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August 20, 2025 38 mins

As the global race to develop quantum computers heats up, New Zealand is working on specialist areas of technology that could add crucial elements to the quantum supply chain.

That’s according to the University of Oxford’s Professor Andrew Daley, a principal investigator in the UK’s national quantum programme tasked with developing more accurate and functional quantum computers.

In the latest episode of The Business of Tech, Daley sat down with me during a visit to Wellington to break down the key issues facing the field, from dealing with error correction in the quantum world, to the challenges quantum computers pose to the encryption systems that keep our data private and secure.

New Zealand’s contribution to the quantum puzzle is not in building the highly complex and expensive computers themselves, but in supplying vital technologies, know-how, and a global network of talent, said Daley. The challenge now is to coordinate expertise, support industry engagement, and stake a place in quantum’s unfolding future. 

As Daley put it, “All of these pieces of the quantum technologies puzzle are going to come together in a very useful way.”

Listen to episode 112 of The Business of Tech in full, powered by 2degrees Business, streaming on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This week on a Business of Tech powered by two
Degrees Business, we're at the intersection of computer science and
advanced physics. We're looking at one of the most hyped
and misunderstood areas of science, quantum computing, and we've got
a leading KIWEK expert to talk us through the cubits
and the quantum entanglement, with Professor Andrew Daily joining us

(00:25):
to break down exactly what this tech can do for us.
Andrew is a leading New Zealand physicist who has spent
two decades at the frontier of quantum research. Since leaving
New Zealand, Andrew's now based at the University of Oxford
in the UK, and he's actually the principal investigator for
a new quantum computing research effort hosted by Oxford. It's

(00:48):
called the QCI three Hub. It's one of five national
hubs that last year were funded to the tune of
one hundred and six million pounds collectively. Andrew's team has
been tasked with improving the performance of quantum computers.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
They're working with industry.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Partners to do so. It's part of a really substantial
and sustained investment in quantum in the UK we'll unpack
exactly what a quantum computer actually is, why it matters
for breakthroughs in material science, climate modeling, healthcare and encryption,
and where the global race stands today, from the UK

(01:27):
hubs to the high stakes competition between the US, China
and even Australia. Andrew also explains when New Zealand already
contributes to this field, think about things like photonics, cryogenics,
superconductors and fundamental physics, and how we might shape our
own role in the global quantum ecosystem. So if you've

(01:49):
ever wondered whether quantum computing is just hype or the
next technology to truly transform science, industry and society, this episode.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Will give you the clarity you need.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Here's my chat recorded a few weeks back in Wellington
with quantum physicist Professor Andrew Daily. Andrew, Welcome to the
Business of Tech. Great to see you. You're in New Zealand.
What you've been visiting Auckland University, University of Otago as well.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah, visiting a University of Otago and also here in
Wellington to visit various people at Victoria University and meet
with people from the Robinson Institute and the mcdermmer's Institute.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
And it's topical timing the announcement about the Advanced Technology Institute,
this public research organization which is focusing on things like AI,
synthetic biology and quantum technologies.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
Which is your area of expertise.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
And it's been a long journey from physics at the
University of Auckland to the UK where you're playing a
real leading role at Oxford University in the UK quantum efforts.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Take us back to how you got there.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
I think you actually started studying law, right.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yes, actually that is true.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
Yeah, so I was.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
I was at at Auckland University in the late nineties
and initially started a content degree in law and science.
And what sort of happened was in my first year
I really enjoyed law, but I enjoyed physics even more
and decided that I would put the law degree on
hold and sort of focus on physics, and enjoyed it
so much that I never went back. So yeah, So

(03:28):
I did a master's degree at Auckland and finished that
in two thousand and two and then went to do
my PhD at the University of Innsbrook in Austria, where
there's a big center in quantum optics and quantum technologies
now more broadly and kind of just sort of followed
opportunities from there. I was a senior researcher there for
a number of years after my PhD there, and was

(03:50):
an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh in the US,
and then for ten years I was a professor at
the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. So in Scotland there's
a lot going on also ontom photonics. And then two
years ago I got my current position as a professor
of quantum physics at the University of Oxford.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, so you've been in a range of really esteemed organizations.
What is at the core of your particular research interest.
You talked about quantum photonics there, maybe explain there.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Yeah, so my background is instead of quantum optics and
atomic physics, so really are the interactions of light and
atoms And guess what we are sort of doing is
thinking about understanding the properties of how light interacts with
individual atoms, how you can trap and control individual atoms
with light, and then basically what you can do with it,

