September 4, 2023 • 46 mins
In Part 2 of the Tech Lessons Series by Bill Harris, get ready to unravel the mystery of quantum computing? Brace yourselves as we, your hosts, and our esteemed guest, Bill Harris, take you on a whirlwind tour of this fascinating technology that's set to redefine the future. Possessing the potential to disrupt major industries and even cryptography, quantum computing is a topic you certainly can't afford to miss.
Imagine a computer that can process information at superluminal speeds. That's the magic of quantum computing! From its application in fields as diverse as healthcare and AI to the challenges it poses, we've got it all covered in this episode. But it doesn't stop there. We discuss the potential threat quantum computers pose to current encryption technologies and the prodigious task of developing quantum-safe encryption techniques.
Finally, we examine the present landscape of quantum computing, key players in the field, and IBM's quantum roadmap. Are you curious about how a linguist might relate to all this tech talk? Listen in as Alan, an IT professional, ties it all together with his son's choice of major. We wrap up with a hilarious segment discussing our favorite physicists and resources, where you may just find your next good read! Get ready for a deep dive into a future shaped by quantum computing!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric Brown (00:05):
You are listening to the audit presented by IT Audit
Labs.
Welcome back to the auditeveryone.
We're talking again with BillHarris.
So, bill, thanks for coming on.
And today we're talking aboutquantum computing.
(00:25):
I think that's a topic thatmost of us probably don't know a
lot about.
Alan's back with us, alan,hopefully you can stay the whole
time this time.
Thanks for coming back in, nick, always good to have you, of
course, and Scott too.
Last week, scott, we startedtalking about classical compute
(00:46):
with Bill, and Bill's got athree-part series of classical
compute quantum and then thefuture of storage, so looking at
things like DNA and crystallinefor storage.
So, bill, we'll turn it over toyou and we'll pepper you with
questions.
Maybe we just get a quickbackground.
For those who maybe didn't hearthe previous podcast, bill, do
(01:09):
you want to just give a littleinsight into who you are and
what you do?
Bill Harris (01:14):
Yeah, sure you bet.
So my name is Bill Harris and Ido security architecture, and
one of the things that I focuson is security and general
technology futures.
So today I'll be talking aboutthe future of quantum between
now and 2023.
Eric Brown (01:30):
Now, in 2023?
.
Bill Harris (01:32):
Oh, I'm sorry, Now in 2030.
Eric Brown (01:34):
2030, got it Cool.
And then, alan, you'rerelatively new to this too.
Do you want to just give aquick who you are, besides being
apparently a Wisconsin fan?
Alan Green (01:45):
Yeah, so I'm wearing this in honor of my youngest
son, who graduates high schooltomorrow.
He's decided to attend theUniversity of Wisconsin, so yet
again, my kid and my money willbe going to the University of
Wisconsin.
Congratulations.
Scott Rysdahl (02:02):
He'll be the second one.
Alan Green (02:04):
Yeah, he'll be the second one that I had go through
that school.
I'm Alan Green IT professional,been in the industry going on
practically 30 years now.
My current role is I manage ateam of system engineers at a
company that developed softwareand does some work in the credit
(02:26):
industry, and I own that totalresponsibility for their
infrastructure.
Eric Brown (02:32):
And last time, Alan, you were drinking what you were
calling iced tea.
Alan Green (02:36):
It was iced tea and a solo cup.
But I got to admit.
That's why I left the name ofmy employer out of this
introduction, just in casesomeone makes an accusation
again that I was drinking morethan iced tea.
It's not tied to anybodybecause it was iced tea, my
friend.
Eric Brown (02:55):
We just happened to be talking about bourbon at the
same time, and Scott, nick, billand Alan are all fans of
bourbon.
Are you as well?
Scott Rysdahl (03:08):
I like bourbon and I was going to give Alan
props for pouring bourbon intoan iced tea can so that he could
drink it throughout therecording of this episode.
Eric Brown (03:17):
All right, there you go.
So, alan, when did he decide togo to Wisconsin?
It?
Alan Green (03:24):
was several weeks back almost better than a month
right, he applied to a host ofschools, got accepted into all
of them that he applied to, andthen it became the OK what can
dad and mom afford?
And as we tick down the list,we felt very comfortable with
University of Wisconsin.
(03:44):
As I mentioned earlier, hisolder sister graduated from
there back in 2019-ish.
Yeah, I'm a great parent.
Don't know when my kidsgraduated college.
Yeah, I'll own that.
So anyway, yeah, it'll be fun.
It'll be fun to have anotherone there.
It's a great school.
I'm looking forward to roadtrips.
(04:07):
We can go watch some Badgerfootball and hang out on the
campuses.
Eric Brown (04:14):
What's he going to study?
Alan Green (04:16):
You know what he is?
Linguistics.
He has an uncanny ability tograsp languages and so he has
studied Chinese since he was Idon't know, fifth grade, sixth
grade, and then he just pickedup French on the side.
(04:37):
So he's conversational inChinese and damn near
conversational in French.
So he wants to do something inlinguistics and then maybe get
out and you know, I don't knowwork for the UN or become
something that requires him toleverage those skill sets CIA.
(04:58):
And potentially, yeah,potentially CIA.
Eric Brown (05:04):
Very cool for him.
I heard recently that the SpaceForce and the Air Force I know
it's funny to say the SpaceForce.
I know right, yep, steveCarroll or whatever right.
But yeah, I think those two are, from a military perspective,
top for cyber is what I heard.
(05:27):
Not that all the other branchesdon't have cyber capabilities,
but I think there's.
They're at least recruitingmaybe more for cyber in in the
Air Force and the Space Force.
Alan Green (05:39):
So I thought you were about to tie that to
linguistics, and Steve Carrolland company were looking for
people that could speak Martian.
They ventured into the outerspace, so like where you took
that?
Bill Harris (05:53):
you know the US has actually had a Space Force for
a while.
It's just wasn't called as much.
It was called out in theprevious administration, the
prior to that.
It was Just caught kind ofquietly buried and in other
agencies, so it's not to drawattention to it.
All right, can we see my screen?
Alan Green (06:10):
Yes, we can.
Bill Harris (06:11):
All right.
So for today's agenda, this iswhat I'm gonna go through today.
We're gonna talk about reallykind of quantum and get you
introduced from beginning to end, talk about where it's going.
I'll kick off with talkingabout what exactly is quantum
computing.
That we'll move to why itmatters.
We'll go through some use casesand talk about where quantum is
(06:32):
being used today and reallywhat benefits it brings.
There are also challenges tocome with quantum, so we'll go
into that and tell you what'sholding it back a little bit and
what we're trying to do aboutit.
I'll talk about the elephant inthe room, right?
So quantum is always discussedin terms of cryptography, it
seems, and what it's going to doto encryption in the future.
We'll absolutely dive into thatand then we'll start to wrap up
(06:55):
and talk about where quantumexists today, what countries are
using it, what companies haveit, and go into the roadmap from
there and then wrap up.
So first, well, let's take offwith some basics around quantum
computer.
So quantum was first envisionedin the 1980s by two scientists,
richard Feynman and Yuri Manin.
(07:16):
They were seeking to solve abasic problem of physics, which
is that Was really tough forphysicists to model Quantum
mechanics on classical computers.
So they realized that theywould have to build a quantum
computer to model quantumproblems.
That's why it was born.
So in 1998 the first quantumcomputer was made.
(07:40):
It had two qubits, and A qubitis the same thing as a regular
bit and so far as it canrepresent a zero or a one and it
is, it's it's nothing more thantwo superconductors on either
side of an insulator.
But in addition to representinga zero or a one, by the rules of
quantum mechanics you can alsorepresent both at the same time,
(08:03):
and we're going to be comingback to that concept a lot and
talking about why that matters.
But I'll touch one of thelittle bit here and say that in
terms of how you can relate aqubit to a regular bit, and
qubits take the value of Two tothe end bits.
So if you've got ten qubitsthat can take on the values of
(08:26):
about a thousand, 24 regularbits.
If you've got 20 qubits thatcan take on the value of a
million bits.
So if you've got a hundredqubits, they can take on the
values of one point two, seven,non million bits.
So here you start to see thepower of the superposition and
(08:48):
and how qubits are justexponentially more powerful than
a regular bit because they cando all of that stuff at the same
time.
We'll talk more about thatcoming up.
Eric Brown (08:58):
Guys, I have a confession.
I made it through two bulletpoints before I got lost.
I feel like I'm in all in son'sChinese class.
Bill Harris (09:07):
Oh, don't worry, We'll get you caught up, we'll
get you caught up.
So we're gonna kind of berevisiting these, these, these
ideas a little bit and at theend of this, if you want to know
more about it, there's somegreat material on the internet
there's.
There's plenty of plenty ofstuff to brush up.
Important to know that quantumcomputers are not programmed
like a regular machine like youcan't just kind of pony up there
(09:29):
and and program it with, youknow, c, sharp or, or, or cobalt
or something like that, right?
So it requires algorithms to befed to it and we'll talk about
one of those algorithms is whenwe get into cryptography.
But Scientists are stilldeveloping, and particularly
mathematicians are stilldeveloping algorithms to feed
quantum computers, and We'lltalk a little bit also about why
(09:51):
that matters and how that'sdifferent.
Now, before I advance it andkind of go into some of the
details, let's get introduced tothe quantum computer.
So For most of these slidesyou're going to see a quantum
computer on your right side andit's all going to be different
ones, but they all kind of lookthe same.
So here's what we're looking athere.
The quantum computer is usuallya multi-tiered model and I'm
(10:13):
going to talk about why this injust a moment.
But you'll see that all thesewires coming down here, that's
called a chandelier because itlooks like a chandelier, so they
gave it a catchy name like thatand these are a combination of
signal cables as well asSuperconducting circuits.
The little these bars you seekind of coming down the center
(10:34):
here and these weekly things,this is the refrigerant.
