1 00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:03,840 Is one of the quantum advantages that quantum networks have. And 2 00:00:04,320 --> 00:00:08,160 security is an interesting point because in the Internet, in the evolution 3 00:00:08,160 --> 00:00:11,800 of that network and the networks of networks, 4 00:00:11,800 --> 00:00:14,800 security wasn't really front of mind and it was kind of tacked on 5 00:00:15,520 --> 00:00:19,280 at the end. And there are plenty of vulnerabilities and security 6 00:00:19,280 --> 00:00:22,960 on the Internet today. And so we do have an opportunity here to really build 7 00:00:23,120 --> 00:00:26,240 these security first principles into 8 00:00:26,720 --> 00:00:30,440 the quantum Internet as it evolves. Welcome to Impact 9 00:00:30,600 --> 00:00:31,240 Quantum. 10 00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:47,640 Hello and welcome back to Impact Quantum, the podcast where we 11 00:00:47,640 --> 00:00:51,480 explore the emerging industry that is quantum computing. We don't 12 00:00:51,480 --> 00:00:54,920 need to be a physicist. You just need to be curious about the technology. 13 00:00:55,480 --> 00:00:59,300 And. And with me is the most quantum curious person I 14 00:00:59,300 --> 00:01:03,020 know, Candice Giuli. How's it going, Candice? It's going great. Thank 15 00:01:03,020 --> 00:01:06,740 you, Frank. It's going great. Today we are going to be speaking 16 00:01:06,740 --> 00:01:10,060 with Michael Kubadoo, who is the co 17 00:01:10,060 --> 00:01:13,660 founder at Alero Quantum Technologies. 18 00:01:14,220 --> 00:01:18,060 How are you, Michael? I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having 19 00:01:18,060 --> 00:01:21,860 me here today. I'm really excited to have this conversation. I'm 20 00:01:21,860 --> 00:01:25,020 a big fan of the podcast and really honored to be here as a guest. 21 00:01:26,200 --> 00:01:29,320 Thank you. Thank you very much. It's always good to 22 00:01:30,200 --> 00:01:33,080 one find out we have fans and then two to meet one. 23 00:01:36,760 --> 00:01:40,360 So Alero, I'm looking at kind of their just basic 24 00:01:41,480 --> 00:01:44,840 talk. This looks really interesting. It's a quantum 25 00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:48,480 networking company. So for those may not be in the know, what 26 00:01:48,480 --> 00:01:52,250 exactly is a quantum networking company? So 27 00:01:52,250 --> 00:01:55,050 quantum networks are new kinds of networks where 28 00:01:55,770 --> 00:01:58,570 traditional networks send zeros and ones around. 29 00:01:59,530 --> 00:02:03,170 And quantum networks, while they can send zeros and ones around, they can 30 00:02:03,170 --> 00:02:06,650 actually send qubits or quantum states over these 31 00:02:06,730 --> 00:02:10,010 channels. And those channels could be fiber, they could be over free space. 32 00:02:10,410 --> 00:02:14,170 So it's really a way to communicate quantum data across 33 00:02:14,170 --> 00:02:17,730 distance. And so to build a company around quantum 34 00:02:17,730 --> 00:02:20,330 networking. There are many pieces of technology 35 00:02:21,530 --> 00:02:25,330 that comprise a quantum network from different kinds of hardware, different 36 00:02:25,330 --> 00:02:29,090 components, but then all of the software stack, the whole networking stack that really 37 00:02:29,090 --> 00:02:32,370 drives what we can do with these kinds of networks. And that's what we focus 38 00:02:32,370 --> 00:02:35,210 on at Alero. Interesting. 39 00:02:36,970 --> 00:02:40,690 So what role? I'm thinking about networks and 40 00:02:40,690 --> 00:02:43,530 so it just makes me think naturally of entanglement. 41 00:02:45,620 --> 00:02:49,140 So what role does entanglement and quantum 42 00:02:49,140 --> 00:02:52,420 repeaters play in making these long 43 00:02:52,420 --> 00:02:56,220 distance quantum networks possible? That's a really 44 00:02:56,220 --> 00:02:59,540 great question. And similar to the 45 00:02:59,700 --> 00:03:03,500 evolution of the Internet, and there were different generations on 46 00:03:03,500 --> 00:03:06,580 the way to the Internet that we, we know and love today. 47 00:03:07,300 --> 00:03:10,740 You know, it really started as, you know, a network 48 00:03:10,820 --> 00:03:14,530 for Science exchange and to share data across 49 00:03:14,530 --> 00:03:18,210 distance between labs. No one really envisioned 50 00:03:18,370 --> 00:03:22,050 the applications that we know and love today. And 51 00:03:22,370 --> 00:03:26,130 we see the same kinds of trends in, in quantum networking. 52 00:03:26,450 --> 00:03:30,169 And the key resource in the Internet is again, these zeros 53 00:03:30,169 --> 00:03:33,890 and ones and how fast you can send them, where 54 00:03:33,890 --> 00:03:36,290 those zeros and ones can. Can reach 55 00:03:37,490 --> 00:03:40,830 over a certain distance. And those are the services that, that really 56 00:03:40,830 --> 00:03:44,350 underpin all the great applications. And the same kind of 57 00:03:44,350 --> 00:03:47,830 analog applies to quantum networking, where, as you said, 58 00:03:47,830 --> 00:03:51,630 entanglement is one such resource, that different applications 59 00:03:51,630 --> 00:03:55,390 can use entanglement in different ways. Now, 60 00:03:55,390 --> 00:03:59,110 there's a lot more complexity with entanglement than zeros and ones. Right. 61 00:03:59,110 --> 00:04:02,830 There are different kinds of entangled states. This notion of 62 00:04:02,830 --> 00:04:06,590 fidelity, or the quality of entanglement, where there really isn't that 63 00:04:06,590 --> 00:04:10,430 quality of a 0 or a 1 in classical networks. So it 64 00:04:10,430 --> 00:04:14,190 is a different paradigm. But some analogies do apply. You can 65 00:04:14,190 --> 00:04:17,990 view entanglement really as a resource that the network is providing, and 66 00:04:17,990 --> 00:04:21,230 then you can build services and applications on top of that entanglement. 67 00:04:21,630 --> 00:04:25,270 But there are different generations of quantum networks, too. Quantum 68 00:04:25,270 --> 00:04:28,950 networks have been demonstrated now for decades. And the 69 00:04:28,950 --> 00:04:32,270 first generations were really about just sending single qubits 70 00:04:32,670 --> 00:04:36,110 or single quantum states and superposition across this network. 71 00:04:36,630 --> 00:04:39,990 And what you mentioned as entanglement is really what we see as the next generation 72 00:04:40,390 --> 00:04:43,750 of quantum networking, the kind of quantum 2.0 of 73 00:04:43,910 --> 00:04:47,630 networks where now we can have not just single photons or single 74 00:04:47,630 --> 00:04:51,190 qubits, but now entangled pairs or larger clusters 75 00:04:51,670 --> 00:04:55,190 of qubits that are entangled with each other and have this special correlation 76 00:04:55,190 --> 00:04:58,870 across distance. And that opens the door for all sorts of applications in 77 00:04:58,870 --> 00:05:01,110 security and computing and sensing in others. 78 00:05:03,040 --> 00:05:06,720 Interesting. So does that mean that 79 00:05:06,720 --> 00:05:10,440 this would be impervious, or I'll 80 00:05:10,440 --> 00:05:13,960 use that term with a little asterisk, because we don't know yet, really, does this 81 00:05:13,960 --> 00:05:17,640 mean that snooping would automatically be detected because you're 82 00:05:17,640 --> 00:05:20,640 sending the superposition so it's inherently secure? 83 00:05:21,360 --> 00:05:25,080 Absolutely. That's really one of the big promises. 84 00:05:25,080 --> 00:05:28,490 One of the quantum advantages that quantum networks have. 85 00:05:28,570 --> 00:05:32,250 And security is an interesting point, because in the Internet, 86 00:05:32,410 --> 00:05:36,250 in the evolution of that network and the networks 87 00:05:36,250 --> 00:05:39,930 of networks, security wasn't really front of mind, and it was kind of tacked on 88 00:05:40,570 --> 00:05:44,330 at the end. And there are plenty of vulnerabilities and security 89 00:05:44,330 --> 00:05:48,010 on the Internet today. And so we do have an opportunity here to really build 90 00:05:48,170 --> 00:05:51,290 these security first principles into 91 00:05:51,770 --> 00:05:54,960 the quantum Internet as it evolves. But that's 92 00:05:54,960 --> 00:05:58,480 absolutely right. These quantum 93 00:05:58,480 --> 00:06:02,280 physics principles, like entanglement, superposition, the no 94 00:06:02,280 --> 00:06:05,760 Cloning theorem, these core principles of quantum 95 00:06:05,760 --> 00:06:09,520 physics really drive those security properties. So as you 96 00:06:09,520 --> 00:06:13,240 said, spoofing or eavesdrop detection, where you can actually 97 00:06:14,280 --> 00:06:18,040 detect when there are some adversaries or some funkiness going on on the network 98 00:06:18,040 --> 00:06:21,730 that will produce patterns and measurement results from these nodes that 99 00:06:21,730 --> 00:06:25,570 can really detect when those things are going on. It's interesting 100 00:06:25,570 --> 00:06:29,410 where as you introduced this podcast focusing on 101 00:06:29,410 --> 00:06:32,810 quantum computing, these sensitivities of 102 00:06:32,810 --> 00:06:36,570 quantum states are actually a bug in quantum computing because they're very 103 00:06:36,570 --> 00:06:40,010 hard to control and you want a computer to be reliable and 104 00:06:40,010 --> 00:06:42,570 robust and isolated from the environment. 105 00:06:43,770 --> 00:06:47,410 This kind of noise is a bug for computing, but it's actually a 106 00:06:47,410 --> 00:06:51,070 feature for networking. You know, this fragility of quantum states, the 107 00:06:51,070 --> 00:06:54,350 sensitivity to its environment is actually what unlocks these security 108 00:06:55,150 --> 00:06:58,870 principles and this new kind of quantum advantage. So eavesdrop detection, 109 00:06:58,870 --> 00:07:02,590 spoof detection, these things are really baked into the physics itself. 110 00:07:03,870 --> 00:07:07,630 So theoretically it's impervious. But who knows what, who knows what 111 00:07:07,630 --> 00:07:10,910 conversation we'll be having in 10 to 15 years about that? 112 00:07:11,310 --> 00:07:15,020 Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. You know, security, they're all, 113 00:07:15,900 --> 00:07:19,460 you know that theoretical security is one piece of the puzzle, right? 