Welcome back to Impact Quantum, the podcast for the Quantum Curious,

where the only thing collapsing faster than a qubit is our free time. Trying

to keep up with the news. Frank and Candace return from a brief

doctor approved hiatus to take stock of the quantum ecosystem,

which is now flush with unicorns, billion dollar buyouts, and

IBM's bold starling ambitions. The

timeline to a fault tolerant quantum computer just got terrifyingly

real. They reflect on how far the shows come from physicists

and founders to photons and post Quantum Panic and why your

RSA encryption might already be on borrowed time. We touch

on quantum tweezers, Canadian pride, and the global race to

stay relevant in a world where the mainframe mindset is making a very

cold, very superconducting comeback. So if you're still

thinking Quantum is decades away, darling, update your calendar.

Welcome back to Impact Quantum, the podcast for

the Quantum Curious. And we took a week or

two off due to a number of sidetracks that happened in

our personal life. I had some health challenges, as did Candace,

but we're all on the med

now. How's it going, Candace? It's going great. Thank you so much for

asking. And yeah, taking a beat and

now coming back. I'm excited because it is a very

exciting time. The quantum news just keeps

getting bigger and crazier and like, it just became like this.

We do have other shows that are still in the can. We are going to

get those out, but I thought it would be good after about 12 episodes to

kind of take a beat. Now, fortunately, the universe thought of that idea. I can't

say it was really our idea, but,

you know, it forces kind of take a beat and kind of like see where

we are. And you know, I think, I think we had a pretty good

exploration of not just, you know, having quantum physicists on the

calls, right, or on the show, but also kind of like, you know, what

this looks like from a business perspective, from a student perspective, from an

entrepreneur, from a startup founder, that sort of thing. We've had a

pretty good smorgasbord sampling. I don't

know what the word would be of people that, you know,

that really proved out our thesis. Right? Our idea was like, you know,

the quantum ecosystem is going to need

everybody. It's going to be a village. Oh,

absolutely, it's going to be a village. And you know, when,

when everyone gets to see what the other players are

doing and thinking about and creating, I think that,

you know, it gets everybody excited in different ways. You're either

competing or you're like, wait, A second. I want to what's going on?

And work with certain other players to say, hey, why don't we

create a solution that, you know, combines the

most, you know, cutting edge hardware with

significant software. And for example,

that's what happened this week when IONQ

decided to buy

Oxford Ionics, you know, for a,

a billion dollars. So, I mean, there are

now Quantum unicorns, right? I mean, there might

have been before, but I mean you can,

I think it's, it's very cliche to say, like we're on the cusp of

something very. Big here, you know,

but we kind of are like, you know what I mean? And that's why it's

still true though. It's true though. It can be cliche, but true. You

know, I actually gave a talk at my team

meeting, like internally in our kind of our AI team, talking

about what the impact of Quantum is going to be, you know, in this space.

And it was a lot of people very curious about it. So,

you know, it's, it's something I think

is coming faster and more furiously than I think we anticipated.

And to your point, you alluded to like there's a bunch of news this week,

like a ridiculous amount of news. Yeah, like, it's absolutely

crazy. I mean, you know, you, you, you told me about

IBM, which was like huge. And

do you want to, do you want to dig into that a little bit about

Star. That is that they, they have unveiled a

path to build the world's first large scale

fault tolerant quantum computer with a target

of bringing the Starling system online by

2029. And that is an

aggressive timeline. You know, like we've seen really,

I mean, all the major players keep on saying, you know, it's going to be,

you know, 10 plus years from now and

until we really have something significant and this is now putting it, you know,

within grasp of, you know, of four, four or

five years, that's really. That'S really

within a decade. And I don't think people realize, you know,

and this came up in my internal call at Red Hat was,

you know, hey, you know, was this something that I'm gonna have to worry about

in my career? And then one guy on the call who, who has a

history in, in cryptography kind of space, he's like, yeah, absolutely.

And I was like, you know, if you had asked me this, say like November,

I'd be like, yeah, you know, It'll hit the 2000s, maybe 2000s, right.

