The video focuses on the Revolutionary potential of Quantum computing, specifically its ability to conduct complex calculations in mere moments and provide deeper insights into the natural world by aligning with Quantum mechanical principles. This futuristic form of computing, currently being researched by IBM and other tech giants, emerges as a game changer in fields such as material science, medicine, and more. However, Quantum computing's promise also brings considerable caution because it could potentially Decrypt internet communications rapidly, creating a new race for technological Supremacy among global powers.

Despite the excitement surrounding Quantum computers due to their unprecedented computational power, these machines are still in the experimental stage. Because qubits must be maintained in extraordinarily precise conditions, reaching their full potential takes years. Moreover, the global race, particularly between the U.S. and China, highlights Quantum computing's strategic importance, integrating all aspects of national security and commercial technology. It also showcases efforts from companies like IBM, who are investing significantly in collaboration to build a supportive ecosystem for the advancement of this technology.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. Revolutionary [ˌrɛvəˈluːʃənɛri] - (adj.) - Involving or causing a complete or dramatic change.

Hidden amongst these snow covered hills is a secretive institution, home to a Revolutionary machine that can harness physics.

2. Superposition [ˌsuːpərpəˈzɪʃən] - (n.) - The ability of a Quantum system to be in multiple states at once.

And rather than just being on or off, a Qubit can be held in something called a Superposition...

3. Encryption [ɪnˈkrɪpʃən] - (n.) - The process of converting information or data into a code to prevent unauthorized access.

All Internet communication is based on scrambling it using a secret code, otherwise known as Encryption.

4. Decrypt [diːˈkrɪpt] - (v.) - To make (a coded or encrypted message) intelligible by converting it to plain text.

But there is a dark side, because they will come with the ability to Decrypt all Internet communication.

5. Quantum [ˈkwɑːntəm] - (n.) - A discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents.

It's called Quantum key distribution.

6. Qubit [ˈkjuːbɪt] - (n.) - The basic unit of Quantum information, analogous to the bit in classical computing.

The bits are known as Quantum bits or qubits.

7. Geostrategic [ˌdʒioʊstrəˈtiːdʒɪk] - (adj.) - Relating to the influence of geography on politics or military strategy.

One of the things we're witnessing is the elevation of technology to the same level of Geostrategic importance...

8. Supremacy [suːˈprɛməsɪ] - (n.) - The state or condition of being superior to all others in authority, power, or status.

For now, the United States maintains Supremacy in the development of Quantum computers.

9. Pioneers [ˌpaɪəˈnɪrz] - (n.) - People who are among the first to explore or settle a new country or area.

We've been sort of leaders and Pioneers of this field...

10. Phenomenally [fəˈnɒmənəli] - (adv.) - In a remarkable or exceptional way, extraordinarily.

Because in practice, getting even a handful of qubits to give you a reliable answer is Phenomenally difficult.

Quantum Computing: Revolutionizing and Securing the Future

Hidden amongst these snow covered hills is a secretive institution, home to a Revolutionary machine that can harness physics. So strange, it sounds like magic. This is IBM's research facility. It's where some of the biggest breakthroughs in the history of computer science have happened. And probably going to be home to a few more, because this is where they build Quantum computers. Their potential is huge, promising breakthroughs in material science, medicine, fundamental physics, and more. But there is a dark side, because they will come with the ability to Decrypt all Internet communication. Experts say there is now a Quantum arms race between the United States and its biggest economic China.

I'm Professor Hannah Fry, mathematician and writer. I want to know where Quantum technology will take us. And with international security under threat, who will come out on top? This is the research headquarters for one of the oldest companies in tech, IBM. They've been inventing new computing technology here since the 1960s. It's like the Jetsons meets the Flintstones.

Quantum scientist Olivia Lanes is showing me IBM's newest experimental machine. This big, shiny behemoth is IBM Quantum system two. Sounds like it's on. What is the big deal, though? I mean, why not just build an ordinary supercomputer? It's a totally different avenue. It's not just supercomputers, but better, or AI, but more powerful. It's an entirely different way of computing. The big difference is the computer's ability to harness the mysterious effects of Quantum physics.

Standard computers. They calculate by using billions of tiny little on and off switches known as bits. Now, these things, they're very reliable, they're very accurate, and they work together in sequence. So if. If you ask a standard computer to solve a maze, it will do so by checking through every possible path, one by one, until it finds a solution. Depending on the size of the maze, that could take seconds or minutes or potentially, for a really big maze, even years.