114 00:07:19,460 --> 00:07:22,900 And at the end of the day, to build a quantum network, you know, it 115 00:07:22,900 --> 00:07:26,580 sits in a box somewhere, there's some collection of hardware, there's the 116 00:07:26,580 --> 00:07:30,180 software that runs it. So there are many other attack vectors to think about. But 117 00:07:30,180 --> 00:07:33,860 at its core, you know, that's where we really derive a lot of the 118 00:07:33,860 --> 00:07:37,380 security value is from that physics itself and using that 119 00:07:37,380 --> 00:07:40,900 physics for security. Whereas, you know, security today in the 120 00:07:40,900 --> 00:07:44,700 Internet, it's really based on math and assumptions about computational 121 00:07:44,700 --> 00:07:48,520 complexity and all sorts of. Whereas this is really a physics 122 00:07:48,520 --> 00:07:52,160 based approach. So for those listening and for Candace 123 00:07:52,160 --> 00:07:55,760 and for Michael as well, if I sound a little grumpy about that, it's not 124 00:07:55,760 --> 00:07:59,280 the concussion or the funky glasses. It's because I 125 00:07:59,280 --> 00:08:02,840 remember sitting in a training class for Windows 126 00:08:02,840 --> 00:08:06,120 NT, maybe 92, 93, 127 00:08:07,160 --> 00:08:11,000 and the instructor, who might have been a 128 00:08:11,000 --> 00:08:14,430 Microsoft employee, I don't remember, had basically boldly 129 00:08:14,430 --> 00:08:18,150 proclaimed that because it was based on the new NT kernel and various security 130 00:08:18,230 --> 00:08:22,070 features of that, that computer viruses would be impossible 131 00:08:22,070 --> 00:08:25,110 to make in the future. So again, 132 00:08:25,990 --> 00:08:29,669 I didn't really buy it at the time, sound a little far fetched, but 133 00:08:29,669 --> 00:08:32,230 I kind of sort of believed it. I was kind of on the, I was 134 00:08:32,230 --> 00:08:36,070 a bit in a state of superposition about it, but obviously as 135 00:08:36,070 --> 00:08:39,910 time moved on, clearly, you know, the anti kernel and 136 00:08:40,299 --> 00:08:44,139 you know, Windows XP and et cetera, et cetera have not been immune 137 00:08:44,139 --> 00:08:47,899 to malware. So that's why it's 138 00:08:47,899 --> 00:08:51,099 not that I don't trust it or I don't believe in the physics. It's just 139 00:08:51,259 --> 00:08:54,179 like you said, at some point this has to sit in the physical thing and 140 00:08:54,179 --> 00:08:57,899 what sort of software vulnerabilities will be covered. But it does give bad 141 00:08:57,899 --> 00:09:01,259 actors a much 142 00:09:01,579 --> 00:09:05,419 bigger hill to climb in order to mess with your network. 143 00:09:07,060 --> 00:09:10,820 That's right. And I think this is where a healthy dialogue around 144 00:09:11,300 --> 00:09:15,140 the security of these quantum networks. You 145 00:09:15,140 --> 00:09:18,740 know, what applications it's being used for, for what kind of data, 146 00:09:18,900 --> 00:09:22,660 what parts of the network are we talking about, what critical infrastructure 147 00:09:22,660 --> 00:09:25,620 is it, you know, electric grid, is it securing financial 148 00:09:26,100 --> 00:09:29,940 transactions, government communications? There are all sorts of security 149 00:09:30,820 --> 00:09:34,650 requirements and compliance and different regulations around 150 00:09:35,210 --> 00:09:38,970 what security means operationally to these stakeholders. So 151 00:09:38,970 --> 00:09:42,170 that's a really healthy conversation and one that's worth having on the international 152 00:09:42,330 --> 00:09:45,930 stage as we start to think about standards and 153 00:09:46,010 --> 00:09:49,650 how to roll this out in the right way to make sure these networks can 154 00:09:49,650 --> 00:09:53,490 talk to each other securely, even if they're using different approaches 155 00:09:53,490 --> 00:09:57,130 to build quantum networks. So that's a really healthy conversation, 156 00:09:57,130 --> 00:10:00,870 and that's what I think we can expect in the coming years as this technology 157 00:10:00,950 --> 00:10:04,470 really matures. But, you know, we all really agree on this kind of, 158 00:10:05,350 --> 00:10:08,950 you know, the driver, the core principles of using physics 159 00:10:09,190 --> 00:10:12,950 and the laws of physics for security first. And, 160 00:10:13,350 --> 00:10:16,510 you know, it's a lot harder to break the laws of physics than it may 161 00:10:16,510 --> 00:10:20,350 be to find a side channel attack. Right. So, you know, but this 162 00:10:20,350 --> 00:10:24,110 is the discussion we need to be having. It's like, what, what do these 163 00:10:24,110 --> 00:10:27,910 attack vectors look like? You know, what do quantum adversaries look 164 00:10:27,910 --> 00:10:31,590 like? What do we project our adversaries will be using as new tools? 165 00:10:31,830 --> 00:10:35,550 Is it AI? Is it quantum? Is it some mixture of both to try 166 00:10:35,550 --> 00:10:39,310 and attack these networks? Is it to read communications off the 167 00:10:39,310 --> 00:10:43,070 wire, or is it easier to blackmail someone? Right. You know, but 168 00:10:43,070 --> 00:10:46,230 these are. These are practical considerations that we have to think about, 169 00:10:46,870 --> 00:10:50,030 you know, in the coming years as we start to really roll this out in 170 00:10:50,030 --> 00:10:53,880 production. It's really exciting. Everything 171 00:10:53,880 --> 00:10:57,440 that it's touching upon, it's quantum 172 00:10:57,440 --> 00:11:01,280 networking. What advice would you give to 173 00:11:01,280 --> 00:11:05,040 a researcher or an entrepreneur who's 174 00:11:05,040 --> 00:11:06,960 passionate about entering the space? 175 00:11:08,640 --> 00:11:12,320 That's a great question. One thing that's 176 00:11:13,200 --> 00:11:16,960 important to know is that quantum computing 177 00:11:17,490 --> 00:11:21,330 is coming. And even experts within the field 178 00:11:22,930 --> 00:11:26,370 couldn't say that confidently even a few years ago. 179 00:11:26,690 --> 00:11:30,290 It's no longer a matter of if, but a matter of when. 180 00:11:30,370 --> 00:11:33,250 And I think all the great advances in error correction 181 00:11:35,250 --> 00:11:38,810 have really made the case that quantum computing is really on a trajectory 182 00:11:38,810 --> 00:11:42,490 to hit the stage in production sooner 183 00:11:42,490 --> 00:11:46,250 than than we thought, which is great. But you know, 184 00:11:46,250 --> 00:11:50,090 with any sort of emerging technology with this kind of power and potential, 185 00:11:51,050 --> 00:11:54,890 you know, we understand that this, in the wrong hands or in adversarial 186 00:11:54,890 --> 00:11:58,490 hands, can be used to, to attack, you know, 187 00:11:58,490 --> 00:12:02,330 the digital security that we rely on today. So we need 188 00:12:02,330 --> 00:12:05,810 to prepare for that. Now the question becomes how do we 189 00:12:05,810 --> 00:12:09,350 prepare our networks to become quantum safe, to become 190 00:12:09,350 --> 00:12:12,990 quantum resistant, to become quantum secure. And you hear these 191 00:12:12,990 --> 00:12:16,390 words thrown around a lot, but that's extremely important for 192 00:12:17,110 --> 00:12:20,630 governments, for critical infrastructure, our energy grids, our 193 00:12:20,630 --> 00:12:23,670 banks, to really think about migrating to 194 00:12:24,230 --> 00:12:28,070 a quantum safe, a quantum aware posture for their cybersecurity. 195 00:12:28,630 --> 00:12:32,310 The attacks are ever changing and we're seeing this play out on many 196 00:12:32,310 --> 00:12:36,150 different stages in military contexts and political 197 00:12:36,310 --> 00:12:40,150 conflicts, in hacks, right? There are all 198 00:12:40,150 --> 00:12:43,990 sorts of cyber attacks. And now with AI playing a 199 00:12:43,990 --> 00:12:47,670 big role as well. It's not just quantum. Just have 200 00:12:47,670 --> 00:12:51,350 more awareness that technology is moving very rapidly 201 00:12:51,670 --> 00:12:55,390 at an increasing pace. And we need to prepare our networks and our 202 00:12:55,390 --> 00:12:59,110 critical infrastructure, not take it for granted and be proactive about it 203 00:12:59,670 --> 00:13:02,710 and don't be reactive. So that's the advice, I'd say, just 204 00:13:02,950 --> 00:13:06,380 awareness around these attacks, preparing for that, 205 00:13:06,780 --> 00:13:10,460 and doing research into what's out there 206 00:13:10,460 --> 00:13:14,220 to protect these networks. Where does having this physics 207 00:13:14,220 --> 00:13:17,580 layer make sense for your data, for your kind of network? 208 00:13:18,700 --> 00:13:22,500 There are a lot of organizations figuring out right now, how much 209 00:13:22,500 --> 00:13:26,340 of my stuff do I want in the cloud versus on prem, how 210 00:13:26,340 --> 00:13:29,940 much do I trust these big hyperscalers and cloud 211 00:13:29,940 --> 00:13:33,160 vendors? And so as they're going through this migration, 212 00:13:33,720 --> 00:13:37,200 figuring out, okay, how much AI am I going to adopt, how much cloud am 213 00:13:37,200 --> 00:13:40,840 I going to adopt? Where does my network security lie in 214 00:13:40,840 --> 00:13:44,600 that? It's all a related problem. It's very hard to 215 00:13:44,920 --> 00:13:48,600 decouple. So this is not a problem that's 216 00:13:48,760 --> 00:13:52,040 decades out that it's fun to think about and a good 217 00:13:52,040 --> 00:13:55,560 exercise. Now this is something that's very important and a complex 218 00:13:55,560 --> 00:13:59,220 topic to start breaking down. So even just doing the inventory of 219 00:13:59,220 --> 00:14:02,900 what's in place right now, what am I using for security? Who 220 00:14:02,900 --> 00:14:06,620 wrote that code? Was it a decade ago and is 221 00:14:06,620 --> 00:14:10,180 that engineer still on staff? Is it written in an old 222 00:14:10,180 --> 00:14:13,140 programming language that I don't have an engineering team to support? 