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Google reported a remarkable breakthrough towards the end of 2019. The company claimed to have achieved something called quantum supremacy, using a new type of quantum computer to perform a benchmark test in 200 seconds. This was in stark contrast to the 10,000 years that would supposedly have been needed by a state-of-the-art conventional supercomputer to complete the same test.

Despite IBMs claim that its supercomputer, with a little optimisation, could solve the task in a matter of days, Googles announcement made it clear that we are entering a new era of incredible computational power.

Yet with much less fanfare, there has also been rapid progress in the development of quantum communication networks, and a master network to unite them all called the quantum internet. Just as the internet as we know it followed the development of computers, we can expect the quantum computer to be accompanied by the safer, better synchronised quantum internet.

Like quantum computing, quantum communication records information in what are known as qubits, similar to the way digital systems use bits and bytes. Whereas a bit can only take the value of zero or one, a qubit can also use the principles of quantum physics to take the value of zero and one at the same time. This is what allows quantum computers to perform certain computations very quickly. Instead of solving several variants of a problem one by one, the quantum computer can handle them all at the same time.

These qubits are central to the quantum internet because of a property called entanglement. If two entangled qubits are geographically separated (for instance, one qubit in Dublin and the other in New York), measurements of both would yield the same result. This would enable the ultimate in secret communications, a shared knowledge between two parties that cannot be discovered by a third. The resulting ability to code and decode messages would be one of the most powerful features of the quantum internet.

Commercial applications

There will be no shortage of commercial applications for these advanced cryptographic mechanisms. The world of finance, in particular, looks set to benefit as the quantum internet will lead to enhanced privacy for online transactions and stronger proof of the funds used in the transaction.

Recently, at the CONNECT Centre in Trinity College Dublin, we successfully implemented an algorithm that could achieve this level of security. That this took place during a hackathon a sort of competition for computer programmers shows that even enthusiasts without detailed knowledge of quantum physics can create some of the building blocks that will be needed for the quantum internet. This technology wont be confined to specialist university departments, just as the original internet soon outgrew its origins as a way to connect academics around the world.

But how could this quantum internet be built anytime soon when we currently can only build very limited quantum computers? Well, the devices in the quantum internet dont have to be completely quantum in nature, and the network wont require massive quantum machines to handle the communication protocols.

One qubit here and there is all a quantum communication network needs to function. Instead of replacing the current infrastructure of optical fibres, data centres and base stations, the quantum internet will build on top of and make maximum use of the existing, classical internet.

With such rapid progress being made, quantum internet technology is set to shape the business plans of telecom companies in the near future. Financial institutions are already using quantum communication networks to make inter-bank transactions safer. And quantum communication satellites are up and running as the first step to extending these networks to a global scale.

The pipes of the quantum internet are effectively being laid as you read this. When a big quantum computer is finally built, it can be plugged into this network and accessed on the cloud, with all the privacy guarantees of quantum cryptography.

What will the ordinary user notice when the enhanced cryptography of the quantum internet becomes available? Very little, in all likelihood. Cryptography is like waste management: if everything works well, the customer doesnt even notice.

In the constant race of the codemakers and codebreakers, the quantum internet wont just prevent the codebreakers taking the lead. It will move the race track into another world altogether, with a significant head start for the codemakers. With data becoming the currency of our times, the quantum internet will provide stronger security for a new valuable commodity.

Harun iljak, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Complex Systems Science for Telecommunications, Trinity College Dublin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

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Quantum Internet: The Technology That Could Change Everything? - The National Interest Online

By the end of 1943, the US Navy had installed 120 electromechanical Bombe machines like the one above, which were used to decipher secret messages encrypted by German Enigma machines, including messages from German U-boats. Built for the Navy by the Dayton company National Cash Register, the US Bombe was an improved version of the British Bombe, which was itself based on a Polish design. Credit: National Security Agency

Quantum computing is a technology that promises to revolutionize computing by speeding up key computing tasks in areas such as machine learning and solving otherwise intractable problems. Some influential American policy makers, scholars, and analysts are extremely concerned about the effects quantum computing will have on national security. Similar to the way space technology was viewed in the context of the US-Soviet rivalry during the Cold War, scientific advancement in quantum computing is seen as a race with significant national security consequences, particularly in the emerging US-China rivalry. Analysts such as Elsa Kania have written that the winner of this race will be able to overcome all cryptographic efforts and gain access to the state secrets of the losing government. Additionally, the winner will be able to protect its own secrets with a higher level of security than contemporary cryptography guarantees.