A Quantum computer, on the other hand, works a little bit differently there. The bits are known as Quantum bits, or qubits. And rather than just being on or off, a Qubit can be held in something called a Superposition, where it can be both on and off at the same time. Now, okay, I know that that doesn't really make a lot of sense, but unfortunately, that is just how physics works down at the atomic level, so go with me.

This bizarre ability of a Qubit to be in two states at once means that a series of qubits can solve lots of calculations simultaneously. And so if you ask a Quantum computer to solve a maze, it means it can consider all possible routes at once, giving you the answer in an instant. It could allow a Quantum computer to complete in minutes computation so complex that it would take today's supercomputers millions of years. But that's not the only reason they're a game changer for science.

I think what it really comes down to is that nature is Quantum mechanical. When you get down to molecular and atomic interactions, nature does not obey classical physics, just a very crude approximation. And if we really want to understand how nature evolves in time, we have to have a system that obeys quantity, Quantum physics. So I guess this finally gives us the opportunity to do simulations down at the level of atoms. And when you have that, I mean, you can design drugs at the level of atoms. That's right. You design materials, batteries. And we haven't had this before. We've never had that.

I think when Quantum computing comes up in conversation, people are excited about it, but they're excited about the amount of power it gives you, about how quickly you can do computations, because, okay, sure, all of that stuff might be true, but we should be thinking of this as though someone has just invented the telescope, and all of a sudden, we can see and understand things at a scale that we just did not have access to before. That's the ambition, at least.

Quantum computers cannot yet perform useful calculations better than a supercomputer, because in practice, getting even a handful of qubits to give you a reliable answer is Phenomenally difficult. Oh, my God. Whoa. This is IBM's lab, where they test out new hardware, a place where we can see the guts of the machine. Oh, that is extraordinary.

This is what system two looks like inside. Yeah. What are we looking at, then? I think a lot of people have a slight misconception, and they see, you know, this whole gold shiny thing, and they think, this is a Quantum computer. That's actually not true. This is the Quantum computer. So this tiny little thing, right, this is the Heron chip. This is the 133 qubits that I am holding in the palm of my hand.

How much is that worth? A lot. Don't drop it. I'm gonna try not to. The chip contains the qubits that carry out the computation, and it's fair to say they're a little fussy. We're trying to change the energy state of the Qubit between zero and one in a very controlled way, so any type of outside energy that might change it slightly in a way, except for what we're trying to do, will break your algorithm and give you the wrong answer.

Outside energy includes any heat. To preserve the delicate Quantum state of the Qubit, the chip must be kept extremely cold. This tangle of gold plated pipes and wires is, in fact, a cooling system that chills the chip to just above absolute zero. For comparison, the cosmic microwave background in space is way warmer. That's orders of magnitude warmer. Oh, my goodness.

So it is the coldest thing in the known universe, which is incomprehensible cold. But these guys like it. They like it. Focus on your work. Stop paying attention to any of the energy around you. That's right. IBM say they'll unlock Quantum's full potential by 2033. As you can imagine, it's been an expensive endeavor.

Do you have any idea how much IBM will have spent on this Quantum program? We haven't broken out, but I think it's fair to say it's like, obviously, many billions of dollars of investments. Our company spends close to $7 billion a year in R and D. And today, in our world of technology, if you're not investing at that scale, it's very hard to be a global leader.

But you do have competition, right? How much are you looking over your shoulder at what everyone else is doing? We pay keen attention to the entire ecosystem. But look, we take the perspective, because we've been sort of leaders and Pioneers of this field, is that we want an industry. Like, we don't want to be alone on this.

How much do you collaborate with other companies there, like Google and Microsoft, who are also in this space? We collaborate a lot externally. For us, collaborating on this is, like, at the heart of making an ecosystem. It's back to the idea of creating an industry.

Do you collaborate with chinese companies as well? No, we do not. Oh, go on. Well, I think we acknowledge the fact that in this technology, in Quantum, but we're seeing it happen, by the way, in other areas, like semiconductors and so on, there is not only a big economic dimension, but there's a big national security implication as well.

Quantum falls squarely within the category of, like, sensitive technologies. From that perspective, how important is it for the US to be the leaders in this? It's critically important, and I think that that is recognized in a bipartisan manner. One of the things we're witnessing is that we've seen the elevation of technology to the same level of Geostrategic importance as trade or military alliances.

