting to work with quantum computing, if they open themselves up to collaboration with partners, rather than trying to go it alone. Instead of locking away their secrets, businesses must be willing to work within an open ecosystem; finding mutually beneficial partnerships will make it much more realistic to drive things forward.

The tech giants have made a lot of early progress with quantum, and partnering with them could prove extremely valuable. Google, for example, claims to have developed a machine that can solve a problem in 200 seconds that would take the worlds fastest supercomputer 10,000 years imagine adding that kind of firepower to your computing arsenal. Google, IBM and Microsoft have already got the ball rolling by creating their own quantum partner networks. IBM Q and Microsoft Quantum Network bring together start-ups, universities, research labs, and Fortune 500 companies, enabling them to enjoy the benefits of exploring and learning together. The Google AI quantum initiative brings together strong academia support along with start-up collaboration on open source frameworks and tools in their lab. Collaborating in this manner, businesses can potentially play their own part in solving the Covid-19 crisis, or preventing future pandemics from doing as much damage.

Those that are leading the way in quantum computing are taking a collaborative approach, acknowledging that no one organisation holds all the answers or all the best ideas. This approach will prove particularly beneficial as we search for a solution to the Covid-19 crisis: its in everyones interests to find an exit to the global shutdown and build knowledge that means we are better-prepared for future outbreaks.

Looking at the bigger picture, despite all the progress that is being made with quantum, traditional computing will still have an important role to play in the short to medium term. Strategically, it makes sense to have quantum as the exploratory left side of the brain, while traditional systems remain in place for key business-as-usual functions. If they can think about quantum-related work in this manner, businesses should begin to feel more comfortable making discoveries and breakthroughs together. This will allow them to speed up the time to market so that ideas can be explored, and new ground broken, much faster than ever before and thats exactly what the world needs right now.

Kalyan Kumar, CVP & CTO, IT Services, HCL Technologies

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Solving problems by working together: Could quantum computing hold the key to Covid-19? - ITProPortal

This willcome as bad news if you're only just getting to grips with Python, but you should probably be thinking of adding quantum computing to your repertoire if you want to maintain your long term employability in finance. Both Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan have been investigating the application of quantum computers to their businesses, and many say it's less a question of if than whenquantum computing is more widely applied.

Both Google and IBM are competing for quantum leadership. Google declared that it had achieved 'quantum supremacy' last October,a claimpromptly disputed by IBM, which said that Google's assertion was misleading. IBM itself now has 18 quantum computersthatcan be accessed via the cloud and that are already used by JPMorgan to set derivatives prices. In a new report*, IBM researchers includingDaniel Egger, Claudio Gambella,Jakub Marecek,Scott McFaddin, and Martin Mevissenargue that this is just the start.

Over time, the researchers say banks will use quantum computers for everything from creating value at risk and liquidity coverage ratios to running simulations to enable more accurate calculations of net stable funding ratios and pricing financial instruments. In preparation for this future they suggest you familiarize yourself with the following six quantum algorithms.

1. The Variational Quantum Eigensolver

The Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE) is used for optimization applications. It harnesses energy states to calculate the function of the variables it needs to optimize and is good whenstandard computers struggle due to the intensity of the computing required. In financial services, IBM says the VQE can be used in portfolio optimization. The only problem is that the number of qubits you need increases signficantly withproblem size.

2. The Quantum Approximate Optimization

TheQuantum Approximate Optimization is used to optimize combined problems and tond solutions to problems with complex constraints. IBM says it can be combined with VQE forportfolio optimization.

3. TheQuantum Amplitude Estimator

TheQuantum Amplitude Estimator(QAE) is used in simulations, optimizations and machine learning. It allows users to create simulation scenarios by estimating an unknown property in the style of the Monte Carlo method. Instead of simple samplying random distributions, the QAE can handle them directly and this dramatically speeds up simulation time. In finance, it can be used for option pricing, portfolio risk calculations,issuance auctions, anti-money laundering operations and identifying fraud.