223 00:14:14,100 --> 00:14:17,860 So those questions, just doing the surveying, the inventory can take a long 224 00:14:17,860 --> 00:14:21,300 time and it's very complex. So getting started on that process 225 00:14:21,700 --> 00:14:25,140 today is really critical. And that's the practical advice I would give. 226 00:14:26,200 --> 00:14:29,960 Then it sounds like you're describing sbom or secure bill of materials 227 00:14:29,960 --> 00:14:33,320 is going to be a part of a. And that makes sense, right? Like it 228 00:14:33,320 --> 00:14:36,360 makes. So for those who don't know, we'll have to explain that because my wife 229 00:14:36,360 --> 00:14:39,640 works in IT security. So I kind of, I kind of know some of the 230 00:14:40,760 --> 00:14:44,360 goings on in terms. But one of the, 231 00:14:45,560 --> 00:14:48,960 I think that, I think you're right. I think we have to have a, as 232 00:14:48,960 --> 00:14:52,720 a society, you know, that is increasingly reliant on this 233 00:14:52,720 --> 00:14:56,310 technology and to have very frank conversations, no 234 00:14:56,310 --> 00:15:00,070 pun intended, about how 235 00:15:00,070 --> 00:15:03,830 we secure infrastructure. Right. I mean, look at the chaos that 236 00:15:03,830 --> 00:15:07,590 having us east one of us going down caused. 237 00:15:08,150 --> 00:15:11,870 All the way from, you know, oh, you know, websites 238 00:15:11,870 --> 00:15:15,070 go down all the way to, you know, some people had IoT devices that were 239 00:15:15,070 --> 00:15:18,870 basically locked including. And I'll pick on them, I'll pick on them for many 240 00:15:18,870 --> 00:15:22,370 years to come. Is the smart 241 00:15:22,370 --> 00:15:26,050 bed. Apparently there was a smart bed that was collecting, you 242 00:15:26,050 --> 00:15:29,770 know, measures how well you sleep and all that. But it would not do anything 243 00:15:29,770 --> 00:15:33,450 unless it could talk to us east one. And you know, we're 244 00:15:33,450 --> 00:15:36,970 recording this a day after a massive Verizon outage. Right. 245 00:15:36,970 --> 00:15:40,810 Right. So it, 246 00:15:41,930 --> 00:15:45,540 you know, we need to understand what our know, 247 00:15:45,540 --> 00:15:49,380 vulnerability of it because, you know, for all we know, these are just 248 00:15:49,380 --> 00:15:53,140 natural happenings. Right. Not a coordinated cyber attack, 249 00:15:53,220 --> 00:15:57,060 for all we know. Right. We'll never, you know, what 250 00:15:57,060 --> 00:16:00,180 will we ever really know the full truth? Maybe. But, 251 00:16:01,220 --> 00:16:04,940 but Candace shaking her head no, like I probably not. But you 252 00:16:04,940 --> 00:16:08,740 know, but I mean, what if this was, you know, 253 00:16:08,740 --> 00:16:12,570 what if this was a coordinated attack? 254 00:16:12,650 --> 00:16:15,050 Like how, you know, how vulnerable are we really? 255 00:16:16,490 --> 00:16:20,170 Yeah. And another, you know, point to that, to that end is around, 256 00:16:21,130 --> 00:16:24,970 you know, attacks that are happening now that, that we don't 257 00:16:24,970 --> 00:16:28,690 even know about, that we can't see directly that aren't, 258 00:16:28,690 --> 00:16:32,490 you know, taking user facing applications down and you know, making 259 00:16:32,490 --> 00:16:34,250 a big fuss in the public eye. 260 00:16:36,250 --> 00:16:39,850 You know, there are adversaries out there that are just harvesting data. They're, 261 00:16:40,270 --> 00:16:43,710 you know, even if they can't crack it yet, they're harvesting it. And 262 00:16:43,950 --> 00:16:47,470 some years down the road when they have access to these, you know, high scale 263 00:16:47,470 --> 00:16:50,750 compute systems and quantum computers, they'll be able to, 264 00:16:51,070 --> 00:16:54,030 you know, look back in time and crack that communication. 265 00:16:54,830 --> 00:16:58,630 So this is especially important for, you know, the kinds of data that you want 266 00:16:58,630 --> 00:17:02,470 to keep secret for a very long time, whether that's, you 267 00:17:02,470 --> 00:17:06,270 know, sensitive financial records, if it's medical records, if it's Government 268 00:17:06,270 --> 00:17:10,050 communications nation secrets. Right. These, there are certain classes of 269 00:17:10,050 --> 00:17:13,770 data that you want to remain secure for 270 00:17:13,850 --> 00:17:17,570 decades. Right. And so, but that's a 271 00:17:17,570 --> 00:17:20,410 threat that's happening now, the harvesting, 272 00:17:21,450 --> 00:17:25,170 you know, it opens you up to this kind of attack at some point in 273 00:17:25,170 --> 00:17:28,730 the future. So a lot of what we do and we engage with these security 274 00:17:28,890 --> 00:17:32,410 stakeholders is to just make them aware that this is happening 275 00:17:32,410 --> 00:17:35,970 and you know, to drive the urgency to be proactive 276 00:17:35,970 --> 00:17:39,730 today and making them understand that, you 277 00:17:39,730 --> 00:17:43,290 know, these kinds of attacks that aren't visible are still 278 00:17:43,290 --> 00:17:46,850 happening. And we do have a lot of dependencies on, 279 00:17:46,930 --> 00:17:50,450 you know, certain cloud infrastructure, data centers, physical 280 00:17:50,450 --> 00:17:54,170 infrastructure and these undersea cables. Right. You know, we 281 00:17:54,170 --> 00:17:57,530 need to think hard and take a close look at what are our 282 00:17:57,530 --> 00:18:00,690 dependencies, how do we mitigate them and what are the attacks that, 283 00:18:01,490 --> 00:18:05,090 that take priority. Right. That's a good way to put it. 284 00:18:05,390 --> 00:18:09,150 And I know Candice is itching to ask you questions and 285 00:18:09,310 --> 00:18:13,070 I don't want to monopolize your time, but after Candace's, I 286 00:18:13,070 --> 00:18:16,910 want to go through your because one, your website's awesome and two, I have some 287 00:18:16,910 --> 00:18:20,750 questions about some of the use cases because those are things I never considered and 288 00:18:20,910 --> 00:18:24,590 those look awesome. Sorry, Candice, go ahead. No, no, it's totally 289 00:18:24,590 --> 00:18:28,230 fine. So let me ask you, so what 290 00:18:28,230 --> 00:18:31,470 role do you see simulation in hybrid classic 291 00:18:32,040 --> 00:18:35,640 classical quantum systems playing in building and testing 292 00:18:35,640 --> 00:18:39,240 quantum networks before large 293 00:18:39,480 --> 00:18:43,120 scale deployment? Yeah, it's a great 294 00:18:43,120 --> 00:18:46,600 question and that's really why we've 295 00:18:46,840 --> 00:18:50,440 spent many years building a very robust simulation 296 00:18:50,760 --> 00:18:52,200 platform and a product, 297 00:18:54,520 --> 00:18:58,040 as you said rightly so. This is a complex technology, 298 00:18:58,280 --> 00:19:02,120 it's one that's evolving. As Frank mentioned, there are other use cases 299 00:19:02,120 --> 00:19:05,620 beyond security that I'd love to get into. But 300 00:19:06,340 --> 00:19:10,180 you know, we have, we have to coexist with what's 301 00:19:10,180 --> 00:19:13,740 here today. Right. We can't lay down a whole new infrastructure 302 00:19:13,740 --> 00:19:17,260 just for quantum. There's fiber in the ground. It's very 303 00:19:17,260 --> 00:19:21,060 expensive to lay new fiber. There's technology we can leverage 304 00:19:21,060 --> 00:19:24,660 today. Let's use it. There are lessons we can take from the Internet. 305 00:19:25,300 --> 00:19:29,140 There's you know, classical security and math based security 306 00:19:29,220 --> 00:19:31,610 that, that we use every day and 307 00:19:33,130 --> 00:19:36,690 every time you see that lock icon and your URL, that's 308 00:19:36,690 --> 00:19:39,610 encryption and we need to coexist with those mechanisms. 309 00:19:41,050 --> 00:19:44,850 It's well baked and very prevalent throughout. That's really the 310 00:19:44,850 --> 00:19:48,570 role simulation can play is to help figure out, okay, 311 00:19:48,570 --> 00:19:52,410 as I start implementing a quantum friendly 312 00:19:52,410 --> 00:19:56,210 or quantum enabled infrastructure, how does it coexist with what 313 00:19:56,210 --> 00:19:59,770 I have today? What fiber am I Using in the ground. 314 00:20:00,090 --> 00:20:03,850 What does it look like to introduce quantum devices onto my network? 315 00:20:04,570 --> 00:20:07,370 How can I combine these new quantum security 316 00:20:08,170 --> 00:20:11,210 applications with my existing security applications? 317 00:20:11,850 --> 00:20:15,610 You mentioned smart beds. Am I going to get qubits to your smart 318 00:20:15,610 --> 00:20:19,370 bed? Probably not. There's no quantum WI 319 00:20:19,370 --> 00:20:23,170 fi. And so what that means is, you know, 320 00:20:23,250 --> 00:20:26,850 when we talk about rolling out quantum networking and quantum 321 00:20:26,850 --> 00:20:30,370 security, quantum encryption, it needs to be 322 00:20:31,490 --> 00:20:34,450 deployed in the right places for the right use cases. 323 00:20:35,250 --> 00:20:38,850 And over time that may grow. But we know 324 00:20:38,850 --> 00:20:42,570 that not everything is going to be quantum. The quantum Internet is not going to 325 00:20:42,570 --> 00:20:46,410 replace the classical Internet by any means. It is going to 326 00:20:46,410 --> 00:20:50,210 augment it. It's going to add new capabilities for certain applications, 327 00:20:50,370 --> 00:20:54,200 certain parts of the network. But classical networks will 328 00:20:54,200 --> 00:20:57,040 absolutely play a role in 329 00:20:58,560 --> 00:21:01,840 our future. And so we need to coexist with what's there. 330 00:21:03,360 --> 00:21:06,800 Simulation is really critical to address those 331 00:21:06,800 --> 00:21:10,640 questions, to figure out how to build these hybrid 332 00:21:10,640 --> 00:21:14,240 networks where parts of your network are just classical, parts of them have 333 00:21:14,240 --> 00:21:17,960 quantum communication on it. How can those nodes talk 334 00:21:17,960 --> 00:21:21,530 to each other end to end in a secure way? So 335 00:21:21,530 --> 00:21:25,370 it's the networking, the protocols, the security, but also the physics. Right. 336 00:21:25,370 --> 00:21:29,090 We need to model how these networks work, what kind of 337 00:21:29,090 --> 00:21:32,490 hardware you, you actually need to build a quantum network 338 00:21:32,970 --> 00:21:36,770 for a certain scale, what kinds of rates and fidelities you need. 339 00:21:36,770 --> 00:21:39,850 There are all sorts of trade offs when designing a quantum network. 