Now, as the refrigerant whichby the way is liquid nitrogen
Comes down through these tears,it gets colder and colder and
colder until it reaches thebottom.
Now the bottom is where thequantum processor is kept.
So all of this is that, you see,right here.
All of that is really justsignals and cryogenics to keep
(10:56):
the thing cold.
And the reason that the quantumprocessor at the very bottom of
this has to be so cold isBecause it has to achieve near
absolute zero, to achieveSuperconductivity.
Only then can quantum activityhappen.
So at close to zero degreesKelvin the most atomic motion
(11:18):
stops right, and so at thatpoint you can then start to
Manipulate these atoms and getthe quantum measurements that
you want.
So at 15 millikelvin, justabove Absolute zero, that's
colder than outer space.
Quantum computer is probablythe coldest thing in the known
(11:38):
universe.
Eric Brown (11:39):
And is it liquid helium or liquid nitrogen?
Bill Harris (11:42):
liquid helium, liquid nitrogen, doesn't get
cold enough.
So can you give us an exampleof how big this is, to scale by
feet tall, and the reason thatyou're gonna see that it is
usually suspended from a ceilingor from a superstructure, not
from a ceiling, from asuperstructure it's usually, and
it's usually off the floor,because if they put it on the
(12:05):
floor it's gonna pick up way toomany vibrations, which is gonna
completely screw up the quantummeasurement.
So they have to suspend it froma superstructure and try to
isolate it from the outsideworld, to reduce vibrations, to
reduce noise.
And what you're seeing herealso is the quantum computer
opened up much like a computer,with your case off.
(12:26):
Over top of this will be ashroud that will further Shield
it from the outside elements?
Eric Brown (12:32):
Do they put LED lights on them like a cool
gaming computer?
Bill Harris (12:35):
They, they should.
It would look beautiful ifthese whole things were like
LEDs, like blue and green andmaybe like a rainbow pattern.
But no, they couldn't do thatbecause it would, wouldn't just
not work.
So that gets introduced to sortof fit, sort of physical like
what a quantum computer lookslike, what it's made of and the
(12:57):
just a really high-level basics.
Let's talk a little bit aboutwhy that matters.
So we had talked earlier a bitabout superposition at 300
qubits.
We talked earlier like ahundred qubits that a quantum
computer could do.
What was it like?
Over a non-million number ofvalues at 300 qubits a quantum
(13:21):
computer can represent 10 to the90th possible states
simultaneously.
Now that is, that representsmore particles than are in the
known universe.
So it's just astronomicallynumber, astronomically high and
high number if you, if you thinkyou can imagine that number,
you really can't.
(13:42):
It's um, it's absolutelyenormous quantity.
And what makes it sointeresting is that we can do
this.
Today IBM already has a quantumcomputer with 433 qubits.
So by virtue of that, ibm has aquantum computer that can
represent more valuesSimultaneously than there are
(14:05):
atoms in the known universe.
Needless to say, conventionalcomputers can't process
Information that quickly, muchless hold it in memory like a
quantum machine can.
Quantum machines don't reallyneed the memory for it.
It's just the way if theirmechanics works.
However, it's worth noting thatAlthough they can hold such an
(14:28):
enormous number of values, theycan't report all of them at the
same time.
You can go in and read one ofthose values, but by the nature
of quantum mechanics, when youread that value, you change it
and so you can read one.
You can read a value and itgives you back that value in.
All the other data disappears.
(14:48):
So they have to build otheralgorithms and put other
electronics around it and playsome very clever tricks to get
the value that they want out ofthat sheer number of
possibilities.
And that's where the math justgets out of control, which I
won't go into today, in largepart because I can't.
It's probably obvious by nowthat maybe a quantum computer
(15:09):
isn't a brute force device.
It just works on differentphysics, right?
So with today's computers youcan throw supercomputers at it,
just throw more processors at it, more memory, bigger circuits
and just kind of brute forceyour way through it.
Quantum is a lot more elegantthan that, because it's just
doing things much differentlyand it's just enormously
(15:30):
parallel, and so incalculableproblems become possible to
solve.
Scott Rysdahl (15:37):
Hey Bill, will quantum ever be able to tell us
how many licks it takes to getto the center of a tutsuba?
Bill Harris (15:42):
I love the throwback to the 80s.
I love it.
That little owl, yeah, no,that's good stuff, but we will
talk about what quantum willallow us to do going forward,
although I think that questionwill always be elusive.
It can, of course, solveproblems in quantum chemistry,
(16:05):
quantum physics.
It's what it was designed to do.
That's the whole reason thatquantum computers were developed
was to solve those types ofquantum mechanical problems.
And the reason it can do thatand everything else below it is
because quantum computers arereally really good at spotting
periodic structures, and I'mgoing to talk about why that's
important for cryptography too.
(16:25):
But computers are not that goodat spotting those types of
structures, but the way thatthey developed the algorithm was
for quantum.
It picks it up quite easily.
The other one that it can doreally good is healthcare, Drug
discovery.
It can diagnose diseases.
It can predict diseases inpeople.
(16:47):
Based on that patternrecognition, based on seeing
those structures, will be usedfor machine learning and
artificial intelligence.
A lot of the machine learningtoday is assisted supervised
learning.
Quantum will be able to makethat unsupervised Again, by
spotting those structures In thesame way a person would, a
(17:08):
quantum computer can kind of doit in an automated fashion,
thereby improving the outcomesof the AI results.
Cybersecurity has a huge roleto play.
Again, I'll keep teasing theencryption.
We're going to get to it, but Isaw a bouncer over that.
But it also is really good atdetecting anomalies and traffic
flows and other behaviors.
It will be used in financialsfor market predictions.
(17:31):
It will be used in meteorologyto model climate and forecast
changes in weather patterns.
Alan Green (17:39):
If it's unsupervised .
I interpret that to mean it'sgoing to be out gathering data
or inputs on its own, versuswhat we do today with ML and AI,
where you need a data set thatyou kind of feed it and it's
going to have access to a wholebunch of data in order to come
back with the outputs.
(18:00):
This will be, I'm going to say,self-learning, for lack of a
better term.
Bill Harris (18:05):
Close to it.
There's a little bit of anuance on that, I think, and
that is that not necessarilyjust kind of set it loose and it
kind of figures it out on itsown, but you would still point
it at a data set.
You can make the data set aslarge as you want, but you
wouldn't necessarily have tocome back to it and say, oh no,
no, I don't mean, youinterpreted this wrong.
(18:26):
I don't mean this way.
With quantum computing and withpattern recognition and in
quantum just recognizing thestructures of knowledge, it
should be able to get most ofthat right most of the time.
But you would still need tokind of just point it at a data
set, however large you wanted itto be.
Alan Green (18:44):
Interesting.
So conceptually I could pointit at the intranet period and
then say go write my term paperon whatever subject, and then it
generates, it brings it backand I get an A.
Bill Harris (19:01):
Well, yeah, what you're describing sort of sounds
like chat GPP, for sure, butchat GPP doesn't also doesn't
recognize the differencesbetween true and false knowledge
, whereas quantum can help tobridge that gap.
Alan Green (19:15):
Okay, got it.
Thank you, sir Yep.
Bill Harris (19:19):
So we talked about the all the benefits of quantum.
There are still some thingsholding it back, though.
I hinted earlier that quantumwas susceptible to interference
and hence it was shielded and itwas raised off the floor.
That's a very big problem.
(19:39):
So it is susceptible toelectromagnetic fields, it is
susceptible to heat, it issusceptible to sound, vibration,
pretty much anything, anythingat all.
So just walking, getting tooclose to I mean it's susceptible
to photonics, so just kind ofgetting too close to a quantum
computer can interrupt its flow.
(20:01):
So you tend to find these verysheltered in rooms with a whole
bunch of shielding around them.
In fact, even for even quantumcomputers that are encased in,
say, lead, they are.
They are impacted by thenatural radioactive decay of
these elements.
(20:21):
Therefore, you have to havereally really clever error
correction circuitry torecognize errors when they
happen because of theseuncontrollable situations and
account for that and adjust theresponses.
We referenced some of thelimitations in measuring the
states.
So I said before, it can handlea vast quantity of information,
(20:42):
but when you read thatinformation then it disappears
and so you can capture kind oflike one value at a time
basically, and so you have towork with that as well.
These are extensive machines.
You tend to find quantumcomputers with big and I'm going
to talk about who has these butwith agencies, countries and
(21:05):
companies that have the pocketsto afford them and they require
a lot of cryogenics.
So again, like most of what yousee in a quantum computer, very
little of it is the processing,most of it is just everything
to support it.
And it's not a computer likethis.
It doesn't just do this byitself, it interfaces with a
regular computer, so it passesall this information to a
(21:27):
regular computer that thenmanipulates it to be digested.
It's not just digested by humanminds, but just the power that
has to go into a quantum machineto cryogenically pull it down
to absolute zero is prettysignificant.
So really over 90% of the powerthat goes into quantum is
around the cooling and verylittle is actually required for
(21:50):
the processing itself.
Alan Green (21:52):
So then, Bill let's assume all of the merits you've
described are true in this typeof processing is going to
deliver on all the things youkind of laid out.
If the cost, though, to getthere is so large, is there
(22:12):
truly a practical use case inthe commercial market?
As everyone looks at the costof ownership, will this ever be
a viable option on a largerscale?
Bill Harris (22:26):
It will be.
It's an investment that willyield returns, and usually in
pretty quick order.
So it'll accelerate workloadsdramatically and it'll help
companies find solutions a lotquicker.
Let's say you're apharmaceutical firm and you are
(22:51):
researching your nextpharmaceutical.
Say you want to research yournext antibacterial drug.
Antibacterials are not usuallyvery hugely profitable drugs,
but with a regular computerlet's say you have a
(23:11):
supercomputer it'll take youyears and years to get there.
