Mediaboss Marketing

Biaggis reply was typical of an operating style in which every communication was expected to take immediate priority, according to Evans, who left the office in February 2021 after two years when, she said, her doctor told her the stress was damaging her physical health. She and a half dozen other former staffers who spoke to POLITICO described Biaggi as a boss with few boundaries and all-hours demands that resulted in rapid turnover through her office and campaign team.

That management style is drawing sharper scrutiny as Biaggi one of the highest profile progressives in New York politics runs in a competitive Hudson Valley House primary Aug. 23 against a leading establishment Democrat: Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The race, one of the most closely watched primaries in the nation, has fueled attacks by Biaggi and leading progressives that Maloney funded conservative Republicans nationwide in primaries as a DCCC political strategy and criticism by Maloney that Biaggi is out of touch with the swing district that he represented a portion of for five terms.

Maloney, too, is fielding complaints about his treatment of staff. Last month, a former congressional aide who Maloneys campaign paid to move from Miami to New York in 2014 when he was hired as an executive assistant told the New York Post that his role became that of a body man for Maloney during the more than four years he worked for the congressman.

The race will test whether progressives like Biaggi, who has been endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, can knock off an establishment Democratic incumbent in 2022 and perhaps join The Squad, the AOC-backed progressive delegation in Congress. Biaggi, the granddaughter of late Bronx Rep. Mario Biaggi, has done it before: In 2018, she beat state Senate Democratic powerhouse Jeff Klein with a fraction of his campaign cash in one the most expensive Democratic primary fights in New York history.

But she has a record now, and in Albany, questions over Biaggis workplace environment are striking in juxtaposition to her defining rhetoric: As chairperson of the Senate Ethics committee, Biaggi and her young, progressive colleagues are challenging and changing the old, toxic ways of operating at the state Capitol, which has been marred by decades of scandal and sexual harassment cases.

Democrat Alessandra Biaggi offers her email to a resident at an affordable housing complex in Peekskill where she canvassed July 16 for her congressional run against incumbent Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney.|Anna Gronewold/POLITICO

On the campaign trail, Biaggi is warm and effusive.

Its her favorite part, she said several times during a July morning door-knocking session at a public housing complex in Peekskill in Westchester County. Meeting voters, telling them how shes fought for their rights and how shes ready to do it again in Congress.

Its kind of an issue; I could talk to this plant, she jokes, gesturing to the landscaping. Im just so curious about people. And I actually would, like, harm my own self to fight against people who are cruel to others.

Part of that comes from spending her entire life around prolific New York politicians, including her grandfather, who was a Democratic kingpin in the Bronx and served in Congress for 20 years. She served as counsel in the administration of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but later left and became one of his chief critics.

At the Peekskill complex, Biaggi has a long list of registered Democrats to pitch, but she is waylaid at the first door she comes to. She is invited into the home of a woman who is plagued by fears of eviction, rent increases and a retaliatory building manager. Biaggi perches on the couch, shaking her head, pursing her lips, gasping in rage and offering her personal email and Fordham Law legal expertise to find solutions.

Its the kind of in-person empathy also projected by Ocasio-Cortez and the Working Families Party, which also has endorsed Biaggis congressional run.

In 2018, Biaggis victory over Klein helped Democrats regain control of the Senate for the first time in decades. Klein led a small group of Democrats, called the Independent Democratic Conference, who often voted with Republicans and effectively blocking a laundry list of Democratic legislation from becoming law.

Biaggi became a prominent force for change in Albany. The Democratic-led Legislature has since blown through a backlog of progressive bills, including new protections for tenants. She also helped lead the charge to fight sexual harassment in Albany, successfully pushing to hold the first hearings on the issue in 27 years and to pass an omnibus package with new protections for victims.

Soon, 30 minutes passed in the same womans living room, and as she makes an exit, Biaggi finds herself sitting on a patio with a man whos lived at the complex for decades. A group of curious neighbors begins to gather. Biaggi is suddenly up on her feet, talking with her whole body.

First her arms are fully outstretched, then shes slapping one hand with the back of another, in a retelling of the injustices she witnessed during a tour of Rikers Island last year. She parallels it to the way the residents tell her they have been treated by the housing directors their flowers and recreational spaces have been bulldozed, a planned power cut is scheduled to take place during the heatwave. She uses the words cruel and unacceptable a lot.