It may not affect you because, you know, depending on your Age. Right. And where

you are in your career. But after Willow

kind of was announced and the subsequent

announcements or you know, even before

this week, I was like, yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna matter. Right? It

matters right now like if you're dealing out like SSL certificates and kind

of PKI type stuff, you have to reissue your certificates

with new types of encryption. Like you have to start now.

Ideally you would have started a year ago, but if you haven't started yet, you

need to start now. Oh absolutely. And now that IBM has also

released like their, you know, quantum ized

new timeline, it's, it's really exciting. You

know, talking about the Starling as you know is as a

kind of the first stage in 2029 and then

then focusing on then the Blue Jay, hopefully in

before 2035 and

continuing to build the cubics, the qubits,

excuse me, the qubits. And,

and really working on some of the major problems that you have

when you're working in the quantum system. Like we learned about error

correction and they did something, did some

breakthrough work emphasizing the use of something called

a quantum low density parity check

codes. And this apparently is the key

enabler for fault tolerance. So it's super exciting

when they also talk about the problems so like out there.

So like, you know, what's, oh my God. Why this is working or why it's

not. And, and being very honest about the real

barriers that we have, you know, in quantum computing.

Yeah. And I think that once you get past the error correction business, I

think a lot more doors are going to open up. But also there was a

paper basically saying that Google researchers have proven that

RSA can be broken with as little as a few thousand

messy qubits. So okay,

that was like. And, and obviously like some people said oh, less than a thousand

but. And there's a lot of hype and then when you kind of peel back,

well, maybe 10,000. But I mean just the fact that we're. Things

are some problems are not going to be that

dependent on error correction being figured out than others I think is also very

telling. Right. We are really in the early stage here

and the potential for disruption is

going to happen. I think the only question is that going to happen in this

decade? And I think probably,

but it'll definitely hit in the next decade.

I think there's a definite, I don't know, there's like a definite shift

to optimism that I haven't seen in this

space in a very long time. You know, I think 2019

2018, that timeframe was a bit of a false start.

But then the pandemic happened and then chatgpt and Generative

AI kind of took all the oxygen out of the room in the hype cycle.

And I know, like, research doesn't really tied to the hype cycle

directly, but it takes away a lot

of venture capital money. Right. It takes away a lot of

attention and resources, you know,

that are very, I think, quantifiable. Right. Whether it's VC money, whether it's, you

know, these top PhD researchers, are they trying to figure out what you're going to

listen to next on Spotify or are they working on a quantum computer? Right. Like.

Right. And also it's about, it's about that trust issue too, right?

Like when, when something is, is, is evolving

at like this supersonic rate that you're just

not used to. Right. And you can understand, you

know, if you're, if you're along that, you know, along that path,

you understand why it's happening and why it's exciting.

But to be able to explain that to other

people is really the hardest part of it all.

Because it all comes down to the communication, really

explaining, saying, this is why we're doing

this, because this is what it can do. And.

Right. That's kind of our mission. Yeah, Right. And it comes

down to communication, you know, constantly and saying to people,

you know, be curious and want to understand

this from wherever you come into it. Right.

You know, if you're an academic or, you know, or you're,

you know, or you're on the C suite of a new commercial venture,

or you're just, you know, in the middle and

it, you know, it's exciting to you, but your,

your job is not quite there yet. And you're wondering maybe should

you, or can you, you know, break

in and start understanding why, you know, what's going on

with quantum computing is so incredibly exciting.

And there's so many different things yet to explore.

Like, we've talked about all these different qubits on the show. And

you know, there's so many different, different fields, at least

I see that you can come to it from. And it's a very

exciting sector. Well, yeah, and it's not just one

type of system, right. There's photonics, there's trapped ions, there's

cat cubits, there's typological. And I know I'm leaving some out.

You know, it's not just a simple. It's not like electronics where it's

basically electrons. Right. You're, you're right. Putting

electrons in these little, like, you know, mouse mazes

effectively. Why don't you, like you. You've explained it in terms of a

transistor. When transistor radio came out, right. It just

kind of changed how, you know, within,

within like the Industrial Revolution and, you know, you know,

how it just changed how people thought about communication

and then brought us to, you know, the analog computers. And we've

been there for a very long time and, you

know, and we've gotten comfortable. Right.

