CYBER MAVEN Column – Did China Leap Ahead in Quantum Computing?

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David C. Walsh — Warrior Maven Expert Cyber Writer

Last July and August witnessed more developments bearing on the uncertain state of cyber readiness, including where the spooky arts of quantum computing and encryption (Quantum Cryptography/Quantum Key Distribution, or QC/QKD) intersect.

The most significant may be the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) dramatically upping the QC/QKD ante, teleporting a photon from the ground to a satellite some 300 miles from Earth. There, the sub-atomic particle was quantum mechanically “entangled” with others – theoretically enabling unbreakable communications.

The claimed world record puts China well ahead in the distance-benchmark stakes. (The previous, terrestrial record, using relay nodes and fiber-optic cable, was about 100 miles.)

While not unexpected here, the accomplishment seems bound to quicken activities in a field often dismissed as needless, impractical, too costly, and too slow to mature. For it occurred as chinks in the nation’s digital armor keep appearing — or widening.

Entities tasked with finding the chinks and laboring to “repair or replace” are many, including a couple of standouts: the U.S. Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) and DOD/Army cyber components.

LANL is a lightning rod for all things quantum. In 2013, it demonstrated for the first time QC/QKDs ability to safeguard vital “smart” electricity grid control data. Speeds were blistering—just 120 microseconds for information to traverse about 15 miles of optical fiber linking send-receive nodes.