It's an adequately poweredquantum machine that gets
reduced to weeks, days,potentially hours.
So you save yourself a whole lotof time and you also got to
market more quickly than yourcompetitor has.
Alan Green (23:33):
And so if I'm IBM, I am selling compute time to
those industries that are tryingto solve these really big
problems, and that's how Icommercialize it.
Bill Harris (23:47):
Yes, and you bring up a great point, which is that
quantum capabilities areavailable in the cloud with some
caveats.
So companies like IBM will maketheir quantum capabilities
available, provided that you'rea friendly actor.
So you're generally not goingto make it available to some
(24:09):
certain nation states.
But yeah, you can do it thatway, or you can just buy your
own.
Some companies have very deeppockets, and Booz Allen Hamilton
has a quantum machine, hitachihas one, so you won't find them
just at IBM.
Scott Rysdahl (24:28):
I'd also add to what Allen said and wonder about
the rate of development and therate of maturity.
So Moore's Law says thatcomputing power doubles every
year to two.
So I wonder if quantum has asimilar trajectory or if anybody
has even tried to guess at therate of quantum development yet.
(24:51):
Do you know, bill?
Bill Harris (24:52):
Yes, the people have predicted the rate of
quantum growth based on pastgrowth, and in 2030, they're
about National Institute ofStandards and Technology believe
that there will exist a quantumcomputer capable of breaking
RSA encryption, which is where Ithink we're headed next.
Eric Brown (25:11):
Was an RSA encryption already broken.
Bill Harris (25:14):
No, not RSA 2048.
Like some, maybe some smallerbit sizes of RSA, but 2048 still
remains secure.
Eric Brown (25:22):
I thought they had a back door into that.
Wasn't there a scandal orwhatever on that a couple of
years ago?
Bill Harris (25:27):
Not that I'm aware of, the RSA 2048 is still one of
the preferred encryptiontechnologies used for today's
TLS, so hopefully there's noback door, because that would be
a huge problem.
So this is the exact.
You guys are great.
You guys are just taking meexactly where we're going every
step of the way.
So we'll ask.
We got two slides.
I'm going to talk about theencryption that's vulnerable and
(25:48):
then I'm going to talk aboutthe answers to that and I'm
talking about.
So let's talk aboutvulnerabilities.
First, rsa 2048, which is usedwidely for TLS and VPN
connections, is will soon bevulnerable to encryption, nist
believes.
Another one that will bevulnerable is elliptic curve,
(26:08):
and elliptic curve is used forBitcoin transactions.
And then Diffie Hellman, whichis also used for TLS as well as
other things.
So to give you an idea of howdifficult these algorithms are
to crack the Frontiersupercomputer, which is a
collaboration between HP, amdand others.
(26:28):
It resides in Tennessee.
It's the most powerfulsupercomputer in the world today
.
I'm sure that'll be replaced bysomething else in 12 months.
It would take it billions ofyears to crack that Again,
because you're really trying todeal with factoring large prime
numbers, which neither classicalcomputers nor people are good
at doing.
It's enormously time consumingtask.
(26:50):
Quantum today will also takebillions of years to crack any
of those algorithms that you seelisted above.
But in 2030, nist believes thatthere may be a quantum machine
that might take a few hours tocrack it, based on the rate of
growth that we're seeing.
So in 98, two qubits.
(27:12):
Today, 433 qubits.
Ibm is expected to release aquantum machine this year.
Yet I think it's Condor we'regoing to get there that has over
1,000 qubits.
So we're seeing this not quiteexponential growth yet, but
we're seeing this march towardsmuch, much more powerful
(27:35):
computers.
Now here's why this matters.
It's reasonable today to saywell, quantum computers can't
crack the encryption that I useon websites.
So you go to website HTTPS, youlog into your bank, you log
into your healthcare provider orwhatever it is, and you can
(27:55):
feel reasonably safe over thatconnection.
Feel safe insofar as no one'sgoing to crack just like brute
force crack the encryptionbetween you and your destination
.
However, rest assured thatthere are countries and other
bad actors who are collectingthat information and they're
(28:16):
storing it and then, when theyhave a powerful enough machine
to break it, they're going tocome back and they're going to
break that encryption and thenthey'll have information.
Now, some of the information maybe stale, but some of it won't
be so stale.
So encrypted images of militaryinstallations seven, eight
(28:37):
years from now might be reallyhelpful.
Information about those privatemessages that one politician
sent to another seven years fromnow, oh yeah, they'll be really
helpful for blackmail, right?
So that's going to be a problem.
They've already got theinformation.
It's just a matter of timebefore they can read it.
Scott Rysdahl (28:56):
So RSA is used only basically to exchange keys
in TLS, right, so we don'tencrypt the entire contents of
your web browsing session withRSA encryption.
We use it to exchange a key andthen, like AES or some more
efficient symmetric algorithm,is used to encrypt the actual
transit in transit, and perfectforward secrecy is a way to try
(29:20):
to decouple that initial keythat is exchanged with RSA from
the encryption of the rest ofthe transit session.
Bill Harris (29:29):
Yes.
Scott Rysdahl (29:30):
Yeah.
Bill Harris (29:31):
Thank you.
Thank you for explaining thatto me too, because I wasn't very
familiar with perfect forwardsecrecy.
But the way you explain it isyes, and here's why.
So AES 128 and 256 are bothquantum safe.
So let's define quantum safe.
It is that no efficient knownalgorithm classical or quantum
(29:53):
can invert the function beingused to protect the data.
So you have a hash function oran encryption function with this
algorithm.
You can't just reverse it andsay, oh, that's the answer.
Here are the current quantumsafe encryption technologies
today, and this is not anexhaustive list.
The big ones SHA-256, aes 128and 256 and RSA-4096.
(30:18):
Rsa 2048, still quantum safe.
I'm just saying that RSA-4096will probably still be quantum
safe in 2030 because you're justyou're increasing the bit
length.
You are making it moredifficult for a quantum computer
to break it.
Likewise, aes 128 and 256 couldtheoretically be quantum safe
(30:39):
indefinitely, because all youreally need to do is just
increasing the bit size.
So it could be AES 384 or 512.
And that will just make itexponentially more difficult to
solve.
However, the National Instituteof Standards and Technology is
(31:02):
leaving nothing to chance, so in2016, they invited
mathematicians and scientistsaround the world to submit their
plans for new encryptiontechniques that would be quantum
safe by the definition providedabove, which means it needs to
be safe from a classical attackas well.
A lot of submissions came.
(31:23):
Some of them were thrown out.
There was one submission thatwas cracked with a regular PC
given enough time, so they'reclearly not going to work.
There were a couple ofsubmissions that went well into
round three and then finallyfailed because it was cracked.
But four of them rose to thetop For general encryption
(31:44):
Crystal's Kyber has already beennamed a solution and for
digital signatures to verifypeople's identities crystal
xyliphyum, falcon and stinks, orthe three that rose to the top.
All of these are going to beavailable, probably in 2024.
And then they should bedeployable then.
(32:07):
The reason there are so many ofthem and, by the way, there's
more coming.
So there's going to be a roundtwo, and the round two will
focus on general encryption only.
They've already got enoughdigital signature solutions, so
you're going to see thingsgetting added to the crystal
kyber.
But let me talk about some ofthe differences here.
So three of these four usecryptography that's predicated
(32:36):
on lattice mathematics, and I'mgoing to talk about what that is
.
And then the last one, stinksplus is a hash-based algorithm,
and the reason that NIST didthis is because they wanted two
completely different solutions.
So in case lattice-basedcryptography is cracked, well,
(32:56):
they can fall back on stinksplus and have a hashing
algorithm which so far stillworks fine, given enough key
length.
So here's what lattice-basedmathematics is.
It's really fascinating stuff.
Imagine, if you will, you'vegot yourself a sheet of 8 1 1⁄2
(33:18):
sheet of grid paper and nowimagine that you make that
three-dimensional.
So instead of just length andwidth, now you've got depth.
Now I want you to expand that,blow it up to say 100 miles wide
and 100 miles deep.
(33:38):
Now I want you to add 1,000dimensions to it.
So now you've got this1,000-dimensioned, huge,
100-mile-wide deep and high grid, and the problem that you're
being asked to solve is to findthe shortest point between A and
(34:00):
B within that structure.
That is enormously difficultfor anything known to do because
there is no periodic structureto it.
The classical computer can'treally figure that out and a
quantum computer can't figurethat out.
That's lattice-basedmathematical cryptography.
Scott Rysdahl (34:21):
Bill, quick question about that.
Is that the shortest distance?
I don't want to say linearly,but linearly thinking in
three-dimensional space.
Or is it the shortest distancefollowing some route through the
network, let's say 90 degreeangles between nodes, if that
makes sense?
Bill Harris (34:42):
Yeah, I think it is the second one where you're
trying to follow the nodesInteresting.
Eric Brown (34:49):
Can you create a wormhole between the two?
Bill Harris (34:52):
You should be able to given this topic.
Scott Rysdahl (34:55):
That's how we crack this, that's right.
Bill Harris (34:58):
Let's patent that.
And the third quantum-safeencryption for discussion here
is around photonics.
This one's really interestingbecause it uses the principle of
quantum mechanics in which assoon as you observe something
you change it.
So with photonics it's more ofa detective technique, it's not
(35:22):
a prevention technique.
So you encrypt somethingstrongly, but if someone is
eavesdropping on it you willknow, because the qubits within
that transmission are entangled.
So if you impact one of thosephotons, one of those particles,
(35:44):
then you will impact the otherand then you will know that
someone is eavesdropping on yourdata.
Now I don't think we talked toomuch about entanglement, but
entanglement is the phenomenonin quantum mechanics in which
any changes to one particle it'ssister particle, regardless of
distance.
So they can be infinitely farapart, and that's going to
(36:09):
happen.