4.Quantum Support Vector Machines

Quantum support vector machines (QSVM) applysupervised machine learning to high dimensional problem sets. Used for financial forecasting, they map data into a 'quantum-enhanced feature space' that enables the separation of data points and improvedforecastaccuracy.

5. Harrow, Hassidim, and Lloyd

Harrow, Hassidim, and Lloyd (HHL) is used for optimization and machine learning and enables better measurement of large linear systems by exponentially speeding up calculations. It can be used for credit scoring.

6.Quantum Semidenite Programming

Quantum Semidefinite Programming (QDSP) is used to optimize a linear objective over a set of positive semi-denite matrices. It can be used for portfolio diversification and "exponentially" speeds-up calculations when there are particular constraints.

As the financial services industry is subject to the combined demands of, "sophisticated risk analysis, dynamic client management, constant updates to market volatility, and faster transaction speeds," IBM's researchers predict quantum algorithms are primed for take-off. Now might be a good time to start familiarizing yourself with how they work.

*Quantum computing for Finance: state of the art and future prospects

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Six things you need to learn about quantum computing in finance - eFinancialCareers

By Tirthankar Dutta

On October 23rd, 2019, Google claimed that they had achieved Quantum supremacy by solving a particularly difficult problem in 200 seconds by using their quantum computer, which is also known as "sycamore." This performance was compared with a Supercomputer known as 'Summit" and built by IBM. According to Google, this classical computer would have taken 10,000 years to solve the same problem.

The advancement of large quantum computers, along with the more computational power it will bring, could have dire consequences for cybersecurity. It is well known that important problems such as factoring, whose considered hardness ensures the security of many widely used protocols (RSA, DSA, ECDSA), can be solved efficiently, if a quantum computer that is sufficiently large, "fault-tolerant" and universal, is developed. However, addressing the imminent risk that adversaries equipped with quantum technologies pose is not the only issue in cybersecurity where quantum technologies are bound to play a role.

Because quantum computing speeds up prime number factorization, computers enabled with that technology can easily break cryptographic keys by quickly calculating or exhaustively searching secret keys. A task considered computationally infeasible by a conventional computer becomes painfully easy, compromising existing cryptographic algorithms used across the board. In the future, even robust cryptographic algorithms will be substantially weakened by quantum computing, while others will no longer be secure at all:

There would be many disconnects on the necessity to change the current cryptographic protocols and infrastructure to counter quantum technologies in a negative way, but we can't deny the fact that future adversaries might use this kind of technology to their benefit. As it allows them to work on millions of computations in parallel, exponentially speeding up the time it takes to process a task.

According to the National, Academies Study notes, "the current quantum computers have very little processing power and are too error-prone to crack today's strong codes. The future code-breaking quantum computers would need 100,000 times more processing power and an error rate 100 times better than today's best quantum computers have achieved. The study does not predict how long these advances might takebut it did not expect them to happen within a decade."

But does this mean that we should wait and watch the evolution of quantum computing, or should we go back to our drawing board to create quantum-resistant cryptography? Thankfully, researchers have been working on a public-key cryptography algorithm that can counter code-breaking efforts by quantum computers. US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) evaluating 69 potential new methods for what it calls "post-quantum cryptography." The institution expects to have a draft standard by 2024, which would then be added to web browsers and other internet applications and systems

No matter when dominant quantum computing arrives, it poses a large security threat. Because the process of adopting new standards can take years, it is wise to begin planning for quantum-resistant cryptography now.

The author is SVP and Head of Information Security at Infoedge.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETCIO.com does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETCIO.com shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organisation directly or indirectly.

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Cybersecurity in the quantum era - ETCIO.com

Teleportation between photons has not been a novelty for a long time, but when it comes to massive particles everything becomes more complicated. Thanks to the strange rules of quantum entanglement, physicists believe they have found a method for teleport information between two electrons distant from each other.

The teleportation of information it is not only the first step to get to teleportation itself, but it has important applications in the development of quantum computing and in data encryption. The development of teleportation between electrons can allow the construction of quantum computers with architecture more similar to the current one.

