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The new methods are to replace the conventional public-key cryptography system, which could be vulnerable in the face of quantum computers with powerful computing capabilities.

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China denies accusations of state-sponsored hacking from US, UK and New Zealand

China denies accusations of state-sponsored hacking from US, UK and New Zealand

The report quoted Dou Menghan, deputy director of the Anhui Quantum Computing Engineering Research Centre, as saying the anti-quantum attack shield was developed and used for the first time by Origin Quantum, the developer of the computer named after the Monkey King of Chinese mythology.

This shows that Chinas home-grown superconducting quantum computer can play both offence and defence in the field of quantum computing, he said.

This is also an important exploration of the application of new data security technologies in China.

The third-generation Wukong is powered by a 72-qubit home-grown superconducting quantum chip, also known as the Wukong chip.

In January, the superfast computer opened remote access to the world, attracting global users from countries such as the US, Bulgaria, Singapore, Japan, Russia and Canada to perform quantum computing tasks.

In traditional computing, a bit is the basic unit of information that represents either zero or one. A quantum bit, or qubit, takes it a step further by being able to represent zero, one, or both simultaneously.

Lawmaker urges China to safeguard tech production chain for a quantum edge

Because quantum computers can simultaneously represent multiple possibilities, they hold theoretical potential for significantly faster and more powerful computation compared to the everyday computers we use now.

But the subatomic particles central to this technology are fragile, short-lived and prone to errors if exposed to minor disturbances from the surroundings. Most quantum computers operate in highly isolated and extremely cold environments to avoid disruption.

The normal operating temperature of the Wukong chip is close to absolute zero, or minus 273.15 degrees Celsius. It is stored in a special fridge before being installed in a vacuum environment for operation.

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Encryption shield installed to protect Chinese quantum computer from attack - South China Morning Post

Processors that crunch through supercomputing tasks in the blink of an eye. Batteries that recharge in a flash. Accelerated drug discovery, encryption and decryption, and machine learning. These are just a few of the possibilities that may be enabled by quantum computing, which harnesses the laws of physics to perform calculations much faster than even the most powerful traditional computers. They all hinge on research here in the United States, the worlds undisputed leader in quantum computing.

How did America become the epicenter of this technological revolution? It didnt happen by accident. Quantum computing and world-class U.S. research universities have grown hand in hand, fostered by a policy environment that encourages scientists and entrepreneurs to commercialize academic research.

Consider our quantum computing company, IonQ. As engineering and physics professors from Duke and the University of Maryland (UMD), we founded the company in 2015 using our research, which was largely funded by the Defense Department and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA)a government organization investing in cutting-edge technology for the intelligence community. Weve also received significant funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Department of Energy.

In 2020, we opened a 23,000-square-foot, $5.5 million center in College Park to house our state-of-the-art quantum machinery. The next year, IonQ was valued at $2 billion upon our IPOand became the first publicly traded pure-play quantum hardware and software company.

Along with government financing, we owe much of our success to both UMD and Dukes investment in our quantum research. UMD boasts more than 200 quantum researchers including a Nobel laureate at a joint institute shared between the university and NIST, and has awarded more than 100 doctorates in physics with a quantum focus. Duke recently established the only vertical quantum computing center in the world, which conducts research and development combining every stage of the quantum computing processfrom assembling individual atoms and engineering their electronic controllers to designing quantum algorithms and applications.

But we also owe it to a little-known law, without which none of this would have been possible the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. Before its passage, the federal government owned the patents on inventions resulting from academic research that had received any amount of federal funding. However, the government lacked the capacity to further develop university breakthroughs, so the vast majority simply gathered dust on shelves.

Bayh-Dole allowed universities to own the patents on the inventions of their scientists, which has had a galvanizing impact. Suddenly, academic institutions were incentivized to license those patents to the private sector where they could be transformed into valuable goods and services, while stimulating entrepreneurship among the researchers who came up with those inventions in the first place.

