Word has gotten out about the recent breakthroughs in quantum computing.

Just remember that you heard it here first…

On the most recent episode of 60 Minutes, the work done by IBM, Google, and other smaller companies in the field of quantum computing was highlighted at length.

Among the people interviewed for the piece were Dario Gil, the Director of Research at IBM, and Michio Kaku, a physicist at City University of New York.

Dario Gil took on the difficult task of attempting to describe the potential power of quantum computing, saying that while current quantum computers only match the most powerful supercomputers, “we're going to continue to expand that capability, such that not even a million or a billion of those supercomputers connected together could do the calculations of these future machines”.

Kaku took on the even more challenging task of explaining quantum computing vs traditional computing (which he refers to as “classical” computing) by comparing it to solving a maze…

“Let's look at a classical computer calculating how a mouse navigates a maze. It is painful. One by one, it has to map every single left turn, right turn, left turn, right turn before it finds the goal. Now a quantum computer scans all possible routes simultaneously. This is amazing. How many turns are there? Hundreds of possible turns, right? Quantum computers do it all at once.”

The mechanics are explained in extremely broad strokes, but as I’ve said before, if you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you definitely don’t.

What is way more important (and way more interesting) for the average onlooker than how quantum computing works is this…

How is it going to change the world?

We’ve been getting progressively faster computers ever since their invention. If you step back far enough, it’s easy to tell how they’ve changed the world. But no one change has been big enough to have to decide who, as Michio Kaku puts it, “will rule the world economy”.

Raising The Stakes

“We're looking at a race, a race between China, between IBM, Google, Microsoft, Honeywell, all the big boys are in this race to create a workable, operationally efficient quantum computer. Because the nation or company that does this, will rule the world economy.”

A bold claim made by Michio Kaku, and one similar to what I’ve said previously in Technology Profits Daily.

But while the power of quantum computing has long been theorized, for the first time we’re firmly on the track to making it a reality. According to the founder of Google’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, Hartmut Neven, “we don't need any more fundamental breakthroughs. We need little improvements here and there. If we have all the pieces together, we just need to integrate them well to build larger and larger systems.”

One historical fundamental breakthrough just happened. IBM and the Cleveland Clinic have installed one of the first quantum computers that’s being used outside of a lab setting.

The goal of this project is to model the behavior of proteins, of which traditional computing cannot fully process the complexity. And when we get things wrong with the building blocks of all life, then the consequences are often fatal.

According to Dr. Serpil Erzurum, chief research officer at the Cleveland Clinic, quantum computers have the ability to completely transform healthcare.

Once again something you probably already know from reading Technology Profits Daily…

But somehow, healthcare doesn’t even represent the biggest stakes for whoever pulls ahead in the quantum computing tech race.

That title would go to national security.

According to 60 Minutes, China has named quantum as their top national priority and the US government is spending almost a billion dollars per year on research.

That’s because when quantum computing is fully realized, it will render encryption as we know it completely useless.

The US plans to publish new standards for encryption next year, since quantum computing will make all encrypted information an open book, from your credit card info to our national secrets.

Quantum computing has a lot more in its future than a national spotlight on 60 Minutes, but it appears that the secret is finally coming out that quantum is here. And it’s going to be huge.