(04:40):
both in terms of understanding fundamental physics and then how
you can translate that into technologies that can have a
real world impact. And the point is that the physics
of small objects like atoms is surprisingly different to what
we see in the world around us, and that gives
you both a lot of really fascinating things to study,
the potential to build extremely sensitive sensors, measuring devices that

(05:05):
could be used in medical imaging, for example, or sort
of give you completely different properties that you could make
to build a computer in a very different way to
how we build sort of the world's best super computers currently.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
And quantum optics and photonics, and that seems to be
a real area of expertise for New Zealand. We just
had was it Quantify the startup here to solve for
one hundred million dollars plus very precise measurements optical measuring
systems that they sold to a big Nasdaq company.

Speaker 4 (05:38):
So we'll talk a bit.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
About the optic side of stuff and where we're showing
real strength here. But let's just dial it back. You
talked about quantum computers there. There's been so much in
the media in the last few years about the race
to develop quantum computers.

Speaker 4 (05:52):
Really keen to get.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Your insight into where we are at in the development
of quantum computers.

Speaker 4 (05:58):
But maybe just take it right back and explain to
us what a quantum computer actually is.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yeah. So, a quantum computer, as I said, is a
device that it's a computer that you build out of
individual atoms, or out of individual photons, particles of light,
or sort of micro and nanoelectronic circuits. And the idea
is that you base it around these sort of very
unusual properties that these very small systems have. And the

(06:27):
power of these sort of quantum systems comes from the
fact that, if you know, in classical computers you're used
to dealing with bits, zeros, and ones, if you add
one extra bit of information to a quantum computer, then
in principle trying to describe everything that that could hold
information wise, by adding one extra bit, you would have

(06:49):
to double the size of a classical supercomputer that was
trying to describe that quantum system. And so very quickly,
once you string together about fifty or sixty of these
quantum bits, they start to become very very difficult to
describe on any existing classical computer. You simply don't have
enough memory to store all the possibilities there are challenges

(07:12):
in that, And actually the first interesting element is that
this feature makes it very different difficult to use a
classical computer to describe the quantum systems that we might
want to understand in chemistry or in materials. If you're
trying to build new battery cathodes or industrial catalysts or
things like that, trying to describe those sort of microscopic

(07:33):
systems is very hard on existing computers, and this is
one of the sort of early things you might be
able to do with a quantum computer. On the other hand,
building and programming computers based on this set of physics
is itself very challenging, because first you have to build
it in such a way that it's sort of isolated
from the environment around it in order to really maintain

(07:56):
these sort of special properties. And also you can image
that a computer that works based on very different principles
is also very different to program So you can't just
take the sort of programs that you would run on
existing computers and run them on a quantum computer and
get any advantage from that at all. So it becomes
a real challenge to understand how you can apply these

(08:19):
quantum computers and where there are real opportunities to make
a huge impact, and as I said, in chemistry and
the materials, we've got very clear paths. People talk a
lot about the ability of quantum computers to calculate the
factors of very large numbers, and that has implications for

(08:40):
modern cryptography systems, and there are a lot of potential applications.
More widely, we are exploring things in fluid dynamics, for example,
which is huge across many industries, and I think there
are a lot of opportunities. But at the moment, it's
important to bring together people who are developing the harbor

(09:01):
and the software for quantum computers with experts in the
application areas in order to really understand how to use
these devices that are on the way to do calculations
that will make a big impact on the real world.

Speaker 4 (09:15):
Yeah, and I've seen some of these quantum computers.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
They talk about the golden chandelier, you know at IBM
and New York and elsewhere.

Speaker 4 (09:22):
And that's really not the computer.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
That's all the cooling and there stuff that goes around
it to keep it in a very stable and very
cold state. And in the middle of it you'll typically
see a little computer chip which is the quantum chip.
We've heard you announcements all the time about cubits, the
number of cubits, these quantum bits that are able.

Speaker 4 (09:46):
To be achieved on a computer that's going up and
up and up.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
So the hardware is improving, But there's another big issue,
isn't there That there's a lot of errors that are
introduced in the quantum world and you have to address
those errors to get any sensible output from a quantum computer.
How are we doing on the error correction front?