Unfortunately, the federal government may soon undermine the Bayh-Dole systemwhich could massively stifle new advances in quantum computing. The Biden administration just announced that it seeks to use the laws march-in provision to impose price controls on inventions that were originally developed with federal funds if the priceat which the product is currently offered to the public [is] not reasonable. This notion arises from ignorance of the core value in entrepreneurship and commercialization: While the ideas are conceived and tested at universities using federal funding, it is the huge amount of effort invested by the licensee that turns those ideas and patents into useful products and services.

Abusing march-in wouldnt make new technologies more accessible for consumers or anyone else, it would do just the opposite. Devaluing the investment needed to turn these ideas into successful and practical products could disincentivize private-sector companies from taking risks by licensing university research in the first place.

When it comes to quantum computing, that chilling effect on research and development would enormously jeopardize U.S. national security. Our projects received ample funding from defense and intelligence agencies for good reason. Quantum computing may soon become the gold standard technology for codebreaking and defending large computer networks against cyberattacks.

Adopting the proposed march-in framework would also have major implications for our future economic stability. While still a nascent technology today, quantum computings ability to rapidly process huge volumes of data is set to revolutionize business in the coming decades. It may be the only way to capture the complexity needed for future AI and machine learning in, say, self-driving vehicles. It may enable companies to hone their supply chains and other logistical operations, such as manufacturing, with unprecedented precision. It may also transform finance by allowing portfolio managers to create new, superior investment algorithms and strategies.

Given the technologys immense potential, its no mystery why China committed what is believed to be more than $15 billion in 2022 to develop its quantum computing capacitymore than double the budget for quantum computing of EU countries and eight times what the U.S. government plans to spend.

Thankfully, the U.S. still has a clear edge in quantum computingfor now. Our universities attract far more top experts and leaders in the field than any other nations, including Chinas, by a wide margin. Our entrepreneurial startup culture, often bred from the innovation of our universities, is the envy of the world. And unlike Europe, our government incentivizes risk-taking and entrepreneurship through public-private partnerships.

However, if the Biden administration dismantles the law that makes this collaboration possible, theres no guarantee that our global dominance in quantum computing will persist in the long term. That would have devastating second-order effects on our national security and economic future. Computer scientists, ordinary Americans, and the intelligence and defense communities can only hope our officials rethink their proposal.

Jungsang Kim is a professor of ECE and physics at Duke University. Christopher Monroe is a professor of ECE and physics at Duke University and the University of Maryland, College Park. In 2015 they co-founded IonQ, Inc., the first publicly traded pure-play quantum hardware and software company.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs ofFortune.

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America is the undisputed world leader in quantum computing even though China spends 8x more on the technology ... - Fortune

The full power of next-generation quantum computing could soon be harnessed by millions of individuals and companies, thanks to a breakthrough by scientists at Oxford University Physics guaranteeing security and privacy. This advance promises to unlock the transformative potential of cloud-based quantum computing and is detailed in a new study published in the influential U.S. scientific journal Physical Review Letters.

Never in history have the issues surrounding privacy of data and code been more urgently debated than in the present era of cloud computing and artificial intelligence. As quantum computers become more capable, people will seek to use them with complete security and privacy over networks, and our new results mark a step change in capability in this respect.

Quantum computing is developing rapidly, paving the way for new applications which could transform services in many areas like healthcare and financial services. It works in a fundamentally different way to conventional computing and is potentially far more powerful. However, it currently requires controlled conditions to remain stable and there are concerns around data authenticity and the effectiveness of current security and encryption systems.

Several leading providers of cloud-based services, like Google, Amazon, and IBM, already separately offer some elements of quantum computing. Safeguarding the privacy and security of customer data is a vital precursor to scaling up and expending its use, and for the development of new applications as the technology advances. The new study by researchers at Oxford University Physics addresses these challenges.