These claims are considerably overstated. Instead of worrying about winning the quantum supremacy race against China, policy makers and scholars should shift their focus to a more urgent national security problem: How to maintain the long-term security of secret information secured by existing cryptographic protections, which will fail against an attack by a future quantum computer.

The race for quantum supremacy. Quantum supremacy is an artificial scientific goalone that Google claims to have recently achievedthat marks the moment a quantum computer computes an answer to a well-defined problem more efficiently than a classical computer. Quantum supremacy is possible because quantum computers replace classical bitsrepresenting either a 0 or a 1with qubits that use the quantum principles of superposition and entanglement to do some types of computations an order of magnitude more efficiently than a classical computer. While quantum supremacy is largely meant as a scientific benchmark, some analysts have co-opted the term and set it as a national-security goal for the United States.

These analysts draw a parallel between achieving quantum supremacy and the historical competition for supremacy in space and missile technology between the United States and the Soviet Union. As with the widely shared assessment in the 1950s and 1960s that the United States was playing catchup, Foreign Policy has reported on a quantum gap between the United States and China that gives China a first mover advantage. US policy experts such as Kania, John Costello, and Congressman Will Hurd (R-TX) fear that if China achieves quantum supremacy first, that will have a direct negative impact on US national security.

Some analysts who have reviewed technical literature have found that quantum computers will be able to run algorithms that allow for the decryption of encrypted messages without access to a decryption key. If encryption schemes can be broken, message senders will be exposed to significant strategic and security risks, and adversaries may be able to read US military communications, diplomatic cables, and other sensitive information. Some of the policy discussion around this issue is influenced by suggestions that the United States could itself become the victim of a fait accompli in code-breaking after quantum supremacy is achieved by an adversary such as China. Such an advantage would be similar to the Allies advantage in World War II when they were able to decrypt German radio traffic in near-real time using US and British Bombe machines (see photo above).

The analysts who have reviewed the technical literature have also found that quantum technologies will enable the use of cryptographic schemes that do not rely on mathematical assumptions, specifically a scheme called quantum key distribution. This has led to the notion in the policy community that quantum communications will be significantly more secure than classical cryptography. Computer scientist James Kurose of the National Science Foundation has presented this view before the US Congress, for example.

Inconsistencies between policy concerns and technical realities. It is true that quantum computing threatens the viability of current encryption systems, but that does not mean quantum computing will make the concept of encryption obsolete. There are solutions to this impending problem. In fact, there is an entire movement in the field to investigate post-quantum cryptography. The aims of this movement are to find efficient encryption schemes to replace current methods with new, quantum-secure encryption.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is currently in the process of standardizing a quantum-safe public key encryption system that is expected to be completed by 2024 at the latest. The National Security Agency has followed suit by announcing its Commercial National Security Algorithm Encryption Suite. These new algorithms can run on a classical computera computer found in any home or office today. In the future, there will be encryption schemes that provide the same level of security against both quantum and classical computers as the level provided by current encryption schemes against classical computers only.

Because quantum key distribution enables senders and receivers to detect eavesdroppers, analysts have claimed that the ability of the recipient and sender [to] determine if the message has been intercepted is a major advantage over classical cryptography. While eavesdropper detection is an advancement in technology, it does not actually provide any significant advantage over classical cryptography, because eavesdropper detection is not a problem in secure communications in the first place.

When communicating parties use quantum key distribution, an eavesdropper cannot get ciphertext (encrypted text) and therefore cannot get any corresponding plaintext (unencrypted text). When the communicating parties use classical cryptography, the eavesdropper can get ciphertext but cannot decrypt it, so the level of security provided to the communicating parties is indistinguishable from quantum key distribution.

The more pressing national security problem. While the technical realities of quantum computing demonstrate that there are no permanent security implications of quantum computing, there is a notable longer-term national security problem: Classified information with long-term intelligence value that is secured by contemporary encryption schemes can be compromised in the future by a quantum computer.

