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Today we're going to be talking about emerging technology, in particular quantum technology, and how it influences policy, and how policy influences emerging technology and quantum technology.

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And so first I'd like to start off with the fact that in 2023, it is predicted that there will be about $30 billion spent globally on quantum technology.

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Of that $30 billion, the United States, with its National Quantum Initiative, is about to spend about $4.5 billion.

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The European Consortium is about a billion and a half.

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And the People's Republic of China is supposed to be spending $15 billion.

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In addition to that, globally we have 18 countries that have quantum strategies, or are thinking about how to use quantum technology to enhance not only their governments, but also the technology, their prosperity, as well as trying to protect data globally.

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The rest of them are really in that quantum divide.

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They don't have access to quantum technology.

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They don't have access to the understanding of what policies have been written, about what regulations might be needed, as well as what threats are out there from that quantum technology.

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And so if we think through this, there are attacks that are going on regularly, such as store-now decrypt-later attacks, where your data is being siphoned off, stored in data centers, with the goal that once quantum computers are here, that Shor's algorithm will then be able to decrypt your data instantaneously.

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This may not seem like a big deal, but what happens when all the data from Merck, and Pfizer, and J&J, and all of the others are now put together, and all of their individual trial data is now allowed to be collaborated and collated in order to create outstanding and astonishing insights into drug discovery.

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And now the People's Republic of China, or some other bad actor, has access to that data, and now has a cure for cancer.

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Will they share that cure with you?

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Will they keep it for their own citizens?

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Will they try to find a counter to give people cancer, so that they can control that?

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Have we thought about those sorts of things?

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The United States has developed, and is developing, policies around quantum technology.

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They are looking at things like post-quantum cryptography in particular, and they've done several national security memos, office of management and budget memos, executive orders, as well as laws to try to protect, enhance, and control what is going on with quantum technology.

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There's also those things such as export control, or ITAR, which is technology that is deemed to be too important for military needs, that it needs another special category before it is exported even to our allies like the UK, Australia, Canada, Mexico,

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or other places.

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And so what does that mean for us?

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What does that mean for this collective of this quantum world that we live in?

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Because one of the things that I love about the quantum community is how collaborative the quantum community is, how supportive they are of each other, and how we really try to work towards the greater good for all of the technology that we do have.

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And so one of the things that I would like to say before we get to some questions about this, is that there are ways that you, everybody in here, can actually be a part of making sure that the policy and regulations that are put in place across the global governments are useful and not harmful.

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I'll give you a quick antidote.

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I was talking to the White House, and certain people within the White House, we won't tell you who, and they made a comment to me when I briefed them on some things about, we're going to put export controls on dilution fridge technology.

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And I said, why would you do that?

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Well, because we don't want the PRC to have that technology.

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You're too late, buddy.

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Why would you do that now?

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You don't even understand what the components are, where they come from.

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And you can build a dilution fridge based on plans around the internet.

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That's not what you should be looking at.

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You should be looking at how do we build a more collaborative environment for quantum technology, to enable us to work with our allies and partners, as well as our commercial and government organizations, to enhance that technology and maintain that edge,

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that leading edge.

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There was a question over in the far corner about that.

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And so for you, what I would say is that if you're part of a company or part of a quantum group, be active in the dialogue about quantum policies, about export control, about what regulations should or shouldn't be there.

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There's often open comment sessions or sections that you can actually provide, for whether it's the U.S.

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government or other governments, as well as quantum strategy input.

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The second thing that I would say is that if you're in a country that is part of the quantum divide, that doesn't currently have a quantum strategy or even a thought about what to do with quantum, engage with those that do, to enable them to come help their government to build those.

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And then the last thing I would say is, as was mentioned earlier, is that education is a huge part of this.

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It's educating our young people, but it's also educating the leaders in government about what quantum technology is, what's here today, what will be here tomorrow, what's useful, what's not useful, as well as how we should be using the technology in order to make this world a better place.

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Okay, so that's sort of a little bit of an introduction.

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I would love, if there's anybody that has any questions or wants to talk about anything, I'm happy to take anything.

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Yes?

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I guess I'll continue on the previous topic, since privacy is very relevant

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in the digital world.

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So I guess from your perspective, given that we haven't re-standardized what privacy means around the world, how much of that is needed to be able to advance policy in this space?

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Yeah, so I think policy and privacy are very much aligned.

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I think the one thing that I would talk about that is probably most dear to people's hearts are the store-now-decrypt-later attacks.

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That is probably one of the biggest threats to privacy that we have at the moment, whether it is privacy of your own personal data, or your IP, or critical infrastructure, and being able to protect that so that you can then maintain this lifestyle that we have here in the Western world.