Eric Brown (36:09):
I feel like we need a dad joke in here, or to talk
about Nick's cats.
Bill Harris (36:14):
To lighten the mood , to bring it up the level.
Eric Brown (36:19):
You were just talking about some sort of a
sheet of paper that had 1,000dimensions and 1,000 miles wide
and deep.
Bill Harris (36:28):
Well, this is crazy stuff and I'm not a
mathematician, but this isreally fascinating stuff to look
into.
It just really boggles becauseof these.
When we're talking aboutquantum, we really are talking
about this multi-dimensionalcomputing, and it's crazy.
Scott Rysdahl (36:48):
I've got something for us.
I've got some quantum jokes.
Can I just interject these oncein a while?
Bill Harris (36:53):
Absolutely yeah.
Scott Rysdahl (36:55):
So there's three types of people in the world
those who understand quantumcomputing, those who don't
understand quantum computing andthose who simultaneously do and
do not understand quantumcomputing.
Bill Harris (37:06):
Yeah, I think I might be more of the third, but
just barely understanding itmyself.
So actually, let's lighten themood a little bit here.
So we're going to come back upand talk about countries with
quantum.
You'll see a fairly familiarlist here.
I don't think there's any bigsurprises in this list.
(37:27):
Maybe the Netherlands a littlebit.
Probably 95% of quantum ishappening in the United States,
Canada and China.
In terms of the power that theyhave Within the United States,
IBM is really leading the field.
They're very public about theirquantum capabilities.
Some news came out of Chinaearlier this year in which they
(37:47):
claimed to have already brokenRSA 2048.
But that was immediately metwith a lot of skepticism, and so
it appears that is not the case.
They do not have a computercapable of doing that, but it's
still something that we'rewatching for 2030.
Eric Brown (38:04):
And what is RSA again?
Bill Harris (38:07):
I forget the names of the three scientists who
developed it, but it's anencryption technology that's
used for asymmetric encryptionto transmit traffic from over
the internet.
So, as opposed to a symmetricencryption algorithm like AES,
rsa is asymmetric, in whichwe're using a public key and a
private key.
Scott Rysdahl (38:29):
And real quick.
To add to that, the beauty ofpublic key cryptosystems or
asymmetric encryption is thatyou can reach a shared key
across an insecure channel likethe internet and you can have
somebody sitting in the middlewatching all the traffic going
in both directions and theycan't arrive at the same key.
So it basically makes internetcommerce and trusted
(38:51):
communications possible.
For anybody who's never metsomebody else in a park or in a
parking garage after dark tosecretly exchange that key, we
can, in the light of day, twopeople can get a secure session
going with no prior contact orcommunication.
Bill Harris (39:06):
Yeah.
Eric Brown (39:08):
I feel like I'm studying for the CISSP.
You guys have all experiencedthis, I'm sure, where you go to
some sort of family dinner orgathering of people that aren't
in security and they startasking you what you do and you
go down this long kind ofdiatribe about something that
(39:28):
you're working on, that you'rereally into, and they just glaze
over and they have no idea whatyou're talking about because
you're using these acronyms thatnobody really understands,
right?
I wonder what these poorquantum scientists do, because
anywhere they go, they'retalking about stuff that, like,
a handful of people really grasp.
Bill Harris (39:49):
I presented the same deck at my last family
outing this past Memorial Day.
No one was interested.
Alan Green (39:56):
Yeah, you found yourself sitting alone at some
point.
Bill Harris (40:01):
Yeah, right, yeah, I'm not invited back.
So here are some of thecompanies with quantum computers
today.
I think it's an interestinglist.
Again, there aren't many bigsurprises on here.
I do want to point out that alot of universities have quantum
right and it's not surprising.
(40:22):
But it's interesting thattoday's students are learning
this and they're fiddling withit in the lab and they're part
of the tip of the spear when itcomes to this type of research.
Eric Brown (40:34):
And I'm sure nation states have it.
Is it just not publicized?
Bill Harris (40:38):
They do.
Us Department of Energy hasquantum.
You better believe the NSA hasquantum.
And then, yeah, nation states,china, russia, yes, they have
quantum.
And there's a race.
There's a race to get to aquantum computer that is
sufficiently large enough to dosome real damage, which is where
(40:59):
I'm going.
So let's talk through IBM'sQuantum Roadmap.
So in 2019, they introducedFalcon.
That was 27 qubits.
Today they're on Condor 1121.
They're actually going to beintroducing Condor.
I don't think it's out yet.
It should be coming later thisyear.
Right now they're still sittingon 433.
(41:20):
And by 2026, they really wantto get above 10,000 qubits.
But IBM has a very definedroadmap for how they can scale
their capabilities.
Bill are you aware of who comesup with these names?
No, but I love Cucubora.
If my next pet would absolutelybe named Cucabora.
(41:40):
So, yeah, so.
So yeah, let's get into thatright now.
So where is this going?
Cubits will continue toincrease.
I think things become veryuseful.
At about 10,000 qubits you can.
This starts to have some realworld applications and some of
(42:00):
the things that we justmentioned.
You know some of likeautomotive industry, any any
business industry to solve, tosolve, you know, complex
problems.
But after like a thousandqubits or so, ibm believes that
the machines will have to belinked fiber-optically, so in
other words, horizontally scaledright, as opposed to
continually try to verticallyscale the.
(42:21):
The quantum computer itself isgoing to be more difficult
because trying to get that manyperfect qubits into a single
processor is really tough.
So horizontally scaling isprobably going to be the way
it's going to go.
They will benefit from morefrom more practical
superconductors, maybesuperconductors that don't have
(42:44):
to be so aggressively cooled orthere are other methods to make
them work.
Do expect some performanceinnovations outside of qubits.
So I mentioned earlier thatquantum computers are also
connected to conventionalcomputers.
They work in tandem.
We'll probably end up seeingmore of that, where a classical
computer will be brought to bearto facilitate some of the some
(43:08):
of the results that come fromthe quantum machine and also
expect new ways of measuringworkloads, because I mean, it's
never enough to measuresomething one way.
I think qubit will become avery vague term.
Already there are.
Qubits can have variations intheir quality.
(43:29):
So some qubits can be highlyfault tolerant, others less so,
and the highly fault tolerantqubits are more powerful, right.
So you have to keep an eye onthat as well.
But not all qubits are createdequal.
I think quantum computers willbe functional.
I think most people agree thatquantum computers will be
functional coming up, but reallyits potential is still you know
(43:52):
, we're still trying to figurethat out.
Scott Rysdahl (43:53):
Bill, do you know anything?
Any applications whereclassical computers are expected
to still be better than quantumgoing forward?
Oh, yeah, probably at the rightscales.
Bill Harris (44:05):
Yeah, sure.
So really anything that doesn't, that doesn't have any periodic
structure to look at.
You know things that are highlyrandomized, where it requires
you know if they're gettinghighly randomized input, a
classical computer is going toexcel at that because there's
just no structure to go out andfind.
So gaming is going to be oneexample.
Eric Brown (44:26):
Would it change potentially how cryptocurrency
works?
Because today cryptocurrency issolving, you know racing to
solve a complex problem over aperiod of time and then you know
getting cryptocurrency as areward for solving that problem
Would quantum essentiallydisrupt that and potentially
(44:49):
cause like a fork?
Bill Harris (44:50):
So what you're talking about there is proof of
work, and, yeah, quantumcomputing will absolutely impact
proof of work, because proof ofwork is, I mean, it's they're
trying to find these large,these large prime numbers.
Quantum's good at that.
So, yeah, it will disrupt anytype of proof of work.
(45:11):
Crypto that works on big primes, didn't?
Eric Brown (45:15):
Ethereum move to proof of stake.
Yeah.
Bill Harris (45:19):
Ethereum too.
Yeah, yeah.
Eric Brown (45:23):
And when we talk about quantum, just to go back
to the beginning, quantum is thestate of the atom that it's in.
What atom is it?
Bill Harris (45:40):
So they use different elements for the
superconductivity.
Off the top of my head, I don'trecall.
I remember seeing this.
I don't recall specificallywhat elements they use in their
superconductor, but that's yeah,they're just using, they're
taking an element thatsuperconduct very, very well and
they use the atoms within that.
Eric Brown (46:02):
Is it the proton, the neutron or the electron?
Bill Harris (46:10):
I believe with the I think they're changing the
electrons, but there again I'mnot sure it's.
Now we're getting into a levelthat I'm not sure what part
specifically of the atom thatthey're following, but I think
it's the electron.
Do we have any more quantumjokes?
Scott Rysdahl (46:28):
Yeah, so an electron was pulled over by the
quantum state patrol and theofficer walks up to the car and
says do you know how fast youwere going, to which the
electron responds no, but I knowwhere I am.
Bill Harris (46:43):
I'm going to try these out on my kit, yeah, so.
Scott Rysdahl (46:46):
I'll hate them.
Bill Harris (46:47):
Yeah.
Eric Brown (46:51):
Well, Bill, thank you very much.
Very deep topic and youcertainly have done your
research.
Bill Harris (46:59):
Pleasure presenting it to you, a really interesting
topic.
I would encourage anyone, ifyou want to learn more about
this, to check out yourresources on the internet.
Youtube has some, some, somefantastic things from your
favorite physicists.
Once you certainly recognize,and they go into this it's, they
take it into different areas.
Eric Brown (47:18):
Nick, last time we were talking about our favorite
physicist.
My name is Brian Cox and DrMiku Kaku.
Did you come up with a favoritephysicist?
Scott Rysdahl (47:27):
You know about 10 minutes ago I had the same
thought and I, you know I didn'tget around to it.
So that's homework for nexttime, how about?
you Scott Feynman's Cool.
He actually wrote a book calledyou Can't Be Serious or
something like that, and it waslike just kind of physics humor
not just cheap jokes like these,but like just kind of a really
(47:49):
like approachable, humorous bookabout physics.
