Category Archives: Quantum Computing

PRESS RELEASE

Published August 31, 2023

D-Wave Quantum (NYSE: QBTS), a leader in quantum computing systems, software and services, was one of three stocks listed in a recent InvestorPlace article. The article, titled "These Are the Only Quantum Computing Stocks to Consider in August 2023," noted that generative AI has received a lot of attention this year but that quantum computing is likely to bring the real digital revolution. Calling quantum computing a "new technological revolution," the article noted that the technology has the potential to leapfrog generative AI because quantum computers can better approximate how human brains function.

Regarding D-Wave Quantum, the article recognized that the company was one of the world's oldest and most established quantum computing companies. It pointed to the strides the company has made toward further commercialization of its core product as well as a 146% increase in revenue bookings year-over-year, "which speaks to enterprises recognizing the value of D-Wave quantum annealing technology." The InvestorPlace contributor also pointed out that the company anticipates 2023 revenues to total between $11 million and $13 million, representing between 52.8% and 80.5% year-over-year revenue growth.

To view the full article, visit https://ibn.fm/BC1RE

About D-Wave Quantum Inc.

D-Wave is a leader in the development and delivery of quantum computing systems, software and services, and is the world's first commercial supplier of quantum computers -- and the only company building both annealing quantum computers and gate-model quantum computers. The company's mission is to unlock the power of quantum computing today to benefit business and society. D-Wave does this by delivering customer value with practical quantum applications for problems as diverse as logistics, artificial intelligence, materials sciences, drug discovery, scheduling, cybersecurity, fault detection and financial modeling. D-Wave's technology is being used by some of the world's most advanced organizations, including Volkswagen, Mastercard, Deloitte, Davidson Technologies, ArcelorMittal, Siemens Healthineers, Unisys, NEC Corporation, Pattison Food Group Ltd., DENSO, Lockheed Martin, Forschungszentrum Julich, University of Southern California and Los Alamos National Laboratory. For more information about the company, please visit http://www.DWaveSys.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release are forward-looking, as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from the information expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements and may not be indicative of future results. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the potential of quantum computing and D-Wave's anticipated revenue for 2023. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including, among others, various factors beyond management's control, including general economic conditions and other risks; our ability to expand our customer base and the customer adoption of our solutions; risks within D-Wave's industry, including anticipated trends, growth rates, and challenges for companies engaged in the business of quantum computing and the markets in which they operate; the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against us; risks related to the performance of our business and the timing of expected business or financial milestones; unanticipated technological or project development challenges, including with respect to the cost and/or timing thereof; the performance of our products; the effects of competition on our business; the risk that we will need to raise additional capital to execute our business plan, which may not be available on acceptable terms or at all; the risk that we may never achieve or sustain profitability; the risk that we are unable to secure or protect our intellectual property; volatility in the price of our securities; the risk that our securities will not maintain the listing on the NYSE; and the numerous other factors set forth in D-Wave's Annual Report on Form 10-K for its fiscal year ended December 31, 2022 and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements in this press release in making an investment decision, which are based on information available to us on the date hereof. We undertake no duty to update this information unless required by law.

NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to QBTS are available in the company's newsroom at https://ibn.fm/QBTS

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D-Wave Quantum (NYSE: QBTS) One of Three Quantum Stocks ... - Digital Journal

ESPOO, Finland , Aug. 30, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- VTT is developing a cooling technology based on microelectronics and electric current, which can be utilised by low-temperature electronic and photonic components. The new technology reduces the size, power consumption and price of cooling systems. The method has a wide range of application fields: one topical example is quantum technology.

Many electronic, photonic and quantum technology components require cryogenics, as they only operate at very low temperatures. For example, a quantum computer built from superconducting circuits has to be cooled near to the absolute zero (-273.15C). Currently, such temperatures are achieved by complex and large dilution coolers. VTT's electronic method can replace and complement existing solutions and thus reduce the size of the refrigerators. Accordingly, this makes it possible to significantly reduce the size of quantum computers.