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Yeah, so, in fact, in the last few years has
been a really big improvement in the hardware that's enabled
us to start doing quantum error correction. And what's really
exciting across a number of different physical platforms is to see,
you know, the first implementations of error correction. The whole
idea there, of course, is that these systems will always

(10:26):
couple a little bit to the world around them, and
that always introduces noise in the calculations. And so where
we are at the moment is that when you go
to perform a calculation that involves sort of processing information
on two of our quantum bits, depending on the technology,
you have sort of errors that are introduced, you know,

(10:46):
of the order of one of every thousand or one
every ten thousand operations, and of course at the moment
you know that will sort of restrict things that you
can't really do any serious calculation with that. What error
correction does is it allows you effectively to make use
of spreading the information you're processing over many bits in
such a way that by having the information sort of

(11:09):
more delocalized, you can kind of have extra copies of
it that avoid this problem. So it's a little bit
of a challenge because you can't copy information in the
quantum system, but there are ways of delocalizing it to
make this error correction work. And so at the moment,
some of the main sort of candidates for building quantum
computers that superconducting cubits you're talking about before, but also

(11:32):
neutral atoms held in sort of optical tweezers created with
laser light. They're getting to the point where over the
next few years we're likely to have about sort of
ten thousand physical cubits that have error rates of about
one part in one thousand, and what you can do is,
using error correction sort of take those and build the
order of about one hundred sort of cubits where you're

(11:54):
going to do it really calculation on that information, but
with error rates of one part in the mind and
so that's pretty good. And when we get to that point,
there are things that we already know that we can
do with these machines that are going to be of
interest to scientists that we can't calculate on the world's
biggest supercomputers. And that's really exciting. And then the challenge
now is really to go out and work together with

(12:17):
experts and application areas across materials, across chemistry and wider
fields to understand how you can make use of that
or the sort of next generation of the machines beyond
that in order to make a big impact on computations
and other areas.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
To boil it down and to watch the use of
this stuff for us when we were at an event
last night at the Britishigh Commission where someone asked that,
and it really is that the speed with which you
can do calculations that for instance, Google's quantum computer, they
claimed in five minutes they're able to do a calculation

(12:54):
that would have taken longer than the time it took
for the universe to form, you know, that's the sort
of scale that we can shrink down working on really
complex calculation. So whether it's climate change, whether it's healthcare,
material science, new molecules, it's potentially going to accelerate scientific
research exactly.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
So there are big opportunities there and understanding exactly how
best to use that is one of the open challenges.
But now that we have machines coming online we can
try out small scale things, we can understand how those
calculations are scaling. And one of the things that we're
doing in the UK in particular is trying to bring
together interdisciplinary networks of people from academia and from industry

(13:36):
who really understand where the key crunch points are that
are preventing calculations being done even on the world's biggest supercomputers,
and trying to understand where and how you can best
use quantum computers to solve those problems.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Where is the UK at in quantum development? Is the
UK building quantum computers?

Speaker 3 (13:56):
Yes, so the UK is building quantum computers. We also
have a national lab, the Nation Quantum Computing Center that's
been set up both to evaluate and work with set
of technologies that are generally being built by industry and
then also to connect into academic research that's going on
that can support those those industrial developments. And the National

(14:16):
quant Computing Center is also doing a lot of work
helping to sort of educate industry and to work for
people to understand where the biggest applications are going to be.
We have then a much wider National Quantum Technologies Program,
and the UK has invested over the last eleven years
actually now over a billion pounds and supporting not just
the development of quantum computing but also quantum sensors, quantum

(14:40):
communications networks, and it's actually really exciting to see the
industrial landscape that has built up sort of around that
National Quantum Technologies Program.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
So the UK has all of these tubs, is five
of them around the UK that are specializing in different
parts of the quantum puzzle.

Speaker 4 (14:57):
Europe principal investigator of one of them tell us about
these hubs.

