The US leads the world in quantum computing research, but it will need more government investment to maintain its lead over China, an assessment by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) has argued.
Broadly, the ITIF’s latest report, the result of interviews with experts as well as a review of scientific articles and patents, is positive about US efforts in a sector that has the potential to be as technologically disruptive as anything wrought by artificial intelligence (AI).
The US, it says, currently leads in mainstream quantum computing (getting quantum computers to spit out useful answers), and is neck and neck in quantum sensors (super-accurate measurement, useful for geolocation and medical imaging), while China leads in quantum key decryption (QKD, used for secure communications that can’t be secretly eavesdropped upon).
However, as much as it is a competitive race, the rivalry between the US and China in quantum appears to be a battle between two entirely different systems.
The US lead in quantum computing has emerged from the private sector, where competing innovations from IBM, Google, and others have racked up slow but steady advances. China’s efforts, meanwhile, are dominated by government-funded programs, a reflection of a growing tendency of the state to direct innovation toward political goals.
“While the US invests in the long-term potential of quantum computing — a less mature but highly promising technology with broad applicability across multiple industries — China focuses on the immediate and secure applications of quantum communications, a more mature set of technologies with a narrower market scope,” noted the report.
China’s excellence in QKD is one area where this approach has borne fruit, allowing it to build a 1,200 mile (1,931.2km) fiber QKD link between Beijing and Shanghai, extended into space via satellites.
The wider question is whether the US versus China matters beyond national pride.
In one important sense, the report reckons it does. The US approach is open, but assumes the private sector will do most of the legwork at its own pace. China is more insular, but focussed on achieving commercial goals as soon as possible.
The insularity of China gives the US an edge, the report believes. Quantum computing is complex, requiring huge intellectual capital as well as investment. But limiting collaboration has downsides.
“This approach yields rapid gains but poses long-term risks in sustaining complex technology advancements,” noted the report.
Why does quantum computing matter?
Along with AI, quantum computing is cited as having the potential to create huge technological disruption. While this is true, quantum computing’s bugbear is the incredible challenge of commercialization. Progress towards saleable systems has been slow, expensive, and often stuck in experimental mode.
Nevertheless, the mere possibility of quantum computing is already affecting mainstream computing, even in advance of full implementation. A good example is NIST’s program to develop quantum safe algorithms able to resist the theoretical ability of a quantum computer to factorize large numbers sufficiently fast to break today’s public key infrastructure (PKI).
This has created the possibility of “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, which many believe are already underway. Under this scenario, nation states gather vast amounts of encrypted data as it travels across the Internet, so that when a sufficiently powerful quantum computer is developed, they will be able to decrypt the data to reveal the secrets of rival nations and businesses.
Should this happen, it’s unlikely anyone would be told. As with Britain’s ability to decipher German enigma transmissions in World War II, it would remain a top secret advantage.
One solution is to use symmetric rather than asymmetric PKI keys to encrypt data, which even quantum computers can’t easily derive. However, inconveniently, unlike with PKI, that means those keys need to be transported to the receiver.
QKD provides a way to do this so that, should the symmetric keys (which quantum computers might decrypt in future) be intercepted, the sender will know this with the certainty of the laws of physics.
One way street
The weakness of the US model for quantum research is that at times it resembles a “Vannevar Bush science project” rather than an endeavor with geo-political implications, the report said. “In this model, basic research leads to applied research, which then leads to development, and eventually to commercial products. It’s a step-by-step process that can be slow and disjointed, with each stage often handled by different entities.”
China, in contrast, integrates these stages, speeding its progress towards applications. Compounding this is a tendency of the Chinese to absorb the advances of others without sharing their own.
This might lead to a scenario where the US dominates scientific quantum research while China dominates commercialization.
On that score, the US Department of Commerce (DOC) last week released licensing proposals designed to control the export of quantum computers and related technologies from the US and its allies that are probably aimed at China.
ITIF’s authors believe that to maintain its edge, the US government should take a leaf out of the book of countries such as the UK and invest money to speed up commercialization.
In other words, the authors seem to be saying, don’t assume commercialization will happen on its own across enough sectors. The US leads in some, but forgetting others might lead to the country becoming reliant on foreign technology in the same way it did with the development of 5G.
ITIF will host a briefing on the topic of China and innovation on Capitol Hill in Washington, District of Columbia on September 18.
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