We got evidence of an entanglement exchange, in which we created an entanglement bond between two electrons even though they hadnt interacted before and we teleported information, a technique potentially useful for quantum computers, explains John Nichol of the University of Rochester, New York.

Teleport is a word that is part of the jargon of physics and serves to explain a very simple concept. When you buy a pair of shoes, even if you separate them you always know all the characteristics of both even if you cannot observe them directly. In a sense, the shoes are entangled.

Things get strange if you imagine that your shoe can be both rights and left at the same time, at least until you look at it. When you look at it, it instantly assumes one of two states and the distant shoe becomes right or left according to the first.

This is the mechanism behind the idea of teleportation in physics.

Their computational logic uses binary language, states are described by sequences of 0 and 1. Quantum computers use qubits, which can take on both states simultaneously, providing possibilities that current technology cannot achieve.

Using photons to teleport information is very easy and intuitive, they can be separated very quickly after they have been tied, and it can also be done inside a chip. Separating massive particles is much more difficult because transport could be lost mathematical purity of their quantum state, and have interference.

Individual electrons are very promising qubits because they interact very easily with each other, making long-distance connections is essential for quantum computing, says Nichol.

To create this teleportation, scientists exploited some fundamental laws of subatomic physics. When two electrons share the same state, they must necessarily have one opposite spin. Researchers had previously shown how this property can be manipulated without acting directly on electrons, presenting itself as a method for teleportation.

Scientists have managed to make one spin exchange between a pair of electrons without having interacted before. There is still a lot of work to be done to replace photons with electrons, as the latter is very difficult objects to control. But having convincing evidence of electron teleportation is an encouraging step.

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Finally we have teleportation for particles with a mass - InTallaght

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Quantum Computing Market: In-Depth Market Research and Trends Analysis till 2030 - Cole of Duty

The decision to deploy nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) in the years to come will be a product of the major paradigms and concepts used to manage nuclear dangers more broadly. Recently, an emerging literature has pointed to a change in the way that at least the major powers plan to mitigate nuclear threats to their interests. This shift in thinking can be summarised as involving a greater reliance on strategic non-nuclear weaponsweapons and enabling systems that can be used to compromise an adversarys nuclear forces using both kinetic and non-kinetic means that dont involve nuclear weaponsand a decreased commitment to mutual vulnerability as the basis of strategic stability between nuclear-armed adversaries.

Strategic non-nuclear weapons include ballistic missile defence, conventional precision-strike missiles, anti-satellite weapons and anti-submarine weapons. When combined with advances in enabling platforms and systems such as elements of cyber, artificial intelligence and quantum technology, they can, in principle, be used to compromise an adversarys nuclear capabilities, with serious implications for issues of deterrence and stability.

Traditional approaches to deterrence based on the threat of punishment now compete with policies based instead on deterrence by denial. Stability based on rational calculations under conditions of mutual vulnerability appears set to be even harder to maintain.

The potential for conventional counterforce strikes makes future scenarios involving use them or lose them logic more likely for states that face adversaries armed with more sophisticated capabilities.

The current challenge to traditional nuclear deterrence relationships has a dual but paradoxical effect on the incentives to deploy sea-based nuclear weapons. In general, as missile silos (and even, over time, mobile land-based missiles), air fields, satellites, and command, control and communications stations become more vulnerable to counterforce attacks, the incentives to diversify a states nuclear force structure increase. In particular, SSBNs still remain the most secure form of second-strike capability, meaning that the further spread of strategic non-nuclear weapons is likely to result in ever more nuclear weapons being deployed at sea.