The most important aspect of the executive order that gives the US government the power to classify information, as it relates to the discussion of quantum computing and cryptography, is that this order allows for the classification of all types of information for as long as 25 years. Similarly, the National Security Agency provides guidelines to its contractors that classified information has a potential intelligence life of up to 30 years. This means that classified information currently being secured by contemporary encryption schemes could be relevant to national security through at least 2049and will not be secure in the future against cryptanalysis enabled by a quantum computer.

In the past, the United States has intercepted and stored encrypted information for later cryptanalysis. Toward the end of World War II, for example, the United States became suspicious of Soviet intentions and began to intercept encrypted Soviet messages. Because of operator error, some of the messages were partially decryptable. When the United States realized this, the government began a program called the Venona Project to decrypt these messages.

It is likely that both the United States and its adversaries will have Venona-style projects in the future. A few scholars and individuals in the policy community have recognized this problem. Security experts Richard Clarke and Robert Knake have stated that governments have been rumored for years to be collecting and storing other nations encrypted messages that they now cannot crack, with the hope of cracking them in the future with a quantum computer.

As long as the United States continues to use encryption algorithms that are not quantum-resistant, sensitive information will be exposed to this long-term risk. The National Institute of Standards and Technologys quantum-resistant algorithm might not be completedand reflected in the National Security Agencys own standarduntil 2024. The National Security Agency has stated that algorithms often require 20 years to be fully deployed on NSS [National Security Systems]. Because of this, some parts of the US national security apparatus may be using encryption algorithms that are not quantum-resistant as late as 2044. Any information secured by these algorithms is at risk of long-term decryption by US adversaries.

Recommendations for securing information. While the United States cannot take back any encrypted data already in the possession of adversaries, short-term reforms can reduce the security impacts of this reality. Taking 20 years to fully deploy any cryptographic algorithm should be considered unacceptable in light of the threat to long-lived classified information. The amount of time to fully deploy a cryptographic algorithm should be lowered to the smallest time frame feasible. Even if this time period cannot be significantly reduced, the National Security Agency should take steps to triage modernization efforts and ensure that the most sensitive systems and information are updated first.

Luckily for the defenders of classified information, existing encryption isnt completely defenseless against quantum computing. While attackers with quantum computers could break a significant number of classical encryption schemes, it still may take an extremely large amount of time and resources to carry out such attacks. While the encryption schemes being used today can eventually be broken, risk mitigation efforts can increase the time it takes to decrypt information.

This can be done by setting up honeypotssystems disguised as vulnerable classified networks that contain useless encrypted dataand allowing them to be attacked by US adversaries. This would force adversaries to waste substantial amounts of time and valuable computer resources decrypting useless information. Such an operation is known as as defense by deception, a well-proven strategy to stymie hackers looking to steal sensitive information. This strategy is simply an application of an old risk mitigation strategy to deal with a new problem.

Quantum computing will have an impact on national security, just not in the way that some of the policy community claims that it will. Quantum computing will not significantly reduce or enhance the inherent utility of cryptography, and the outcome of the race for quantum supremacy will not fundamentally change the distribution of military and intelligence advantages between the great powers.

Still, the United States needs to be wary of long-term threats to the secrecy of sensitive information. These threats can be mitigated by reducing the deployment timeline for new encryption schemes to something significantly less than 20 years, triaging cryptographic updates to systems that communicate and store sensitive and classified information, and taking countermeasures that significantly increase the amount of time and resources it takes for adversaries to exploit stolen encrypted information. The threats of quantum computing are manageable, as long as the US government implements these common-sense reforms.

Editors Note: The author wrote a longer version of this essay under a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory contract with the US Energy Department. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is operated by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, for the US Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. The views and opinions of author expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States government or Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. LLNL-JRNL-799938.

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Keeping classified information secret in a world of quantum computing - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

A wide range of issues in modern science are tackled through quantum mechanical calculations. The quantum nature of the problems involved improves quantum calculations better-suited to them.

Creating quantum computers is expensive and tedious, and the subsequent gadgets are not ensured to display any quantum advantage. That is, operate faster than a conventional computer. So specialists need devices for anticipating whether a given quantum device will have a quantum advantage.

