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Quantum Computing and the Next Frontier
“Spooky action at a distance” is how Albert Einstein described one of the key principles of quantum mechanics: entanglement. Entanglement occurs when two particles become related in such a way that they can coordinate their properties instantly even across a galaxy. Think of wormholes in space or Star Trek transporters that beam atoms to distant locations. Quantum mechanics posits other spooky things too: particles with a mysterious property called superposition, which allows them to take two alternative states at the same time, and particles with an ability to pass through barriers as if walking through a wall.
All of this seems crazy, but it is how things operate at the atomic level: the laws of quantum physics are different. Einstein was so skeptical about quantum entanglement that he wrote a paper in 1935 titled “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” in which he argued that it was not possible.
Einstein was right about the spookiness of this, but his contention that quantum entanglement is not possible has been disproven. Since 1972, researchers have been conducting so-called Bell tests to verify the properties of quantum entanglement, producing a parade of results that have provided stronger and stronger evidence. In what is considered the most definitive proof of quantum entanglement to date, in August 2018 researchers proved massive quantum entanglement between 30,000 pairs of photons observed in two different quasars that occurred billions of years ago.
Even prior to this proof, scientists had been working for over a decade on a new form of computing based on quantum entanglement.
Quantum mechanics is now being used to construct a new generation of computers that can solve the most complex scientific problems—and potentially unlock every digital vault in the world. These miraculous machines will perform, in seconds, a set of computations that would take conventional computers millions of years. They will enable better weather forecasting, financial analysis, logistics planning, the search for Earth-like planets, and drug discovery. And they may compromise every bank record, private communication, and password on every computer in the world. Modern cryptography is based on encoding data in large combinations of numbers, and quantum computers will be able to try out so many combinations of numbers so quickly that they could find these numbers almost instantaneously.
Quantum computers operate on a very different computing basis from that of semiconductor-based computers. While semiconductors represent information as a series of 1s and 0s, quantum computers use a unit of computing called a qubit. Qubits exhibit properties of quantum physics and can hold values of both 1 and 0 simultaneously. This is called superposition. Thus, two qubits could represent the sequences 1-0, 1-1, 0-1, 0-0, all at the same instant. The computing power increases exponentially with each qubit. A quantum computer deploying just 50 qubits could, in theory, outstrip the raw computational power of today’s most advanced supercomputers.
The paradoxical properties that enable quantum computers to immediately crack codes also enable them to solve extremely complex problems. This ability could be used to ends hugely beneficial for humankind—such as predicting the energy states of complex molecules, analyzing how different combinations of genes could affect complex traits such as intelligence, or untangling the precise contributions of different environmental factors to global warming.
An international race is on to build quantum computers. The competitors are big tech companies such as IBM, Google, Intel, and Microsoft; startups; defense contractors; governments; and universities. China, France, Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and Japan are all striving to build the most powerful versions of these systems.
Current working quantum computing systems are massive and must operate in supercooled enclosures approaching absolute zero (–273 degrees Celsius). As progress in the field accelerates, we may soon see an avalanche of breakthroughs. It is a race for so-called quantum supremacy: markedly better performance on some class of problems by a quantum computer over a digital supercomputer.
In November 2017, IBM shocked the world with an announcement of a 50-qubit quantum computer. In March 2018, Google surpassed IBM, saying it had achieved 72 qubits with its Bristlecone quantum-computing chip.143 Then, in September 2018, a startup, Rigetti Computing, claimed it would have a 128-qubit computer within a year and would offer it for use as a cloud service—meaning that anyone could have access.144
To be clear, experts remain skeptical about how truly useful the current generation of quantum systems will actually be, and whether useful quantum computers remain decades away. That’s because quantum computing to date has a big problem. Computations from quantum systems can be inaccurate because qubits are inherently unstable, so significant efforts must go into correcting for errors in quantum computations. Most researchers in the field remain optimistic but cautious. In May 2018, Jim Clarke, director of quantum hardware at Intel Labs, said, “People think quantum computers are just around the corner, but history shows these advances take time.”145
Despite the caution, few experts doubt that quantum computers are coming at some point in the foreseeable future. And the stakes are tremendous. Quantum computers might change the balance of power in business and cyberwarfare. Due to their speed, they will have profound implications for national security. On the other hand, in the modern computing era we have seen time and again that the public gets access to more-powerful systems very quickly after governments. Witness what happened with drones.
The problem with quantum computers’ cracking codes, however, is both real and deadly serious. Modern-day security systems are protected with a standard encryption algorithm called RSA (named after Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman, its inventors). It works by finding prime factors of very large numbers, a puzzle that needs to be solved. Though reducing a small number such as 15 to its prime factors (3 x 5) is easy, factorizing numbers with a few hundred digits is extremely hard and can take days or months using digital computers. But quantum computers can perform these calculations in seconds. They will effectively provide a skeleton key to confidential communications, bank accounts, and password databases.
Imagine the strategic disadvantage the United States would be at if China or Russia were the first to build quantum computers with true functionality and supremacy. Chinese or Russian hackers would be able to open every nation’s digital locks, including the most critical ones protecting infrastructure and national-security secrets.