Speaker 3 (15:01):
Yeah, So the hubs form the sort of the central
part of the National Quantum Technologies Program and they've we've
had hubs in the UK for the last eleven years.
Each of them sort of is a five year, twenty
million pound project basically that brings together academics who focus
around the translation of research from universities out into the

(15:22):
real world, and they've focused on not just quantum computing,
but also on quantum sensing and metrology, on on quantum
communications networks, and previously quantum imaging. In the new generation
of hubs that we have, we also have specific focus
on quantum technologies for healthcare, where for example, people are

(15:44):
making very sensitive magnetic field sensors based on atoms and
little vapor cells driven by by lasers, and this allows
you to build brain scanners that you can use to
try to study elepsy or Alzheimer's disease. And these are
being built into helmets, so that, for example, if you

(16:06):
want to study child epilepsy, you can just have a
helmet that is put on their head rather than having
them to stay still inside a big magnetic field sensor.
And so that sort of thing is very exciting. We
also have a hub for position navigation and timing. And
you might say position navocation and timing. You know, we

(16:27):
have the GPS system, but there was a study done
a few years ago that if we lost access to
the GPS system and the other equivalents the GNSS in
general for five days, it would cost the UK economy
of the order of five billion pounds. And so what
we're trying to do is use quantum technologies to essentially

(16:49):
allow autonomous navigation and timing sort of without needing the
GPS system.

Speaker 4 (16:54):
Right, it's pretty important.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
Yeah, Look, is quantum we here in the mainstream media.

Speaker 4 (17:02):
You know the US China rivalry.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
We know the US of spending a lot of money
on quantum, a lot of startups in that space. Shina
we know less about, but they're forging ahead with quantum
computers as well. Australia has doubled down majorly on investing
in quantum to extent that the government has funded the
best part of a billion dollars into Cyde Quantum to
build small quantum computers.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
Is there a national interest element to this?

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Is it really important to sort of have sovereign capability
in quantum computing and associated technologies.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
I mean, I think it's very important for countries to
develop their own capabilities here. And obviously there is that
of this international race, and there are certain elements obviously
that have implications for defense and security, and of course
the governments are very conscious of that. I would say
that what is necessary here though, is both that countries

(17:56):
develop their own capability and their own understanding of how
they're going to use technologies, how they're going to make
sure that they have those technologies available to them. But
at the same time, in the development of these technologies,
we actually still need a lot of international collaboration and
especially you know, I mentioned before that a lot of
what's been done is a collaboration between academia and an
industry and in that sort of pipeline for the ideas

(18:17):
that are going to be important in building up large
scale quantum computers or in the applications of quantum sensors.
I think it's also important to have international collaboration because
there are a lot of technological challenges that need to
be solved and I don't think that any one country
is going to have all of the expertise that they
need to solve all of those challenges. And so and
you do see that, you know, a lot of international

(18:38):
collaboration in these in these areas. So you know, my
own area is quantum computing, as mentioning before, so I'm
the principal investigator of the UK sub the quantum computing
in this phase of the program, and obviously we have
a lot of work sort of nationally, but there is
a lot of collaboration both industrial. We have a lot

(19:00):
of companies that are based part in the United States
and part in the UK, or part in Europe and
part in the UK. And we have on the research
level really a lot of very important set of academic collaborations.
So we work with people all over the world.

Speaker 4 (19:16):
Looking at what we have here.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
We're not building quantum computers in New Zealand, that's not
our specialty, but Dodge Wall Center various other Robson Research
Institute are working on associated technologies around it that could
be useful to these efforts in the UK and elsewhere
to build highly functioning quantum computers and this whole idea

(19:40):
of quantum communication as well, maybe take us through. What
you see is the value that we can add, the
bits of the puzzle that we can put on the
table for the quantum industry in general.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
Yeah, I mean so I think that there are sort
of two There are two sides to that, and as
you mentioned, you know, one of them is that the technologies,
and you see right now today things being developed in
photonics and then transduction and photonics in the DoD Wall
Center and quantum memories that could be extremely useful for
quantum communications networks, for quantum sensors, and to form an

(20:13):
underpinning technology for building quantum computers. And you also have
lots of interest there in understanding sort of the physics
sol systems that maybe quantum computers could describe very well.
You see in the Robinson Institute you see an interest in,
for example, cryogenic electronics, which is going to be important
for certain ways of building quantum computers. And in them

(20:37):
Diomede Institute, you have a lot of interest in sort
of material systems which are probably sort of one of
the first candidates for real world impact of quantum computers
and describing those materials. And as I was saying before,
it's going to be so important for people developing quantum
hardware and software to work together with experts in those
application areas. I think there's a lot here that you

(20:58):
could do in New Zealand also specifically on the applications
of quantum computing. So there's that sort of technological base,
and I think that it's important to also recognize that
New Zealand has already significantly impacted this area internationally, that
in fact, a lot of the underpinnings of what we
do in quantum communications and therefore also instead of scaling