340 00:21:40,410 --> 00:21:44,250 And so simulation is really critical not just in planning and 341 00:21:44,250 --> 00:21:48,060 designing a quantum network, but figuring out how to scale it, how to 342 00:21:48,060 --> 00:21:51,860 introduce these new applications, simulating new kinds of protocols 343 00:21:52,180 --> 00:21:55,700 beyond just symmetric keys and encryption keys. 344 00:21:56,340 --> 00:21:59,380 So there's all sorts of use cases for quantum simulation 345 00:22:00,340 --> 00:22:04,180 that is much cheaper than actually acquiring some of this quantum 346 00:22:04,180 --> 00:22:07,060 specialized hardware, which could be quite pricey in some cases. 347 00:22:08,740 --> 00:22:12,270 Okay, interesting. Go ahead, Frank. All right, 348 00:22:12,430 --> 00:22:16,030 I'm chomping at the bit because one, one, your website's really well 349 00:22:16,030 --> 00:22:18,430 designed. And two, 350 00:22:19,550 --> 00:22:23,190 networking quantum computers, solving the scaling 351 00:22:23,190 --> 00:22:27,030 problem. That is the one that blew my mind. If you're watching the video, you 352 00:22:27,030 --> 00:22:30,790 can see when I really click through that, that is a, that is 353 00:22:30,790 --> 00:22:34,430 an amazing concept where, you know, it reads like. And I don't know 354 00:22:34,430 --> 00:22:38,280 how, you know, you know, is this happening 355 00:22:38,280 --> 00:22:42,000 now where I could have, say, if I have a quantum computer, I can 356 00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:45,640 network with that with another one and I can 357 00:22:45,640 --> 00:22:49,360 have basically clusters of quantum computing, which is not something I heard 358 00:22:49,840 --> 00:22:53,160 a lot of people talk about yet, you know, they always show like, here's our 359 00:22:53,160 --> 00:22:56,920 chandelier, right, you know, and all that. But like the whole idea of 360 00:22:56,920 --> 00:23:00,560 having like, basically an entire, you know, cluster of these 361 00:23:00,720 --> 00:23:04,000 chandeliers. How real is that? 362 00:23:05,080 --> 00:23:08,920 Yeah, that's a great question, and I'm glad we have an opportunity 363 00:23:08,920 --> 00:23:12,360 to talk about how quantum networks really 364 00:23:12,360 --> 00:23:16,000 enable quantum computing. So quantum 365 00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:19,680 networks are not just good for security, and they're not good just for 366 00:23:19,680 --> 00:23:23,320 long distance communication. What is a data 367 00:23:23,320 --> 00:23:26,960 center? A data center is a network of clustered compute 368 00:23:26,960 --> 00:23:30,640 resources, even GPU clusters. You know, there's the famous saying, the 369 00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:34,400 network is the computer, right? The same principle applies here for 370 00:23:34,400 --> 00:23:38,120 quantum computing. You know, the conversation, as you pointed out, used to be, my 371 00:23:38,120 --> 00:23:41,400 qubit is better than yours. My, my material, my platform 372 00:23:42,120 --> 00:23:45,920 has better fidelity, or it's faster, or it's this or that, or it 373 00:23:45,920 --> 00:23:49,240 can run longer circuits. There are all sorts of metrics that the quantum 374 00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:53,560 computing community would talk about. Now 375 00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:57,080 we're entering a phase where, you know, we used to have small, 376 00:23:57,970 --> 00:24:01,690 noisy, intermediate scale quantum computers, which could 377 00:24:01,690 --> 00:24:05,290 have maybe a dozen qubits, and they're very unreliable and 378 00:24:05,290 --> 00:24:09,090 noisy. But really, over the past years, since we 379 00:24:09,090 --> 00:24:12,850 started Alero, we've seen the amazing advances 380 00:24:12,850 --> 00:24:16,530 in quantum computing where now we're at the orders of hundreds or 381 00:24:16,530 --> 00:24:20,330 thousands of qubits. We now have error correction, we have, you 382 00:24:20,330 --> 00:24:24,010 know, some level of protecting against noise. And so the 383 00:24:24,010 --> 00:24:27,850 conversation is starting to shift from here's why my qubit is better 384 00:24:27,850 --> 00:24:31,650 than yours to here's why my path to scalability 385 00:24:31,810 --> 00:24:35,130 is better than yours. And I think that's the critical 386 00:24:35,130 --> 00:24:38,890 transition in the dialogue that we're seeing. It's all 387 00:24:38,890 --> 00:24:42,690 about scalability. Now that I've achieved the error correction threshold, I 388 00:24:42,690 --> 00:24:46,410 can build a logical qubit. How do I 389 00:24:46,410 --> 00:24:50,070 scale to millions and millions of qubits? And the same 390 00:24:50,070 --> 00:24:53,590 thing with classical computers and GPUs and CPUs, there's no 391 00:24:54,070 --> 00:24:57,510 monolithic single chip that runs everything, 392 00:24:57,750 --> 00:25:01,030 right? A data center is a network of small computers. 393 00:25:01,750 --> 00:25:04,790 And the same thing applies to quantum computing. So 394 00:25:05,510 --> 00:25:09,310 now that opens all sorts of fun questions around what 395 00:25:09,310 --> 00:25:12,830 does that quantum data center look like? What does the quantum network look like to 396 00:25:12,830 --> 00:25:16,600 actually communicate qubits across different quantum 397 00:25:16,600 --> 00:25:20,200 computers? And that's some of the networking 398 00:25:20,200 --> 00:25:23,040 problems that we solve with rstack as well. How to 399 00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:27,680 manage quantum traffic between computers, how to manage 400 00:25:27,680 --> 00:25:31,080 all the scheduling and the different timescales that these quantum 401 00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:34,600 computers operate at? How to provide this reliable 402 00:25:34,600 --> 00:25:38,000 entanglement as a service, as a resource to these different compute 403 00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:41,780 clusters? There are all sorts of interesting questions from, you 404 00:25:41,780 --> 00:25:45,380 know, not only a physics aspect, but the whole networking stack, the compute 405 00:25:45,380 --> 00:25:48,740 stack, to support it and just to throw another 406 00:25:48,740 --> 00:25:52,340 curveball in there we have GPUs to play with as well. 407 00:25:52,340 --> 00:25:55,900 Nvidia has invested a lot of, you know, money and resources 408 00:25:55,900 --> 00:25:59,700 into playing a big role in really pioneering 409 00:25:59,940 --> 00:26:03,060 how quantum computers will interact with their GPUs. 410 00:26:03,460 --> 00:26:07,300 Right. So you're going to have this hybrid quantum data center. You have 411 00:26:07,300 --> 00:26:10,860 quantum computers, you have GPUs. You might have different kinds of quantum 412 00:26:10,860 --> 00:26:14,600 computers playing a role. You have CPUs, you have networks that are quantum 413 00:26:14,600 --> 00:26:18,280 networks that are classical. They all need to work together, they 414 00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:22,080 all need to be orchestrated and play this 415 00:26:22,080 --> 00:26:25,840 complex dance with each other so we can solve really 416 00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:28,160 large scale and impactful problems. 417 00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:34,480 Wow. I'm sorry, Candice. I'll 418 00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:37,760 say. So from your perspective, what 419 00:26:38,220 --> 00:26:41,340 are the most realistic near term use cases 420 00:26:42,460 --> 00:26:45,940 for quantum networking beyond the 421 00:26:45,940 --> 00:26:48,780 pure research? Yeah, great question. 422 00:26:49,660 --> 00:26:53,340 There are all sorts of applications for a 423 00:26:53,340 --> 00:26:56,940 quantum network. And you know, one 424 00:26:56,940 --> 00:27:00,620 common misconception that we face is when folks hear the 425 00:27:00,620 --> 00:27:04,380 word quantum, they either think about a Marvel 426 00:27:04,380 --> 00:27:08,140 movie or something mythical and very far off into 427 00:27:08,140 --> 00:27:11,820 the future. There's that camp, there's the other camp that's 428 00:27:11,820 --> 00:27:15,580 quantum aware and they hear the word quantum and they think about quantum computing. 429 00:27:15,660 --> 00:27:19,140 And that's really dominated the, the airwaves and, and the 430 00:27:19,140 --> 00:27:22,540 discourse for quantum technology, and rightly so. It has, you know, 431 00:27:22,780 --> 00:27:25,660 many huge potentials in, 432 00:27:26,380 --> 00:27:30,140 in solving problems exponentially faster than, than other kinds of 433 00:27:30,140 --> 00:27:33,730 computers. That's great. But one thing we face is 434 00:27:33,730 --> 00:27:37,410 that to build a useful quantum network, you don't need a quantum 435 00:27:37,410 --> 00:27:41,010 computer. There are other kinds of quantum devices, special quantum 436 00:27:41,010 --> 00:27:44,490 lasers and detectors and other sorts of optics and 437 00:27:44,490 --> 00:27:48,170 photonics that you don't need a full scale quantum computer 438 00:27:48,250 --> 00:27:52,010 to do these security applications. For example, to generate secure 439 00:27:52,010 --> 00:27:55,810 keys between nodes, to have a secure link. You know, 440 00:27:55,810 --> 00:27:59,050 you don't need a quantum computer to do that. So those are the use cases 441 00:27:59,050 --> 00:28:02,770 that are near term those ones where we don't rely 442 00:28:02,770 --> 00:28:06,210 on error correction and fault tolerant quantum 443 00:28:06,210 --> 00:28:09,530 computers. We just have security 444 00:28:10,170 --> 00:28:13,810 and key generation and these 445 00:28:13,810 --> 00:28:17,530 other sorts of applications. In the near term, I think in the medium 446 00:28:17,530 --> 00:28:21,170 term, we'll see other kinds of security applications, not just for keys, 447 00:28:21,170 --> 00:28:23,610 but to actually use the quantum channel to 448 00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:28,160 encode our sensitive data. So using what's called 449 00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:31,360 quantum secure direct communication, there's teleportation, 450 00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:36,280 there's new kinds of authentication methods. So we 451 00:28:36,280 --> 00:28:39,520 can actually use these quantum networks to verify location and 452 00:28:39,840 --> 00:28:43,560 to verify the position of nodes on 453 00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:46,880 a network. This is something you can't do classically. 