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And for that, it's the how do you make sure that you can inventory what your cryptography is, make sure that it is up to date, make sure that it is good to go, that you're complying with the current standards, and then putting in a way to manage that,

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and then enabling you to remediate in order to protect against those quantum attacks.

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And what that does is that enables us to make sure that our privacy is maintained now, but also into the future.

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Yeah?

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Do you have any advice for how to speak to non-technical, like an elder?

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Yeah, sure.

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So the question is, how do you speak to non-technical policymakers about this?

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So, a funny story.

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Before I started working at the company, I'm at Sandbox AQ.

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Before I started working at Sandbox AQ, I actually didn't know anything about quantum at all.

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I now teach a class on quantum and national security at Georgetown.

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And one of the reasons why is because of the ability to talk about things at a level that they understand.

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The first thing you have to be able to do is not use jargon, and talk about what the impacts are to the technology in a way that they understand it.

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Oftentimes, coming at whatever their point of view is, is the most interesting.

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So if you're talking to lawmakers, they often want to know about how is this going to impact their constituents.

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If you're talking to national security professionals, they want to know how do they protect the nation from threats and adversaries and bad actors.

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If you're talking to a cybersecurity person, you need to come from that attack vector perspective.

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So you have to meet them where they are first, before you launch into the discussion about the technology.

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So, for example, when Sandbox was starting, and really looking at the public sector, which is what I lead at Sandbox, we started with an education platform, where we'd go in and we'd teach them about what's going on globally with quantum technology, as well as what the quantum technologies are,

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and what the timelines are for them.

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Because everybody only thinks of quantum computers.

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They don't think of quantum sensing, or quantum communications, or other things that are in those buckets.

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And it was an education process.

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And you build up the trust, and now they think of you as a thought leader, and not just as somebody who is trying to sell your product, or trying to influence them in ways that they don't want to be influenced.

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Yes?

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You mentioned the $4.5 billion that the United States is investing into quantum technology.

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You also mentioned that you were at the White House when you speak with them.

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Was there any mention that you can't mention of what the overarching goals for the country are as far as quantum technology?

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Or is it like you just mentioned, depending on who you speak with, they all have their own goals in mind?

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So the question is, what are the overall goals of the U.S.

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government for quantum technology?

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It is dependent upon the organizations and agencies that you ask.

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If you go to the National Security Agency, they tell you it's post-quantum cryptography and protecting encryption from being hacked.

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If you talk to the White House, it's on how do we advance our quantum capabilities overall.

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If you talk to the Air Force, they want to know about quantum navigation, because they want to be able to navigate without GPS, because the Russians are jamming GPS over Ukraine right now, and the Chinese are jamming GPS over Australia.

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And it's impacting not just military flights, but also commercial flights, so it's a safety of issue thing.

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So you have to sort of understand what the point of view is, and where the technology is relative for them.

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As they spend this money and get closer to those individual goals, are they all related?

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If you get further in one aspect versus another aspect, are all of them closer, or is it just separate goals?

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No, a lot of them are separate, believe it or not.

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They're all unique.

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I will say that post-quantum cryptography and quantum security are more across the board than some of the individual other technologies that are out there.

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Yes?

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Are there any laws specific being put in place at the moment specific to quantum technology?

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Yes, so the White House actually released an executive order this week that said that no one in the United States, commercial or public sector, is allowed to export any quantum technology to China.

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So it's not a law where it's written in the law books, but it's an executive order that is treated like a law until it is revoked, either by a president that comes later.

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And there are executive orders that have been around for decades and decades and decades.

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And with the onslaught of technology coming from China, that is one of the things that's happening.

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There's also the Quantum Cybersecurity Preparedness Act, which has directed all agencies within the U.S.

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government to do inventories of their cryptography and plan for the migration to post-quantum cryptography.

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And they were all supposed to have done that by about May 4th of this year, but with anything in the U.S.

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government, it doesn't actually happen on time.

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And more and more policies are being written on a regular basis.

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Yes?

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I have a follow-up question.

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So, at the start, you mentioned collaboration.

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And my day job is I'm an attorney, and I deal a lot with export controls, etc.

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You can see where I'm going.

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How do we even begin to reconcile that?

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How can we allow for collaboration while navigating this world of export controls?

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Yes.

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So, the question is, how do we enable collaboration while we navigate the world of export control?

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This is a really important topic, and one of the topics that I like to talk to the governments, not just the U.S.

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government, but many governments about.

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We have collaborative agreements with many governments in the quantum space.

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One is AUKUS, so it's Australia, U.S., and U.K.

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They are doing mostly submarine deals, but they're also looking at quantum technology.

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I think that we need to use those platforms to enable a discussion where we bring commercial companies together from those countries to build a platform to go to the governments and say, we have this AUKUS group, why don't we use that for quantum technology and limit the restrictions on export control?