(21:20):
up quantum computers via sort of photonic links, is based
on physics that was developed actually at the University of
Waikato in the nineteen seventies and eighties that two physicists
Dan Walls after him the part of the Dodd Wall
Center is named, and Chrispin Gardner who started school for
theoretical physics there that really laid the foundations for a

(21:42):
lot of sort of early quantum optics. And again the
basis of a lot of the techniques of years in
our research came out of that work here in New Zealand,
you know, thirty or forty years ago. And you also
see as a result of that and that investment effectively
in people a large degree of expertise here in New

(22:05):
Zealand and also in Australia, there are a lot of
scientists that can really trace their roots back to that
work that was done there, and then later you know
at the University of Auckland and Victoria and Otaga University,
and so you have really a critical mass of people
who think about the underpinding physics in this area and
that work is still relevant today. Is the sort of

(22:27):
underpinnings of what we're going to be doing in future
generations of this technology.

Speaker 4 (22:30):
That's incredible.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
Just it's amazing where keewis pop up and the influence
they have. I'm thinking of someone you may have known
at UK University, James E.

Speaker 4 (22:41):
Hacker, who created the art statistical.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Language and that's used all over the world now, so
including by physicists and mathematicians all over the place.

Speaker 4 (22:51):
So that influence.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, we know about our three Noble winners, we know
the influence they've had that so many New Zealand scientists
have had influens on technologies and research all over the world.

Speaker 4 (23:02):
It's incredible.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
But in terms of you know, the hubs and the
UK model, I think you noted recently there's been a
number of spinout companies from the hub model. What's the
key do you think to getting to a point where
this can become a commercial venture. You know, we've seen,
as I said, Quantify as a twenty year journey in

(23:25):
New Zealand.

Speaker 4 (23:26):
Little known company just sold.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
Earlier this year to a Nasdaq listic company for a
lot of money, So great exit for those founders. After
a lot of hard work, but startup world usually has
shorter horizons five to seven years before they reached a
commercial viability. In that what was the key to some
of those companies gaining traction.

Speaker 4 (23:47):
And how can we sort of foster that in New Zealand.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
So I think what you see is is, of course,
you know, growing interest internationally and the development of these
technologies and sort of so many individual underpinning tech logical
challenges that need to be solved in order to get
to where we need to be with these sort of
large scale, large scale quantum computers or indeed sort of
similar things in quantum sensing and so forth. And I

(24:12):
think the key is to have you know, points of
sort of technological difference that have been sort of developed
in in academia or often in universities, people going and
researching new ways of doing things that are going to
significantly improve components of these sort of larger systems. And
then what you see is as people generating a startup
company to further develop those sort of initial ideas you know,

(24:35):
into a viable product. And then you will often see
either the product being sold to larger companies that of
who are building a quantum computer or who are interested
in sensing in a particular area, or indeed you see
the startup being being bought and incorporated into a larger organization.
So in the UK, over the sort of first sort

(24:56):
of ten or eleven years of our national program, there
are been forty nine startups across computing and sensing and communications,
which is just kind of incredible and it really sort
of emphasizes the importance of the industrial lands and the
size of the industrial landscape that's been been generated. Ten
of those were in the first two phases in quantum computing,

(25:20):
which also tells you that there's sort of so much
going on in these other areas. But those ten computing
startups of that same sort of period, you know, had
some somewhere in the vicinity of two hundred and thirty
million pounds of investment funding. And I think that's the
other thing that the government has sort of started to see.

(25:41):
I said that, you know, the government's put in a
billion pounds and of that, you know, sort of a
couple of hundred million was to these sort of these
hubs over the first two phases, and another sort of
one hundred and seventy four million I think was as
part of an Industrial Strategy Challenge fund that specifically looked
to link academia and industry. And what you're starting to

(26:01):
see is that being substantially multiplied in the sort of
the private investment and the commercial investment into these areas.

Speaker 4 (26:08):
What opportunity do you see?

Speaker 1 (26:09):
There's obviously momentum now the government has this Advanced Technology Institute.

Speaker 4 (26:14):
We've got areas of expertise.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
Even in mcdirn Institute and Material Science Robson Research Institute,
Don Walls and others.

Speaker 4 (26:24):
What should the government be doing now?