And, you know. Yeah. With the, with the, you know,

accent of the mobility aspect, which makes it harder for

older people, you know, in, you know, in our world because

it's just so much faster and

that's, that's, that's just harder. Right. But we're, we're on the cusp of

something that is going to be a totally different

mainframe mindset, right? Well, yeah, I think, I think for the

foreseeable future, these quantum computers are probably going to be in the data

center. They're probably going to be accessed like a mainframe was. You're not going to

have a. You're not going to have a Q phone. Right.

Least not right away. You're not. Probably not for a while. You're going

to be able to go and, you know, order a, you know, a QPU

and drop it into your desktop PC. Right.

It sounds so cool. I love it. I mean, I can't wait.

I mean, but it's probably some time away for that'll be a thing. But

I mean, in the meantime, you know, I was talking to somebody

who also works at Red Hat, and again, you know, this is, this

podcast is completely independent of that company, though I am very conscious

that, you know, IBM owns Red Hat and IBM is a

massive player in the quantum space. They're probably in the lead, I

would say by a country mile. But I would

also, you know, I was talking to him, I showed him, like, he should probably

look into it because he's kind of, like, curious about it. I encourage him to

look into it and his first reaction was, you know,

wow. We're really just at the algorithmic level right now, right. So when you

develop something on a quantum computer, you are really like, down in the

weeds, like in a low level. It's not like I can go and, you know,

create a react native app on, in like Visual Studio

code or whatever, right. Like, it's not. The frameworks aren't really there

yet, like the ui, you know, that sort of thing. Like, there's

no Pandas you know, there's no

numpy, like, you know what I mean? Like, you are really, you are really

kind of in exercises that you wouldn't really

do unless you were taking Introduction to Computer Science. You

are really slinging the code at the algorithmic level. Right. It was. It's

still very basic. I think that's going to change. But,

you know, it's a time when,

you know,

traditional computers were also at that point where you needed

electrical engineers and you needed vacuum tubes. You needed all these

crazy things to just make them work. They had to be in the

basement or like enlarged, building onto themselves. We're really at that

phase here of quantum computing. And it's not a stretch of the

imagination to say, like, you know, this will evolve just

like traditional computers have.

And, you know, we'll look back and, you know, we'll. In my

case, in your case, you know, we told our grandkids, I remember when the first

quantum computer came out, it filled up a whole building and it needed liquid nitrogen,

the stick with coal. But you got like, you know, the new Apple Q Phone

26 and, you know, running iOS like, you know,

200 by then. Right. All these

numbers are fresh in my head because the Apple developer conference was this week, so.

Aha. Aha. There you go. You know, and I also,

and I know a lot of our guests that we've had and a lot of

experts in the field kind of look down upon, you know, quantum emulation.

I think quantum emulation is going to be more of a thing than people

will admit. But, you know, again,

it's so early. It's really, it's so early in the game, it's hard to say

who's going to be right, you know. Right. We talked to,

you know, a photonic startup founder and I was like, I really. And I wasn't

just buttering his bread. Right. You know, I really think

that, you know, photonics is probably going to win

as a. As a foundational kind of. I almost say substrate,

but like foundational layer. I think it's going to win because it's probably going to

be the first to hit like something closer to room temperature.

Okay. I think now I could be wrong. Right. And I.

What's fascinating about this is every time I think I got a handle

on how these systems work and how qubits work, I'm always

learning something new, like, oh, I was kind of wrong,

like. No, no, but seriously, I mean, and, you know, for me,

from where I first began to where I am now and then, remember,

we There was, there was some. It was, something had

come out from Caltech, I

believe it was like a week or two ago, and they talked about using

like, these tweezers, these qubit

tweezers. Oh, yeah, you were, you, you had sent like this

thing. It was like a text message and you were like, you got to hear

about these cubit tweezers or clean quantum tweezers. And I'm like,

oh, she's having a really pretty crazy fever dream.

But it's really, I mean, that it's so exciting, all the, the

new technology that they're using and theoretical

and now putting some things into practice. Right? Like, yeah, like

the gentleman that we spoke to from Israel near

Alfasi, and he's, he's sitting in front of one of those kind of

crazy rooms that you're talking about where their

first kind of quantum computer, you know, they're

working from it, right? And, and, you know, and people, I mean,

using just quantum algorithms now. It's already in our world,

you know, so, you know. Well, it's already. If you're

a, A CISO or chief information Security officer

or any, you know, you really

need to take this threat seriously. Right. And, you

know, the Quantum Night guys don't pay us.