Quantum computing is without a doubt one of the top technologies that the United States needs to lead. For now, the United States maintains Supremacy in the development of Quantum computers. But its biggest rival is fast catching up. China are betting biggest. They've invested over $15 billion, more than three times any other country. They have dozens of new research institutes committed to Quantum and hold more than half of all patents in Quantum technology.

Hey. Hi there. How you doing? Security expert Ana Pugliesi has been advising the us government on how not to fall behind. China really does view science and technology as a national asset. It talks about not leading, not just leading, but dominating in these key areas.

Does the US not see science as a national asset as well? I don't think we have the same kind of comprehensive strategic plan that brings together all facets of society and really has that longer term investment. What we are facing is it's not an even and level playing field. Our researchers are essentially up against the funding of a nation state. What are we talking about here in terms of the magnitude of difference of funding?

Some examples that folks have given me is, okay, I have a lab. I have five to six, maybe four to six graduate students in my lab at any given time. There, the equivalent labs have 5100 graduate students or postdocs. The US is hitting back.

I've made sure that the most advanced american technology can't be used in China. And thanks to our Chips and Science act, the United States is investing more in research and development than ever before. Whoever is the first to realize the potential of Quantum computers will wield incredible power. But it's a double edged sword, because a world with Quantum computers could be a world without secrets.

Pretty much all Internet communication is based on scrambling it using a secret code, otherwise known as Encryption. And a lot of it uses a very clever mathematical trick involving prime numbers. What you do is you take two prime numbers, let's say 17 and 31, and then you multiply them together to give you a code, in this case, 527. Now, that bit is very straightforward, very easy for computers to do that multiply numbers together. What is much harder is if you only have the long number working out what those two secret primes were.

The only way that you can do this with classical computers is by checking through all the prime numbers just to see if they work one after the other after the other. A common type of Encryption, RSA, uses prime numbers that are hundreds of digits long. To crack those codes, it would take a conventional computer trillions of years.

That's really the obstacle of Encryption. It's not. That's impossible. It just takes a really, really long time. This is where Quantum computing comes in, because Quantum computers using Superposition can simultaneously run numerous calculations at the same time and can take something like this down to being crackable within just a few minutes. It means that encrypted data could be hacked in no time. Few are more afraid of a mass global data breach than the banking industry.

Doctor Philip Interloura is head of Quantum technology at HSBC. We process 3.5 trillion pounds worth of payments every year. So cryptography is a big deal for us. How much of a catastrophe would this be if people just sat back and did nothing?

Well, ultimately, you're going to have customers accounts being breached, which means things like identity theft and fraudulent transactions, money being stolen, money being stolen. That's then going to roll into financial losses. Customers will lose money, the banks will lose money. But I think ultimately, the biggest risk of all is the element of trust. If customers can't trust their bank to keep their accounts and their money secure as well as their data, then it's kind of an existential risk. Yeah. I mean, that is a fundamental part of banking.

Can you be absolutely sure that this hasn't happened already? I mean, okay, if I had a Quantum computer, I could read everything. I'm not sure I would tell people about it. No, you probably wouldn't.

I think it's very unlikely that anyone's got a Quantum computer powerful enough right now to do this. But there may be something called a store now, Decrypt later, a harvest now Decrypt later type of attack. And this is kind of the idea that state actors, or malicious entities right now can start, start intercepting our data and storing it and just keeping it ready for the time, the point in time when a cryptographically relevant Quantum computer arrives.

Are we talking about national security concerns here? Is that ultimately where the big worry is? That's probably the number one area that we should be concerned about, because, you know, state actors are most likely going to target national security kind of infrastructure to scrape and decipher information. State secrets will be uncovered. You'll know who all the spies are.

You'll know who all the spies are. If you suddenly lose that secrecy and that security, then it causes all sorts of vulnerabilities on a personal level, on a national level, from a security perspective, from a commercial perspective. And so, you know, this is a big, big deal.

HSBC say that doing nothing is simply not an option. The bank has been testing a way to secure its data against an attack from Quantum computers. Internet data today is sent by laser pulses in an optical fiber. This is Doctor Andrew Shields, head of Quantum technology for Toshiba.

In general, fiber networks are very secure. But they are vulnerable to tapping. If I introduce a small bend into the fiber, you can see some of the light is now leaking out, and actually, a hacker can use that. They can introduce a small bend to tap out some of the light and measure that to recover the data.

So that's all you need, then, is just access to the cable? Indeed. It's very straightforward. Goodness me.

