Quantum of no solace: Chinese progress alarms US

Quantum-wise, recent years seem to have been good for China and dismal for the West. To cite just one example, the New Scientist magazine reported in September 2021 that Beijing is closer to ‘quantum supremacy’, after creating a machine able to solve in a single hour a problem that would take the world’s fastest traditional supercomputer eight years.

The US defence and security establishment is paying attention, although in an October 2021 report the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that game-changing quantum systems for cryptography and secure communications are probably ten years and billions of dollars away.

Speaking to Shephard, GAO report lead Karen Howard, director of science technology assessment and analytics at the watchdog agency, touched on security issues and whether classic and quantum computing can co-exist.

One thorny issue is the innate challenge of sourcing vital quantum materials from abroad, including rare earth elements from China. Howard acknowledged the technical, supply chain and national security ramifications of such dependence.

The risks, she remarked, would be ‘similar to the reliance on other outsourced technology components. A single point of failure, in some situations, could interrupt or disrupt development’.

Howard added: ‘Quantum computing, when developed, could pose a threat to currently-used public key [PK] encryption schemes by making it significantly easier [for enemies] to figure out the decryption keys.’

The challenge for the DoD and other US agencies is to future-proof data encryption as much as they can, as acknowledged by the US National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) in its Post-Quantum Cryptography Programme (PQCP).

This programme will ‘introduce encryption schemes that can better withstand quantum computer-based decryption’, Howard said, although implementing PQCP could take time.

There are several other options for the US to narrow the quantum technology gap with China.

As well as championing PQCP, the GAO report also called for the US to fund more quantum information science research and R&D centres to cut the ‘risk of cybersecurity threats posed by quantum information science’.

Other actions the US could take include grand-prize challenges to incentivise private-sector investment, or supporting collaboration between scientific disciplines and between researchers/developers and potential users to facilitate technology transfer.

Howard added that ‘identification of potential supply chain vulnerabilities can allow mitigation of risks to materials and components needed for quantum technology development’.

She concluded on a positive note by underscoring arenas in which the US remains strong despite foreign pressures. The country remains a ‘significant researcher in quantum technologies, and it is also a leader in high-performance computers [HPCs]’, for instance. ‘These very large classical, non-quantum computers are used to analyse staggering amounts of data and to model or simulate systems.’