454 00:28:47,760 --> 00:28:51,440 So this is a way that quantum position verification has this non 455 00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:55,090 spoofing property. To it, which is really nice. So we expect that 456 00:28:55,570 --> 00:28:58,730 in the medium term as well. And then in the long term we can think 457 00:28:58,730 --> 00:29:02,370 about distributed quantum computing where you're connecting 458 00:29:02,370 --> 00:29:05,330 quantum computers over a long distance. There's 459 00:29:06,450 --> 00:29:10,090 great applications not just in computing, but the security of 460 00:29:10,090 --> 00:29:13,530 that computing as well. So who's going to own these quantum 461 00:29:13,530 --> 00:29:17,050 computers? Is it the cloud titans? Right. If 462 00:29:17,050 --> 00:29:20,710 so, how do I actually securely send my, my algorithm, 463 00:29:20,710 --> 00:29:24,550 my computation to the cloud, to the US Quantum east one 464 00:29:25,350 --> 00:29:28,910 and get those results back 465 00:29:28,910 --> 00:29:32,630 securely? And doing so without showing 466 00:29:32,630 --> 00:29:36,189 Amazon or showing the cloud vendor, what is my algorithm, what's my 467 00:29:36,189 --> 00:29:39,870 proprietary data that I'm putting into that quantum computer? So quantum networks can 468 00:29:39,870 --> 00:29:43,630 also help out with the security of those large scale quantum computing 469 00:29:43,630 --> 00:29:47,370 use cases. But that's in the longer term. So to answer 470 00:29:47,370 --> 00:29:51,130 your question, in the tldr, security 471 00:29:51,130 --> 00:29:54,850 is near term and over time there are all these other sorts of 472 00:29:54,850 --> 00:29:58,650 applications in computing and sensing, even some 473 00:29:59,770 --> 00:30:02,010 far fetched ones as well, like quantum money. 474 00:30:03,850 --> 00:30:07,490 There's the potential to have more trustworthy elections and leader 475 00:30:07,490 --> 00:30:10,570 election kinds of applications, secret sharing, there's all 476 00:30:11,050 --> 00:30:14,810 some really cool distributed protocols we can use entanglement 477 00:30:14,810 --> 00:30:18,410 for and we're really excited about those. But you know, as a company 478 00:30:18,570 --> 00:30:22,370 we have to be focused on what's here today, what's commercially viable, what are 479 00:30:22,370 --> 00:30:25,850 folks interested in, what is the market telling us they need 480 00:30:26,410 --> 00:30:30,130 and how can quantum networks serve those needs. So that's front of mind for us, 481 00:30:30,130 --> 00:30:33,810 you know, on the day today. But you know, of course we spend some 482 00:30:33,810 --> 00:30:36,810 time researching these long term applications. 483 00:30:37,850 --> 00:30:41,690 Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned quantum money. Is that some kind of crypto thing? 484 00:30:41,690 --> 00:30:45,460 Because I've never heard that before. Yeah, so it's interesting, quantum 485 00:30:45,460 --> 00:30:46,980 money is actually one of the first 486 00:30:49,060 --> 00:30:52,260 distributed quantum algorithms that was conceived of, 487 00:30:52,740 --> 00:30:56,500 I think it was in the 60s. 488 00:30:57,220 --> 00:31:00,740 I have to double check on that. But the first concepts of quantum money, 489 00:31:01,620 --> 00:31:04,100 yeah, it's decentralized. It's basically using 490 00:31:05,700 --> 00:31:08,660 essentially a quantum signature that can't be forged. So 491 00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:13,760 with today's digital currencies there is, you know, there 492 00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:15,800 are security vulnerabilities and forgery 493 00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:20,920 blockchain is done, you know, designed to be decentralized, of course. 494 00:31:20,920 --> 00:31:24,760 But with quantum money the idea is you can have these 495 00:31:24,840 --> 00:31:28,680 quantum signatures where you can have, you know, let's 496 00:31:28,680 --> 00:31:32,160 say a bank be the only ones to verify whether this piece of 497 00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:35,720 currency is real. So they're fun exercises in 498 00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:39,450 thinking about how these quantum 499 00:31:39,450 --> 00:31:43,050 physics principles can be used for, for money and 500 00:31:43,130 --> 00:31:46,890 to stop forgery. That actually inspired 501 00:31:47,050 --> 00:31:50,730 some of the, the work for quantum key 502 00:31:50,730 --> 00:31:54,570 distribution, which came later. So it's kind of an interesting evolution. 503 00:31:55,610 --> 00:31:59,330 And I've heard Peter Shore talk about this where there's 504 00:31:59,330 --> 00:32:02,410 quantum money that inspired quantum key distribution. 505 00:32:03,380 --> 00:32:06,940 And the folks who invented quantum key distribution asked Peter 506 00:32:06,940 --> 00:32:10,660 Shor to work on a security proof for it. That security proof led 507 00:32:10,660 --> 00:32:14,500 Peter Shor to ultimately discover Shor's algorithm, which 508 00:32:14,500 --> 00:32:18,300 really inspired all the quantum computing progress. So it's, it's kind of 509 00:32:18,300 --> 00:32:21,940 a fun history lesson. But you know, quantum money, while it's very 510 00:32:21,940 --> 00:32:25,540 far looking and very long term application, was one of the first 511 00:32:25,780 --> 00:32:29,140 ideas of quantum networking that came out 512 00:32:30,070 --> 00:32:33,750 in the middle of last century. Interesting, interesting. 513 00:32:34,630 --> 00:32:38,150 So a lot of unpack, a lot to unpack. 514 00:32:38,230 --> 00:32:41,830 But the short thing is, you know, when it comes 515 00:32:41,830 --> 00:32:45,349 to conventional networking, we all understand what a 516 00:32:45,349 --> 00:32:49,110 gigabit is. We all understand what, you know, megabit is like. Are there 517 00:32:49,110 --> 00:32:51,750 similar, like what are the speeds that we're talking about with 518 00:32:52,790 --> 00:32:55,600 quantum networking? Yeah, great question. 519 00:32:56,720 --> 00:33:00,400 There are many factors that go into determining what is 520 00:33:00,400 --> 00:33:04,000 the speed of a quantum network. And the biggest factor 521 00:33:04,000 --> 00:33:07,280 being the distance of your channel. So 522 00:33:07,760 --> 00:33:11,240 if we're doing this in fiber, fiber is quite 523 00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:14,880 lossy and we lose a lot of our flying qubits. 524 00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:19,880 So that really determines what is the maximum rate that 525 00:33:19,880 --> 00:33:23,640 we can transmit quantum data. There's all other 526 00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:27,480 sorts of factors, like how fast are your lasers and your entanglement 527 00:33:27,480 --> 00:33:31,200 sources, how good are your detectors, you know, the quality of your 528 00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:34,920 hardware will determine that, that rate. But 529 00:33:34,920 --> 00:33:38,600 there are analogs, right? We and I touched on this in a recent 530 00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:42,840 research paper I did with, with NIST on quantum 531 00:33:42,840 --> 00:33:46,640 routing, entanglement routing. And in there we start to make some 532 00:33:46,640 --> 00:33:50,420 analogs between, you know, metrics. What, 533 00:33:50,420 --> 00:33:53,540 what are the metrics we know and love from the classical Internet. So things like 534 00:33:53,540 --> 00:33:57,100 throughput bandwidth, you know, your typical 535 00:33:57,100 --> 00:34:00,940 performance metrics. Do those apply to quantum networks? In some cases, 536 00:34:00,940 --> 00:34:04,700 yes, it's a direct analog. In some cases, no, it's a 537 00:34:04,700 --> 00:34:08,420 very different paradigm. In some cases, yes, but it's a 538 00:34:08,420 --> 00:34:12,220 very different kind of unit. So you mentioned throughput 539 00:34:12,220 --> 00:34:16,030 as an example. What are the rates in a quantum network that 540 00:34:16,030 --> 00:34:19,710 could be, you know, qubits per second, it could be entangled pairs per 541 00:34:19,710 --> 00:34:23,550 second. But again, with quantum networks you have this notion 542 00:34:23,550 --> 00:34:27,270 of quality fidelity that you don't have in zeros and ones. 543 00:34:27,510 --> 00:34:31,190 So which brings an interesting question about the 544 00:34:31,190 --> 00:34:34,790 quality of service of these quantum networks. So some applications, 545 00:34:35,270 --> 00:34:38,910 they really need a very high rate of entanglement. They really 546 00:34:38,910 --> 00:34:42,609 need qubits as fast as possible, but they don't care that they need. You 547 00:34:42,609 --> 00:34:46,289 know, if they're 99% fidelity. Other applications, 548 00:34:46,289 --> 00:34:50,009 they don't care if it's, if it's that fast. They just need really 549 00:34:50,009 --> 00:34:53,849 good quality of entanglement. So building a network stack, building 550 00:34:53,849 --> 00:34:57,609 a network that can service these different kinds of applications. 