Speaker 1 (26:25):
We've done, for instance, have a national strategy around quantum.
We just published one on AI. So they've realized that
to have a coherent approach you need to get everyone
on the same page. Has that been a useful thing
for the UK to get everyone on the same page? Actually,
the government publishing a national strategy.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
I think it has been and it's been particularly good
at getting industry engaged as well. And I think that,
you know, what is so important is to support the
areas where you have research expertise, also in universities. Also
because it brings people into the country from outside or
trains up New Zealanders who are then experts in these
areas and then can form the basis for industry in

(27:07):
these areas. So supporting those sort of university initiatives both
for the development of the technologies and for the training
of people is extremely important. And then get industry engaged.
You know, have industry sort of start to understand what
impact these sorts of technologies are going to have on them.

(27:28):
Quantum computing might be a little bit sort of further
down the track, but as I said, in things like
materials research and in fluid dynamics, we're already talking with
industrial partners. My own research group, I have for PhD
students who are currently entirely a half supported by people
in industry who are keen to understand how quantum computing

(27:49):
is going to impact their specific area, and you know,
have some sort of a way to really get that
communication going where you have sort of jointly supported approach
as well between between universities and industry. One key feature
of the first couple of phases of our national program
was a partnership resource fund that was provided to the

(28:12):
quantum hubs, with the idea being that they would identify
real opportunities for academics to collaborate with industry, and this
would sort of provide seed funds of the order of
sort of one hundred k to kind of kickstart that
engagement and get people an industry really involved in what
was going on in the academic research. And I think
that's helped a lot in growing the industry engagement and

(28:37):
has been really a cornerstone of what we've done in
our national program.

Speaker 4 (28:40):
Yeah, that'd be great.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
We did see at the Commission last night some really
interesting uses of quantum technologies. Bill Frey from the Earth
Science Institute using five rock to cables that crisscrossed the
ocean floor, using the light signals along there to detect
potential armies and early warning systems for tsunamis even out

(29:04):
of dog walls. A really interesting project I hadn't come
across about sort of zapping varroa mites off bees, a
big potential problem exactly.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
This is really one of the things to emphasize that
there are that you know, people think about quantum computers
a lot, and there's a big amount of hyperund quantum computing,
but actually I think the initial impacts of these things
are going to be in a combination of quantum sensing
and you see sort of some of this, as you say,
with the sort of early warning systems for tsunamis and

(29:33):
sort of some of these healthcare applications I was describing before.
But also as you develop all of those things, the
underpinning technologies you know, in terms of the photonics and
so on, are going to have their own applications. And yes,
these varroa mites soft bees and that was really it
was really impressive, and again as a good example of

(29:54):
what can come out of investment in this wider area.

Speaker 4 (29:57):
Just a couple of final questions.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
I'm intrigued out, and I know that the people at
dog Walls are sort of interested in this concept of
quantum communication. You have a quantum computer, it's generating information.
You want to send that somewhere in a really secure
sort of way. How does that actually happen? I mean
we are already hearing about quantum satellites and things like that.

Speaker 4 (30:19):
How does that work?

Speaker 3 (30:21):
Yeah, So the idea here is that if you can
link up essentially a quantum network like this, you can
have essentially provably secure communications in the sense that if
you build the system right, you can show that there
is that there is no way that someone can sort
of intercept a signal without you knowing that they are

(30:41):
that they are intercepting it, and you can build a
link and then use that link to send sort of
secured information. Now it's important for secured information, but it's
also very important for quantum computers because this is what
will allow you to really properly link up quantum computers,
both scaling them up, you know, linking individual module within
one data center, but also allowing quantum computers to talk

(31:04):
to each other across the world. And if you had,
for example, a small quantum computer in New Zealand and
you might want to run a calculation on a bigger
quantum computer that might be based elsewhere in the world,
you could use these types of secured networks to actually
start calculations running, where in fact the person who was

(31:24):
hosting the bigger quantum computer would not know exactly what
sort of calculation you were running and what the data
was that you were sort of putting into it. So
we talk a lot in the UK about this concept
of blind quantum computing, and I think this is going
to be also very important in a scenario where we're
in the early days, we're likely to have a small

(31:46):
number of very big quantum computers, and you might not
want to sort of transmit data that is maybe private
to people in New Zealand to some big computer overseas.
But if you have these sort of secure communications networks,
you have the possibility of running calculations using that data,
but without actually revealing what that data is in any

(32:07):
way that someone who hosts that computer could read it.
And this is one of these sort of incredible things
that comes out of the unusual physics of a sort
of individual photons and so on. But so the value
of these sort of communications networks, when you combine them
with quantum computing, is even much greater than just the