Electronic method as a part of the cooling system

Current dilution refrigerators are based on multistage pumping of cryogenic liquids. Although these coolers are commercial technology today, they are still very expensive and large. What makes the cooler technology complicated is especially its coldest stage, where refrigerant is a mixture of helium isotopes. New electric cooling technology could replace this part. This would make the system much simpler, smaller, more efficient and more cost effective. A cooler the size of a car, which cools a silicon chip of about a square centimeter in size, could be shrunk by orders of magnitudes down to a size of a suitcase, for example.

"We believe that this purely electric cooling method can be utilised in numerous applications requiring cryogenics, from quantum computing to sensitive radiation detectors and space technology," says VTT Research Professor Mika Prunnila , who is leading the cooler development.

New business opportunities

VTT researchers have already experimentally confirmed the functionality of the cooling method. The method is now being refined into a commercial demonstrator in SoCool-project which was granted to VTT in the highly competitive EIC-Transition program of the European Commission. VTT will also continue the highly important fundamental research of electronic coolers in the CoRE-Cryo-project, funded by the Technology Industries of Finland Centennial Foundation.

Electric cooling can be used to actively cool components directly on a silicon chip or in large-scale general purpose refrigerators. It is a platform technology that is suitable for numerous applications and creates opportunities for new business. The active part of the cooler is manufactured using microelectronics manufacturing methods on silicon wafers, which makes the manufacturing very cost-effective.

"Making the refrigeration systems more user friendly, smaller and cheaper can significantly boost the application of cryo-enabled technologies to new areas. We see that our electronic cooling technology can play an important role in this development," Mika Prunnila says.

Cryogenics has become an area of increasing interest thanks to quantum technology. Systems developed for the extreme demands of the quantum technology can be also used in various sensors, space technology and possibly also in classical computing. Compact and easy-to-use cooling methods contribute to the large-scale adoption of these technologies. Quantum technology is expected to be only the tip of the iceberg for cryogenic, cryo-electronic and cryo-photonic applications.

For additional information:

SoCool-project

More information about the electric cooling method

A scientific article on the cooling method published by Science Advances

Media material:

Figure 1: Silicon wafer with VTT's electronic refrigerators. The wafer is under visual investigation under a microscope.

Figure 2: Schematic illustration of VTT's electronic refrigerator technology. Refrigerator chips are joined by tunnel junctions, through which the passing electrical current leads to cooling, and the lowest temperature is reached on the topmost chip.

Figure 3: VTT's electronic refrigerator prototypes going to cryogenic testing.

Further information on VTT:

Kirsi Jaatinen Specialist, Communications +358 20 722 6757, kirsi.jaatinen@vtt.fi http://www.vtt.fi

Mika Prunnila, Research Professor, VTT tel. +358 40 537 8910, mika.prunnila@vtt.fi

The following files are available for download:

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VTT is developing a purely electrical cooling method that will enable ... - InvestorsObserver

A Virginia Commonwealth University engineering professor is casting fresh light on a decades-old concept, one that could spur advances from national defense to driverless cars and telecommunications.

Nathaniel Kinsey, Ph.D., Engineering Foundation Professor in VCUs Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is leading a group of researchers who are exploring frontiers in optical computing and machine learning. With a focus on nanophotonics, he studies the interaction of light with materials on the smallest of scales.

Though the concept of optical computing is not new, interest and funding waned in the 1980s and 1990s as silicon chip processing proved to be more cost-effective. But recent slowdowns in scaling silicon-based technologies have opened the door to revisiting methods of data processing.

Optical computing could be the next big thing in computing technology, Kinsey said. But there are plenty of other contenders, such as quantum computing, for the next new presence in the computational ecosystem. Whatever comes up, I think that photonics and optics are going to be more and more prevalent in these new ways of computation.