551 00:34:57,609 --> 00:35:00,809 And so you can have these, these knobs that you can tune, 552 00:35:01,609 --> 00:35:05,129 whether that's rate, whether that's fidelity, whether it's the network 553 00:35:05,129 --> 00:35:08,950 complexity and the switching capabilities. There are all sorts 554 00:35:08,950 --> 00:35:12,790 of metrics to think about. But we started to address those questions a 555 00:35:12,790 --> 00:35:16,390 little bit. And I know there are plenty of groups out there thinking about quantum 556 00:35:16,390 --> 00:35:19,190 networking metrics and I think that's something we can work on as a, as a 557 00:35:19,190 --> 00:35:22,830 community to have a common language. What metrics are important, what's going to drive 558 00:35:22,830 --> 00:35:25,830 economic value? How do we start to understand 559 00:35:26,630 --> 00:35:29,670 what these metrics actually mean for commercial use? 560 00:35:31,030 --> 00:35:33,870 Right. I can imagine like at some point in the future you'll be like, in 561 00:35:33,870 --> 00:35:37,700 the distant future, everyone, distant future, I'll be in the 562 00:35:37,700 --> 00:35:40,660 store of a Best Buy or like Micro center and like, hey, this is the 563 00:35:40,660 --> 00:35:44,420 10 gigabit, you know, and this is the 564 00:35:44,420 --> 00:35:47,860 20 gigabit, you know, quantum router or something like that. Like, I mean, 565 00:35:48,260 --> 00:35:51,580 you're right. Like, and does it even make sense? You're right. Like we need to 566 00:35:51,580 --> 00:35:55,140 figure out like, you know, what numbers make sense. Right, 567 00:35:55,380 --> 00:35:58,980 right, right. And is it, you know, you can buy 568 00:35:58,980 --> 00:36:02,820 a box or a laser at a certain rate and you know, there are 569 00:36:03,230 --> 00:36:07,030 those kinds of components available commercial off the shelf today. You can, you 570 00:36:07,030 --> 00:36:10,590 know, buy a photon source that generates, you know, this many 571 00:36:10,590 --> 00:36:14,110 pairs per second at say a gigahertz rate or a kilohertz rate. 572 00:36:14,910 --> 00:36:18,710 It's tuned to this wavelength or that wavelength. Does that make sense for your 573 00:36:18,710 --> 00:36:22,470 application? What kinds of distances could that actually cover point 574 00:36:22,470 --> 00:36:26,230 to point? So there's, there's all other sorts of questions around it. But yeah, 575 00:36:26,230 --> 00:36:29,310 I think, you know, we're starting to see that emerge 576 00:36:29,870 --> 00:36:33,540 and especially over the, the past seven years or so that, that 577 00:36:33,540 --> 00:36:37,100 we've been working at Olero, we've really seen that trend pick up and so 578 00:36:37,100 --> 00:36:40,660 many amazing quantum hardware startups 579 00:36:40,660 --> 00:36:44,500 focused on networking that are building these entanglement sources, these 580 00:36:44,500 --> 00:36:48,340 photon sources, these photon detectors, the quantum switches, all the 581 00:36:48,340 --> 00:36:52,020 components we need quantum memories as well, quantum repeaters that 582 00:36:52,020 --> 00:36:55,740 are, that are being worked on. And we're seeing so much activity 583 00:36:56,460 --> 00:36:59,790 in that space. And as Oliro, we're really focused on 584 00:37:00,270 --> 00:37:03,070 kind of the networking stack and the software part of it. 585 00:37:04,670 --> 00:37:08,470 And we partner with as Many of these companies as we can, in these groups 586 00:37:08,470 --> 00:37:12,230 that have these components that we need to, to build a network and to 587 00:37:12,230 --> 00:37:15,990 actually operate it. So that's been really encouraging to see and I'm 588 00:37:15,990 --> 00:37:19,830 excited to continue that, that to watch that 589 00:37:19,830 --> 00:37:23,630 space and to foster those relationships with, with those companies, 590 00:37:23,710 --> 00:37:27,510 because it does take a village. No one company has all the right pieces, just 591 00:37:27,510 --> 00:37:31,280 like the Internet. There's no, you know, single service provider. 592 00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:34,640 There's no one company that can do it. All right? It takes components from all 593 00:37:34,640 --> 00:37:38,320 sorts of vendors, takes contributions from standards 594 00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:42,040 organizations, from software companies, from hardware companies to build a network 595 00:37:42,520 --> 00:37:46,320 that we can actually use. You've 596 00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:50,160 mentioned several different metrics. Is 597 00:37:50,160 --> 00:37:53,720 there a single metric you trust most when 598 00:37:53,720 --> 00:37:57,570 evaluating the maturity of a quantum system, or 599 00:37:57,570 --> 00:37:59,850 does it always depend on the context? 600 00:38:02,650 --> 00:38:05,770 It's a really great question and a timely one that, 601 00:38:06,410 --> 00:38:10,210 you know, we're working on in some industry consortium, and I was 602 00:38:10,210 --> 00:38:13,850 just at a conference last month talking about this exact thing. Like what, 603 00:38:14,010 --> 00:38:17,770 what are the important metrics? What is the common language and the definition 604 00:38:17,770 --> 00:38:21,130 of these metrics? I think it will be 605 00:38:21,290 --> 00:38:24,750 some combination of these performance 606 00:38:24,910 --> 00:38:28,350 metrics like rate, like fidelity, and like distance, 607 00:38:29,310 --> 00:38:32,750 because those are the. Broadly the things we care about. Right. How, 608 00:38:32,990 --> 00:38:36,510 how broad is this network? You know, what geographies does it cover 609 00:38:37,070 --> 00:38:39,549 that tells us what kinds of applications we can think about. 610 00:38:41,950 --> 00:38:45,710 The rates and the fidelities tell us what kind of, you know, service quality 611 00:38:45,710 --> 00:38:49,510 can this quantum network provide? If it's too slow or if 612 00:38:49,510 --> 00:38:53,290 it's not good enough, then, you know, we can't rely on the security of these 613 00:38:53,290 --> 00:38:56,770 things. Or we. That that's not fast enough to connect quantum 614 00:38:56,770 --> 00:39:00,290 computers over this distance. Right. So knowing that is really 615 00:39:00,290 --> 00:39:04,090 critical, but I think it will be some combination of 616 00:39:04,570 --> 00:39:07,450 speed, of quality, and of distance. 617 00:39:11,610 --> 00:39:15,170 Interesting. Wow. I mean, there's a lot to consider here. Right. Like it's not just 618 00:39:15,170 --> 00:39:18,810 about. And one of the other use cases. 619 00:39:19,050 --> 00:39:22,810 I know we're running low on time, so I have to probably have you come 620 00:39:22,810 --> 00:39:26,610 back. Quantum sensor networks, which, if I, if I were 621 00:39:26,610 --> 00:39:30,450 to posit what quantum networking is for, is you want 622 00:39:30,450 --> 00:39:34,290 to be able to sense the state of the particles and the entanglement 623 00:39:34,290 --> 00:39:38,130 and then be able to send that state over a. What, over a wire? 624 00:39:38,210 --> 00:39:42,050 Bear with me over something. Right. 625 00:39:42,130 --> 00:39:45,810 And then it be preserved on the other side where it could be 626 00:39:46,050 --> 00:39:49,490 read or whatever, done whatever with. Is that. Is that correct? 627 00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:53,640 Yeah, there's. So quantum 628 00:39:53,640 --> 00:39:57,160 sensors are arguably the most mature 629 00:39:57,160 --> 00:40:00,920 subfield of quantum technologies. And quantum sensors have 630 00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:04,160 been around and, you know, we're Talking about clocks, we're talking about 631 00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:08,400 magnetic sensors, sensors for electric fields, 632 00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:12,320 RF sensors, all sorts of sensors that have been worked on for decades and 633 00:40:12,320 --> 00:40:16,050 deployed and used today in systems that we, we use every 634 00:40:16,050 --> 00:40:19,570 day. You know, gps, Right. So quantum 635 00:40:19,570 --> 00:40:23,130 sensors are very mature. But when you bring up 636 00:40:23,770 --> 00:40:27,570 networking quantum sensors, that's, that's really an interesting intersection 637 00:40:27,570 --> 00:40:31,329 point of these two fields where quantum sensors 638 00:40:31,329 --> 00:40:35,090 are great at measuring, you know, something very locally 639 00:40:35,090 --> 00:40:38,850 with great degrees of precision. But when we think 640 00:40:38,850 --> 00:40:42,650 about networking these together and maybe entangling an 641 00:40:42,650 --> 00:40:46,130 array of sensors over a network, that opens the door for some really 642 00:40:46,130 --> 00:40:49,010 interesting applications, both for 643 00:40:49,890 --> 00:40:53,650 geodesy, for mapping, for not relying on gps, 644 00:40:54,450 --> 00:40:58,130 for sensing fluctuations in the magnetic field and the electric field. 645 00:40:59,570 --> 00:41:03,170 Doing better astronomy, how we 646 00:41:03,170 --> 00:41:07,010 collect light from stars and using entanglement to process that light in 647 00:41:07,010 --> 00:41:10,840 better ways so we can have higher resolution for, say, black hole 648 00:41:10,840 --> 00:41:14,640 imaging. There are all sorts of deep science questions 649 00:41:14,640 --> 00:41:18,360 that can be answered with, with quantum sensors in a distributed setting, which 650 00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:22,120 is a really, really exciting frontier that the community is thinking 651 00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:25,959 about deeply. Oh, because the earth rotates, so you could have 652 00:41:25,959 --> 00:41:29,360 a couple of these sensors. So that way you're always pointed at the same 653 00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:33,280 thing in space. Right. And one, yeah, 654 00:41:33,280 --> 00:41:36,480 one first example of this is ligo. So, 655 00:41:38,260 --> 00:41:41,700 you know, basically we have these telescopes 656 00:41:41,700 --> 00:41:45,060 collecting light from stars. And the way things are done today is that, 657 00:41:45,540 --> 00:41:49,260 you know, this light is collected, that data is processed using 658 00:41:49,260 --> 00:41:53,059 classical computers. And all those telescopes around 659 00:41:53,059 --> 00:41:56,740 the world will share their data, they'll bring it together, they'll aggregate it and 660 00:41:56,740 --> 00:42:00,460 they'll process it and try and generate an image or some kind 661 00:42:00,460 --> 00:42:04,220 of data, you know, end result for science. 662 00:42:04,940 --> 00:42:08,660 Now, how quantum changes the game there is, you 663 00:42:08,660 --> 00:42:12,300 know, if these telescopes are actually entangled with each other, 664 00:42:12,780 --> 00:42:16,500 you can process that light in a very different way. Instead of just post processing 665 00:42:16,500 --> 00:42:20,180 it on a classical computer, you can use these, these 666 00:42:20,180 --> 00:42:23,820 global entangled states to sense that light in a very different 667 00:42:23,820 --> 00:42:27,500 way, to process it in a very different way. Ultimately, with the quantum computer, 668 00:42:27,740 --> 00:42:31,470 they're all, you know, sorts of new features. You can think about sensing 669 00:42:31,470 --> 00:42:34,950 and imaging for astronomy in that, in that application. 670 00:42:35,030 --> 00:42:37,350 So yeah, it's a really, really interesting space. 