The Lead Brief As I explored last week, we’re entering an exciting era for quantum technologies. And the geopolitical stakes are high. Both Washington and Beijing anticipate that the technology will bring significant advantages on the battlefield — allowing militaries to communicate in ways that are impossible to decipher and also direct missiles without GPS. The Special Competitive Studies Project, a think tank founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, wants the U.S. to be first in the quantum race. And the organization has an excellent new report out today that provides a “scorecard” of how the U.S. is faring in comparison to China. The findings: The U.S. has a slight edge, getting higher ratings on its innovation leadership, industrial capacity, market ecosystem and talent pipeline supporting quantum development. But China leads where it always leads (“national leverage”), deploying enormous state resources in concentrated quantum research hubs and building out the physical infrastructure to support quantum tech at scale. Just look at where the Chinese quantum facilities are concentrated: Hefei, the capital city of Anhui Province. Reportedly funded at $10 billion, the city is home to a “Quantum Avenue” anchored by the country’s leading quantum research institution, the University of Science and Technology of China — which is in turn surrounded by the Hefei National Laboratory and an array of private companies that manufacture different parts of the quantum supply chain, according to the report. I chatted Thursday morning with David Lin, senior adviser of tech leadership at SCSP, about the report’s findings. Note: Report co-authors include the Special Competitive Studies Project’s Nicholas Furst, Olivia Armstrong, Nyah Stewart and Damien Bérubé. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Q: Where is the U.S. leading in quantum, and where is China leading in terms of the technology? Where should the U.S. be concerned if it wants to maintain that slight edge you talk about? A: This is the third report in our tech scorecard series, and, so far, we’ve written ones on robotics, on autonomous vehicles, and this one is on quantum. And so, it’s worth noting that this is the first scorecard that we’ve released where we are actually judging or assessing that the U.S. is in the lead. I think part of that shift is because quantum technologies right now are lower in the technology readiness level. They’re in that more emerging transition phase between science, engineering and commercial applications. And, if you look across the whole waterfront of strategic technologies, the science part of emerging technologies is where the U.S. traditionally has excelled. And, once we start transitioning from science to commercial applications, that’s where you start to need a lot of infrastructure investments — a lot of capital investments to build the labs, to build the components, to build the computers to deploy and scale that technology at commercial scale. And that’s where we start to see China leveraging its manufacturing industrial base to edge out the lead. Q: As you mentioned with the other technologies in your studies, such as robotics, deployment and coordination can end up mattering a lot more in the long run than innovation once it hits that commercialization phase. Do we risk underweighting that “national leverage” category? A: Absolutely. And I think the Department of Commerce’s recent announcement that the [government] was taking $2 billion from Chips and Science [Act] R&D money and dedicating that to equity investments in nine U.S. quantum computing companies — that starts to move the needle for the U.S. when it comes to national leverage. I think that at least starts to send a strong U.S. government demand signal that the [government] and this administration is serious about quantum technologies. Q: I saw a point in the report that Chinese nationals account for nearly 30 percent of the physics PhDs the U.S. awards to non-U.S. citizens. Should we be concerned that we’re helping educate Chinese scientists in leading quantum technologies? A: I would argue that we should be concerned, but maybe not for the reasons that many people think. I think we should be concerned about ways that we can attract even Chinese talent to the United States and making sure that there are ways to keep them here. This harks back to a broader tech talent recommendation that the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence put out, which is this idea of stapling green cards to diplomas. I think we want the Chinese talent to come to the U.S., innovate in the U.S., build in the U.S. and stay in the U.S. And so, I think we need to find the policies and regulations that have been able to do that. Q: You have this really interesting map in the report that shows the extensive quantum key distribution (QKD) fiber and relay network that the Chinese have built connecting Shanghai to Beijing to Guangzhou. However, the National Security Agency put out a key report arguing that QKD has several vulnerabilities — and that agencies should not use the infrastructure. Can you explain what QKD is and why the U.S. has chosen not to invest in it at all? A: QKD is essentially a secure quantum-based communications network that China has decided to really pour a lot of infrastructure dollars into. This leans into, again, one of their comparative advantages in terms of infrastructure. I think the [NSA] memo determined, through a slew of technical and scientific reasons … that QKD is not a really viable technology at this stage. And I think that has really cooled QKD investments here in the U.S. Q: If the technology does become viable, what could the Chinese potentially do with this technology? Communicate in entirely undecipherable ways? A: That is the theoretical value proposition of QKD. In the U.S., the prevailing wisdom is gravitating toward PQC, which is post-quantum cryptography. [That is] looking at ways to harden our data and networks to prepare for a day when quantum computers can decrypt our current encryption key, which is based around RSA technology. The U.S. isn’t necessarily behind in QKD so much in that we just haven’t put our focus on QKD. Q: What would you say is the broad takeaway behind the finding that the U.S. is behind in autonomous vehicles and robotics but ahead in quantum? A: China’s comparative advantage has always been more on things that tie back to its manufacturing industrial base. We’re looking at 6G. We’re looking at small modular reactors. There are reports that are coming down the pike. The more that the current state of that technology leans on the science more than it does physical infrastructure, I think that will be the key determining factor. This newsletter is published by WP Intelligence, The Washington Post’s subscription service for professionals that provides business, policy and thought leaders with actionable insights. WP Intelligence operates independently from The Washington Post newsroom. Learn more about WP Intelligence. | 
