
The CIA and Jeff Bezos Bet on Quantum Computing - iProject
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429429/the-cia-and-jeff-bezos-bet-on-quantum-computing/
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cs702
The societal impact of quantum computing would be immense -- the entire
security infrastructure of the web would have to be rebuilt from the ground
up.

However, many experts -- including Scott Aaronson (who is mentioned in the
article) -- have cast doubt on D-Wave's claims, because the company has not
yet _proved_ that its machines are producing results by exploiting quantum
phenomena like particle entanglement and superposition. In other words,
D-Wave's devices may very well be different, but still classical, computers.
D-Wave's engineers acknowledge as much: they are quoted in the article stating
that "they don't yet know for sure what's happening inside the chip."

The fact that Bezos, a very smart guy, has invested in D-Wave, has changed my
perception of the company from "these are likely crazy people making
outrageous claims" to "maybe these guys are unto something." Exciting and a
bit scary. Time will tell.

~~~
greenmountin
I think "don't yet know for sure what's happening" is a bit misleading to the
casual reader. If they're actually being honest it's more like: don't know
that anything "special" is happening.

Frankly, their devices just aren't quantum computers until they can show they
perform quantum mechanically. Until then, they are just hype. Bezos'
investment is perfectly rational as an affiliation move -- if he was serious,
he'd donate to, say, the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo where real quantum
computer development is taking place. But the press releases for their
accomplishments get several orders of magnitude less attention, so why bother?
(or, is it that you just can't buy in to IBM -- also real work -- or HRL)

Their job ads [1-3] focus is very telling to me; which are mostly for new
algorithms people, with long unfilled placements for physicists and materials
engineers. The big development in QC this decade has been that "materials
matter", and that you can't just throw qubits together willy-nilly. D-Wave
scaled their qubit count (see the ridiculous "Rose's Law" slide [4]) basically
by ignoring all these problems.

[1-3] [http://www.dwavesys.com/en/files/20120627_d-
wave_algorithms_...](http://www.dwavesys.com/en/files/20120627_d-
wave_algorithms_researcher_job_ad.pdf)
<http://www.dwavesys.com/en/files/senior_engineer_2011.pdf>
<http://www.dwavesys.com/uploads/20091026_Design_Engineer.pdf>
(<http://www.dwavesys.com/en/careers.html>)

[4] <http://www.dwavesys.com/en/dev-tutorial-hardware.html>

~~~
neworder
Just a side note - you're probably conflating Perimeter Institute
(www.perimeterinstitute.ca) and Institute for Quantum Computing
(<http://iqc.uwaterloo.ca/>). Both are in Waterloo, but it's the latter that
is involved in developing quantum computing implementations.

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jimwhitson
Would it be overly conspiratorial to suggest that the CIA and NSA are in fact
interested in a large-scale implementation of Shor's algorithm? Perhaps I
underestimate how much use intelligence agencies have for optimization...

~~~
wallawe
Can anyone provide an explanation of this in layman's terms? I took a look at
wikipedia but am having a hard time wrapping my head around it..

~~~
dyeje
A lot of public key cryptography methods used in the real world are based on
the fact that factoring really big numbers is computationally unfeasible.
Shor's algorithm makes it feasible, but it's a quantum algorithm that can't be
run on a classical computer. Basically, alot of stuff won't be secure anymore
when it's feasible to run Shor's algorithm.

~~~
ams6110
But would new forms of currently-infeasible encryption become possible at the
same time? Many forms of encryption have fallen over the years as technology
and mathematics have advanced; while at the same time better encryption
methods have been developed.

~~~
dyeje
Oh, of course. The dance between defense and offense will continue as usual.
However, there may be a window of time where a lot of services are left
vulnerable in the transition.

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wallawe
Did anyone else catch the temperature miscalculation?

> It is actually a cold gun: the structure is a chilly -259 °F (4 °Kelvin) at
> the wide end and a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero at its
> tip...

4 degrees Kelvin is approx -452 Fahrenheit is approx -269 Celsius. Absolute
zero is −459.67° F

~~~
ars
4 Kelvin is probably the correct number since that's the temperature of liquid
helium.

~~~
fjorder
You can go a bit lower than the temperature of liquid helium just as you can
cool something to lower than the temperature of liquid water just by using
evaporating water. However, 4 Kelvin is probably correct. The image they show
appears to be of a cryostat that would almost certainly use helium as a
cryogen. Such cryostats are realistically limited to around 2-3 Kelvin. They
can go a bit lower when empty, but generally not if you stick a complex
experiment with a lot of heat-conducting fibers and wires into them.

4K is probably warmer than they'd like for a quantum circuit, but getting
their apparatus colder would require a much beefier cryostat or more exotic
technologies like magnetic cooling built inside a helium cryostat. Such setups
are capable of getting complex setups down to the hundreds of millikelvin,
which is much nicer for this sort of work!

