Thanks, Edward Snowden: You propelled China to quantum networking leadership China has an undeniable lead in quantum networking technology – a state of affairs that should give the US pause, despite its lead in quantum computing. So says think thank the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), which on Monday published a report titled "How Innovative Is China in Quantum?" Its answer is " …
Snowden is not the problem, pride is .
The Americans considered themselves at the forefront of everything for so long that their pride gave way to lackadaisical ignorance.
Never forget that the same amount of intelligent people exist in China too except that their government is pushing to get ahead rather than remaining all high and mighty on its laurels.
America is splitting itself apart, it will very soon become a extremely divided nation. The glue that held it together has been lost by corporate greed and individualism.
In the US, half the population does not believe in facts nor Science. Entire Universities, like Liberty University, teach Creationism as Science.
https://www.liberty.edu/arts-sciences/creation-studies/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-liberty-university-creates-creationists
"half the population does not believe in facts nor Science"
Understandable considering science and facts are wrong, more than half of the time.
"half the population does not believe in facts nor Science"
A statement which ironically ironically a complete fallacy ... belief infers a lack of knowledge.
Science is a process not a belief system (except if you watch Sabine Hossenfelder's recent obliteration of some dodgy papers which do look more like belief and hope that nobody will read them before the next grant cheque arrives).
Facts are the current state of knowledge, not a belief.
Thinking The Great God Malcolm created penquins while on holiday in Torremolinos is a belief. Thinking that Margaret on Facebook (cleaner at Sainsburys and part time expert in global pandemics) can cure Covid by reading your aura on-line and chanting in the bath for the small fee of £499 is a belief.
You cannot believe in Science. You cannot believe in facts. But you can choose to ignore both and believe ignorance is bliss.
.
I’m not sure… facts are not absolute but are at best assumed (believed?) to be true according to our understanding of the world.
So I tend to see myself as a strong/devoted/zealous believer of the scientific method. I find this state of mind makes it easy to curtail interactions with people of esoteric views such as flat-earthers and homeopathists (I’ve given up trying to convince them that they’re wrong): „you believe in homeopathy? Well I believe in science. Let‘s talk about films“
Sorry dude, you CAN and most people DO believe in Science.
Most people accept what they have been told is true by scientists. We believe in what were are told, and whilst theoretically anyone should be able to test the assertions that they have been told, in practice the ability to perform such tests to verify these assertions is usually beyond most people's ability, understanding/comprehension, but more likely beyond their available time or budget.
At the cutting edge the numbers of people that HAVE verified results is relatively small. The rest of us BELIEVE.
Of cause this is far, far better than just blindly accepting assertions from any unverifiable source, with no attempt to provide any data to support a theory (alternative facts / alternative truth) but ultimately belief in science is still a belief.
We can, and we all should, apply a healthy scepticism to what we are being told, apply thought experiments to see if it is even plausible, but without actually repeating the experiment, following the maths, analysing the data and cumming to the same conclusions independently then we are still just believing what we have been told.
Note I am not saying that science itself is an act of belief. Good science CAN and IS tested. Only that most people have little choice other than BELIEVE in the science, and even those that have the means to independently test and verify can only do so within a very small field, for the rest they still must TRUST and BELIEVE in what they are being told by others.
/Rattus
You have totally misunderstood the premise of that book, unless the title is totally misleading (I haven’t read it).
It is saying that facts have a half-life, which is something I had already heard about. The half-life that was mentioned back then was 50 years.
This says nothing about which proportion of today’s accepted facts are true. To take the example of 50 years, it means that half of all facts that were accepted as such 50 years ago will have turned out to be incorrect.
I suggest you read it. The "50 years" was from a completely different book, the name of which escapes me now but as I recall took 50 established truthes, and listed the disproval of each one over 50 years. This book covers most of the sciences, and through the use of it's accompanying addendum website, brings it all the way up to the current day.
Most facts are wrong, most of the time.
"Americans considered themselves"
what are Americans? the politicians or lawyers everyone hates? the musicians? the drug users? The gear heads, the PC gamers, the farmers, the techs.
Glad you can lump everyone in one country (that are 95% immigrants) into one ideology, Just because you get paid to promote divisionism, doesn't mean anyone is buying.
I will argue politics all day (both sides suck) but at the end of the day, I will defend my fellow idiot countrymen to the death. I hope you would do the same.
Propaganda and real world are very different.
what are Americans? the politicians or lawyers everyone hates?
Add in the industrialists, venture capitalist, bankers etc and yes that is the Americans. Why because they are the one making the decisions, the are the ones deciding on the direction and the force behind it. The average American has no say over how his country proceeds.
It's also representative of most, but not all, nations.
"Am I right that "quantum comms" refers to being able to send an encryption key over long distances in a way such that, if anyone has looked at it or tampered with, that can be detected? Which avoids the risk of a man in the middle?"
Yes ... and no (and that's not meant to be a Schrödinger pun). "Quantum Comms" is a phrase that means different things to different people. Yes it can mean exactly what you just said, including the subsequent non-quantum communications that use that key. The idea being that regular encryption is sufficient for privacy so long as you can be sure the key hasn't been intercepted.
It can also mean using the same quantum enabled channel to pass the comms messages themselves, rather than just the key. The downside of that is that currently, quantum methods of communication are slow compared to regular comms.
For the example given, I'd have thought that the link running from one part of a police state to another was also a substantial mitigation of the risk. Older technologies, such as sending a courier, would also be applicable to the key distribution problem.