671 00:42:39,030 --> 00:42:42,590 Wow, that's 672 00:42:42,590 --> 00:42:46,390 funny. Sorry, Candice, I'm just going to say. No, 673 00:42:46,390 --> 00:42:48,710 I'm taking it all in. I'm taking it all in. 674 00:42:50,150 --> 00:42:53,750 So what kinds of measurements become possible with quantum 675 00:42:53,750 --> 00:42:57,030 sensor networks that simply can't be done with classical 676 00:42:57,110 --> 00:43:00,190 sensing systems? Yeah, 677 00:43:00,910 --> 00:43:04,710 it's a great question and I think the field is 678 00:43:04,710 --> 00:43:08,030 thinking deeply about this question, you know, where, 679 00:43:10,110 --> 00:43:13,830 so there's Kinds of evolutions of this whereby, you know, we 680 00:43:13,830 --> 00:43:17,510 can have one sensor that's great for many applications. Say it's an 681 00:43:17,510 --> 00:43:21,070 inertial sensor that's awesome for, you know, aircraft 682 00:43:21,070 --> 00:43:23,790 and it has applications 683 00:43:25,230 --> 00:43:28,830 on its own. Then the next generation is, okay, what if we have a 684 00:43:28,830 --> 00:43:32,670 network of sensors but there's no quantum connections between them? They're just, 685 00:43:32,670 --> 00:43:36,230 they're individual quantum sensors that are, that can exchange data with each other 686 00:43:36,230 --> 00:43:39,590 classically. So that has, you know, some 687 00:43:39,590 --> 00:43:42,270 advantages there just as, as an array. 688 00:43:43,230 --> 00:43:46,430 And then the next generation is, oh, what if they are also 689 00:43:47,310 --> 00:43:51,030 entangled with each other? And then you can get more advantage. 690 00:43:51,030 --> 00:43:54,360 So the advantages come in precision and in accuracy. 691 00:43:55,320 --> 00:43:59,040 And as you have these sensors working together, you 692 00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:02,680 can actually enhance the precision that way. So 693 00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:07,120 there's something called the standard quantum limit where there's a 694 00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:10,920 square root performance benefit with the number of sensors you have. 695 00:44:10,920 --> 00:44:14,720 So if you have K sensors working together, you can get that square 696 00:44:14,720 --> 00:44:18,560 root K advantage in your precision and accuracy. So 697 00:44:18,560 --> 00:44:21,280 there are, you know, there's a lot of great theory kind of backing this up. 698 00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:25,520 I think the field writ large is thinking about, you know, what are those 699 00:44:25,840 --> 00:44:29,520 killer applications, you know, in the near term, in the medium term, 700 00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:34,039 you know, we have quantum networking on its own as a field, we have quantum 701 00:44:34,039 --> 00:44:37,840 sensing on its own as a field. So how do we intersect these, these two 702 00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:41,520 timelines and roadmaps and technology to actually work together 703 00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:45,560 to solve certain problems in science and position, navigation, 704 00:44:45,560 --> 00:44:49,080 timing and astronomy, all sorts of application areas. 705 00:44:53,160 --> 00:44:56,880 Wow, that's cool. I mean, I just, it's just 706 00:44:56,880 --> 00:45:00,680 mind blowing. Like what? Because you know, you hear about the hype 707 00:45:00,680 --> 00:45:04,440 about quantum computers, you don't think about the networking. Right. Networking doesn't 708 00:45:04,440 --> 00:45:07,480 always come up in the hype cycle. Right. However, 709 00:45:08,920 --> 00:45:12,720 very clearly, like you said, like, you know, you don't need to have a quantum 710 00:45:12,720 --> 00:45:16,340 computer to do quantum networking. Right. I would imagine that these 711 00:45:16,340 --> 00:45:19,780 photon generators and things like that, they probably don't need to be super cooled. 712 00:45:20,020 --> 00:45:23,220 Guessing. So you could have this 713 00:45:23,700 --> 00:45:26,420 today with relatively modest 714 00:45:27,140 --> 00:45:30,900 comparatively investment. Oh yeah, that's definitely right. 715 00:45:32,180 --> 00:45:35,740 Yeah. Quantum computers probably cost on the order of tens of millions of 716 00:45:35,740 --> 00:45:39,540 dollars and quantum networks orders of magnitude less than 717 00:45:39,540 --> 00:45:42,980 that. And there are off the shelf components you can buy and start to piece 718 00:45:42,980 --> 00:45:46,550 together these networks. There are all 719 00:45:47,750 --> 00:45:51,070 sorts of quantum photon sources and entanglement 720 00:45:51,070 --> 00:45:54,790 generators and photon detectors, all with different trade offs. Right. 721 00:45:54,790 --> 00:45:58,510 Some are tuned to certain wavelengths. 722 00:45:58,510 --> 00:46:02,270 Right. They want to operate in the telecom regime. Others are great for 723 00:46:02,270 --> 00:46:05,990 visible light and free space. And that may lend itself better to say 724 00:46:05,990 --> 00:46:09,270 A satellite link or an inter satellite link. Some 725 00:46:09,270 --> 00:46:13,110 lasers might be better for fiber networks. Some lasers are 726 00:46:13,110 --> 00:46:16,770 faster than others, but generate a different kind of entanglement. 727 00:46:17,410 --> 00:46:20,890 So a lot of what we think about is like, okay, you have this landscape 728 00:46:20,890 --> 00:46:24,130 out there of all sorts of components and different approaches to 729 00:46:24,370 --> 00:46:28,170 generating quantum light. How do we stitch them together? How do 730 00:46:28,170 --> 00:46:31,890 these components actually interoperate with each other, not just at the 731 00:46:31,890 --> 00:46:35,610 physical level, but over a network? How can they communicate 732 00:46:35,610 --> 00:46:39,450 with each other? What is a quantum network node? It's a collection of 733 00:46:39,450 --> 00:46:43,290 dozens of these things, right? You're going to have switches and photon sources 734 00:46:43,290 --> 00:46:46,770 and detectors. But it needs to be useful. There needs to be some 735 00:46:46,770 --> 00:46:50,410 logic, some control, some timing and synchronization 736 00:46:50,650 --> 00:46:54,090 infrastructure that actually supports all of these great 737 00:46:54,090 --> 00:46:57,450 applications. So that's what we spend most of our time thinking about, 738 00:46:57,850 --> 00:47:01,450 is building out these abstraction layers in the network stack to actually get these 739 00:47:01,450 --> 00:47:03,610 components to talk to each other in a useful way. 740 00:47:04,890 --> 00:47:08,690 Wow. So this seems to me like this could be a burgeoning career field. Really, 741 00:47:08,690 --> 00:47:12,030 like a quantum network engineer? Absolutely, 742 00:47:12,110 --> 00:47:15,630 yeah. And I think that's testament to how we've built our team 743 00:47:15,950 --> 00:47:19,790 and grown the team over time. It takes a village. 744 00:47:19,790 --> 00:47:23,350 And I think within all the subdomains of 745 00:47:23,350 --> 00:47:27,150 quantum. I would say quantum networking is the most interdisciplinary. 746 00:47:28,830 --> 00:47:32,630 We have folks on staff that are the PhD quantum physicists, but 747 00:47:32,630 --> 00:47:36,430 we have folks that worked in classical networking and built 748 00:47:36,430 --> 00:47:39,830 the products that power the Internet. They know what it takes to build a network 749 00:47:39,830 --> 00:47:43,630 stack. They know what it takes to deploy a system in a data center 750 00:47:43,630 --> 00:47:47,470 or for a telecommunications company. What does it take to have 751 00:47:47,470 --> 00:47:51,230 five nines of service reliability? That's something in the classical 752 00:47:51,230 --> 00:47:54,670 networking space is a must have. So taking those lessons learned 753 00:47:54,750 --> 00:47:58,510 from the classical networking world, combining that with the quantum 754 00:47:58,510 --> 00:48:02,310 expertise, and of course all of the amazing backgrounds 755 00:48:02,310 --> 00:48:06,150 we need to actually build products and reliable 756 00:48:06,150 --> 00:48:09,860 software products. So we have traditional software engineers, but out in the field, 757 00:48:09,860 --> 00:48:13,020 we're going to need traditional fiber engineers as well. 758 00:48:13,820 --> 00:48:17,660 So that's something that I'm excited to see over the coming years, 759 00:48:17,660 --> 00:48:20,860 is a workforce development for quantum networking and having 760 00:48:21,260 --> 00:48:24,220 upskilling programs to make this 761 00:48:24,860 --> 00:48:28,620 less daunting, to lower the barrier to entry. There are 762 00:48:28,620 --> 00:48:32,420 so many great engineers out there, and 763 00:48:32,420 --> 00:48:36,140 they don't need a PhD level quantum education to be 764 00:48:36,750 --> 00:48:40,590 to have a career in quantum networking. There are trade schools that 765 00:48:40,830 --> 00:48:44,110 train fiber engineers today, and those folks can be 766 00:48:44,110 --> 00:48:47,830 absolutely useful with minimal training, you know, to set 767 00:48:47,830 --> 00:48:51,630 up this infrastructure, to monitor it, to, you know, go out and learn how 768 00:48:51,630 --> 00:48:55,270 to, you know, fix some issues. That we might see in the network to do 769 00:48:55,270 --> 00:48:58,950 updates, to do, you know, ads and changes, and to 770 00:48:58,950 --> 00:49:02,750 scale the network. There are all sorts of field engineering that we're 771 00:49:02,750 --> 00:49:06,480 going to need to really make this a reality. You know, we talk about the 772 00:49:06,480 --> 00:49:10,000 quantum Internet. We're well, well away from that. But, 773 00:49:10,560 --> 00:49:14,240 you know, right now we're, we're at the point where you do see these 774 00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:17,880 metropolitan regions, these local area networks. There's dozens and 775 00:49:17,880 --> 00:49:21,400 dozens of them around the world. What's the natural next step is to start 776 00:49:21,400 --> 00:49:25,080 connecting them over longer distances. And you know, that 777 00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:28,680 that's how we're going to get there. But it, it doesn't take only quantum 778 00:49:28,680 --> 00:49:32,530 PhDs to do that. You know, we need practical engineering expertise, we 779 00:49:32,530 --> 00:49:35,530 need classical engineering expertise to really make this a reality. 