As for writing a scientific article using Fahrenheit... Please don't do that.
Just don't.

~~~
ars
Well obviously you can go lower, but 4K is the boiling point of Liquid Helium,
so it's the easiest temperature to hold it at.

In the article they mention they chip itself is kept at millkelvin
temperatures.

And I disagree about using Fahrenheit - this is not a paper in a journal, it's
a lay article. By all means use Fahrenheit if that's what your audience
understands. Don't let pedantry get in the way of clarity. (Kelvin has some
real meaning, but C vs F is totally arbitrary. One is the freezing point of
water, the other is the lowest temperature you can get with a salt/ice
mixture.)

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SeanDav
Quantum computing and nuclear fusion power generation are probably 2 of the
biggest problems to solve in order to make the next technological leap.

If D-Wave comprehensively cracks Quantum computing I reckon Bezos may become
the world's first Trillionaire.

~~~
swalsh
In the past, technology would provide efficiency to a problem, and a lot of
times up root a job in the process. Which is okay, because a new job was
created in the wake. Astute observers though might notice that the skill level
has been increasing each time a job is transformed. This is okay when an
evolution in technology is equivalent to a single lifetime, but as the
evolution of technology speeds up the adaption becomes more difficult. I feel
like we are seeing the effects of the last technological revolution today. As
a software engineer, I get 4 emails a day from recruiters... but those with no
technical skills are being unemployed in troves, and finding a job is near
impossible.

So my question. What happens when an assumed intelligence explosion disrupts,
an already disrupted world? I absolutely don't believe there's anything we can
(or should) do to slow technological progress... but its an interesting topic
to see how it affects society. There seems to be a disconnect, technology
evolves exponentially, and society evolves linearly.

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jcr
> He (Arronson) and other critics say the company must still prove two things:
> that its qubits really can enter superpositions and become entangled, and
> that the chip delivers a significant "quantum speed-up" compared to a
> classical computer working on the same problem.

I'm curious how one goes about "proving superposition"? If one does the most
obvious thing, opening the box containing Schrodinger's cat to observer and
hence prove state, then you've just lost the superposition.

Anyhow, for those wondering about addressing the impacts of successful quantum
computing on cryptography (i.e. security of most things, including your
banking transactions on the web), you should check out the efforts of Dan J.
Bernstein (DBJ) and friends on the "Post-Quantum Crypto" web site:

<http://pqcrypto.org/>

Though research is still on-going, at present it seems some algorithms are
resistant to quantum cryptanalysis. It might take a decade or two to retool
all the systems using crypto vulnerable to quantum cryptanalysis ( _assuming
someone succeeds in building a quantum computer_ ), but at least it seems like
there's hope.

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dyeje
Stop reading after the second paragraph, quantum computing isn't some magic
wand you wave at problems to make them disappear. It's simply a new way of
approaching them, and it requires algorithms designed to take advantage of
this new approach to computing to solve said problems.

~~~
Bakkot
Those approaches are increasingly well-studied and a lot of them (Grover's
algorithm, anyone?) look an awful lot like magic.

(For people who don't want to look that up, Grover's algorithm does searches
on unsorted databases in root-n time, that is, in fewer operations than would
be required to inspect every element of the database.)

~~~
jimwhitson
Grover's algorithm does indeed look rather like magic, but even better is the
geometrical proof - WP's description looks good at a quick skim. In my (fairly
limited) experience, this sort of geometrical thinking is the best way to
understand quantum algorithms intuitively.

~~~
sev
Although Grover's algorithm is extremely impressive...it's a probabilistic
algorithm, which means that the result is not guaranteed, but very likely. And
the likelihood can be increased by running the algorithm more than once.

~~~
jessriedel
The likelihood increases exponentially because each time you run the algorithm
it's independent of the previous times. Even if it's only 75% sure, you only
need to run it a few dozen times before it's more likely for there to be a
hardware fault in your _display_ giving you the wrong answer.

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cing
On a related note, D-wave is sure posting some interesting job opportunities:
[https://www.mitacs.ca/o/2012/07/cognition-and-creativity-
fra...](https://www.mitacs.ca/o/2012/07/cognition-and-creativity-frameworks-
engineer-dwave-systems-inc)

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ecolak
I don't think their big contract with Lockheed Martin should be a good
indicator of actual quantum computing. What they built is probably optimized
for some of the problems that Lockheed Martin is trying to solve...

~~~
RK
I have heard from people familiar with the Lockheed project that the purchase
was largely motivated by tax incentives. Something along the lines of a
Canadian-American agreement, in which companies could claim 10x as much
business expenses if they were making purchases of research equipment from
Canadian suppliers. The implication was that Lockheed never had strong
confidence in this technology, but had little to lose.

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perlpimp
No one has explained exactly what kind of problems would Quantum computer
could solve well. From few articles I've read it is not for all kinds of tasks
a magic ax.

if someone can expand on that, that would be great.

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batgaijin
What happened with all of the posts from this guy mocking D-Wave?:
<http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=431>

~~~
cing
"I hereby announce my retirement as Chief D-Wave Skeptic, a job that I never
wanted in the first place." -<http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=639>

