CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING — Ten years after Edward Snowden revealed the extent of a sprawling American surveillance program, China and the U.S. are now locked in a neck-and-neck race for quantum supremacy that — at least for Beijing — began in earnest when that former U.S. contractor landed in Hong Kong, wielding a trove of top-secret documents.
“It is no coincidence that when Snowden defected to China, they (Chinese leadership) immediately started ramping up quantum networks and their quantum computing program,” said Paul Dabbar, former U.S. Under Secretary for Science and Energy, during a recent House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing.
After meeting with journalists, Snowden traveled to Russia, where he remains today. But the impacts of his June 2013 disclosures still reverberate a decade later, lawmakers said, with Beijing having since made major strides in a technology “critical around decryption,” added Dabbar.
Within a year of Snowden's Hong Kong visit, Chinese leadership under President Xi Jinping set about building the longest-ever quantum communications network, as well as the world’s first quantum satellite, initially in a bid to shore up data protection. Now, however, the promise of far more expansive security applications loom large, including its potential use alongside artificial intelligence to overwhelm unprepared rivals.
“China, while behind us, is right on our heels,” added Dabbar.
And yet others offer a more qualified perspective. With China announcing breakthrough-after-quantum-breakthrough in an increasingly critical aspect of U.S.-China competition, there is some evidence to suggest that China may indeed be pulling ahead, depending on which facet of the tech is evaluated.
“Based on an analysis of highly cited research publications, the United States leads the world in quantum computing,” explained Celia Merzbacher, Executive Director of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium. “But China leads in the areas of quantum communication, quantum sensors, and post-quantum cryptography.”
“In particular,” she added, “China has focused on quantum communications and cybersecurity and based on citations, dominates research output and excellence in these areas.”
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That growth has likely contributed to an increasingly strident U.S. posture.
Last month, during a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Investment Security Paul Rosen said his team was focused on further isolating technologies and investment that benefit “artificial intelligence and quantum computing" for China and its military, given how much paradigm-shifting speculation surrounds the field.
“The global leader in commercial and military quantum applications will have an economic and strategic advantage not seen since the United States ushered in the nuclear era in the 1940s,” noted House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Frank Lucas during last week’s hearing.
Meanwhile, the U.S. National Quantum Initiative Act – which was intended to advance quantum tech, especially quantum computing – is set to expire at the end of this year. Without Congressional reauthorization, its advocates say the U.S. risks ceding its lead to China, which has been investing heavily. Chinese companies now account for more than half of the world’s public investment towards quantum, with Beijing prioritizing the emerging tech.
Speaking at that same hearing, Charles Tahan, the director of the National Quantum Coordination Office at the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, said a renewed focus on quantum satellite technologies, as well as a $200-million annual cost in development of supercomputer architectures, among other facets, is needed for the U.S. to stay competitive.
That said, he also highlighted the need for an educational shift.
“We need to incorporate much more universities, community colleges, other places of learning and training … that means investing in infrastructure equipment, even small labs so people can be trained up,” he said. “We need to get quantum computing testbeds that students can learn in 1,000 schools, not 20 schools.”
“For success in the long term, we need to invest in programs that significantly expand the participation of teachers and educational institutions across the country,” added Dr. Emily Edwards, Executive Director of The Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center.
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While quantum computers could break encryptions used for secure communications, analysts say it could also dramatically improve intelligence gathering and analysis capabilities, as well as a range of other applications.
Last month, the Biden administration published a memorandum, highlighting the need for U.S. leadership in quantum information sciences (QIS), touting not only its security implications, but also “the potential to drive innovations across the American economy, from fields as diverse as materials science and pharmaceuticals to finance and energy.”
“While the full range of applications of quantum computers is still unknown,” it said, “it is nevertheless clear that America’s continued technological and scientific leadership will depend, at least in part, on the Nation’s ability to maintain a competitive advantage in quantum computing and QIS.”
That sentiment also seems to have whet private investor appetites. In fact, global investment in quantum start-ups peaked last year, at $2.35 billion, according to recent Mckinsey analysis, with four leading industries – automotive, chemicals, financial services, and life sciences – poised to gain as much as $1.3 trillion in value by 2035.
While U.S. spending has ramped up investment in recent years, driven mostly by the private sector interest among American companies like Google and IBM, which recently gave academia a boost with $150 million investments at the Universities of Chicago and Tokyo, “China’s total announced investment of $15.3 billion still stands as the highest in the world,” the analysis found.
“The technology has become more affordable for industrial buyers as private companies in this area are committed to providing cheaper and smaller devices,” Dr. Wang Chao, general manager of XT Quantech, a Chinese company that employs quantum technology in information security, reportedly said.
And yet amidst all the talk of Sino-U.S. competition and tit-for-tat sanctions, the geopolitics of the tech may also be overshadowing a certain level of remaining collaboration between east and west.
At this stage of quantum technologies development, “a lot of it is open science published in journals,” said Edward Parker, a physical scientist at the RAND Corporation, who is among the authors of a recent report on the state of quantum technologies in China and the U.S.
Researchers collaborate across borders to advance ideas and technologies, he said. And at times, American scientists have even co-authored articles with their Chinese colleagues.
“It’s a race, and it’s not a race,” noted Parker.
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