We have shown for the first time that quantum computing in the cloud can be accessed in a scalable, practical way which will also give people complete security and privacy of data, plus the ability to verify its authenticity, said Professor David Lucas, who co-heads the Oxford University Physics research team and is lead scientist at the UK Quantum Computing and Simulation Hub, led from Oxford University Physics.

In the new study, the researchers use an approach dubbed blind quantum computing, which connects two totally separate quantum computing entities potentially an individual at home or in an office accessing a cloud server in a completely secure way. Importantly, their new methods could be scaled up to large quantum computations.

Using blind quantum computing, clients can access remote quantum computers to process confidential data with secret algorithms and even verify the results are correct, without revealing any useful information. Realising this concept is a big step forward in both quantum computing and keeping our information safe online said study lead Dr Peter Drmota, of Oxford University Physics.

The results could ultimately lead to commercial development of devices to plug into laptops, to safeguard data when people are using quantum cloud computing services.

Researchers exploring quantum computing and technologies at Oxford University Physics have access to the state-of-the-art Beecroft laboratory facility, specially constructed to create stable and secure conditions including eliminating vibration.

Funding for the research came from the UK Quantum Computing and Simulation (QCS) Hub, with scientists from the UK National Quantum Computing Centre, the Paris-Sorbonne University, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Maryland, collaborating on the work.

The study Verifiable blind quantum computing with trapped ions and single photons has been published in Physical Review Letters.

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Breakthrough promises secure quantum computing at home - University of Oxford

By converting data into light particles and beaming them around the world using satellites, we could prevent encrypted messages from being intercepted by a superpowerful quantum computer, scientists claim.

Currently, messaging technology relies on mathematical, or cryptographic, methods of protection, including end-to-end encryption. This technology is used in WhatsApp as well as by corporations, the government and the military to protect sensitive data from being intercepted.

Encryption works by scrambling data or text into what appears to be nonsense, using an algorithm and a key that only the sender and recipient can use to unlock the data. These algorithms can, in theory, be cracked. But they are designed to be so complex that even the fastest supercomputers would take millions of years to translate the data into something readable.

Related: World's 1st fault-tolerant quantum computer launching this year ahead of a 10,000-qubit machine in 2026

Quantum computers change the equation. Although the field is young, scientists predict that such machines will be powerful enough to easily break encryption algorithms someday. This is because they can process exponentially greater calculations in parallel (depending on how many qubits they use), whereas classical computers can process calculations only in sequence.

Fearing that quantum computers will render encryption obsolete someday, scientists are proposing new technologies to protect sensitive communications. One field, known as "quantum cryptography," involves building systems that can protect data from encryption-beating quantum computers.

Unlike classical cryptography, which relies on algorithms to scramble data and keep it safe, quantum cryptography would be secure thanks to the weird quirks of quantum mechanics, according to IBM.

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For example, in a paper published Jan. 21 in the journal Advanced Quantum Technologies, scientists describe a mission called "Quick3," which uses photons particles of light to transmit data through a massive satellite network.

"Security will be based on the information being encoded into individual light particles and then transmitted," Tobias Vogl, professor of quantum communication systems engineering at TUM and co-author of the paper, said in a statement. "The laws of physics do not permit this information to be extracted or copied."

That's because the very act of measuring a quantum system changes its state.

"When the information is intercepted, the light particles change their characteristics," he added. "Because we can measure these state changes, any attempt to intercept the transmitted data will be recognized immediately, regardless of future advances in technology."

The challenge with traditional Earth-based quantum cryptography, however, lies in transmitting data over long distances, with a maximum range of just a few hundred miles, the TUM scientists said in the statement. This is because light tends to scatter as it travels, and there's no easy way to copy or amplify these light signals through fiber optic cables.

Scientists have also experimented with storing encryption keys in entangled particles meaning the data is intrinsically shared between two particles over space and time no matter how far apart. A project in 2020, for example, demonstrated "quantum key distribution" (QKD) between two ground stations 700 miles apart (1,120 km).