More optimistically, this new horizon for computing comes at a timely moment for its exponential advance. Moore’s Law set a timetable for computational speed per unit to double every eighteen months, and for the price per computing unit to fall by half in that period. And the industry has largely continued to abide by that timetable. Alas, though, the amount of investment required to wring these improvements from semiconductors is now significantly greater than in the past. In other words, semiconductor companies and researchers must spend vastly more in R&D dollars to deliver equivalent improvements in speed and performance. Quantum computing, on the other hand, is nascent and will likely deliver far greater returns in computational speed per dollar invested. And quantum computing, inherently and due to its architectural differences, has the potential to take computing to an entirely new plane; legacy semiconductors are increasingly looking as though they will be the horse-drawn carriages of the twenty-first century.
Thus, we are at a place where the confluence of quantum computing and A.I. appears promising. As we witness the first significant impacts of broadly used artificial intelligence, we are also seeing that semiconductor-based computing is inadequate to solve the biggest problems that we had imagined artificial intelligence could surmount. Some researchers believe that quantum computers can start providing very useful computational resources even as they remain ensconced in low-temperature environments. What’s more, our current connected infrastructure will allow anyone with a relatively fast web connection to tap in to the power of quantum computers. Already, IBM has set up online test environments for developers that simulate the programming parameters that it expects successful quantum computers’ code bases will necessitate.
Lots of risks and security issues remain, but the hope is that quantum computing can provide the extra firepower that is needed to solve the grand scientific challenges and vault humanity into a better existence. Potential breakthroughs include finely targeted medical treatments, exponentially cheaper energy, and novel classes of extra-strong environmentally friendly materials. Google researchers demonstrated this promise when they used quantum computing to simulate the electron structure of a hydrogen molecule.146 This simulation was a key step toward transforming chemical design from educated guesses and empirical measurement to more predictable and systematic engineering and simulation. (It will also make possible the discovery of new drugs.)
Many of the finest minds in big companies, governments, university labs, and startups are working for quantum supremacy. Whoever achieves this state first could quite literally alter the global balance of power, and in very short order.
Autonomy or Dependence?
Quantum computing promises to finally provide us with the computational firepower to solve the great engineering challenges and set all people free forever from Maslow’s hierarchy. It can be truly the catalyst for the Star Trek future. The computing revolution has enabled and underpinned all of the exponentially advancing technologies I cover in this book. Quantum computing will unleash a second and even greater wave of innovation and progress. And just as present-day computers have shrunk in size in comparison with their predecessors, quantum computers will shrink in size as the technology that powers them advances rapidly over the coming decades, and they will put the supercomputers of today in the shade. Even in the near term, quantum computing will rapidly improve and drive all manner of breakthroughs. Of all of the technologies discussed in this book, quantum computing has the greatest potential to free us from physical want.
Not surprisingly, the flip side is that quantum computing is likely to boost our dependence on computing to a degree that will make today’s ubiquitous connectivity seem quaint and tame. With such mega-dependence will invariably come vulnerability to potentially catastrophic system failures. As with today’s driverless cars, quantum computing may well remove human inputs from even more complex operations.
Are the Benefits Worth the Risks?
The Y2K bug made headlines in 1999 when computers needed massive upgrades to correct code that had not been expected to be used beyond years beginning in 19, resulting in chaos in the I.T. world. Now, we are about to open up a Pandora’s box on security. As far as I know, no company or government is prepared for it; organizations urgently need to build their defenses. They will need to upgrade their computer systems, which are presently using RSA encryption. They will need to implement new algorithms that are “quantum safe,” such as matrix multiplication, which takes advantage of the techniques that allow quantum computers to analyze large amounts of information simultaneously.
And as we have witnessed of late with the rise of A.I. used to generate so-called deep fakes and increasingly convincing forms of fabricated evidence—images, videos, articles, and voice-overs—the truth in the digital age appears to be more and more malleable, and absolutes are increasingly difficult to detect. These fakes will be much easier to create and even more realistic with the new generations of computers. Airline pilots’ reliance today on heavily computerized controls and stabilization systems can lead to particularly catastrophic outcomes in the rare instances when those systems fail. Reliance on quantum computing may expose us to rarer but even more catastrophic events.
In Blade Runner 2049, the 2017 version of the dystopian science-fiction film Blade Runner, characters refer to “the Great Blackout,” an event that destroyed most electronic records on Earth, including personnel and medical records, baby pictures, and everything in between. The blackout was caused by a large electromagnetic pulse (EMP), a massive wave of electromagnetic energy that overloads and fries electrical and digital systems. We know that an EMP is not only plausible but already within the capability of nation states. The quantum-computing era will surely have its own version of an EMP, but its destructive capabilities are likely to be even more profound.
Yes, I am deeply worried about the risks of this new technology. And I am really excited about the potential rewards. In any case, as we’ve seen with many other technologies, there is no way of stopping the progress of quantum computers, so we need to prepare our defenses and develop sensible policies.