Quantum computers: a turning point for science, business, and privacy

Simone Melo

Quantum computers have a lot of power. They can revolutionize science, transform medicine, help to find a cure for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and significantly optimize manufacturing efficiency. Quantum can boost the accuracy and employability of machine learning and artificial intelligence to apply numerous datasets to solve real-world problems.

But quantum machines can also pose a real threat in the long term. A lot of buzz revolves around quantum algorithms’ capacity for breaking down encrypted information, which could lead to a significant toll on economies, money transfer, and risk secure communication worldwide.

While quantum technologies are still in an early stage, their potential future implication for economies and national security have pushed the most powerful countries in the world into a disputed race to develop a quantum advantage. Governments have invested billions of dollars in conquering quantum’s untapped power.

Quantum computers operate upon the laws of quantum physics. Credit: Shutterstock

In the United States (U.S.), the National Quantum Initiative, a multiagency research and development program involving NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Navy, the U.S. Air Force, and the Army, was established in 2018 with a 1.2 billion USD budget. The European Union started a ten-year Quantum Flagship strategy in the same year, investing 1 billion euros.

But the most significant quantum national player on stage has been China. Since 2017, the Asian nation has invested 10 billion USD in building a national laboratory for Quantum Information Science. In December 2020, Chinese scientists claimed the achievement of a quantum breakthrough, with the development of a quantum computer able to calculate in minutes what a supercomputer would take 2.5 billion years to do.

Big tech companies, such as I.B.M., Google, Amazon, Honeywell, and Intel, are also running against the clock to develop quantum programming languages and commercialize quantum technologies.

“Quantum computers will be billions of times more powerful than a classical computer. It is not just a bit more powerful. It is more powerful in order of magnitude, and it is going to drive the future economy”, points out Dr. Peter Smith, who has an established career in quantum technologies and leads the Optical Engineering and Quantum Photonics Group at the University of Southampton, a GFCC member in the United Kingdom.

Quantum is weird and so is the universe Quantum computers are powerful because of how they process and represent information. A classical computer, the type of desktop computer people use to work and study, operates in a binary way (zero and one), using switches that turn on and off called “bits.” All the information that goes through a computer in a day is at the very end a combination of millions of zeros and ones encoded as two different possibilities independent from each other.

Quantum computers operate upon the laws of quantum physics. Instead of bits, they use “qubits” (quantum bits). A qubit has a curious property. It can be zero and one simultaneously or somewhere between the two, a phenomenon called superposition. As strange as it sounds, that is how the universe operates, moving around a large spectrum of uncertainty.

Representation of classical bits versus qubits

'We live in a quantum universe that has looked like a classical universe to us until now,” explains Dr. Peter Smith. “But if we can use quantum physics to exploit it, what we get is a new type of power over nature.”

For decades scientists have dealt with complex problems with more than one answer, but even today’s supercomputers aren’t good at calculating ambivalence. The possibility of achieving probabilistic results is a turning point in the history of scientific development.

“Quantum algorithms are good for answering complex questions. There is no point to use a superposition state if you are looking to get only one answer at the end”, explains Dr. Kristen Pudenz, quantum research scientist and corporate leader at Lockheed Martin, an aerospace contractor and a GFCC member.

Applying quantum technologies Quantum computers are only starting to be useful, and most predictions foresee the commercial development of quantum technologies for the next decade. But the disruptive impacts it will have for the financial market, supply chain logistics, data analysis, communication, and manufacturing optimization could create a real upheaval and the development of new industries in the future.

Quantum technologies create the possibility of discovering new materials, such as batteries for electric cars or medical drugs, through computer simulations, reducing the number of experiments and laboratory testing.

At Lockheed Martin, a group of 30 quantum scientists and engineers have been working to develop quantum-enabled flight controls that help pilots fly in combat aircraft, such as the F-35 model. “A quantum computer may be able to find an optimal solution for our aircraft that improves performance and fuel efficiency, and it is nimbler in its response to environmental conditions,” explains Dr. Pudenz.

Lockheed Martin is developing quantum-enabled flight controls for the F-35 aircraft

Lockheed has also used quantum research for logistics optimization, scheduling flights, moving supplies, and improving manufacturing lines.

For Dr. Smith, corporate conglomerates must invest in quantum to reach competitive advantages and not miss out on business opportunities. “Companies with large budgets that have big computational needs, such as Shell, The JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, can afford it and must develop quantum research”, point out Dr. Smith.

Post-quantum cryptography Much of today’s online communication tools, emails, and finance transactions use RSA encryption, public-key cryptography based on factoring. In 1994, a scientist called Peter Shor discovered a quantum algorithm that could find the prime factor of large numbers. Shor’s algorithm in a large quantum computer could decrypt messages and endanger the whole RSA system.

Currently, available quantum computers aren’t able to break encryption. But the potential destabilizing impacts this technology could cause have pushed scientists towards developing quantum secure communication systems that generate codes unbreakable by quantum computers. Post-quantum cryptography will use quantum-resistant algorithms instead of factoring.

“I believe we are at least five to 10 years away from developing a quantum computer capable of factoring and some people will still be using factoring-based encryption by then. But we will soon need to migrate and use quantum-resistant systems”, points out Dr. Pudenz.

Quantum computing is a key topic on businesses and government agendas when developing innovation and competitiveness strategies for the future.