Oh, I like her, one of the residents whispers to Tina Volz-Bongar, a Democratic Party district leader who is backing Biaggi. She then turns to Biaggi. Youve got my vote, but what are you, like 10 years old? she asks.

Biaggi laughs. She is 36. Her Italian grandmother told her to smear Vaseline on her face at night, she said. It preserves her youth. The crowd laughs and heads nod. Biaggis campaign staffers finish canvassing the rest of the multi-building complex without her.

New York Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, D-Bronx, celebrates after her legislation to change state legal standards on sexual harassment to help victims prove harassment cases as members discuss the Bill in the Senate Chamber at the state Capitol Wednesday, June 19, 2019, in Albany, N.Y. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink)|AP Photo

Biaggi, who lives in North Castle in Westchester, a suburban county north of New York City, didnt mean to make ousting white, male, establishment incumbents her brand, she said later, but it somehow stuck. In the Senate, she quickly became a thorn in the side of Cuomo and his staff, and she was rumored to be considering challenging him in a primary long before his fall from grace. She was never actually going to do that, she says now.

I did not want to run for governor, Ill be very clear, she said. But I was happy that he thought I did because it kept him on his toes. And it allowed me to have a platform to speak to people about what he was up to and people listened and that was so important.

Her latest fight was also unplanned after New Yorks bungled redistricting process produced a new set of maps at the last minute, Biaggi dropped the Long Island-based congressional seat she initially planned to chase.

Instead, she announced she would challenge Maloney, partly as punishment for his strong-arming freshman colleague Rep. Mondaire Jones out of his Hudson Valley district, forcing him to run in the hotly contested 10th District in Brooklyn.

I think we all want to see people actually take risks on behalf of people, instead of themselves. That, to me, is how we actually get a different world, she said.

The dream of that world is why many of Biaggis former staffers initially signed up.

Evans, now 31, says when she joined the team shortly after Biaggi took office in 2019, the energy was palpable. Evans worked on legislation creating workforce protections and anti-harassment measures. The shine of those historic moments quickly wore off.

She was doing the same shit she criticized, behind her own closed doors, Evans said. And I honestly think thats the most disappointing thing and really very dangerous. Shes so good at outwardly projecting, but where were these protections for her own staff?

Evans and the other staffers said in interviews that they were expected to field calls and texts from Biaggi at all hours of the night, regardless of the level of urgency. There was a disconnect between the events and photo opportunities Biaggi sought out and her understanding of the work it took to accomplish things she was talking about, said three staffers who worked in her Bronx district. Two described becoming physically ill with anxiety about the constant alertness she demanded on nights, weekends and holidays.

Part of the stress was the confusion of a double standard: when Biaggi wanted space during a vacation in April 2019, she sent a Slack message to her team, which had been requesting her sign-off for legislative business.

@here GM - unless something is literally on fire and you need extra water, do not email/text/call me. It is v frustrating that my phone is going off every 5-10 minutes it is not okay for everyone to expect that I am readily available at the drop of a hat on my time off, when that is not reciprocated during regular business days, the message shown to POLITICO said.

Evans counted at least 16 departures from Biaggis government office which would typically employ about 10 individuals at a time during her time there between 2019 and 2021. That did not include any from the campaign team.

She and the other former staffers acknowledged turnover is not uncommon for a new office during a tumultuous time in the state and nation. But they each had worked in other offices throughout New York politics for demanding bosses, both male and female, and said Biaggi was different.

They each independently expressed that the hypocrisy was the hardest part her public comments about championing positive workplaces, boundaries, equal protections and mental health didnt apply to her own staff. Evans, for example, said that during the first few months of 2021 she was told to reschedule her own mid-morning, bi-weekly therapy sessions which she was allowed during the rest of the year so she could have a clear calendar for the all-consuming budget season.

Yeah, working there sucked all around, said one former senior staff member who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to candidly discuss their former employer.

Whatever youve heard, I promise its true, and you probably havent heard the worst of it, said another.

We were all terrified of her. I hate to give her that power, but you can work hard to get what you want, and still not talk down to people like that, Evans said.

