Eye Spy - May 2018

EYE SPY INTELLIGENCE MAGAZINE 115 2018 45

Intelligence and Quantum Computing

AN INVISIBLE

MILITARY

ARMS RACE

Players in a new intelligence theatre with major implications

for the cyber world and all users of the Internet

magine the value of a computer that
takes about a hundredth of a second to
solve a problem which would take 100
days to answer with a conventional
computer. For the Pentagon and US spy
Iagencies - priceless. And far from being
science fiction, Google and NASA have
already conducted laboratory tests that prove
quantum computers could be an astonishing
100 million times faster than today’s technol-
ogy. Mind boggling statistics. But like any
emerging technology, intelligence officials and
scientists have warned that the country that
dominates the quantum arena and era will
have an edge in everything from national
security, intelligence collection, military

A D-Wave ‘wafer’ of processors on

display at the 2018 Age of AI

(Artificial Intelligence) Conference

ing that it had built the world’s first quantum

computer. Although the announcement was

met with scepticism by some, it also won

important customers. The first was Lockheed

Martin, the world’s largest defence company.

In 2013, a D-Wave Two system was installed

at the new Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab,

a collaboration between Google, NASA and the

Universities Space Research Association

(USRA). The facility is housed at the NASA

Ames Research Center in California. In

A D-Wave 2000 Qubit processor September 2015, the system was upgraded to

theatres and of course, business and

technology. Little wonder, perhaps, that leaked

NSA documents reveal the super secret

agency is engaged in a programme to switch

to quantum computing. In the United States,

the Pentagon and US Intelligence Community

(USIC) have long been the lead funders of

quantum computing. And the spy world, in

par ticular, has looked to quantum computing

for its use in encryption and codebreaking.

ORIGINS

D-Wave Systems, a Canadian-based com-

pany, came to prominence in 2007 when it

stunned the scientific community by announc-