But. No, but you really should look at what their

solutions are, because whether you use them or use somebody else, if you're not

moving your infrastructure today over to some kind of quantum

safe encryption, you are going to be sol as.

As the acronym is when this does come out.

Oh, absolutely. Right. If not, if not sooner. Right. Because it's probably going

to exist. I think it's safe to say that this will exist

a bit like the Manhattan Project did, like in the 40s, right. Where, you know,

it happened a couple of years before the public knew

in general. So if IBM is saying 2029,

it's not unreasonable to think that by 2026,

which is next year, six months away. If you really want to be technical,

it's not out of the question to think that a state actor, whether it's a,

you know, one of, you know, the good guys or the bad guys. And I

realize this podcast is global, so, you know, there's going to be. Your good

guys are not going to be the same bad guys as mine and vice versa.

Right, right. That's fair. It's not unreasonable to think that

this is, you know, either about to go online or, you know, sometime in

the next 12 months. And, you know, moving all these certificates around is not a

trivial lift. So, like, seriously, like, you know, For God's sake, do something

about it. And it's also interesting that, you know, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10

that they announced a few weeks ago at the big Red Hat conference,

you know, it supports, you know, quantum safe

encryption algorithms when you generate certificates. Right.

Like, you should really start doing this like now.

Right. Like, because that's the thing that's really going to hit. I think it's going

to impact people first. Right. It's not going to be foreign, it's not

going to be curing cancer or solving, you know, climate issues or energy

production or whatever. It's going to be. People are going to

break your RSA encryption. I mean, Right. That's, they're just going to go for

your data. Right. And that's going to be done at the nation state level, at

the criminal level. And I mean, go, go back and listen to the two episodes.

We have the Quantum Knights guys because they're very interesting guys and

very smart guys and very good to have them on again. But I

mean, seriously, like, if you're, if you're not, if you're in any

kind of position of authority over any organization and you don't have a plan

to migrate this, you, first thing you need to do is have a

plan to mitigate this threat. Yeah.

You need to make a call and get someone to consult for you and tell

you really what's going on. Right. Because I think that's

the thing that people need to, even if they're not in the quantum space,

need to really upgrade their encryption tech to be

resistant against this. Yeah, we need some more, we need some more of

the encryption people and we need some more photonics folks.

Right. You know, for what we're, you know, going

into, going into the next part of our season.

Right. That's for sure. No, exactly, exactly.

Speaking of the next part of our season, we do have some episodes kind of,

you know, in the can and we just have to edit and get them cut

down and, you know, we'll get

those out and I'm looking forward to it. I think we're going

to have a, it's going to be an interesting year in Quantum. I think it

started, it started off a little rough with Jensen kind of talking smack,

but about the technology and then that kind of,

that kind of hullabaloo and then it really has bounced back with all these

announcements and innovations. Right. I think so. I think that

it was, it was, it was kind of like a wet towel moment and.

Right. Those that were working on it were like, we're Just not going to listen

to that. You said wet towel. I think you said

what? Towel moment. I'm like, is that some kind of Canadian. No, no kind of

Canadian slang. I don't know about. I just felt that he kind of depressed people

and he did, but there. Were a lot of other people. Like, you know,

the best way to, if I wanted to buy a Quantum company, like, the best

way to do that would be to like depress the Quantum stocks

and then by saying something and then, I don't know,

there's conspiracy theorists, I guess, around every corner.

Yes. But the truth is there's a lot going on that

people don't understand. That's why you

join our mailing list. You should, you should listen

to the podcast. We are completely approachable

and we'd love to hear from you.

So, Frank, is there anything else that we

want to say? We have, we formally announced in the show that we're like the

number one, according to Feedspot, number one rated quantum computing podcast out there.

That's right. That's true. I'm really excited. I'm really excited. I wish

I had a. I wish I had a little applause. We should get, have a

little applause. That's right. That's right. I need to set up my soundboard again.