By the time Biaggi was making the national media rounds in 2021, bashing Cuomo for the cruel and demeaning workplace hed cultivated, they couldnt help but notice some similarities when it came to downtrodden staff in their own office, they said.

Its ironic the way she talked about Cuomos toxic work environment, she could have been talking about her own office, they said. It was all about serving her, making her look good, not about serving the public.

When asked about the specific criticisms from the former staffers, Biaggi vowed to take feedback from her team about how she can be a better manager, and said she could never do my job without my team who work incredibly hard to live up to the needs of our constituents, she said in a statement.

The relentless demand of the work we do day in and day out has only been exacerbated by the pandemic but I wouldnt want to do any other work. I love the team we have built and will always value and take seriously all feedback from each member. It makes us stronger and better at what we do everyday, including myself.

Her reputation in the state Capitol is also mixed: Shes known to largely reject meetings with lobbyists and sometimes spurn opportunities for compromise required in a legislative body.

Her friends like Brooklyn Democrat Sen. Julia Salazar use words like passionate and fierce. Salazar said she wasnt aware of any widespread complaints about Biaggi as a boss or colleague.

I really admire her as someone whos able to, on the one hand, be forceful and try to shape the agenda of the conference, while also having respect for her colleagues, Salazar said. I think it can be a delicate balance, but shes done it really well.

Others even some of her allies said her interpersonal style is divisive but also had a positive impact on the state Senates Democratic Conference.

Alessandra came into the Senate as an outsider and has relished that reputation since her election, said one Democratic senator who did not want be named to avoid taking sides in the high-profile primary. A small handful of colleagues may characterize that sort of approach as not being able to play well in the sandbox most colleagues and I appreciate her conviction and tenacity.

Regardless, Biaggi will not be headed back to the state Senate next year. Shes endorsed Assemblymember Nathalia Fernandez to replace her. That was over another candidate, Christian Amato, a strategist and community organizer who was fired from Biaggis staff in 2019. Amato, when reached for comment, did not discuss the details of his departure, but said he was not surprised Biaggi backed Fernandez.

Our communities that make up the new 34th district are communities that have historically been overlooked overlooked by their representatives, you know, in a grander sense, by New York City, by the county, when we talk about resiliency or transportation issues, he said. So I think that two candidates who are so focused on keeping higher office and not focused on actually improving the material needs of their constituents in their community its really telling that they would come together.

Sean Patrick Maloney isnt too popular with some of his colleagues right now because of concerns about his DCCC leadership, and he also has recently fielded a complaint about his treatment of staff.|AP

Its unclear how Biaggis public or private personas might play with voters who may not even know theres a primary in late August as summer winds down.

She and her brand of progressive politics face a different landscape than the one that brought her into power in 2018 and also helped Ocasio-Cortez unseat Rep. Joe Crowley that same year. The progressives who made promises four years ago with the fuel of an anti-Trump fervor are now challenged to prove that they were more than social media lip service. But theyre also being watched to see if theyve been absorbed by the systems they vowed to upend.

In New York, voters have embraced more moderate Democrats in recent elections driven by fears for public safety and an uncertain economy. And far-left candidates were largely beaten back at the polls in New Yorks June primaries for governor and the state Assembly.

I think that people would agree Senators Biaggi, Salazar, (Jessica) Ramos and everyone who knocked out the IDC (the Independent Democratic Conference) were correct in step with where New Yorkers were, Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist at Mercury Public Affairs, said.

But its not 2018, the state environment has changed, and people are feeling theres a backlash to who we are as New Yorkers and theres a doubt that sending another squad member to Congress would be helpful.

Biaggi has never represented any part of the newly drawn Hudson Valley district. Its geography leans a moderate blue, but could elect a Republican in the unpredictability of this years midterm. It also includes a large and politically active Jewish voting bloc.

Both candidates have announced publicly they support Israel, but the districts Jewish community which could drive significant turnout is cautious because they have viewed many of Biaggis allies, like AOC, as hostile.

The primary winner will face the victor of the Republican primary, where Assemblymember Mike Lawler is on track to prevail by way of strong fundraising and local endorsements. Some polling suggests slim margins in a hypothetical race between Maloney and Lawler.

Maloney isnt too popular with some of his colleagues right now because of concerns about his DCCC leadership, and he also has recently fielded a complaint about his treatment of staff.