Is it perhaps possible that the US has no comparable link because, in their considered opinion, they have better things to do with the money?
"Quantum R&D is a global endeavor, with advancements and supply chains spread across multiple countries.” ..... says think thank the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF)
What you are yet to widely accept is fully realised, and wisest best engaged with as an exceptional expanding treat rather than being feared as an existential threat to be gravely regarded and avoided, is Quantum R&D is a universal enterprise, with advancements and supply chains readily available but naturally protected by Advanced IntelAIgent Design to be provided and administered, mentored and monitored by ....... well, a select body of an alien few would not be a fake falsehood and perfectly appropriate APT* and out of this world descriptor.
APT* ....... Advanced Persistent Treat/Threat
This article from last year:
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/06/hsbc_vodafone_quantum_security/
notes that a QKD distribution network is on a 3-year trial in London, using commercially available hardware from Toshiba. Toshiba Europe have been working on quantum secure networks for about 30 years now.
You can't give Snowden credit for something China did in their own best interest. The US was simply caught in a global spying network, PRISM, and China doubled down to protect themselves. Take personal politics out of it and China only did what any country would do if they seek to protect their own interests. Of course, politically, one could go on all day about that......
> China has made some important advances on superconducting quantum chips, but trails badly on quantum algorithms.
Well, since they are miles ahead in Quantum security, maybe they have loads more quantum tech. Its just that the americans can't hack into their systems to discover what they've got.
The reason why I doubt that is that both superconducting quantum chips and quantum algorithms are really 99.9....% research topics at this point, that survive (ironically) by open international communication and curiosity, and are funded by the power of bragging rights. Any practical profitable, even military, applications are so far downstream at this point that hiding any progress would be pointless and counterproductive to progress.
ITIF gets loads of funding from tech industry groups
not the first time they have come out with a story like this - to encourage more spending monies for the "tech bro's" who pay their mortgages/rent
pure non story, total baloney ... nothing to see here
PS Is it me but ever since the register became more US centric they just publish baloney stories like this verbatim without any real critical analysis, leaving it to the commentators, bit sad
Do not be tempted to wholeheartedly agree with harrys and Will Godfrey who said ...
PS Is it me but ever since the register became more US centric they just publish baloney stories like this verbatim without any real critical analysis, leaving it to the commentators, bit sad .... I'm getting pissed off with this sort of crap. Not only do we seem to have a reduction of real global tech stories, but there is no longer the sense of humour we used to see in (such as) the "Special Projects"
....... because you are able every day to freely comment, humorously or otherwise, on any number of "Special Projects" which may very well be scaring the crap out of mainstream baloney bullshit story publishers/failing establishment propaganda pedal pushers, and it is not as if they are a Top Secret and hiding away and difficult to find whenever so clearly presented to globally share .
Did you not notice the one posted and hosted since Tue 10 Sep 07:39 [2409100739] for peer review here on this thread ....... For That and Those Everywhere East and West ... with Future Desires that Need to Know?
And that sort of news spreads everywhere in next to no time with the click of a mouse.
* ...... You might like to realise now, rather than being surprised by it later, there is another one of those “Special Projects” some may have imagined to be missing on El Reg...... Biting the hand that feeds IT
What has Edward Snowden to do with China pushing quantum-computer R&D ? For all I know he only revealed illegal spying by the US three-letter agencies. Something that any knowledgeable person suspected already, he merely brought proof of it. Germany's Angela Merkel's phone has been listened-to for years, the Five-Eyes organisation was already well known, Pegasus and Cambridge Analytica were also known ... if the author believes that China needed Snowden to realise the amount of spying going on then I have a bridge to sell him. Fair price, low usage, nearly new.
It's part of the lingua franca to refer to MICIUS MOZI QUESS in this way, since it launched in 2016, "in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations of widespread surveillance by the U.S.", as a "satellite for the post-Snowden age" ...
The issue here is a simple one: China develops QKD. China's comms "go dark" for intelligence agencies worldwide.
Meanwhile, nobody else has QKD. Everyone else is easy pickings for China.
That makes me think that everyone pushing the "think of the children" angle trying to nobble encryption is basically doing the same job as a Russian or Chinese espionage agent; they just don't know it.
Well, I think this may be best explained by equating the US with John Travolta, the EU with Olivia Newton-John, China with Patrick Swayze, and Russia (or Kazakhstan really) with Jennifer Gray.
There was a time when John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John fell on their butts trying to send people to the ISS, and had to resort to Dirty Dancing with Jennifer Gray to remain relevant on that ballroom floor. This odd situation has now been mostly resolved it seems.
Today, Patrick Swayze leads the QKD dance competition, and even invited Olivia Newton-John to join in. She was thrilled indeed to participate in what became the first ever intercontinental quantum-secure dance-video call (2016), over the 7,500 km between Beijing and Vienna (Austria), through Swayze's MICIUS satellite.
The history of intercontinental telegraphic and radio-modulated dance contests made us expect that QKD would occur first between Travolta and Newton-John, as a Grease or Saturday Night Fever type of fiesta, inspired possibly by such great choreographers as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, or Guglielmo Marconi, but no, it turned out to be a (sensual) Dirty Dance between Swayze and Newton-John! No one knows when Travolta will get off his butt to retake the crown in this, and reclaim his entanglement with Newton-John, who so likes to get quantum physical!
That's my story now, and I'm sticking to it ...
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