Yeah, there we go. Yeah. Super excited. I'm really, I'm really

happy to, to see what we believe to be true, that

people are curious, people do want to understand

and people who understand and are in that world, you

know, are communicating what's exciting about what's going

on. I think that's great.

And I think it's such a. There's these rare moments in

tech. They happen about

once a decade. And I think quantum AI is currently, I think the darling of

the 2020s.com was obviously the darling of the 90s,

probably social media, mobile, the 2000s and

2010s was probably cloud and big data.

But I really think Quantum is going to be the it girl

of the, of the 2000 and 30s. Right. Well,

I'm really excited about it. I'm excited. We're trying to learn about it and

we're, we're doing it in a fun way. Did you want to

announce here that you have a state of Quantum in Canada report?

Oh, that's right. Folks could download from your profile. I will be

posting it shortly. I will be posting it shortly. Thank you, Frank,

for reminding, reminding me, telling the audience we're very excited. Well,

that's the other thing too. We've, we've kind of discovered as we've been interviewing people,

like, this is a global phenomenon, right. It's like it's not just Silicon Valley,

right, where or the west coast of the United States, whether it's, you know,

Seattle with Amazon, Microsoft and I guess

Vancouver as well with the wave and such. But I think this is

a global phenomenon. We talk to people in Israel, we talk to

people in Europe, we talk to people in the US and you know, there's

obviously a lot of quantum activity in China. There's Singapore, Japan.

This is someone in Africa. In Africa, yeah, yeah, there's actually a

quantum institute. I think it's a, it's either

in Cairo or in Nairobi.

So I mean, this is a global phenomenon. And I

think that's really, I think one of the perils of Silicon

Valley is the fact that they are very geographically

focused. And I think that that

makes people, you make assumptions, I think, based on your geography because it's your

day to day experience, right. Whether it's, you know, you're in

Montreal, right. Like you were telling me what the kids do, they have boots and

then they have inside shoes and like that's a whole thing. And I

vaguely remember my grandfather talking about that. You know, whereas if you're

in Florida, it's pretty much flip flops year round. Right, right,

right. You know, and here like in, you know,

Baltimore, ish, You know, there's,

you know, we have, we have all four seasons and each, each one of

them is kind of aggressive. So

particularly the pollen this year, which was my. Oh, the pollen is

crazy here this year. Like we actually had to wash off our,

our air conditioning unit outside our house because, wow, not enough

air was getting through it with all the pollen that landed on it. Right. Wow.

Like, oh, yeah, it's crazy sauce. But you know what, like you

adapt. But I think what you're saying about the global interest

is important. I think that Canada

really wants to be Canadian strong and not

rely or be thought to as having

to rely on other countries for

cutting edge technology. And so it's very

exciting that they kept on mentioning quantum,

quantum, quantum over and over again at the G7.

And it was me, as, you know, born American,

New York, born and bred. Been living in Canada now for 15

years or so, dual citizen. But it

made me really proud to see that, you know, Canada

was really stepping forward and showing that this is something

that they want to focus their time and energy and resources on.

Yeah, I think that's one of the, you know, the last X number of years

we've been focused on globalization this, globalization that. And

globalization works well when everybody can hold hands and sing Kumbaya.

Right. The human history

is not known for its moments of history where

the world holds hands and sings Kumbaya. Right.

Partnership is super important. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it isn't,

but like, you know, a little bit of self sufficiency never hurt anyone. Oh,

100%. Like when, when, when the, you know, when the,

when the epidemic hit and everyone. I

was watching the. I literally was in Punta Cana on vacation

for first time vacation abroad with my children and my husband.

And we were watching on the news how in

China they were locking people in their rooms. Yeah.

Because of this, you know, was soon to be Covid. Right.

And we were. And we were coming home

back to, you know, Montreal with that going

on in the world. And it was very soon after that where

everything kind of shut down. It was a very weird time. But I remember

at that moment being really pissed

that Canada didn't have the resource to make their

own vaccine. And we were not even,

not even vaccines, but like, you know, Advil. There was like an

Advil shortage or something like that and a lot of other medicine shortage. I'm like,

why? And it turns out that a lot of this stuff is made in India,

in manufacturing plants in India. And when you shut down borders and you shut down

all this stuff, right. Suddenly you don't realize. I think

what made a lot of people realize is how dependent we are

on supply chain. So if there's any kind of conflict

or whatever, or any kind of disruption, whether it's from a pandemic or,

you know, hurricane or whatever, just how

out of luck you'll be. Sol as it was, I said earlier, right. Like, right.