Harold Leath regularly spent time with Maloney and his family outside of work, accompanied him everywhere he went in the district, and told the New York Post my main responsibility was to make sure the congressman and his family never needed anything.

A former chairwoman of the Dutchess County Democratic Party who is backing Biaggi has filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics and asked for an investigation. The Maloney campaign and office have denied any ethical or financial wrongdoing and said any investigation will prove that.

Still, internal polling from both his and Biaggis campaigns shows him with double digits leads. He has significantly more cash on hand and support from more than 75 current and former Democratic officials, labor unions, local committees and other interest groups. On Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton endorsed him. (The district includes the Clintons Westchester County home of Chappaqua.)

On Saturday, he received the endorsement of the New York Times.

A low-turnout primary could cut both ways: Maloney could be carried by name recognition and mobilization from top Democratic leaders; Biaggis could be buoyed by her grassroots efforts. Thats Biaggis goal: Getting communities out to vote by pointing to the things her opponent hasnt done in Washington amid the turbulent times.

Ive got to remind voters: Im frustrated too, she said. Im a young person watching all of these things happen. And Im like, what are you guys doing? Like, can you have some urgency with what were fighting for? The fact that they dont feel the urgency to me is a disqualification.

Maloneys campaign says that characterization is desperate attacks from a flailing campaign and pointed to Maloneys House leadership team role in passing the first major gun safety reform package in decades, as well as the massive climate, tax and healthcare package making its way through Congress this month.

Biaggi is losing by double digits in her own internal polls because she is running a campaign based on smearing Rep. Maloney instead of making any positive case for herself, spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said,. Thats why she has yet to receive a single endorsement from a local elected official, union or Democratic committee.

The rest is here:
Biaggi wants to defeat the DCCC boss in New York. Her ex-staff has a story to tell. - POLITICO

D-Wave completed a planned merger on Monday with DPCM Capital (the latter of which was already listed on the New York Stock Exchange), making the Canada-basedfirm the third quantum player to go public via a SPACthat is, a special purpose acquisition companywithin the last year. (The other companies? Rigetti and IonQ.)

Its an interesting trend, but perhaps not a surprising one: According to D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz, the until-recently-obscure financial quirk offers his companyone thats in a still-budding sectorfaster access to capital.

In some sense SPACs are ideal for a company that has huge potential but is going to take some time to mature,he tells Fast Company. With a SPAC, youre able to tap into the funding sources in the public markets to accelerate your growth and do it based on the future potential.

A traditional IPO, on the other hand, is all about today, he adds.

SPACs can also save companies money (though this point is subject to some debate). I dont think all SPACs should be discounted, says Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy, a consulting firm. Its a much less expensive way to go public and takes less time and effort.

So far, D-Waves post-SPAC stock is holding its own. It opened at $9.98 Monday and closed at $11.86 on Thursday. But Rigetti and IonQ havent fared as well. Rigetti has seen its shares drop in value by roughly half since its listing on the NASDAQ in March. IonQs shares have lost about 40% of their value since its listing in October 2021.

In the young field of quantum computing, D-Wave has emerged as a major character. Back in 2011, the company became the first to actually sell a quantum computer; it now counts NASA, Google, and Lockheed Martin as customers.

Building and operating a quantum computer is an extraordinary feat of science and engineering. Instead of the bits used in traditional computers (which can be set to zero or one), quantum computers use subatomic particles called qubits, which can represent many values between zero and one, as well as zero and one at the same time (a superposition). Qubits can also entangle to represent values in extremely complex problems. In order to take advantage of these properties, the computer has to control the state of the qubits, whose erratic behavior is governed by quantum physics, not regular physics. This is very hard, and usually involves supercooling the qubits to slow their constant spin, then using lasers or electricity to control their state.

D-Wave was able to get to market with a quantum computer because it adopted a unique approach to working with the qubitsone that asks far less of them. What its looking for is the minimum energy level within a qubit, and by finding the minimum energy level, then theyre able to find the most optimized solution to a problem, says Heather West, research manager at research firm IDC. And thats why D-Wave is able to say they have 5,000 to 7,000 qubits in their system versus an IBM, which is still down around 127.

