Quantum Computing & Regulatory Overreach Risk

Quantum Safe systems are in fact critical to humanity on a number of levels, and some less obvious but even more critical, than others. The biggest one is ensuring accelerating private sector innovation in quantum computing, which is connected to the economic primacy of the US, which is connected to preventing a hostile attempt to try to force the US into decline (lots of ways this can feasibly happen). Here is the connection between the two:

In a near-future world of quantum computing, post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is what secures our financial networks, military communications, authentication systems, supply-chain infrastructure, and the global banking system. Without PQC, a bad actor may use Quantum Computing (QC) to break encryption and disrupt one of these components of the world. That could cause shortsighted blowback that involves centralized control and heavy regulatory oversight on Quantum Computing research, which would look like a solution, but inevitably likely be the source of our national decline. 

Nations are powerful primarily because of the economy’s that support them. There is no reason to gamble the survival of a nation on an idea or theory. The survival of the US requires quantum computing be used to advance the dominance of its economy. Technological change made possible by quantum computers reduce risks to the primacy of the US from other economic challengers. Nothing is more important than this, because there is no problem that can be solved if the systems that make it possible no longer exist all together. Our survival is zero sum with those who wish to rival the wealth, global norm influence, and power of the US. I teach game theory to my friends as a career-long obsession. I am first to identify positive sum opportunities. This is not one of them.

Human progress over 400 generations was carried forward by those who did not pump the breaks on technological change, but instead those who leaned into and adjusted their sails not unlike that of Christopher Columbus who played a small part in bringing you the reader to this website made possible by an Internet: an Internet developed in the US by a people Christopher had a hand in birthing. Civilizations who managed to control those who accelerate change are no longer here, conquered by those who did not. The engines of innovation in quantum computing in the US must not be slowed even by 1% from fear because one was misused to break encryption, and PQC is at the center of that need.

With PQC we can focus on the future and with less fear in the way of the risks of Quantum Computers, which means:

• Nuclear Fusion (not Fission – See General Fusion) becomes more viable as QC improves plasma modeling, reactor optimization, and materials testing, potentially reducing the need for global energy trade.

• Room-temperature superconductors become more plausible as QC accelerates materials discovery, enabling major reductions in electricity transmission loss if the right compounds can be engineered. 

• Global logistics costs fall as routing, scheduling, and supply-chain optimization problems—currently solved with approximations—gain access to far better computational methods. Quantum Computing may solve the “Traveling Salesman Problem” thought today to be unsolvable. 

• Quantum-accelerated biology improves molecular modeling, enabling more precise drug development, protein design, and gene-target discovery. If the biology cooperates and the regulatory system keeps pace, this could extend healthy human lifespan significantly.

It is all tied together.