One of the approaches to execute quantum computations in quantum walks. In simple terms, the technique can be envisioned as a particle traveling in a specific system, which underlies a quantum circuit. On the off chance that a molecules quantum walks starting with one network node then onto the next happens quicker than its classical analog, a device-dependent on that circuit will have a quantum advantage. The quest for such superior systems is a significant errand handled by quantum walk specialists.

In a new study, Russian scientists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Valiev Institute of Physics and Technology, and ITMO University have replaced quantum walk experts with artificial intelligence. They trained the machine to recognize networks and tell if a given system will convey quantum advantage. This pinpoints the networks that are good candidates for building a quantum computer.

Scientists used a neural network geared toward image recognition. An adjacency matrix served as the info data alongside the quantities of the input and output nodes. The neural system restored a forecast of whether the old style or the quantum walk between the given nodes would be quicker.

Associate Professor Leonid Fedichkin of the theoretical physics department at MIPT said,It was not obvious this approach would work, but it did. We have been quite successful in training the computer to make free predictions of whether a complex network has a quantum advantage. The line between quantum and classical behaviors is often blurred. The distinctive feature of our study is the resulting special-purpose computer vision, capable of discerning this fine line in the network space.

Scientists also created a tool to simplify the development of computational circuits based on quantum algorithms. The resulting devices will be of interest in biophotonics research and materials science.

Scientists noted,Solving a problem that formally involves finding the quantum walk time from one node to another may reveal what happens to an electron at a particular position in a molecule, where it will move, and what kind of excitation it will cause.

Compared with architectures based on qubits and gates, quantum walks are expected to offer an easier way to implement the quantum calculation of natural phenomena. The reason for this is that the walks themselves are a natural physical process.

The findings are reported in the New Journal of Physics.

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A neural network that learned to predict the behavior of a quantum system - Tech Explorist

A multi-university team of researchers from Japan recently used the worlds fastest astrophysics-simulation supercomputers to develop an AI system capable of predicting the structure of the universe itself. The scientists hope that in doing so theyll unlock the mysteries surrounding dark matter and dark energy.

Dubbed Dark Emulator, the AI system parses gigantic troves of astrophysics data and uses the information to build simulations of our universe. It taps into a massive database full of information gleaned from special telescopes and compares current data with what scientists expect based on theories surrounding the universes origin.

Study: Our universe may be part of a giant quantum computer

The simulation basically attempts to demonstrate what the universe might look like, including its edges, based on the big bang theory and the subsequent rapid expansion that continues to take place.

According to Phys.Org, the lead author on the teams research paper, Takahiro Nishimichi, said:

We built an extraordinarily large database using a supercomputer, which took us three years to finish, but now we can recreate it on a laptop in a matter of seconds. I feel like there is great potential in data science.

Using this result, I hope we can work our way toward uncovering the greatest mystery of modern physics, which is to uncover what dark energy is.

The hope here is that by understanding the general cosmology of the entire universe, scientists will be able to from better theories on how dark matter works. We currently assume that most of the universe is made up of dark matter. The void of space as it were, isnt a void but composed of energized matter that, so far, cant be directly observed.

But were currently unable to prove dark matter exists through scientific rigor, observation, and measurement. And that leaves astrophysicists struggling to come up with a unified theory of the universe that encompasses all the different ideas in play. How do we reconcile the Big Bang, Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principal, Einsteins Relativity, and Newtons Laws of thermodynamics with modern quantum mechanics and dark energy theories?

The team from Japan hopes we do so with the information were able to glean from Dark Emulator. The AI system doesnt just analyze data for loose ends, it learns from each simulation it creates and uses the output to inform the next iteration.

It does this by analyzing the invisible tendrils between galaxies and performing astronomical (literally) feats of mathematics to create more precise simulations. According to a paper the team published in Astrophysical Journal, its incredibly accurate:

The emulator predicts the halomatter cross-correlation, relevant for galaxygalaxy weak lensing, with an accuracy better than 2% and the halo autocorrelation, relevant for galaxy clustering correlation, with an accuracy better than 4%.

Eventually, this technology could help flesh outour understanding of the universe and allow scientists to determine exactly what dark matter is and how dark energy works. For now, this means filling in some of the massive blanks we have in our understanding of what the universe actually looks like beyond our front porch.

But in the future, having a clear understanding of dark energy could bring about myriad far-off science fiction technologies such as warp drives, time-travel, and teleportation. That is, of course, if dark matter even exists.