First, a quick link between man and machine: A neuron is a brain cell that helps humans think, and in the same vein, an artificial neural network helps machines learn for example, its what helps Siri understand and answer our prompts. One of the powerful components of a neural network is the perceptron, and Kinsey is looking to use light (optical signals) instead of traditional digital processing (electrical signals) to create the component. His work on nonlinear optical perceptrons has drawn funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Defense Department sees optical computing as a promising step forward in military imaging.

Lets say you want to find a tank within an image, Kinsey said. Using a camera to capture the scene, translate that image into an electrical signal and run it through a traditional, silicon-circuit-based computer processor takes a lot of processing power especially when you try to detect, transfer and process higher-pixel resolutions. With the nonlinear optical perceptron, were trying to discover if we can perform the same kinds of operations purely in the optical domain without having to translate anything into electrical signals.

Elimination or minimization of electronics has been a kind of engineering holy grail for a number of years, Kinsey added. For situations where information naturally exists in the form of light, why not have an optical-in and optical-out system without electronics in the middle?

Linear optical systems, like photonic integrated circuits that are common in fiber-optic communications, use limited energy but are not capable of complex image processing. Building nonlinear optical systems would expand functionality, making them ideal for remote sensing platforms on drones and satellites for example, to identify tanks or troop movements as part of an early warning system. Kinseys research seeks to determine the impact of the additional power requirements in nonlinear optical computing.

There are potential nonmilitary applications as well, even if consumer applications might be years away. In driverless cars, optical computing could enhance LiDAR the light detection and ranging equipment that tracks obstacles and helps maintain safe distances. For microbiologists, dark-field microscopy could be improved for examining clinical samples. In telecommunications, optical neural networks could read address labels and send data packets without electronics.

As part of the research, Kinsey and collaborators from the National Institute of Standards and Technology they include Dhruv Fomra, one of Kinseys former Ph.D. students at VCU are working to design a new kind of optically sensitive material. Their goal is to engineer and produce a device combining a unique material, called epsilon-near-zero, and a nanostructured surface to offer improved control over transmission and reflection of light and with limited energy requirements, as the light is bent and shaped along the surface to perform data processing.

Kinsey used the example of putting a black plastic sheet outside on a sunny day. The heat changes its refractive index, a measure of its ability to bend light.

Thats because the object is absorbing various wavelengths of light, he said. Now, if you design a material that is orders of magnitude more complex than a sheet of black plastic, we can use this change in refractive index to modify the reflection or transmission of individual colors controlling the flow of light with light.

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The death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner mercenary chief, has set off intense speculation over the future of the worlds most dangerous private army.

In reality, the departure of the boss may not change much.

Another Wagner lieutenant can easily fill the leadership vacuum left by the plane crash that killed Mr. Prigozhin and Dmitri Utkin, his deputy and a retired Russian special forces officer who was a key member of the Wagner group.

After Mr. Prighozins failed mutiny in June, President Vladimir Putin forced many Wagner mercenaries to surrender their weapons to the Russian military, granting his generals their wish. But Wagners best fighters are in Africa. Reports emerged on Thursday that the Russian government is now moving to take control of operations of the enterprise there that Mr. Prigozhin built as a conflict entrepreneur. It is simply too profitable for Mr. Putin to fully disband.

In fact, the business model Mr. Prigozhin created with his Wagner force has been so successful that it has become a blueprint for wannabe mercenary overlords to follow, potentially emboldening up-and-coming paramilitary forces to step into unstable places, impose their might in similarly ruthless and violent ways and grab resources.

In the last 10 years, mercenary groups across the globe have proliferated and grown bolder as military contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan ended, the hired-gun labor pool expanded and norms against using private forces eroded. Mercenaries are believed to have played key roles in the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Mose of Haiti, openly battled with American troops in Syria and created a hired-gun bonanza in Libya.

When I worked in north and sub-Saharan Africa as a military contractor between 2003 and 2013, I was part of that illicit and robust market for might. The ecosystem had all the necessary components private spies, fixers, hired guns, troll farms. I saw how that loose network could surge collectively to meet demand.

