My friend Meera, who knows about these things, tells me that quantum computing is real, it has moved from science fiction to science fact. Pictures of IBM’s machine are available online and, so I am told, you can hire processing time on the machine by the minute. Blimey, that doesn’t seem long but then I guess that a minute is a long time in quantum computing.
It reminds me of the alleged Einstein quote ‘If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.’ If I had a quantum computer I would spend months working out the question and a minute doing the calculations.
I find it hard to get my head around any form of commuting but quantum takes the biscuit. I hope I have got this right in that a qubit (the quantum equivalent of a bit) can exist in states 1 and 0 simultaneously, known as superposition.
According to IEEE Spectrum ‘Superposition lets one qubit perform two calculations at once, and if two qubits are linked through a quantum effect known as entanglement, they can help perform 22 or four calculations simultaneously; three qubits, 23 or eight calculations; and so on. In principle, a quantum computer with 300 qubits could perform more calculations in an instant than there are atoms in the visible universe.’
Apparently Google has claimed to have linked 53 qubits, giving immense commuting power.
This has made me think about cyber security. Quantum computing is so expensive that it is likely that the usual suspects, nation state governments and dominant technical companies, will be the only ones able to afford them. Current encryption will be meaningless and anyone with deep enough pockets and enough determination will be able to crack whatever they wish. No secret will be safe.
A new cold war is in the making where super nations vie to outperform each other’s computing capacity with the threat of breaking all national security. There will be little need to nuke each other when hacking will be just as effective. Mutually assured quantum destruction.
I think the Hudson Institute agrees.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 