Published February 5, 2020 23:32 UTC

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Scientists built an AI to figure out what the universe is made of - The Next Web

Buried within the 13,000-odd words of the Union Budget speech on Saturday was a paragraph that set aside 8,000 crore over five years for the National Mission on Quantum Technologies and Applications. Most commentators seem to have either missed or overlooked this budgetary allocation, but in terms of significance, the implications are well worth considering.

More than two years ago, the department of science and technology launched the Quantum-Enabled Science and Technology (QuEST) programme with an aim to develop technical capacity within the country to build quantum computers and communications systems comparable with the best in the world. The first phase of the project was to build the infrastructure and acquire human resources to develop physical and computation structures for improving precision in quantum measurement. The eventual goal is to build quantum computers domestically.

Though the allocation in this years budget is clearly part of a long-term national strategy, I cannot help wonder whether it is, at least in some small measure, a response to Googles recent announcement that it had achieved quantum supremacy"the ability to perform a calculation on a quantum computer that is impossible on a conventional computer. And the fear that we might, once again, be falling behind.

As much as I enjoy science, quantum mechanics gives me a headache. Quantum computing is an order of magnitude more perplexing. Ordinary computers function using binary logic gates that can be either off or on. This is why classical computers store information in bitseither as a 0 or 1. On the other hand, quantum computers can store information as both a 0 and a 1 at the same time using a quantum property called superposition. This means that with two quantum bits (or qubits), information can be stored in four possible states of superposition, and as more qubits are added, the computational power grows exponentially.

While this gives us more computing power, quantum computers are error-prone. The quantum state is delicate. It lasts for a fraction of a second and is easily disrupted by tiniest of vibrations or variations in temperature. This noise" in calculations causes mistakes to occur, and unless we can make them sufficiently error-free, quantum computing will not be commercially viable. Googles breakthrough was to achieve sufficient control over the process to allow its experimental computer to outperform a traditional computer. As a result, its computer could solve in 200 seconds what would take the worlds fastest supercomputer 10,000 years.

We still have a long way to go before quantum computing becomes commercially viable, but there is reason for urgency. As soon as quantum computing becomes commercially viable, much of what we take for granted today will become irrelevant.

Take encryption, for example. Almost all digital security today is based on the RSA algorithm that encrypts messages by relying on the factorization of two large prime numbers. While it is easy to multiply two prime numbers, it is very difficult to factorize them. RSA encryption exploits this feature, making it impossible for even governments and private actors with near infinite computational resources to decrypt messages. This is why we have the confidence to store valuable information in encrypted archives on the cloud, secure in the knowledge that even the largest corporations and most technologically advanced governments dont have the computational capability to decrypt these databases and access the information stored inside.

Once quantum computers are capable of being used for decryption, the computational hurdles of prime number factorization that we now rely on will become trivial to overcome. Shors algorithm already describes a process by which quantum computers could be used find the prime factors of any integer. In 2001, IBM proved that this algorithm works by using a 7 qubit computer to factorize the number 15 into 5 and 3. Googles Sycamore processor harnessed 53 qubits in its latest experiment, demonstrating that much higher computational capabilities are already within our grasp. Once our quantum computers have reached a sufficiently advanced level of stability, even the highest encryption known to man will be easy to defeat.

When that happens, cyber security as we know it will be a thing of the past. All the secure data services that we rely on will be thrown wide open, allowing anyone with a quantum computer to easily access the information within. Given the imminence of major breakthroughs in quantum computing, it is rumoured that there is already an underground market for encrypted data in anticipation of a time when all this information can be decrypted and the secrets of famous personalities can be exposed.

In the war for quantum supremacy, it is those who can understand and use the fundamental technologies behind quantum computing who will emerge dominant. In the not-so-distant future, the world will be divided into the quantum haves and have-nots. It is imperative that India makes every effort to stay in the game if it is to have any hope of remaining relevant. If we are to retain any measure of technological independence, we will need to ramp up our research in quantum computing and actively invest in the development of indigenous quantum computational capabilities.

Rahul Matthan is a partner at Trilegal and author of Privacy 3.0: Unlocking Our Data Driven Future

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Opinion | Prepare for a world of quantum haves and have-nots - Livemint