Even though that approach, called quantum annealing, doesnt try to exert a lot of control over the states of the qubits, its still very useful for solving optimization problemsthat is, problems where the goal is to find the best solution among a huge number of possibles. An optimization problem might be finding the optimal routes and cargos for a large fleet of delivery trucks, or finding the optimal number of employees to schedule on a given day. Its a common type of business puzzle, and annealers are especially good at solving them.

Some of these industries really gravitated toward D-Wave because of those optimization problems, and being able to pull in all sorts of data to find these optimized solutions and solving problems faster was really appealing, West says.

That application is a good example of the way companies are using quantum services like D-Wave today. Theyre looking for problem types where classical computers struggle and quantum computers excel.

They [D-Wave] are really more of an accelerator, says Ashish Nadkarni, group VP and general manager at IDC. We are not at the point where you can completely run all kinds of jobs on a quantum computer.

But D-Waves annealer may eventually be seen as a forerunner to a more robust kind of quantum computing, called gate model, in which the quantum computer takes full advantage of the quantum properties of the qubitstheir many possible states, their capacity for superposition, and the compute power enabled by multiple qubits entangling with each other.

Controlling and leveraging these properties opens the possibility of solving problems that are far beyond the reach of classical supercomputers (and annealers). These are large probabilistic problems where the qubits are asked to model huge and complex data sets. It could be modeling all the receptors in the brain to explore how theyll react to a drug, or a huge array of stock market conditions to predict their effect on the price of a certain commodity.

Realizing that much of the upside and excitement around quantum computing is coming from the possibility to solve such problems, D-Wave announced last year that it had begun building gate-model quantum computers more like the ones built by Google, IBM, and IonQ. D-Wave will need years to develop its gate-model quantum, but Baratz believes offering both annealers and gate-model quantum computing will eventually put his company at an advantage.

By doing both and being the only company thats doing both, were the only company in the world that will be able to address the full market for quantum, and the full set of use cases, he says. D-Waves customers typically tap into these computing services via a dedicated cloud service.

Because quantum is considered a nascent technology, many potential customers (such as companies in the financial services and pharmaceutical industries) are experimenting with running certain types of algorithms on quantum systems to look for some advantage over classical computing. But theyre not necessarily paying customers.

Baratz says that its the gate-model quantum services that are nascent technology, not D-Waves annealers, which he says are ready to deliver real value today. He believes the gate-model quantum computers are still as many as seven years away from being able to run general business applications in a way that beats classical computers.

Baratz believes that D-Wave is now challenged to make sure customers differentiate between gate-model computingwhich he says could be as many as seven years away from running real business applicationsand D-Waves quantum annealing service, which is mature and ready to deliver value today. While his gate-model competitors are out telling customers its okay to dip their toes into the water and experiment, D-Wave must counter that narrative in the marketplace with the message that customers can be doing real optimization work using quantum annealing now.

We truly are commercial, so when our competitors talk about revenue, they talk about government research grants as revenue, and they talk about national labs and academic institutions as customers, Baratz says. When we talk about our customers, we talk about our recently announced deal with MasterCard, or Deloitte or Johnson & Johnson or Volkswagen.

Baratz says over 65% of D-Waves quantum cloud revenue last year came from more than 50 commercial customers, which include over two dozen members of the Forbes Global 2000.

Baratz says D-Wave is now entering a phase in which it can leverage its annealers to start customer relationships.

We do have a significant head start, but we think now is the time to really make the investment to grow that loyal customer base and get the market share, Baratz says.And then, as we bring new generations of annealing to market, its just an upsell to more complex applications as we bring gate [model] to market.

Read more from the original source:
D-Wave is the third quantum startup to SPAC in less than a year - Fast Company

This years Red Hat Summit gathering in early May provided an opportunity to step back from the enterprise computing treadmill and assess the long-term implications of where network innovation is headed.

Along with news surrounding an edge platform opportunity with General Motors Corp. and the latest release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, this years gathering in Boston offered a glimpse into the computing future.

Through SiliconANGLEs exclusive onsite coverage of the Summit and a closer analysis of multiple interviews with Red Hat Inc. thought leaders over the past two years on theCUBE, a clearer picture emerges. Three major areas that are high on the priority list for the companys top executives: building platforms for managed services, the open hybrid cloud and quantum computing.