I think it was written in likethe 60s or something, so it's
pretty dated now, but he wasjust like a genuinely cool guy.
Are we still recording?
We are Okay, never mind, I'lltalk to you later.
Tell you some Richard Feynmanstory.
Eric Brown (48:11):
You have been listening to the audit presented
by IT Auto Labs.
We are experts at assessingsecurity, risk and compliance,
while providing administrativeand technical controls to
improve our clients datasecurity.
Our threat assessments find thesoft spots before the bad guys
do, identifying likelihood andimpact, while our security
control assessments rank thelevel of maturity relative to
(48:34):
the size of your organization.
You are listening to the audit presented by IT Audit
Labs.
Welcome back to the auditeveryone.
We're talking again with BillHarris.
So, bill, thanks for coming on.
And today we're talking aboutquantum computing.
(00:25):
I think that's a topic thatmost of us probably don't know a
lot about.
Alan's back with us, alan,hopefully you can stay the whole
time this time.
Thanks for coming back in, nick, always good to have you, of
course, and Scott too.
Last week, scott, we startedtalking about classical compute
(00:46):
with Bill, and Bill's got athree-part series of classical
compute quantum and then thefuture of storage, so looking at
things like DNA and crystallinefor storage.
So, bill, we'll turn it over toyou and we'll pepper you with
questions.
Maybe we just get a quickbackground.
For those who maybe didn't hearthe previous podcast, bill, do
(01:09):
you want to just give a littleinsight into who you are and
what you do?
Bill Harris (01:14):
Yeah, sure you bet.
So my name is Bill Harris and Ido security architecture, and
one of the things that I focuson is security and general
technology futures.
So today I'll be talking aboutthe future of quantum between
now and 2023.
Eric Brown (01:30):
Now, in 2023?
.
Bill Harris (01:32):
Oh, I'm sorry, Now in 2030.
Eric Brown (01:34):
2030, got it Cool.
And then, alan, you'rerelatively new to this too.
Do you want to just give aquick who you are, besides being
apparently a Wisconsin fan?
Alan Green (01:45):
Yeah, so I'm wearing this in honor of my youngest
son, who graduates high schooltomorrow.
He's decided to attend theUniversity of Wisconsin, so yet
again, my kid and my money willbe going to the University of
Wisconsin.
Congratulations.
Scott Rysdahl (02:02):
He'll be the second one.
Alan Green (02:04):
Yeah, he'll be the second one that I had go through
that school.
I'm Alan Green IT professional,been in the industry going on
practically 30 years now.
My current role is I manage ateam of system engineers at a
company that developed softwareand does some work in the credit
(02:26):
industry, and I own that totalresponsibility for their
infrastructure.
Eric Brown (02:32):
And last time, Alan, you were drinking what you were
calling iced tea.
Alan Green (02:36):
It was iced tea and a solo cup.
But I got to admit.
That's why I left the name ofmy employer out of this
introduction, just in casesomeone makes an accusation
again that I was drinking morethan iced tea.
It's not tied to anybodybecause it was iced tea, my
friend.
Eric Brown (02:55):
We just happened to be talking about bourbon at the
same time, and Scott, nick, billand Alan are all fans of
bourbon.
Are you as well?
Scott Rysdahl (03:08):
I like bourbon and I was going to give Alan
props for pouring bourbon intoan iced tea can so that he could
drink it throughout therecording of this episode.
Eric Brown (03:17):
All right, there you go.
So, alan, when did he decide togo to Wisconsin?
It?
Alan Green (03:24):
was several weeks back almost better than a month
right, he applied to a host ofschools, got accepted into all
of them that he applied to, andthen it became the OK what can
dad and mom afford?
And as we tick down the list,we felt very comfortable with
University of Wisconsin.
(03:44):
As I mentioned earlier, hisolder sister graduated from
there back in 2019-ish.
Yeah, I'm a great parent.
Don't know when my kidsgraduated college.
Yeah, I'll own that.
So anyway, yeah, it'll be fun.
It'll be fun to have anotherone there.
It's a great school.
I'm looking forward to roadtrips.
(04:07):
We can go watch some Badgerfootball and hang out on the
campuses.
Eric Brown (04:14):
What's he going to study?
Alan Green (04:16):
You know what he is?
Linguistics.
He has an uncanny ability tograsp languages and so he has
studied Chinese since he was Idon't know, fifth grade, sixth
grade, and then he just pickedup French on the side.
(04:37):
So he's conversational inChinese and damn near
conversational in French.
So he wants to do something inlinguistics and then maybe get
out and you know, I don't knowwork for the UN or become
something that requires him toleverage those skill sets CIA.
(04:58):
And potentially, yeah,potentially CIA.
Eric Brown (05:04):
Very cool for him.
I heard recently that the SpaceForce and the Air Force I know
it's funny to say the SpaceForce.
I know right, yep, steveCarroll or whatever right.
But yeah, I think those two are, from a military perspective,
top for cyber is what I heard.
(05:27):
Not that all the other branchesdon't have cyber capabilities,
but I think there's.
They're at least recruitingmaybe more for cyber in in the
Air Force and the Space Force.
Alan Green (05:39):
So I thought you were about to tie that to
linguistics, and Steve Carrolland company were looking for
people that could speak Martian.
They ventured into the outerspace, so like where you took
that?
Bill Harris (05:53):
you know the US has actually had a Space Force for
a while.
It's just wasn't called as much.
It was called out in theprevious administration, the
prior to that.
It was Just caught kind ofquietly buried and in other
agencies, so it's not to drawattention to it.
All right, can we see my screen?
Alan Green (06:10):
Yes, we can.
Bill Harris (06:11):
All right.
So for today's agenda, this iswhat I'm gonna go through today.
We're gonna talk about reallykind of quantum and get you
introduced from beginning to end, talk about where it's going.
I'll kick off with talkingabout what exactly is quantum
computing.
That we'll move to why itmatters.
We'll go through some use casesand talk about where quantum is
(06:32):
being used today and reallywhat benefits it brings.
There are also challenges tocome with quantum, so we'll go
into that and tell you what'sholding it back a little bit and
what we're trying to do aboutit.
I'll talk about the elephant inthe room, right?
So quantum is always discussedin terms of cryptography, it
seems, and what it's going to doto encryption in the future.
We'll absolutely dive into thatand then we'll start to wrap up
(06:55):
and talk about where quantumexists today, what countries are
using it, what companies haveit, and go into the roadmap from
there and then wrap up.
So first, well, let's take offwith some basics around quantum
computer.
So quantum was first envisionedin the 1980s by two scientists,
richard Feynman and Yuri Manin.
(07:16):
They were seeking to solve abasic problem of physics, which
is that Was really tough forphysicists to model Quantum
mechanics on classical computers.
So they realized that theywould have to build a quantum
computer to model quantumproblems.
That's why it was born.
So in 1998 the first quantumcomputer was made.
(07:40):
It had two qubits, and A qubitis the same thing as a regular
bit and so far as it canrepresent a zero or a one and it
is, it's it's nothing more thantwo superconductors on either
side of an insulator.
But in addition to representinga zero or a one, by the rules of
quantum mechanics you can alsorepresent both at the same time,
(08:03):
and we're going to be comingback to that concept a lot and
talking about why that matters.
But I'll touch one of thelittle bit here and say that in
terms of how you can relate aqubit to a regular bit, and
qubits take the value of Two tothe end bits.
So if you've got ten qubitsthat can take on the values of
(08:26):
about a thousand, 24 regularbits.
If you've got 20 qubits thatcan take on the value of a
million bits.
So if you've got a hundredqubits, they can take on the
values of one point two, seven,non million bits.
So here you start to see thepower of the superposition and
(08:48):
and how qubits are justexponentially more powerful than
a regular bit because they cando all of that stuff at the same
time.
We'll talk more about thatcoming up.
Eric Brown (08:58):
Guys, I have a confession.
I made it through two bulletpoints before I got lost.
I feel like I'm in all in son'sChinese class.
Bill Harris (09:07):
Oh, don't worry, We'll get you caught up, we'll
get you caught up.
So we're gonna kind of berevisiting these, these, these
ideas a little bit and at theend of this, if you want to know
more about it, there's somegreat material on the internet
there's.
There's plenty of plenty ofstuff to brush up.
Important to know that quantumcomputers are not programmed
like a regular machine like youcan't just kind of pony up there
(09:29):
and and program it with, youknow, c, sharp or, or, or cobalt
or something like that, right?
So it requires algorithms to befed to it and we'll talk about
one of those algorithms is whenwe get into cryptography.
But Scientists are stilldeveloping, and particularly
mathematicians are stilldeveloping algorithms to feed
quantum computers, and We'lltalk a little bit also about why
(09:51):
that matters and how that'sdifferent.
Now, before I advance it andkind of go into some of the
details, let's get introduced tothe quantum computer.
So For most of these slidesyou're going to see a quantum
computer on your right side andit's all going to be different
ones, but they all kind of lookthe same.
So here's what we're looking athere.
The quantum computer is usuallya multi-tiered model and I'm
(10:13):
going to talk about why this injust a moment.
But you'll see that all thesewires coming down here, that's
called a chandelier because itlooks like a chandelier, so they
gave it a catchy name like thatand these are a combination of
signal cables as well asSuperconducting circuits.
The little these bars you seekind of coming down the center
(10:34):
here and these weekly things,this is the refrigerant.
Now, as the refrigerant whichby the way is liquid nitrogen
Comes down through these tears,it gets colder and colder and
colder until it reaches thebottom.
Now the bottom is where thequantum processor is kept.
So all of this is that, you see,right here.
All of that is really justsignals and cryogenics to keep
(10:56):
the thing cold.
And the reason that the quantumprocessor at the very bottom of
this has to be so cold isBecause it has to achieve near
absolute zero, to achieveSuperconductivity.
