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A speaker at the TechNet Indo-Pacific conference in Hawaii made the bold claim that “China is about a decade ahead of us on quantum” during a panel discussing the use of artificial intelligence for warfighting.&nbsp;
TechNet Indo-Pacific is a military conference <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://events.afcea.org/tip24/public/Content.aspx?ID=108094&amp;sortMenu=101002" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" text="null" title="https://events.afcea.org/tip24/public/Content.aspx?ID=108094&amp;sortMenu=101002">held</a> each year dedicated to discussions on defense and wartime preparedness. Its particular area of focus is the geographical area between Africa’s eastern coast and the US’s western coast.&nbsp;
The panel, “AI/ML as a Warfighting Advantage” took place on Oct. 22 and featured several speakers from the tech industry including the executive who issued the warning, Theresa Melvin, chief technology officer at AI firm Aerospike.&nbsp;
According to Melvin, China has achieved a purported “decade ahead” advantage in quantum “specifically because they never fought a war on terror.” However, there appears to be little scientific or economic evidence to support these assertions.&nbsp;
<h2 id="war-on-terror">War on terror</h2>
Melvin’s remarks concerning the war on terror seemingly stem from the idea that China has outspent the US on quantum computing research. According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), China has <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://itif.org/publications/2024/09/09/how-innovative-is-china-in-quantum/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="null" text="null" title="null">spent</a> over $15 billion in public funding on quantum research, approximately five times more than the US.&nbsp;
There’s no scientific measure by which the amount of money spent or the number of research articles published can be directly correlated to measurable progress. Furthermore, those figures don’t account for private sector spending on quantum technologies, an area the US <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="vhttps://www.csis.org/analysis/innovation-lightbulb-private-investment-quantum-technology" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" text="null" title="vhttps://www.csis.org/analysis/innovation-lightbulb-private-investment-quantum-technology">leads</a> in.&nbsp;
Related: <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/quantum-computing-bitcoin-encryption-keys" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="null" text="null" title="null">Quantum computer ‘threat’ to crypto is exaggerated — for now</a>
Even factoring in the cost of the US war on terror, which high-end estimates <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="null" text="null" title="null">place</a> at approximately $8 trillion, the US GDP <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?most_recent_value_desc=true" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="null" text="null" title="null">surpasses</a> China by more than $10 trillion annually according to data from the World Bank Group.&nbsp;
This indicates that a direct comparison of progress between the two nations based on government spending is in no way indicative of either’s capabilities in the quantum sector.&nbsp;
<h2 id="quantum-advantage">Quantum advantage</h2>
China’s quantum computing sector recently made headlines when the South China Morning Post reported on Oct. 13 that scientists at Shanghai University had used a <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/scientists-breach-crypto-algorithms-quantum-computer-report" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="null" text="null" title="null">Canadian-built quantum device to crack “military grade” encryption</a>.
This report was quickly debunked and, per translations of the research paper generated by both Google and Microsoft services independently, the scientists appear to have made no such claims in their research.
Related: <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/china-has-not-cracked-encryption-mental-outlaw" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="null" text="null" title="null">China has not cracked encryption, at least not yet — Mental Outlaw</a>
The aforementioned ITIF report gives a more nuanced and comprehensive overview of what China’s quantum technologies sector actually looks like and how it compares to the US.&nbsp;
“China leads in quantum communications, lags behind in computing (where the United States excels), and matches the United States in sensing,” reads the report, adding that “the United States dominates high-impact areas.”
The high-impact areas the US “dominates” are those most closely related to security and defense: quantum computing and quantum encryption. Standards and encryption algorithms for the post-quantum era have already been developed in the US.<iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HCOj9CSE050" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
While it’s true that China’s research on quantum communications is widely <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-reaches-new-milestone-in-space-based-quantum-communications/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" text="null" title="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-reaches-new-milestone-in-space-based-quantum-communications/">considered</a> world-class, there’s little evidence to support that it’s as competitive in the field of quantum computing or encryption/decryption.&nbsp;
Publicly available research and roadmaps <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://www.ibm.com/roadmaps/quantum/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="null" text="null" title="null">indicate</a> that US-based private sector companies such as Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, and others are <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://quantumai.google/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="null" text="null" title="null">ahead</a> of China in those specific areas as well as related fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Magazine: <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/solana-champion-mert-mumtaz-fud-sol-most-helius/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="null" text="null" title="null">The rise of Mert Mumtaz: ‘I probably FUD Solana the most out of anybody’</a>

US tech exec warns China is ‘a decade ahead’ on quantum

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