That happened in 2015 when Nigeria reportedly hired mercenaries from southern Africa and ex-Soviet republics to combat Boko Haram. It also happened during the failed mercenary coup dtat of Equatorial Guinea in 2004. I had a firsthand look at how a model like Mr. Prighozins could destabilize some of the most vulnerable places on earth.

That model has been ticking along profitably since 2014. Mr. Prigozhin apparently kept an opportunistic eye on conflict markets: Any place rich in natural resources, political rivalries, post-colonial grievances and short on rule of law was ripe for exploitation.

The blueprint for what followed probably went something like this: Once he spotted an opening, he would pitch it to Mr. Putin, and, if amenable, Mr. Putin would unofficially sanction Wagners operations, sometimes providing them with military equipment and intelligence. Sending some 50,000 Wagner mercenaries to Ukraine was just one part of a larger enterprise. (Mr. Putin originally denied links to Prigozhin activities but he recently said that the Wagner group was funded by the Russian state.)

With Mr. Putins blessing in place, Mr. Prigozhin would approach the potential client, typically a head of state or group of putschists, and propose a deal. He would coup-proof them using Wagner muscle and create an elite military unit to serve them. He would use another arm of his business empire, a troll factory called the Internet Research Agency, to smear domestic opposition, popularize the client and further exploit grievances against the West. In exchange, he very likely demanded two things. First, the regime had to abandon the West and support Russias interests. Second, it had to grant Russia access to natural resources such as oil, natural gas and gold.

That system apparently helped make Mr. Prigozhin a very rich man, generating some $250 million from natural resource extraction since 2018 and providing Mr. Putin with plausible deniability as Russia sought to establish influence in resource-rich countries and fund the war in Ukraine.

The roaring success of Mr. Prigozhins model and the atrocities left in Wagners wake have troubling implications in an era when rare earth minerals and metals have become critical in manufacturing consumer electronics, renewable energy products and hardware for national defense technologies, like quantum computing. Some of the worlds largest untouched reserves lie beneath dangerous conflict landscapes in Central Africa and South Asia. Traditional mining companies cant easily operate there, but the obstacles are fewer for mercenaries, who can take an area by force, defend it against militants, the state and competitors, and provide security for smuggling out the ore.

If new conflict entrepreneurs managed to carve out a fief of rare earth minerals and deposits in the Congo region or Afghanistan, which potentially has the worlds largest deposits of lithium, they could come to control a strategic choke point in the global supply chain. They would have the power to move markets, blackmail nations and shape geopolitics, as the quasi-mercenary British East India Company once did.

Other private security companies could get into the resource business if they are able to scale. Already at least half a dozen such companies including Russian, French and Nigerian outfits are working across Africa or have the capacity to do so. In Afghanistan, the Blackwater founder Erik Prince once proposed turning over the entire nations security to mercenaries and paying for it by extracting mineral deposits and rare earths from the region.

Those companies may not be strictly mercenary groups, but as the need for these minerals continues to boom and the prospect of mining them gets riskier, expect a keener interest by private armed actors led by a conflict entrepreneur to step into the breach, like a general contractor coming in to fix your home.

This was apparently the Prigozhin model. Mr. Putin might replace his general contractor, but not the Wagner forces. The fact that the Russian leader seems to be continuing to tolerate and use and is possibly assuming more direct control over mercenaries despite their humiliating and destabilizing march on Moscow is testament to Mr. Prigozhins real legacy.

More worrying are the copycats who may also latch onto it. A world awash in mercenaries breeds more war and more human suffering.

Continued here:

Opinion | Prigozhin's Real Legacy: The Mercenary Blueprint - The New York Times

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.

Read More: Column: How Our Cells Strategize To Keep Us Alive

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.

Read More: The World Economic Forums Klaus Schwab on What Lies Ahead

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.

Read More: Exclusive: OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic

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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Write to Charlie Campbell at charlie.campbell@time.com.

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