Re: [Clips] Feds mull regulation of quantum computers
WASHINGTON--Quantum computers don't exist outside the laboratory. But the U.S. government appears to be exploring whether it should be illegal to ship them overseas.
A federal advisory committee met Wednesday to hear an IBM presentation about just how advanced quantum computers have become--with an eye toward evaluating when the technology might be practical enough to merit government regulation.
Suppose that quantum computers work and the NSA has them. What steps can or should they take to try to stop the propagation of this technology? If they come out too openly with restrictions, it sends a signal that there's something there, which could drive more research into the technology by the NSA's adversaries, the opposite of the desired outcome. If they leave things alone then progress may continue towards this technology that the NSA wants to suppress. Something like the present action isn't a bad compromise. Work towards restrictions on technology exports, but in a studiously casual fashion. There's nothing to see here, folks. We're just covering our bases, in the outside chance that something comes out of this way down the road. Meanwhile we'll just go ahead and stop exports of related technologies. But we certainly don't think that quantum computers are practical today, heavens no! CP
Seems to me we don't even need to bother thinking about Quantum Computers until they can fab components that operate at room temperature. That's not impossible, but if someone stopped thinking about it for about 5 years you probably wouldn't miss anything. -TD
From: cyphrpunk <cyphrpunk@gmail.com> To: cryptography@metzdowd.com, cypherpunks@jfet.org Subject: Re: [Clips] Feds mull regulation of quantum computers Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:18:09 -0800
WASHINGTON--Quantum computers don't exist outside the laboratory. But the U.S. government appears to be exploring whether it should be illegal to ship them overseas.
A federal advisory committee met Wednesday to hear an IBM presentation about just how advanced quantum computers have become--with an eye toward evaluating when the technology might be practical enough to merit government regulation.
Suppose that quantum computers work and the NSA has them. What steps can or should they take to try to stop the propagation of this technology? If they come out too openly with restrictions, it sends a signal that there's something there, which could drive more research into the technology by the NSA's adversaries, the opposite of the desired outcome. If they leave things alone then progress may continue towards this technology that the NSA wants to suppress.
Something like the present action isn't a bad compromise. Work towards restrictions on technology exports, but in a studiously casual fashion. There's nothing to see here, folks. We're just covering our bases, in the outside chance that something comes out of this way down the road. Meanwhile we'll just go ahead and stop exports of related technologies. But we certainly don't think that quantum computers are practical today, heavens no!
CP
On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 12:15:17PM -0500, Tyler Durden wrote:
Seems to me we don't even need to bother thinking about Quantum Computers until they can fab components that operate at room temperature. That's not
It would be good to have nontrivial qubit assemblies at all in in *solid state*. I don't think anyone has QC working yet. It's not obvious it is at all usable, even for number factoring (entangling and keeping entangled a large qubit constellation, error correction, suitable QC algorithms, etc). Does at all elliptical curve crypto map well to QC?
impossible, but if someone stopped thinking about it for about 5 years you probably wouldn't miss anything.
-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]
It would be good to have nontrivial qubit assemblies at all in in *solid state*. I don't think anyone has QC working yet. It's not obvious it is at all usable, even for number factoring (entangling and keeping entangled a large qubit constellation, error correction, suitable QC algorithms, etc). Does at all elliptical curve crypto map well to QC?
There's actually been quantum error correction for as long as ten years already, so I suspect that somewhere deep underground in the greater DC-area there's a giant QC that's actually starting to do some interesting things. But I'd also bet any amount of $$$ it's more than a decade behind anything in the electronic domain. The knee in the curve is several years away. The mapping between elliptical curve crypto and quantum algorithms is a very interesting question that I have no idea of. No doubt, however, the affinities (or lack thereof) is already known. Look for telltale odd standards-bodies pushes towards certain approaches. -TD
participants (3)
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cyphrpunk -
Eugen Leitl -
Tyler Durden