(32:28):
sort of secured communications links themselves, and it is very exciting.
There are people in the dog Walls Center developing quantum memories.
Of course, there's a lot of connections to space in
New Zealand, which has been really exciting to see the
developments there. And so you could imagine New Zealand setting
up base stations for international quantum communications networks, and I

(32:48):
think that type of thing would be would be very exciting.
And I think all of these sort of pieces of
the sort of quantum technologies puzzle are going to come
together in a very useful way. And what we really
need to do is just continue to make sure that
we're supporting research that's going to see these technologies properly

(33:09):
developed and come to fruition, and that we're engaging industry
and people really working in the application areas to understand
how this can transform their sectors and be prepared for
the changes that will bring over the next few decades.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
And just finally, Andrew, the issue that probably gets the
most attention in the media is the quantum encryption or
the quantum technology is potentially breaking encryption. How worried should
we be about this? And when I talk to vendors
like IBM who tell me, oh, we've created a quantum
safe mainframe for our banking customers, so we're already cracking

(33:49):
that issue, is there factual basis to that you are
there quantum safe systems?

Speaker 3 (33:55):
Now, we're probably at least a decade away still from
really being able to to break the sorts of RSA
encryption that you would use to talk to your bank
over the Internet or things like that. And this is really,
I guess, at the moment, a lower bound because these
are still very difficult calculations even if you have a
quantum computer, and so that's not going to be widespread

(34:18):
for a lot longer than that. And at the moment,
what's going on internationally is two things. So obviously you
mentioned quantum communications networks, which are secure a different way
of securing information, and some people are actually some banks
now have actually quantum communications links between their data centers. Yes,
so this is something that's been been trialed and implemented
by a number of people internationally. So indeed that's going on.

(34:41):
The other thing that's been developed is a lot of
work in the cryptography community on what they call post
quantum encryption, and basically what's happening there is people are
finding different mathematical ways to encrypt information that at the
moment we don't know how to break with quantum can computers.
And so I think that what you're going to see

(35:04):
is that before quantum computers get to the point where
they can really break the existing codes, there are going
to be ways both based on quantum communications networks and
based on sort of changes in classical encryption that we'll
we'll make sure that you know, you can talk to
your bank perfectly safely.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
Well, it's a fascinating feel hard for a lot of
us to get our heads around, but there's obviously going.

Speaker 4 (35:27):
To be incredibly important and.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
Great to see that not only do we have areas
of expertise here, but does that openness to collaborate with
the UK and other researchers around the world. So good
luck with what you're working on in the UK, and
thanks so much for coming on the Business of Tech.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to talk
to you.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
So that's it for this episode of the Business of Tech.
A big thanks to Professor Andrew Daily for helping cut
through the jargon and explaining where quantum computing is really headed.
Quantum it's pretty clear, isn't arriving overnight, but advances in
things like error correction, sensing and communications mean it's moving fast.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Actually it's accelerating.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
The first applications are likely in material science, chemistry and
secure communications and think about things like you know, designing
new batteries, catalysts, drug development, fluid dynamics. It's already playing
a role in some of those areas. The countries that
harness their expertise now will shape the future. I was

(36:36):
in Australia this week talking to quantum computing experts, they're
right up there in terms of expertise and investment. Australia
is already spinning off quantum companies and one side Quantum
has attracted a billion dollars in federal and state funding
and is now a multi billion dollar enterprise, so they're

(36:58):
doing it across the ditch. We've got some unique strengths
and opportunities in the global quantum ecosystem too. We're not
building quantum computers here, but we have critical expertise to
contribute in the likes of photonics and optical systems from
Dodd Wall Center, cryogenic electronics and superconductors from Robinson Research Institute,

(37:21):
material signs from McDiarmid Institute. So we definitely have something
to add here and a strong heritage in quantum optics
dating back to Dan Walls and Crispin Gardner at Waikato University.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
I hope you enjoyed that.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how
New Zealand should approach quantum, whether through a national strategy,
industry collaboration, all of the above. Drop me a note
via LinkedIn x or email me Peter at Petergriffin dot
co dot nz. You can subscribe, like, and share the
podcast on iHeartRadio or in your favorite podcast app. Tune

(37:56):
in again next week when we dig into another area
of technology reshaping our world.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
Catch you in and thanks for listening.
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