Oh, 100%. Which was very alarming. I'm like, wait,

you can't. Who makes Advil, you know, in the US like, and if you

also too, like, you know, recently, you know, we're recording this in June

and it wasn't what, but like three, four weeks ago that India

and Pakistan had a actual shooting conflict.

Right, right. And like, really, like, I mean, if that,

God forbid that, you know, thankfully that did not escalate, but,

you know, it's. That's scary. Not hard to imagine if it

did. That could very easily slip in the wrong direction.

A lot of things in the world right now could easily slip in the wrong

direction. Absolutely. Kind of a miracle we made it this far.

Well, you know, but. But cooler heads

tend to prevail every once in a While, and, but, but in any case, like

regardless of where you stand on, you know, what country kicked off water, what started

what, like doesn't matter who's right, who's wrong if you can't get

the medicine you need. Right, right. Or anything you need. Like,

it's just, I don't know, like I think and I picked

up a bottle of Advil like the other day at the store and

you know, on the side it said it was manufactured, you know, in India. And

I was like, well, you know, good for, good for the Indian economy. But God

forbid if, if it hits the fan again. Right, right.

Like have we learned nothing? And you know, apparently,

apparently no. Well, yeah, because isn't the egg problem still happening

in the States? No, the egg problem is mostly abated.

Okay. Like I got a, a big case of eggs the other day at

like Costco or whatever and. Right. You know, I didn't have to take a mortgage

out or anything like that. And we didn't have an egg problem here like

that. We don't have as many varieties. That's like the deal. Basically,

you, you to survive, you learn to accept not having so many of their

varieties. Like I could never walk down an entire aisle

at like the Stop and Shop and it would just

be salad dressings. Right,

right, right, right, right. Well, a lot of, a lot of the egg shortage was

because there was a small outbreak of some kind of bird flu. Right.

Right. So they had killed off a lot of, they kind of, you can

argue that maybe they overdid it, but now that it's recovered so quickly,

maybe they maybe was the appropriate response. Right.

Okay. You know, yeah. But things like egg prices though.

Well, you know, are now, they're very

political. Right. So like if there was another outbreak again, like will, will the decision

be made on science or politics?

I don't know. Usually if it's science versus politics,

politics usually wins. We've gotten, we've gotten

very political here. But no, I mean, but I mean like it's,

I think we did kind of. You're a bit off topic, but that's what we

do. But no, I mean

I can totally see why after the events the last, well say five, six years,

people have realized, you know, look, love partnering with other countries,

etc, but you know, it's a good

time to re examine being self sufficient. I

think it's important, I think it's important to be able to. If you know, you're,

you're, you need to provide for your, for your society,

you need to protect your society. But I, you know.

Well, I. I don't want to be. I. I was just. We. We talk about

the health care system, but we're going to take. I'm going to stop myself. Yes.

Don't get me started. So. But no, this was great. I mean, really,

there was so much that went on in the past couple weeks. I'm just

happy that we got to take a little chance to talk and. I'm glad we're

both feeling well enough to. To chat again and we're gonna. I thought this would

be a good kind of point and let us know, you know, in the comments

or. Or just through ever. Whatever feedback. You know, if you

think like a catch up show every few weeks because we did that in the

beginning or like maybe every 12 episodes or something like

that. I don't know. Let us know. Yeah, I'd love to hear from you.

Cool. All right. With that, we'll let Bailey finish the show.

Nd that's a wrap on this catch up voyage through the ever expanding

quantumverse. If your classical brain is spinning, don't

worry, you're in good company. Minds distributed across several

dimensions and still can't keep up. Remember to

subscribe, rate and review impact Quantum, preferably with

glowing praise, but we'll settle for constructive quantum criticism.

Join our mailing list, send us your questions, or just shout into

the void. With enough entanglement, we might actually hear you.

We'll be back soon with more guests, more insights, and more

proof that the future is arriving whether you're ready or not.

Until then, stay curious, stay entangled, and for

heaven's sake, update your encryption. Bailey signing

off.