Andrew has built a device that utilizes the strange world of Quantum physics to send data in a way he claims can never be hacked. It's called Quantum key distribution. This is it. This is it, yes. What this box is doing is it's sending single photons through an optical fiber into the BT network, and we use that to form Encryption keys. And those Encryption keys are then being used. Secure data sent between here and the data center in Berkshire.

The device generates a secret code using single particles of light, photons, which are sent, one at a time, down a fiber optic cable. A fundamental law of Quantum physics is that if you observe a photon, you change its Quantum state, and that means that if an eavesdropper tries to intercept the key, the code will be changed, rendering it unusable.

The device already uses telecom company BTS existing fiber network to send sensitive files across London to a data center over 30 miles away.

Tell me about the information that you're sending using this method at the moment, then. So, in the case of HSBC, it's financial data, but we've done other trials with hospitals, for instance, where they've been sending medical scan data, or with governments where they've been sending some government data.

Do you feel this sense of urgency from companies, even though we're not quite there yet, with Quantum computers? Yes, they absolutely are. There's an increasing realization that the Quantum computer is coming. How far away do you reckon it is?

Well, no. That's a very difficult question to answer. If I was a betting man, maybe, I would say five to seven years.

There are no maybes here. It's not if this is going to happen, it's when it's going to happen, and it's the total acceptance that when it happens, our existing communication systems are no longer fit for purpose. And that puts you in a position where you have no choice, no choice but to find something else that works and is secure.

Some have made more progress than others. In 2016, China shocked the world by launching a satellite capable of sending Quantum keys over far greater distances than fiber optics. It's part of a wider Quantum network that China has built, connecting banks, government, and industry across the country, leaving other nations scrambling to catch up on the gleaming streets of Singapore, the Quantum revolution has found fertile ground.

Scientists here want to build an unhackable network that can be commercialized so anyone can use it. Professor Alexander Ling runs the center for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore, a government funded group of scientists working on all sorts of Quantum technology.

They told me that I would get to see some nano satellites. Okay, I think this is even more nano than I was expecting. This is over 200 times lighter than China's Quantum satellite.

Okay, tell me about the experiment then. What's the big aim? The big goal over here is we want to build a global network where we can actually distribute Quantum signals around the world. We can distribute Quantum signals using optical fiber, except that there's a distance limit to it.

We can't repeat those Quantum signals. So we think that if you have satellites with optical fiber networks, you can actually build a more comprehensive network around the world. So then when you send up a rocket, you presumably have a number of these, and you sort of put them out where you want them?

Yes, yes. What we're doing in Singapore is to test whether similar technology can go on much smaller satellites. You can imagine that if it works, you can have a fleet of smaller satellites that's more cost effective, and that makes the deployment of such a system more likely.

His plan is to fire single photons into space and back again via a network of satellites and telescopes. These Quantum keys would provide unhackable global communications.

So this is your fancy photon capture? That's right. This is a telescope that's going to receive the signals from the satellite.

Long distance communication is just one part of Professor Ling's work. They also collaborate with us and chinese companies. Quantum technology was developed in era when international relations was more relaxed and put it that way. You know, it started in the late eighties, early nineties, and everyone was open to having an exchange of people and ideas at that time.

Has that desire for collaboration continued, or has it been sort of shut down a bit more because of the geopolitical situation we find ourselves in?

I think definitely everyone's aware that there's tension, geopolitical tensions, and people from time to time talk about exploit controls and things like that.

Everybody seems to have high expectations for when Quantum technology will deliver those benefits. If you come in with controls too early, before a lot of problems are worked out, you are probably going to be pushing the date of deployment, the date when you see those benefits much further into the future, kind of squashing the innovation as it's happening. That's right.

Scientists understand how Quantum computing could supercharge their discoveries. Banks and governments see the risks and the potential for economic growth. But will a high stakes jewel for Supremacy really define the future of global power?

I think the rhetoric around this is always framed as a Quantum race, right between two giant superpowers who are throwing everything they have at it. But I sort of don't think that this is, like racists that we've had before.

I don't think this is like the space race or the nuclear arms race, because I don't think that we're in a situation where you can only have one winner.

The Quantum future is about building a scientific tool that allows us to see and understand the universe down at the level of atoms in a way that we have just never had access to before. And, okay, maybe I'm just being optimistic, but I think that that is something that all of humanity will stand to benefit from.

Technology, Science, Global, Quantum Computing, Quantum Security, IBM Research