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Same thing with the Quad that's out there with Japan, India, Australia, and the U.S.

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Yes, sir?

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Since a quantum state is essentially a trumpet, in that sense, when you use it, it's going to collapse, it's going to become plastic.

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So in that sense, how does the federal government improve privacy, given what...

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How does the federal government improve the policies just because the quantum technology?

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The question is, how do you improve privacy when the quantum technology collapses and goes into a classical state, more or less, is what you're saying.

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So quantum technology, in and of itself, has to be used with other technology.

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That's why we still need classical computers when you're dealing with quantum computers.

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That's why when you're doing quantum key distribution, you still need post-quantum cryptography to authenticate.

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It is not something that is mutually exclusive, and that you need to understand how that works in order to protect privacy in the long run, so that your quantum computing and quantum communications is just as secure, or I should say your classical computers are just as secure as your quantum computers.

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Yes?

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Speaking of that, would that be more on an application-by-application level?

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The question was, is that more on the application-by-application level?

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It can be, absolutely.

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It's got to be the full stack of your systems.

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And secondly, we're seeing some success with Lattice as being a quantum-resistant cryptography algorithm.

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How long do you think that success will actually hold?

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I think that's a really interesting question, and I don't know that I can really answer that.

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One of the reasons why it's called quantum-resistant and not quantum-safe, or other words that are out there, is because we know that quantum is going to continue to push us at the boundaries of where we need to be, and that's why we also have to consider crypto-agility.

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We need to be able to take cryptographic algorithms and standards and change them and modify them as new attack vectors occur, and we don't want to have to rip and replace our cryptography anymore.

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In the back room.

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When I read the research papers, they're mostly Chinese, South Koreans, these kinds of names, and I don't really... my perception was that there isn't really, it seems more of a collaborative effort across the world, and I find it interesting that the US is trying to tell us that there's a quantum war happening,

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because I'm pretty sure if we just did that narrative and people started going back and learning, the West would not be very competitive anymore.

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So interestingly enough, the question was about that quantum is a very collaborative space, and that there are people from multiple countries, whether it's the Chinese or others, who are involved in paper writing and publishing, and that is very, very true.

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However, if you have research, and there's been a bunch of research that's been published recently, not about quantum, but about the Chinese and their influence operations in European universities in particular, like the University of Heidelberg, and how they're recruiting and taking technology.

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So we have to question and think about what are the ulterior motives of them actually doing this research, and what is their goal?

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And their goal, oftentimes, is to bring back that technology into China, make it very insular, and then recruit people who should be contributing to the greater good of quantum, and make them only a part of the Chinese ecosystem.

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Any other questions?

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Yes?

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Do you feel that there is a light at the end of the tunnel

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?

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Is there like a new emerging goal when it comes to quantum, to change the way people feel about the norm?

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So the question is, is there a light at the end of the tunnel that would make people more positive about quantum technology and collaboration within that quantum technology?

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I think the biggest thing is for there to be an understanding of what quantum technology is and what it isn't, and the timelines for what's here now and what's potentially going to be here later.

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Because a lot of people don't deal with quantum, it's because of a fear of the unknown.

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And that's when, you know, you think about when you have people who are, I'm not going to touch that, I don't know anything about it, I'm not smart enough to know about that.

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When in reality, they are.

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They just have to be taught at a level that they understand, and then you continue to upskill with more and more information as they grasp the basic concepts to the more advanced concepts.

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Yes?

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How big do you think that learning curve would be for somebody like that?

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So I'll give you an antidote.

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When I started teaching my class at Georgetown, I had a bunch of security studies professionals, so people who were really in international relations and policy.

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I had 16 students in my class, not one of them knew anything about quantum.

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I actually had somebody call it a qubit in class, instead of a qubit.

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And by the time we were done, I had them, in their final presentations, they were talking about more advanced concepts than we discussed in class.

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And it was amazing to see, and it was only a 14-week class, of two and a half hours a week.

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So it is doable, if you just put a little bit of time into it, you explain concepts at where they are, and then give them things that they can read and explore on their own, in a safe space.

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Yes?

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What are those easily accessible resources?

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Yeah, I don't have it publicly available, but I'm willing and able to share the resources out of it, and I can share that with Mark, and you can put it out there.

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But it's using everything that's open source.

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I actually didn't use a textbook.

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I just used articles, Qiskit, you know, just discussion points, you know, talking about even things like the quantum height curve, and talking about what is a height curve, and what is out there.

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And so I can share that.

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And the question was, what are the resources for the curriculum?

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That's a brilliant note to say thank you, Jen.

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Thank you.

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Thank you, Jen.

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Applause