780 00:49:36,250 --> 00:49:38,530 It's a good way to put it. As I like to say, someone has to 781 00:49:38,530 --> 00:49:41,370 rack them and stack them. That's right, yeah. 782 00:49:43,290 --> 00:49:46,930 So we always ask this of everybody. So what is the biggest 783 00:49:46,930 --> 00:49:50,490 misconception that you hear out there about 784 00:49:50,490 --> 00:49:54,290 quantum computing that you would like to reframe or just let them 785 00:49:54,290 --> 00:49:58,100 know this is, this is wrong? What's one of the 786 00:49:58,100 --> 00:49:59,460 biggest misconceptions out there? 787 00:50:03,620 --> 00:50:07,300 You know, I think for many years 788 00:50:07,540 --> 00:50:11,300 that I've been in this space, the misconception was that 789 00:50:11,379 --> 00:50:14,580 there is going to be one single 790 00:50:16,340 --> 00:50:19,620 winner of quantum computing. There's going to be a winning platform 791 00:50:20,500 --> 00:50:23,620 and that's going to look like a huge chandelier 792 00:50:24,180 --> 00:50:26,260 that has millions and millions of qubits on it. 793 00:50:27,700 --> 00:50:31,460 That's not the case. The future of quantum computing is going to be 794 00:50:31,620 --> 00:50:35,020 heterogeneous. I think different kinds of qubits will play different 795 00:50:35,020 --> 00:50:37,460 roles. I think, 796 00:50:38,500 --> 00:50:41,460 apart from, you know, 797 00:50:42,260 --> 00:50:45,980 maybe certain modalities. I think broadly, most 798 00:50:45,980 --> 00:50:49,690 of the quantum computing approaches will need to be networked. That's the only way 799 00:50:49,690 --> 00:50:53,010 they're going to reach scale. The difference is how many 800 00:50:53,010 --> 00:50:56,450 qubits can I get before I have to think about networking? 801 00:50:56,930 --> 00:51:00,610 Some might be on the order of a couple thousand. Others think 802 00:51:01,890 --> 00:51:05,530 they can scale on a single chip or a single atomic 803 00:51:05,530 --> 00:51:09,250 system to say 50 or 100,000 qubits, 804 00:51:09,250 --> 00:51:12,610 and then they need to network. So there's some difference there. But regardless, 805 00:51:13,490 --> 00:51:17,210 to get to the utility scale of quantum computing, you're going to need to network 806 00:51:17,210 --> 00:51:20,770 them. And that's something I'd like to shed some more light on. And I'm glad 807 00:51:20,770 --> 00:51:23,970 the community has kind of woken up and 808 00:51:25,490 --> 00:51:28,210 seen the need for networking these computers together 809 00:51:29,410 --> 00:51:33,050 recently. And that wasn't always the case. So I still think 810 00:51:33,050 --> 00:51:36,690 it's somewhat of a misconception. But for quantum computing 811 00:51:37,170 --> 00:51:40,890 to realize that they need to network, I mean IBM just announced their 812 00:51:40,890 --> 00:51:44,510 plans to network their computers just to few months ago. 813 00:51:44,750 --> 00:51:47,950 Right. So you know, we're starting to see that shift. But 814 00:51:48,350 --> 00:51:52,190 yeah, shining more light on that is really important. Interesting. 815 00:51:52,350 --> 00:51:54,750 You had mentioned a couple times something called free space. 816 00:51:55,870 --> 00:51:59,510 I think I know what that means, but I don't think I do like 817 00:51:59,510 --> 00:52:02,750 totally. Is this kind of like white space spectrum 818 00:52:03,150 --> 00:52:06,830 that's available or something else? Yeah, so free 819 00:52:06,830 --> 00:52:10,510 space we use as a term to describe a 820 00:52:10,510 --> 00:52:14,240 quantum channel that's not over fiber. So okay, 821 00:52:14,400 --> 00:52:18,240 it's wireless now. There is a caveat there. So 822 00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:23,240 you know the WI fi router I'm using now can those signals can 823 00:52:23,240 --> 00:52:25,680 permeate through walls and things. 824 00:52:26,960 --> 00:52:30,680 The quantum signals, at least for quite some time, 825 00:52:30,680 --> 00:52:34,480 will need to be line of sight when you're talking about point 826 00:52:34,480 --> 00:52:38,160 to point free space. But 827 00:52:38,240 --> 00:52:41,920 there have been satellite deployments, we're working on some, some satellite deployments 828 00:52:41,920 --> 00:52:45,770 as well for quantum networks with our partners in 829 00:52:45,770 --> 00:52:49,570 the aerospace sector, which is really, really exciting. That's 830 00:52:49,570 --> 00:52:53,290 a critical part of the quantum Internet. It's not just going to be fiber. 831 00:52:53,370 --> 00:52:57,010 If you really want to generate entanglement cross continents, 832 00:52:57,010 --> 00:53:00,330 cross oceans, we're going to need a satellite infrastructure to do that. 833 00:53:01,130 --> 00:53:04,890 But you do need this line of sight. And so that's 834 00:53:04,890 --> 00:53:08,610 what free space means for quantum networking. We 835 00:53:08,610 --> 00:53:12,350 won't be able to have a quantity quantum WI fi unless there's some, you know, 836 00:53:12,510 --> 00:53:15,990 huge advancements and physics breakthroughs in terms of like 837 00:53:15,990 --> 00:53:19,750 microwave photons, but we can't depend on that. I 838 00:53:19,750 --> 00:53:23,470 think it's safe to say that, you know, the quantum communication will be 839 00:53:24,190 --> 00:53:27,550 line of sight. So you need to be able to see your end node. 840 00:53:28,270 --> 00:53:32,030 Yeah. We had a previous guest, Dr. Catania 841 00:53:32,110 --> 00:53:35,710 Kuntz, had mentioned that they basically has. It's 842 00:53:36,630 --> 00:53:40,030 whatever she uses in her research is probably not limited to some flavor of 843 00:53:40,030 --> 00:53:43,830 infrared light and things like that, but 844 00:53:43,830 --> 00:53:46,670 okay, free space. I thought when you said free space I thought you meant like 845 00:53:46,670 --> 00:53:50,390 spectrum that's available or whatever. The TV white 846 00:53:50,390 --> 00:53:53,830 space is what people used to call it, but that means something completely different. 847 00:53:54,150 --> 00:53:57,950 That's really cool and thank you for 848 00:53:57,950 --> 00:54:01,630 explaining that. Any parting thoughts? Where can 849 00:54:01,630 --> 00:54:04,470 folks find out more about you, more about what LERO is doing? 850 00:54:05,460 --> 00:54:09,060 Yeah, sure. You know, I'm really, really 851 00:54:09,060 --> 00:54:12,500 excited to get the chance to talk about quantum networking and its 852 00:54:12,500 --> 00:54:15,540 importance not just in security and for, 853 00:54:16,500 --> 00:54:20,260 you know, governments and companies today, but 854 00:54:20,740 --> 00:54:24,180 also all the cool applications that that can be 855 00:54:24,900 --> 00:54:28,620 derived from quantum networking. I think Security is 856 00:54:28,620 --> 00:54:32,440 one that draws a lot of the attention. But you 857 00:54:32,440 --> 00:54:36,200 know, we do play some of that fear motivation. Right. We need to prepare 858 00:54:36,200 --> 00:54:39,920 our infrastructure for the quantum attacks. Absolutely. Like we need to drive 859 00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:43,680 that urgency. But at the same time, this is an infrastructure play. 860 00:54:43,680 --> 00:54:46,960 Right. This is, this quantum Internet that we talk about 861 00:54:47,840 --> 00:54:51,480 has all sorts of amazing applications and I'm sure a lot that we 862 00:54:51,480 --> 00:54:55,120 haven't even dreamt of. Just like the Internet, right as it was getting started, we 863 00:54:55,120 --> 00:54:58,880 did not think about a Facebook or, you know, this, 864 00:54:59,600 --> 00:55:02,880 all the Internet services that we TikTok, brain rot, all that stuff. 865 00:55:03,340 --> 00:55:05,660 Yeah, probably not thought about. Yeah. 866 00:55:07,660 --> 00:55:11,020 You know, there's a lot of room for innovation and it's a really, really exciting 867 00:55:11,020 --> 00:55:14,820 field to be in. And so I really appreciate the 868 00:55:14,820 --> 00:55:17,980 opportunity to talk about it today. Feel free to reach out. 869 00:55:18,620 --> 00:55:22,140 We do also run a webinar series as well if you want to 870 00:55:22,300 --> 00:55:26,020 learn more about what a quantum network is. How does it work, 871 00:55:26,020 --> 00:55:29,500 what are the, you know, the trade offs, you know, everything from a 872 00:55:30,010 --> 00:55:33,530 101 to what does it look like to deploy a quantum satellite? 873 00:55:33,850 --> 00:55:37,610 We try and address all those topics in an educational way. So feel free 874 00:55:37,610 --> 00:55:40,570 to check out our website, check out that webinar series if you want to learn 875 00:55:40,570 --> 00:55:44,130 more about quantum networking. And as always, feel free to reach out to me as 876 00:55:44,130 --> 00:55:47,290 well. Very cool. Any parting thoughts, Candice? 877 00:55:47,610 --> 00:55:51,170 No. Thank you so much for this conversation. I think the 878 00:55:51,170 --> 00:55:54,930 quantum networking is absolutely fascinating and we're 879 00:55:54,930 --> 00:55:58,500 hearing more about it from the different perspectives. So I'm just really happy that we, 880 00:55:58,500 --> 00:56:01,940 we got to hear about it from yours. So thank you again for your time. 881 00:56:02,180 --> 00:56:05,580 Of course. It's an honor being here. Thanks so much. Thank you for coming. And 882 00:56:05,580 --> 00:56:07,940 I really, I really learned quite a bit today. 883 00:56:09,620 --> 00:56:12,980 I hope our listeners did too. And with that, we'll play the outro music. 884 00:56:21,950 --> 00:56:22,670 And it's gold. 885 00:56:34,510 --> 00:56:38,190 The multiverse is skanking Skanking in time Black holes 886 00:56:38,190 --> 00:56:41,830 are wailing in a horn line so fine From Planck scales to planets they're 887 00:56:41,830 --> 00:56:45,390 connecting the dots Candace and Frank they're the cosmic 888 00:56:45,390 --> 00:56:46,510 Han shots. 889 00:56:51,160 --> 00:56:54,680 Quantum podcast turn it up fast Candace and Frank 890 00:56:54,680 --> 00:56:58,480 blowing my mind at last Quantum podcast They're breaking 891 00:56:58,480 --> 00:57:02,120 the mold Science has got beats it's bold 892 00:57:02,440 --> 00:57:03,480 and it's gold.