Matt Hicks was recently named Red Hat CEO. Photo: SiliconANGLE

These areas are being driven by Red Hats longtime commitment to the open-source community. Open source remains the companys wellspring, and Red Hat pays close attention to which way the water flows.

For us, when you see open-source projects, they definitely get to a critical mass where you have so much contribution, so much innovation there, theyre going to be able to follow the trends pretty well,Matt Hicks, the newly appointed chief executive of Red Hat, said in aninterview with theCUBE analysts. Thats been our model, though; its to find those projects, be influential in them, be able to drive value in lifecycles.

One project that Red Hat fully supports involves providing services for the managed cloud. The company announced a number of offerings in this area during its Summit event in 2021, and it has continued to build on those with OpenShift as the foundation.

The managed cloud is generally defined as a suite of services with partial or complete management of cloud resources. The new managed cloud services portfolio that Red Hat announced last year meant that OpenShift was now available on all of the major cloud provider platforms.

To further its managed cloud vision, Red Hat launched OpenShift Streams for Apache Kafka, an add-on for OpenShift Dedicated called API Management Service, and OpenShift Data Science. The key behind the companys managed cloud strategy is to provide enterprises with an ability to control the flow of data across different environments.

Clayton Coleman envisions an open hybrid cloud future. Photo: SiliconANGLE

A visible proponent of the managed cloud has been Clayton Coleman (pictured) who, until recently, was Red Hats chief technical officer for hybrid cloud. Coleman took a new position in June as a distinguished engineer at Google LLC.

Were trying to continue to deliver the best experience, the best operational reliability that we can so that the choice of where to run your cloud or where you run your applications matches the decisions youve already made and where your future investments are going to be, Coleman said in an interview with theCUBE at the time of the OpenShift releases. We want to be where customers are but also want to give you that consistency that has been the hallmark of OpenShift since the beginning.

This quest for consistency has infused much of Red Hats strategic focus over the years, as it has pursued open-source innovation from the data center to the cloud and edge. Red Hats vision of the open hybrid cloud is guided by partnerships and technology advances, and one top executive sees this coming from the processor side.

Paul Cormier speaks at Red Hat Summit in Boston, May 2022. Photo: m.albertson

At this years Summit, former CEO and now Red Hat Chairman Paul Cormier (pictured) declared that the open hybrid cloud would be defined by hardware innovation at the edge. Cormiers point was that innovation from processor firms such as Nvidia Corp., Arm Ltd. and Intel Corp. would play a central role in the future of open hybrid cloud. To underscore this point, senior executives from Intel and Nvidia made prominent appearances during the Summit keynote sessions in May, two months after Red Hat added support for OpenShift on Arm processors.

SiliconANGLEs analysis of market data from Enterprise Technology Research last fall pointed to the ascendance of hybrid cloud as an enterprise information technology force. Red Hat is betting that open-source code can provide the foundation for creating systems and environments that seamlessly cross a multitude of platforms.

The company has also backed up its bet with a significant research investment. In April 2021, Red Hat announced the donation of software subscriptions valued at half a billion dollars to Boston University for open hybrid cloud research. The collaboration will focus on operations and systems research using upstream and production environment code.

Its really giving you that secure, flexible, fast innovation backbone for cloud-native computing, Hicks said in an interview about open hybrid cloud in 2021. I hope well see an explosion of innovation that comes out, and I hope customers see the benefits of doing that on an open hybrid cloud model.

Thought leaders within the Red Hat community are also looking beyond managed services and the open hybrid cloud for the next wave of innovation. Computings future will likely be impacted by current research in the quantum field.

Quantum computings potential lies in its ability to retain multiple states, a feature known as superposition. While classical computing models are based on bits with a 1 or a 0, a qubit in quantum can be 1, 0 or both.This sets the stage for a significant boost in computing power and a future tied to quantum supremacy as both Red Hat and IBM pursue research initiatives in this field.

Parul Singh guides Red Hats work toward quantum supremacy. Photo: SiliconANGLE

Quantum supremacy plays a very important role in the roadmap that weve been working on, said Parul Singh (pictured), senior software engineer at Red Hat, in an interview with theCUBE. Lets say that you have any program that you run or any problem that you solve on a classical computer. A quantum computer would give you the results faster, so thats how we define quantum supremacy.