Only then can quantum activityhappen.
So at close to zero degreesKelvin the most atomic motion
(11:18):
stops right, and so at thatpoint you can then start to
Manipulate these atoms and getthe quantum measurements that
you want.
So at 15 millikelvin, justabove Absolute zero, that's
colder than outer space.
Quantum computer is probablythe coldest thing in the known
(11:38):
universe.
Eric Brown (11:39):
And is it liquid helium or liquid nitrogen?
Bill Harris (11:42):
liquid helium, liquid nitrogen, doesn't get
cold enough.
So can you give us an exampleof how big this is, to scale by
feet tall, and the reason thatyou're gonna see that it is
usually suspended from a ceilingor from a superstructure, not
from a ceiling, from asuperstructure it's usually, and
it's usually off the floor,because if they put it on the
(12:05):
floor it's gonna pick up way toomany vibrations, which is gonna
completely screw up the quantummeasurement.
So they have to suspend it froma superstructure and try to
isolate it from the outsideworld, to reduce vibrations, to
reduce noise.
And what you're seeing herealso is the quantum computer
opened up much like a computer,with your case off.
(12:26):
Over top of this will be ashroud that will further Shield
it from the outside elements?
Eric Brown (12:32):
Do they put LED lights on them like a cool
gaming computer?
Bill Harris (12:35):
They, they should.
It would look beautiful ifthese whole things were like
LEDs, like blue and green andmaybe like a rainbow pattern.
But no, they couldn't do thatbecause it would, wouldn't just
not work.
So that gets introduced to sortof fit, sort of physical like
what a quantum computer lookslike, what it's made of and the
(12:57):
just a really high-level basics.
Let's talk a little bit aboutwhy that matters.
So we had talked earlier a bitabout superposition at 300
qubits.
We talked earlier like ahundred qubits that a quantum
computer could do.
What was it like?
Over a non-million number ofvalues at 300 qubits a quantum
(13:21):
computer can represent 10 to the90th possible states
simultaneously.
Now that is, that representsmore particles than are in the
known universe.
So it's just astronomicallynumber, astronomically high and
high number if you, if you thinkyou can imagine that number,
you really can't.
(13:42):
It's um, it's absolutelyenormous quantity.
And what makes it sointeresting is that we can do
this.
Today IBM already has a quantumcomputer with 433 qubits.
So by virtue of that, ibm has aquantum computer that can
represent more valuesSimultaneously than there are
(14:05):
atoms in the known universe.
Needless to say, conventionalcomputers can't process
Information that quickly, muchless hold it in memory like a
quantum machine can.
Quantum machines don't reallyneed the memory for it.
It's just the way if theirmechanics works.
However, it's worth noting thatAlthough they can hold such an
(14:28):
enormous number of values, theycan't report all of them at the
same time.
You can go in and read one ofthose values, but by the nature
of quantum mechanics, when youread that value, you change it
and so you can read one.
You can read a value and itgives you back that value in.
All the other data disappears.
(14:48):
So they have to build otheralgorithms and put other
electronics around it and playsome very clever tricks to get
the value that they want out ofthat sheer number of
possibilities.
And that's where the math justgets out of control, which I
won't go into today, in largepart because I can't.
It's probably obvious by nowthat maybe a quantum computer
(15:09):
isn't a brute force device.
It just works on differentphysics, right?
So with today's computers youcan throw supercomputers at it,
just throw more processors at it, more memory, bigger circuits
and just kind of brute forceyour way through it.
Quantum is a lot more elegantthan that, because it's just
doing things much differentlyand it's just enormously
(15:30):
parallel, and so incalculableproblems become possible to
solve.
Scott Rysdahl (15:37):
Hey Bill, will quantum ever be able to tell us
how many licks it takes to getto the center of a tutsuba?
Bill Harris (15:42):
I love the throwback to the 80s.
I love it.
That little owl, yeah, no,that's good stuff, but we will
talk about what quantum willallow us to do going forward,
although I think that questionwill always be elusive.
It can, of course, solveproblems in quantum chemistry,
(16:05):
quantum physics.
It's what it was designed to do.
That's the whole reason thatquantum computers were developed
was to solve those types ofquantum mechanical problems.
And the reason it can do thatand everything else below it is
because quantum computers arereally really good at spotting
periodic structures, and I'mgoing to talk about why that's
important for cryptography too.
(16:25):
But computers are not that goodat spotting those types of
structures, but the way thatthey developed the algorithm was
for quantum.
It picks it up quite easily.
The other one that it can doreally good is healthcare, Drug
discovery.
It can diagnose diseases.
It can predict diseases inpeople.
(16:47):
Based on that patternrecognition, based on seeing
those structures, will be usedfor machine learning and
artificial intelligence.
A lot of the machine learningtoday is assisted supervised
learning.
Quantum will be able to makethat unsupervised Again, by
spotting those structures In thesame way a person would, a
(17:08):
quantum computer can kind of doit in an automated fashion,
thereby improving the outcomesof the AI results.
Cybersecurity has a huge roleto play.
Again, I'll keep teasing theencryption.
We're going to get to it, but Isaw a bouncer over that.
But it also is really good atdetecting anomalies and traffic
flows and other behaviors.
It will be used in financialsfor market predictions.
(17:31):
It will be used in meteorologyto model climate and forecast
changes in weather patterns.
Alan Green (17:39):
If it's unsupervised .
I interpret that to mean it'sgoing to be out gathering data
or inputs on its own, versuswhat we do today with ML and AI,
where you need a data set thatyou kind of feed it and it's
going to have access to a wholebunch of data in order to come
back with the outputs.
(18:00):
This will be, I'm going to say,self-learning, for lack of a
better term.
Bill Harris (18:05):
Close to it.
There's a little bit of anuance on that, I think, and
that is that not necessarilyjust kind of set it loose and it
kind of figures it out on itsown, but you would still point
it at a data set.
You can make the data set aslarge as you want, but you
wouldn't necessarily have tocome back to it and say, oh no,
no, I don't mean, youinterpreted this wrong.
(18:26):
I don't mean this way.
With quantum computing and withpattern recognition and in
quantum just recognizing thestructures of knowledge, it
should be able to get most ofthat right most of the time.
But you would still need tokind of just point it at a data
set, however large you wanted itto be.
Alan Green (18:44):
Interesting.
So conceptually I could pointit at the intranet period and
then say go write my term paperon whatever subject, and then it
generates, it brings it backand I get an A.
Bill Harris (19:01):
Well, yeah, what you're describing sort of sounds
like chat GPP, for sure, butchat GPP doesn't also doesn't
recognize the differencesbetween true and false knowledge
, whereas quantum can help tobridge that gap.
Alan Green (19:15):
Okay, got it.
Thank you, sir Yep.
Bill Harris (19:19):
So we talked about the all the benefits of quantum.
There are still some thingsholding it back, though.
I hinted earlier that quantumwas susceptible to interference
and hence it was shielded and itwas raised off the floor.
That's a very big problem.
(19:39):
So it is susceptible toelectromagnetic fields, it is
susceptible to heat, it issusceptible to sound, vibration,
pretty much anything, anythingat all.
So just walking, getting tooclose to I mean it's susceptible
to photonics, so just kind ofgetting too close to a quantum
computer can interrupt its flow.
(20:01):
So you tend to find these verysheltered in rooms with a whole
bunch of shielding around them.
In fact, even for even quantumcomputers that are encased in,
say, lead, they are.
They are impacted by thenatural radioactive decay of
these elements.
(20:21):
Therefore, you have to havereally really clever error
correction circuitry torecognize errors when they
happen because of theseuncontrollable situations and
account for that and adjust theresponses.
We referenced some of thelimitations in measuring the
states.
So I said before, it can handlea vast quantity of information,
(20:42):
but when you read thatinformation then it disappears
and so you can capture kind oflike one value at a time
basically, and so you have towork with that as well.
These are extensive machines.
You tend to find quantumcomputers with big and I'm going
to talk about who has these butwith agencies, countries and
(21:05):
companies that have the pocketsto afford them and they require
a lot of cryogenics.
So again, like most of what yousee in a quantum computer, very
little of it is the processing,most of it is just everything
to support it.
And it's not a computer likethis.
It doesn't just do this byitself, it interfaces with a
regular computer, so it passesall this information to a
(21:27):
regular computer that thenmanipulates it to be digested.
It's not just digested by humanminds, but just the power that
has to go into a quantum machineto cryogenically pull it down
to absolute zero is prettysignificant.
So really over 90% of the powerthat goes into quantum is
around the cooling and verylittle is actually required for
(21:50):
the processing itself.
Alan Green (21:52):
So then, Bill let's assume all of the merits you've
described are true in this typeof processing is going to
deliver on all the things youkind of laid out.
If the cost, though, to getthere is so large, is there
(22:12):
truly a practical use case inthe commercial market?
As everyone looks at the costof ownership, will this ever be
a viable option on a largerscale?
Bill Harris (22:26):
It will be.
It's an investment that willyield returns, and usually in
pretty quick order.
So it'll accelerate workloadsdramatically and it'll help
companies find solutions a lotquicker.
Let's say you're apharmaceutical firm and you are
(22:51):
researching your nextpharmaceutical.
Say you want to research yournext antibacterial drug.
Antibacterials are not usuallyvery hugely profitable drugs,
but with a regular computerlet's say you have a
(23:11):
supercomputer it'll take youyears and years to get there.
It's an adequately poweredquantum machine that gets
reduced to weeks, days,potentially hours.
So you save yourself a whole lotof time and you also got to
market more quickly than yourcompetitor has.
Alan Green (23:33):
And so if I'm IBM, I am selling compute time to
those industries that are tryingto solve these really big
problems, and that's how Icommercialize it.
Bill Harris (23:47):
Yes, and you bring up a great point, which is that
quantum capabilities areavailable in the cloud with some
caveats.