When it comes to transmitting photons, however, at altitudes higher than 6 miles (10 kilometers), the atmosphere is so thin that light is not scattered or absorbed, so signals can be extended over longer distances.

The Quick3 system would involve the entire system for transmitting data in this way, including the components needed to build the satellites. The team has already tested each component on Earth. The next step will be to test the system in space, with a satellite launch scheduled for 2025.

They will probably need hundreds, or perhaps even thousands, of satellites for a fully working quantum communications system, the team said.

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Future quantum computers will be no match for 'space encryption' that uses light to beam data around with the 1st ... - Space.com

Impacts of quantum computing threats of tomorrow will change how we use encryption today

Our business and personal lives depend on many things we do not often think about including encryption. Normally this area evolves under its own steam without most business decision-makers having to pay attention, but over the next few years that has to change or else you might inadvertently cede your secrets to adversaries both known and unknown.

A lot has been made of how quantum computing will change the world, but most of these pronouncements are long on hyperbole and short on actual details.

Quantum computing does have a great deal of promise and will eventually change the world in areas such as material science. The more immediate impact of a medium-scale quantum computer is the threat it and those that come after it will pose to how we all use encryption today. To make sense of this, and therefore understand how to mitigate the risk now, we have to back up and define some things.

Encryption today

As of this writing, there are two general types of encryption in use today: symmetric and asymmetric encryption. Symmetric encryption is when the sender and receiver both have the key that is used to encrypt and decrypt the protected data. This is used almost everywhere, but it is often enabled by the use of asymmetric encryption to exchange that key, given many parties need secure communications without meeting. The latter type is where quantum computers expose a major weakness.

Quantum computing

To make sense of this next part, your understanding of quantum computing does not have to go too deep, but you have to accept some strange truths in exchange. The best way to get through this is to remember the last superhero movie you saw and recall that to enjoy the film you had to suspend disbelief and not question how that person is flying or shooting lasers from body parts in ways that defy logic.

Quantum computing leverages the strange world of quantum mechanics, which fails to make sense when held to our day-to-day experiences. The bit to grasp is that a quantum calculation can evaluate all possible values at once rather than having to walk through each possible value one at a time the way a classical computer would have to approach a problem.

A brilliant mathematician at MIT named Peter Shor created an algorithm that could use this quantum weirdness to enable a sufficiently powerful quantum computer to break the hard math problem that lies at the heart of all mainstream asymmetric encryption in use today. We are all awaiting the day (or year) when a sufficient quantum computer breaks our encryption and guts our current security.

Post quantum encryption

Rather than just waiting for the end, the U.S. government has been busy evaluating replacement encryption mechanisms that can replace the soon-to-be vulnerable asymmetric mechanisms in use today. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is just about to crown Crystals Kyber and Crystals Dilithium (very geeky names indeed) as the heirs.

Swapping out your encryption is no easy task and will take time. The first step is to dig in and understand where you are using encryption in the first place, and then differentiating where the asymmetric encryption is employed. While not easy, this is likely the easiest part. Once you have completed this inventory, you have to make some complicated changes to code, ensure your vendors make these changes, or change solutions to a vendor who has, or soon will, make these changes.

Many pundits are assuring all who will listen that we have a long time before this threat becomes real, but that is, at best, wishful thinking and, at worst, a disaster in the making. The truth is we do not know. It could be 30 years, but many concede that it could be just a few years. It is not today or tomorrow, but it is so close that it is widely accepted that some threat actors are already storing encrypted data in anticipation of being able to use a future quantum computer to decrypt it. They are betting that this threat will come home to roost sooner rather than later. How will you bet?

Patrick Hynds is the CEO of DTS, a cybersecurity solutions provider in Derry.

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Why quantum computing is a threat to encryption, and what to do about it - New Hampshire Business Review