The cloud offers a potential platformto host quantum services. In partnership with IBM, Red Hat has demonstrated how to make quantum systems work through the use of an OpenShift 4 cluster and Qiskit, an open-source software development tool.

IBM has made quantum a significant strategic priority. The company announced plans to deliver a 4,000-plus-qubit system by 2025 and IBM CEO Arvind Krishna spent much of his press briefing during the firms annual conference in May describing progress toward a quantum-fueled future.

There are still challenges ahead for researchers in scaling quantum technology and bringing 4,000 qubits from a simulator to the physical core of a computer. Meanwhile, Red Hat is laying the groundwork to bridge the classical and quantum worlds and democratize the technology for wider use.

Quantum computers are there, but it is not easily accessible for everyone to consume because it is a very new area, Singh said. You have a classical world and a quantum world, and thats where a lot of thought process has been. What we are trying to do is establish best practices so you can have classical components exchanging data with quantum.

See the original post here:
Open hybrid cloud and quantum computing shape future for Red Hat thought leaders - SiliconANGLE News

Were you unable to attend Transform 2022? Check out all of the summit sessions in our on-demand library now! Watch here.

The creation of classical computing may have paved the way for the modern enterprise, but its also barely scratched the surface of the limits of data processing potential. In the future, quantum computers will amplify the resources that organizations have available to process their data.

While quantum computing will unlock powerful analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) processing capabilities, it also opens the door to serious security vulnerabilities, due to the ability of these computers to decrypt public-key algorithms.

This would give cybercriminals and nation-states the ability to openly decrypt information protected by public-key algorithms not just in the future, but also retrospectively by collecting encrypted data today to decrypt when quantum computers finally reach maturity.

Although researchers estimate that quantum computers could be able to do this as soon as 2030, with the Biden administrations CHIPS and Science Act [subscription required] being approved by Congress last week and setting aside $52 billion in subsidies to support semiconductor manufacturers, and $200 billion to aid research in AI, robotics and quantum computing this development could happen much sooner.

MetaBeat 2022

MetaBeat will bring together thought leaders to give guidance on how metaverse technology will transform the way all industries communicate and do business on October 4 in San Francisco, CA.

The idea of quantum risk dates back to 1994, when mathematician and researcher Peter Shor created Shors algorithm, and discovered that it was theoretically possible to break cryptographic algorithms with number factorization.

This first highlighted the vulnerability of public-key algorithms that werent able to offer this level of factorization. However, not all forms of public-key encryption are as susceptible to exploitation as others, so its important not to panic about quantum risk.

Quantum computers cracking crypto sounds scary and will get people reading, but the reality is much more nuanced. Will some types of QC eventually be able to decode some of todays best crypto? Almost certainly. Will we have time to put measures in place before that happens? Signs point to yes, said Brian Hopkins, Forrester analyst.

Hopkins explains that, on the one hand, asymmetric key encryption algorithms like PKI are the most vulnerable, while symmetric key encryption is much less vulnerable, and one-time pads would remain pretty much unbreakable.

For Hopkins, the main risk posed by quantum computers lies in the fact that small advances in their infrastructure can oustrip classical systems and rapidly change the threat landscape.

If one of these firms [IBM, HPE, IonQ, Rigetti] figures out how to scale high-quality qubits more easily, we could see machines that double or triple in qubit number and quality every year to 18 months, Hopkins said. That means we could go from nothing to oh no in a few months.

Although its unclear when quantum computers will have the ability to decrypt public key algorithms, many commentators are concerned that threat actors and nation-states are in the process of stockpiling data thats encrypted today, which they will then decrypt when quantum computing advances.

One of the biggest risks at present is whats known as a HNDL attack This is an acronym for harvest now, decrypt later, where encrypted data is captured, stored and held onto until a quantum computer is able to unlock it, said Vikram Sharma, founder and CEO, QuintessenceLabs.

While this intercepted data is encrypted, this is a false sense of security; it will easily be decrypted by a threat actor with access to a quantum computer, Sharma said. Above all, new investments in quantum tech and geopolitical motivations mean the quantum risk threat has shifted from no longer if, to when.

One of the challenges around reacting to post-quantum threats is the lack of certainty around the future threat landscape, and what technologies are required to defend against them. Together, these factors make it difficult to justify investment in preventative and defensive post-quantum technologies.