On the other hand, one of the key technologies that falls under the banner of strategic non-nuclear weapons is anti-submarine weapons themselves, and much analysis now is focusing on whether advances in this area may in fact undermine the perceived invulnerability of SSBNs. Its important to note that growing concerns over the effects of new anti-submarine capabilities on strategic stability are, at least in part, based on projections about the future. Little serious analysis or commentary predicts that the oceans are going to become effectively transparent overnight. However, advances in sensing and signal processing in particular mean that its a serious possibility that the oceans will become significantly more transparent than they are today. And when it comes to nuclear force structure planning, serious possibilities are enough to keep decision-makers up at night.

As the development of strategic non-nuclear weapons and the associated shift in thinking about stable deterrence based on mutual vulnerability continues, policymakers and analysts will need to give serious attention to what might become the new determinants of stability in the global nuclear order.

The development of countermeasures will play an important role in mitigating the destabilising effects of disruptive technological breakthroughs in anti-submarine weaponry. The role of countermeasures is already evident in other domains. For example, as a reaction to US missile defence, both China and Russia today are placing increasing emphasis on hypersonic missiles because their combination of speed and manoeuvrability makes them extraordinarily difficult to defend against.

Countermeasures for anti-submarine weapons need not rely on kinetic effects. The development both of ever quieter SSBNs with smaller acoustic signatures and of new techniques of deception (for example, unmanned underwater vehicles designed to produce tonals that match those of SSBNs that are thought to have been identified by an adversary) can increase a states confidence that at least some of its SSBNs can remain undetected and uncompromised in a crisis.

Developments in anti-submarine weapons aimed at compromising SSBNs and developments in countermeasures aimed at mitigating those breakthroughs will take on a tit-for-tat dynamic in the years to come. This is not a new phenomenon, but as rapid increases in things such as sensing techniques and data processing allow for technological leaps in anti-submarine capabilities, countermeasures should be expected to take on a new and much greater importance.

Defensive measures for SSBNs aimed at increasing their reliability in the face of technological breakthroughs in anti-submarine weaponry are unlikely to solely rely on new technologies themselves. For example, James Holmes has suggested that both bastion strategies for SSBNs (vessels constricted to a much smaller, actively defended area for patrols) and SSBNs being accompanied by convoys of skirmisher-type defensive units (adopting a similar principle to aircraft carrier battle groups) may be necessary to regain confidence in the survivability of SSBNs.

Stability needs to be seen as the most important goal and that will require a degree of what has been termed security dilemma sensibility among the nuclear-armed powers. Leaders that develop security dilemma sensibility display an openness to the idea that, as Nicholas Wheeler has put it, an adversary is acting out of fear and insecurity and not aggressive intent, as well as a recognition that ones own actions have contributed to that fear.

For example, future Chinese breakthroughs on quantum computing and their application to SSBN communication technology could be a positive development in the USChina strategic relationship. The more confidence Beijing has in the security of its second-strike capability, the less likely it is that a crisis between the US and China will inadvertently escalate.

Beyond unilateral measures, it may be possible, over the longer term, to negotiate, and design, limited multilateral efforts aimed at restoring stability between adversaries, including in relation to sea-based nuclear deployments. History suggests that confidence-building measures can play as important a role as formal arms control measures in reducing nuclear dangers, meaning that finding avenues for dialogue, even at a low level, should now be a top priority.

In the short term, the increasing salience of strategic non-nuclear weapons and the abandonment of deterrence strategies based on mutual vulnerability, is likely to continue to encourage states to deploy more SSBNs. Simultaneously, these forces will intensify the pressures to better protect SSBN fleets that are already deployed from technological breakthroughs in the anti-submarine weapons domain. Restraint in the deployment of anti-submarine capabilities may need to become a substitute for the more traditional tools used to instil stability in nuclear-armed relationshipsrestraint in defensive technology (such as missile defence) and negotiated limits on arms.

This piece was produced as part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy: Undersea Deterrence Project, undertaken by the ANU National Security College. This article is a shortened version of chapter 20, Strategic non-nuclear weapons, SSBNs, and the new search for strategic stability, as published in the 2020 edited volume The future of the undersea deterrent: a global survey. Support for this project was provided by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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Nuclear submarines, non-nuclear weapons and the search for strategic stability - The Strategist