Welcome to the whimsical wide world of unicorn farming. Talking about quantum computing is a bit like tending to your unicorn farm, in that a lossless chip (at the time of writing) does not exist. So, largely, the realm of quantum computing is just slightly faster than normal compute power. The true parallel nature of quantum computing has not yet been realized.
As a bit of background, if you’re new to unicorn farming, quantum computing harnesses the power of quantum strangeness, part of the theory of quantum mechanics, in a processor such that multiple calculations can be carried out in parallel. When we talk about a lossless chip, we’re looking at a quantum processor that can have electric currents flow without energy loss, such that they can operate at room temperature. Now you’re up to speed on the basics of today’s unicorn farming.
You may ask yourself, “What does this all really mean to me, and what does it mean to business as a whole?” Well, we’ll get into three things that actively keep me up at night.
Harvest Now, Decrypt Later
Once quantum computing is available at scale, all of today’s encryption is rendered meaningless. While there are a heroic few who are working on “quantum proof encryption,” it’s a difficult research field when you don’t have the processor to prove it’s working. If you had thought my unicorn analogy was silly, strap in. One of the leading candidates for quantum-proof encryption is a key encapsulation mechanism known as “Kyber,” which is named after the crystals that power lightsabers in Star Wars. Silliness aside, think of all your data that ever existed out there in the world, that is held safe by encryption and privacy standards. Well, there are threat actors out there today just harvesting that encrypted data — just grabbing it while it’s in motion across the internet. They can’t do anything with it today, as it’s all encrypted.
When quantum computing becomes available, the value of that encryption becomes meaningless, and all that data becomes available. While the timeliness of most things renders that not too scary, there are some scary implications I’ll leave you with — the first being that any personal health information will suddenly become known to threat actors, which can be used for malicious purposes. The second thing is that all cryptocurrencies will be suddenly valueless, as there will be no means with which to prove ownership, as the secured ledger for each crypto coin will be compromised.
The Quantum Death of the Internet
That was a pretty scary thought above, but strap in for some more. We just talked about encryption being rendered meaningless by quantum computing. What does that mean when it lands? Well, everything that is done on the internet will become exposed and untrustworthy. So, in a scenario where quantum computing is solved before quantum-proof encryption is available, everything anyone does online will no longer be a secure transaction.
Functionally, what does this mean? It means that people’s bank accounts will suddenly become zero, any device connected to the internet will cease to function, and a whole host of other maladies. We call this the quantum death of the internet. Luckily for us, it may be like Y2K and not happen; if folks can develop quantum-proof encryption, the first quantum computers out in the wild may not be able to render the internet as we know it a smoking ruin.
If the internet does become a smoking ruin, at least we can get back to the good ol’ days of unicorn farming.
Well, What Else?
The real struggle with quantum computing, besides the above two items, is what the heck are we going to do with it when it lands? What problems will we solve with quantum computing that no other current processing architecture can solve?
This is a challenging thought. Quantum computing is a whole different paradigm — it’s not just the same thing, only faster. The ability to process a problem beyond the linear dimensions of reality means it’s difficult to conceive of what we can do with that solution. We’ve heard out in the wild of improvements to AI models, improved pathing of supply chains, and many other business problems. But it’s difficult to think outside our traditional boxes.
We’ll part ways with three thoughts here. First, quantum cryptocurrency: The person to invent this will be exceedingly wealthy. Second, predictive simulations: We will be able to predict the future with a certain amount of accuracy. And lastly, quantum compression: Imagine a near-perfect compression algorithm powered by quantum computing.
Conclusion
As they say, may you live in interesting times, or as we’ve said here, may you tend to your unicorn farm. We say this because that lossless quantum chip just doesn’t exist yet, and neither does a unicorn farm. We could spend a lot of time worrying about things that don’t exist, and we may as well spend that time minding our very own unicorn farm. So, ultimately, that’s the joke: Neither of these things are real, but one of them is sure becoming a reality, and may well be so within the next five years or less. Be prepared and enjoy your time with the unicorns.