Fortunately, post-quantum cryptography (PQC) solutions, essentially encryption services that cant be decrypted by quantum computers, offer a strong answer to these next-generation threats.

The key to being prepared for the evolving threat landscape is to act quickly. As Sharma said, By the time companies start feeling risk from a quantum computer, it will be much too late, because data that was stolen years ago will have been decrypted.

A simple first step is for organizations to start identifying data assets that could be vulnerable to the decryption of public-key algorithms. Conducting a quantum risk assessment can help them identify the impact a post-quantum incident could have on the organization as a whole.

With this information, security leaders can start to build a business case to justify spending on quantum resilience, identifying the potential financial impact of such an event, and put forward a proposed timeline to adopt any defensive solutions like PQC, quantum key distribution (QKD) or quantum random number generation (QRNG).

Just a month ago, NIST finally announced the first four post-quantum algorithms it would be choosing as its new post-quantum cryptographic standard.

This means those organizations facing advanced persistent threats (from nation-states, in particular) now have guidance on how to select quantum-resistant encryption for their highest-secrecy data moving forward, said Kayne McGladrey, IEEE senior member.

As part of the announcement, NIST selected some core algorithms for enterprise use cases. These include the CRYSTALS-Kyber algorithm for general encryption, and CRYSTALS-Dilithium, FALCON and SPHINCS+ for digital signatures (although it recommended Dilithium as the primary digital signature algorithm).

Vadim Lyubashevsky, a Cryptography Research Scientist at IBM who worked on Cyber and Dilithium, explains that the CRYSTALS-Kyber algorithm is extremely fast, with short public-key and ciphertext sizes, while Dilithium is advantageous over FALCON because its easier to implement and less error-prone.

Though these solutions are effective, Lyubashevsky warns that organizations should expect to mix adoption of quantum encryption alongside traditional public-key algorithms.

Realistically, what organizations should expect to implement are hybrid strategies that blend both quantum-safe protocols with existing cryptographic standards to ensure data is secure and protected against threats that exist now and that will arise in the near future, Lyubashevsky said.

As the era of quantum computing may arrive very soon, it is worth starting early on the journey to move from safe to quantum safe. The first step to get there is education: Understand quantum-safe cryptography and what its implications are for your organization. Partner with cryptographic experts to future-proof data encryption and make decisions that will protect your systems well into the future, Lyubashevsky said.

VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Learn more about membership.

Read the original here:
The truth about quantum risk cryptography and being quantum safe - VentureBeat

Researchers from Simon Fraser University were successful in making a breakthrough in the field of quantum technology development. Their study paves the way for creating silicon-based quantum computing processors compatible with the existing semiconductor manufacturing technology.

The researchers light up the silicon chips tiny defects with intense light beams. Stephanie Simmons, the principal investigator of the research, explains that the imperfections of the chips serve as an information carrier. Investigators point out that the tiny defect reflects the transmitted light.

Some of the naturally occurring silicon imperfections may act as quantum bits or qubits. Scientists consider these defects as spin qubits. Also, previous research shows how silicon produces long-lived and stale qubits.

Daniel Higginbottom, their lead author, considers this breakthrough promising. He explains that the researchers were able to combine silicon defects with quantum physics when it was considered to be impossible to do before.

Furthermore, he notes that while silicon defects have been studied extensively from the 1970s to the 1990s and quantum physics research being done for decades, its only now that they saw these two studies come together. He says that by utilizing optical technology in silicon defects[theyve] have found something with applications in quantum technology thats certainly remarkable.

Simmons acknowledges that quantum computing is the future of computers with its capability to solve simple and complex problems, however, its still in its early stages. But with the use of silicon chips, the process can become more streamlined and bring quantum computing faster to the public than expected.

This study demonstrates the possibility of making quantum computers with enough power and scale to manage significant computation. It gives an opportunity for advancements in the fields of cybersecurity, chemistry, medicine, and other fields.

Photo credit: The feature image is symbolic and has been taken by Solar Seven.Sources: Chat News Today / Quantum Inspire

Did this article help you? If not, let us know what we missed.

Originally posted here:
Researchers Find Breakthrough on Quantum Computing With Silicon Chips - TechAcute