So companies like IBM will maketheir quantum capabilities
available, provided that you'rea friendly actor.
So you're generally not goingto make it available to some
(24:09):
certain nation states.
But yeah, you can do it thatway, or you can just buy your
own.
Some companies have very deeppockets, and Booz Allen Hamilton
has a quantum machine, hitachihas one, so you won't find them
just at IBM.
Scott Rysdahl (24:28):
I'd also add to what Allen said and wonder about
the rate of development and therate of maturity.
So Moore's Law says thatcomputing power doubles every
year to two.
So I wonder if quantum has asimilar trajectory or if anybody
has even tried to guess at therate of quantum development yet.
(24:51):
Do you know, bill?
Bill Harris (24:52):
Yes, the people have predicted the rate of
quantum growth based on pastgrowth, and in 2030, they're
about National Institute ofStandards and Technology believe
that there will exist a quantumcomputer capable of breaking
RSA encryption, which is where Ithink we're headed next.
Eric Brown (25:11):
Was an RSA encryption already broken.
Bill Harris (25:14):
No, not RSA 2048.
Like some, maybe some smallerbit sizes of RSA, but 2048 still
remains secure.
Eric Brown (25:22):
I thought they had a back door into that.
Wasn't there a scandal orwhatever on that a couple of
years ago?
Bill Harris (25:27):
Not that I'm aware of, the RSA 2048 is still one of
the preferred encryptiontechnologies used for today's
TLS, so hopefully there's noback door, because that would be
a huge problem.
So this is the exact.
You guys are great.
You guys are just taking meexactly where we're going every
step of the way.
So we'll ask.
We got two slides.
I'm going to talk about theencryption that's vulnerable and
(25:48):
then I'm going to talk aboutthe answers to that and I'm
talking about.
So let's talk aboutvulnerabilities.
First, rsa 2048, which is usedwidely for TLS and VPN
connections, is will soon bevulnerable to encryption, nist
believes.
Another one that will bevulnerable is elliptic curve,
(26:08):
and elliptic curve is used forBitcoin transactions.
And then Diffie Hellman, whichis also used for TLS as well as
other things.
So to give you an idea of howdifficult these algorithms are
to crack the Frontiersupercomputer, which is a
collaboration between HP, amdand others.
(26:28):
It resides in Tennessee.
It's the most powerfulsupercomputer in the world today
.
I'm sure that'll be replaced bysomething else in 12 months.
It would take it billions ofyears to crack that Again,
because you're really trying todeal with factoring large prime
numbers, which neither classicalcomputers nor people are good
at doing.
It's enormously time consumingtask.
(26:50):
Quantum today will also takebillions of years to crack any
of those algorithms that you seelisted above.
But in 2030, nist believes thatthere may be a quantum machine
that might take a few hours tocrack it, based on the rate of
growth that we're seeing.
So in 98, two qubits.
(27:12):
Today, 433 qubits.
Ibm is expected to release aquantum machine this year.
Yet I think it's Condor we'regoing to get there that has over
1,000 qubits.
So we're seeing this not quiteexponential growth yet, but
we're seeing this march towardsmuch, much more powerful
(27:35):
computers.
Now here's why this matters.
It's reasonable today to saywell, quantum computers can't
crack the encryption that I useon websites.
So you go to website HTTPS, youlog into your bank, you log
into your healthcare provider orwhatever it is, and you can
(27:55):
feel reasonably safe over thatconnection.
Feel safe insofar as no one'sgoing to crack just like brute
force crack the encryptionbetween you and your destination
.
However, rest assured thatthere are countries and other
bad actors who are collectingthat information and they're
(28:16):
storing it and then, when theyhave a powerful enough machine
to break it, they're going tocome back and they're going to
break that encryption and thenthey'll have information.
Now, some of the information maybe stale, but some of it won't
be so stale.
So encrypted images of militaryinstallations seven, eight
(28:37):
years from now might be reallyhelpful.
Information about those privatemessages that one politician
sent to another seven years fromnow, oh yeah, they'll be really
helpful for blackmail, right?
So that's going to be a problem.
They've already got theinformation.
It's just a matter of timebefore they can read it.
Scott Rysdahl (28:56):
So RSA is used only basically to exchange keys
in TLS, right, so we don'tencrypt the entire contents of
your web browsing session withRSA encryption.
We use it to exchange a key andthen, like AES or some more
efficient symmetric algorithm,is used to encrypt the actual
transit in transit, and perfectforward secrecy is a way to try
(29:20):
to decouple that initial keythat is exchanged with RSA from
the encryption of the rest ofthe transit session.
Bill Harris (29:29):
Yes.
Scott Rysdahl (29:30):
Yeah.
Bill Harris (29:31):
Thank you.
Thank you for explaining thatto me too, because I wasn't very
familiar with perfect forwardsecrecy.
But the way you explain it isyes, and here's why.
So AES 128 and 256 are bothquantum safe.
So let's define quantum safe.
It is that no efficient knownalgorithm classical or quantum
(29:53):
can invert the function beingused to protect the data.
So you have a hash function oran encryption function with this
algorithm.
You can't just reverse it andsay, oh, that's the answer.
Here are the current quantumsafe encryption technologies
today, and this is not anexhaustive list.
The big ones SHA-256, aes 128and 256 and RSA-4096.
(30:18):
Rsa 2048, still quantum safe.
I'm just saying that RSA-4096will probably still be quantum
safe in 2030 because you're justyou're increasing the bit
length.
You are making it moredifficult for a quantum computer
to break it.
Likewise, aes 128 and 256 couldtheoretically be quantum safe
(30:39):
indefinitely, because all youreally need to do is just
increasing the bit size.
So it could be AES 384 or 512.
And that will just make itexponentially more difficult to
solve.
However, the National Instituteof Standards and Technology is
(31:02):
leaving nothing to chance, so in2016, they invited
mathematicians and scientistsaround the world to submit their
plans for new encryptiontechniques that would be quantum
safe by the definition providedabove, which means it needs to
be safe from a classical attackas well.
A lot of submissions came.
(31:23):
Some of them were thrown out.
There was one submission thatwas cracked with a regular PC
given enough time, so they'reclearly not going to work.
There were a couple ofsubmissions that went well into
round three and then finallyfailed because it was cracked.
But four of them rose to thetop For general encryption
(31:44):
Crystal's Kyber has already beennamed a solution and for
digital signatures to verifypeople's identities crystal
xyliphyum, falcon and stinks, orthe three that rose to the top.
All of these are going to beavailable, probably in 2024.
And then they should bedeployable then.
(32:07):
The reason there are so many ofthem and, by the way, there's
more coming.
So there's going to be a roundtwo, and the round two will
focus on general encryption only.
They've already got enoughdigital signature solutions, so
you're going to see thingsgetting added to the crystal
kyber.
But let me talk about some ofthe differences here.
So three of these four usecryptography that's predicated
(32:36):
on lattice mathematics, and I'mgoing to talk about what that is
.
And then the last one, stinksplus is a hash-based algorithm,
and the reason that NIST didthis is because they wanted two
completely different solutions.
So in case lattice-basedcryptography is cracked, well,
(32:56):
they can fall back on stinksplus and have a hashing
algorithm which so far stillworks fine, given enough key
length.
So here's what lattice-basedmathematics is.
It's really fascinating stuff.
Imagine, if you will, you'vegot yourself a sheet of 8 1 1⁄2
(33:18):
sheet of grid paper and nowimagine that you make that
three-dimensional.
So instead of just length andwidth, now you've got depth.
Now I want you to expand that,blow it up to say 100 miles wide
and 100 miles deep.
(33:38):
Now I want you to add 1,000dimensions to it.
So now you've got this1,000-dimensioned, huge,
100-mile-wide deep and high grid, and the problem that you're
being asked to solve is to findthe shortest point between A and
(34:00):
B within that structure.
That is enormously difficultfor anything known to do because
there is no periodic structureto it.
The classical computer can'treally figure that out and a
quantum computer can't figurethat out.
That's lattice-basedmathematical cryptography.
Scott Rysdahl (34:21):
Bill, quick question about that.
Is that the shortest distance?
I don't want to say linearly,but linearly thinking in
three-dimensional space.
Or is it the shortest distancefollowing some route through the
network, let's say 90 degreeangles between nodes, if that
makes sense?
Bill Harris (34:42):
Yeah, I think it is the second one where you're
trying to follow the nodesInteresting.
Eric Brown (34:49):
Can you create a wormhole between the two?
Bill Harris (34:52):
You should be able to given this topic.
Scott Rysdahl (34:55):
That's how we crack this, that's right.
Bill Harris (34:58):
Let's patent that.
And the third quantum-safeencryption for discussion here
is around photonics.
This one's really interestingbecause it uses the principle of
quantum mechanics in which assoon as you observe something
you change it.
So with photonics it's more ofa detective technique, it's not
(35:22):
a prevention technique.
So you encrypt somethingstrongly, but if someone is
eavesdropping on it you willknow, because the qubits within
that transmission are entangled.
So if you impact one of thosephotons, one of those particles,
(35:44):
then you will impact the otherand then you will know that
someone is eavesdropping on yourdata.
Now I don't think we talked toomuch about entanglement, but
entanglement is the phenomenonin quantum mechanics in which
any changes to one particle it'ssister particle, regardless of
distance.
So they can be infinitely farapart, and that's going to
(36:09):
happen.
Eric Brown (36:09):
I feel like we need a dad joke in here, or to talk
about Nick's cats.
Bill Harris (36:14):
To lighten the mood , to bring it up the level.
Eric Brown (36:19):
You were just talking about some sort of a
sheet of paper that had 1,000dimensions and 1,000 miles wide
and deep.
Bill Harris (36:28):
Well, this is crazy stuff and I'm not a
mathematician, but this isreally fascinating stuff to look
into.
It just really boggles becauseof these.
When we're talking aboutquantum, we really are talking
about this multi-dimensionalcomputing, and it's crazy.
Scott Rysdahl (36:48):
I've got something for us.
I've got some quantum jokes.
Can I just interject these oncein a while?
Bill Harris (36:53):
Absolutely yeah.
Scott Rysdahl (36:55):
So there's three types of people in the world
those who understand quantumcomputing, those who don't
understand quantum computing andthose who simultaneously do and
do not understand quantumcomputing.
Bill Harris (37:06):
Yeah, I think I might be more of the third, but
just barely understanding itmyself.
So actually, let's lighten themood a little bit here.
So we're going to come back upand talk about countries with
quantum.
You'll see a fairly familiarlist here.
I don't think there's any bigsurprises in this list.
(37:27):
Maybe the Netherlands a littlebit.
Probably 95% of quantum ishappening in the United States,
Canada and China.
In terms of the power that theyhave Within the United States,
IBM is really leading the field.
They're very public about theirquantum capabilities.
Some news came out of Chinaearlier this year in which they
(37:47):
claimed to have already brokenRSA 2048.
But that was immediately metwith a lot of skepticism, and so
it appears that is not the case.
They do not have a computercapable of doing that, but it's
still something that we'rewatching for 2030.
Eric Brown (38:04):
And what is RSA again?
Bill Harris (38:07):
I forget the names of the three scientists who
developed it, but it's anencryption technology that's
used for asymmetric encryptionto transmit traffic from over
the internet.
So, as opposed to a symmetricencryption algorithm like AES,
rsa is asymmetric, in whichwe're using a public key and a
private key.
Scott Rysdahl (38:29):
And real quick.
To add to that, the beauty ofpublic key cryptosystems or
asymmetric encryption is thatyou can reach a shared key
across an insecure channel likethe internet and you can have
somebody sitting in the middlewatching all the traffic going
in both directions and theycan't arrive at the same key.
So it basically makes internetcommerce and trusted
(38:51):
communications possible.
For anybody who's never metsomebody else in a park or in a
parking garage after dark tosecretly exchange that key, we
can, in the light of day, twopeople can get a secure session
going with no prior contact orcommunication.
Bill Harris (39:06):
Yeah.
Eric Brown (39:08):
I feel like I'm studying for the CISSP.
You guys have all experiencedthis, I'm sure, where you go to
some sort of family dinner orgathering of people that aren't
in security and they startasking you what you do and you
go down this long kind ofdiatribe about something that
(39:28):
you're working on, that you'rereally into, and they just glaze
over and they have no idea whatyou're talking about because
you're using these acronyms thatnobody really understands,
right?
I wonder what these poorquantum scientists do, because
anywhere they go, they'retalking about stuff that, like,
a handful of people really grasp.
Bill Harris (39:49):
I presented the same deck at my last family
outing this past Memorial Day.
No one was interested.
Alan Green (39:56):
Yeah, you found yourself sitting alone at some
point.
Bill Harris (40:01):
Yeah, right, yeah, I'm not invited back.
So here are some of thecompanies with quantum computers
today.
I think it's an interestinglist.
Again, there aren't many bigsurprises on here.
I do want to point out that alot of universities have quantum
right and it's not surprising.
(40:22):
But it's interesting thattoday's students are learning
this and they're fiddling withit in the lab and they're part
of the tip of the spear when itcomes to this type of research.
Eric Brown (40:34):
And I'm sure nation states have it.
Is it just not publicized?
Bill Harris (40:38):
They do.
Us Department of Energy hasquantum.
You better believe the NSA hasquantum.
And then, yeah, nation states,china, russia, yes, they have
quantum.
And there's a race.
There's a race to get to aquantum computer that is
sufficiently large enough to dosome real damage, which is where
(40:59):
I'm going.
So let's talk through IBM'sQuantum Roadmap.
So in 2019, they introducedFalcon.
That was 27 qubits.
Today they're on Condor 1121.
They're actually going to beintroducing Condor.
I don't think it's out yet.
It should be coming later thisyear.
Right now they're still sittingon 433.
(41:20):
And by 2026, they really wantto get above 10,000 qubits.
But IBM has a very definedroadmap for how they can scale
their capabilities.
Bill are you aware of who comesup with these names?
No, but I love Cucubora.
If my next pet would absolutelybe named Cucabora.
(41:40):
So, yeah, so.
So yeah, let's get into thatright now.
So where is this going?
Cubits will continue toincrease.
I think things become veryuseful.
At about 10,000 qubits you can.
This starts to have some realworld applications and some of
(42:00):
the things that we justmentioned.
You know some of likeautomotive industry, any any
business industry to solve, tosolve, you know, complex
problems.
But after like a thousandqubits or so, ibm believes that
the machines will have to belinked fiber-optically, so in
other words, horizontally scaledright, as opposed to
continually try to verticallyscale the.
(42:21):
The quantum computer itself isgoing to be more difficult
because trying to get that manyperfect qubits into a single
processor is really tough.
So horizontally scaling isprobably going to be the way
it's going to go.
They will benefit from morefrom more practical
superconductors, maybesuperconductors that don't have
(42:44):
to be so aggressively cooled orthere are other methods to make
them work.
Do expect some performanceinnovations outside of qubits.
So I mentioned earlier thatquantum computers are also
connected to conventionalcomputers.
They work in tandem.
We'll probably end up seeingmore of that, where a classical
computer will be brought to bearto facilitate some of the some
(43:08):
of the results that come fromthe quantum machine and also
expect new ways of measuringworkloads, because I mean, it's
never enough to measuresomething one way.
I think qubit will become avery vague term.
Already there are.
Qubits can have variations intheir quality.
(43:29):
So some qubits can be highlyfault tolerant, others less so,
and the highly fault tolerantqubits are more powerful, right.
So you have to keep an eye onthat as well.
But not all qubits are createdequal.
I think quantum computers willbe functional.
I think most people agree thatquantum computers will be
functional coming up, but reallyits potential is still you know
(43:52):
, we're still trying to figurethat out.
Scott Rysdahl (43:53):
Bill, do you know anything?
Any applications whereclassical computers are expected
to still be better than quantumgoing forward?
Oh, yeah, probably at the rightscales.
Bill Harris (44:05):
Yeah, sure.
So really anything that doesn't, that doesn't have any periodic
structure to look at.
You know things that are highlyrandomized, where it requires
you know if they're gettinghighly randomized input, a
classical computer is going toexcel at that because there's
just no structure to go out andfind.
So gaming is going to be oneexample.
Eric Brown (44:26):
Would it change potentially how cryptocurrency
works?
Because today cryptocurrency issolving, you know racing to
solve a complex problem over aperiod of time and then you know
getting cryptocurrency as areward for solving that problem
Would quantum essentiallydisrupt that and potentially
(44:49):
cause like a fork?
Bill Harris (44:50):
So what you're talking about there is proof of
work, and, yeah, quantumcomputing will absolutely impact
proof of work, because proof ofwork is, I mean, it's they're
trying to find these large,these large prime numbers.
Quantum's good at that.
So, yeah, it will disrupt anytype of proof of work.
(45:11):
Crypto that works on big primes, didn't?
Eric Brown (45:15):
Ethereum move to proof of stake.
Yeah.
Bill Harris (45:19):
Ethereum too.
Yeah, yeah.
Eric Brown (45:23):
And when we talk about quantum, just to go back
to the beginning, quantum is thestate of the atom that it's in.
What atom is it?
Bill Harris (45:40):
So they use different elements for the
superconductivity.
Off the top of my head, I don'trecall.
I remember seeing this.
I don't recall specificallywhat elements they use in their
superconductor, but that's yeah,they're just using, they're
taking an element thatsuperconduct very, very well and
they use the atoms within that.
Eric Brown (46:02):
Is it the proton, the neutron or the electron?
Bill Harris (46:10):
I believe with the I think they're changing the
electrons, but there again I'mnot sure it's.
Now we're getting into a levelthat I'm not sure what part
specifically of the atom thatthey're following, but I think
it's the electron.
Do we have any more quantumjokes?
Scott Rysdahl (46:28):
Yeah, so an electron was pulled over by the
quantum state patrol and theofficer walks up to the car and
says do you know how fast youwere going, to which the
electron responds no, but I knowwhere I am.
Bill Harris (46:43):
I'm going to try these out on my kit, yeah, so.
Scott Rysdahl (46:46):
I'll hate them.
Bill Harris (46:47):
Yeah.
Eric Brown (46:51):
Well, Bill, thank you very much.
Very deep topic and youcertainly have done your
research.
Bill Harris (46:59):
Pleasure presenting it to you, a really interesting
topic.
I would encourage anyone, ifyou want to learn more about
this, to check out yourresources on the internet.
Youtube has some, some, somefantastic things from your
favorite physicists.
Once you certainly recognize,and they go into this it's, they
take it into different areas.
Eric Brown (47:18):
Nick, last time we were talking about our favorite
physicist.
My name is Brian Cox and DrMiku Kaku.
Did you come up with a favoritephysicist?
Scott Rysdahl (47:27):
You know about 10 minutes ago I had the same
thought and I, you know I didn'tget around to it.
So that's homework for nexttime, how about?
you Scott Feynman's Cool.
He actually wrote a book calledyou Can't Be Serious or
something like that, and it waslike just kind of physics humor
not just cheap jokes like these,but like just kind of a really
(47:49):
like approachable, humorous bookabout physics.
I think it was written in likethe 60s or something, so it's
pretty dated now, but he wasjust like a genuinely cool guy.
Are we still recording?
We are Okay, never mind, I'lltalk to you later.
Tell you some Richard Feynmanstory.
Eric Brown (48:11):
You have been listening to the audit presented
by IT Auto Labs.
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while providing administrativeand technical controls to
improve our clients datasecurity.
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