Each week our scan collects weak – and less weak – signals for global changes, national and international security, political and geopolitical risk of interest to private and public actors.
A race has started for quantum technologies or quantum information science (QIS). Indeed, considering initially and notably the consequences in terms of cryptology – dubbed a “crypto-apocalypse” – no country may allow another state or a foreign company to be the first to develop quantum computing.
However, since the initial worry about cryptology somehow triggered the current quantum revolution, the situation has changed, discoveries have taken place and first proofs of the interest of QIS in general and quantum computing in particular do now exist.
As a result, what could have still been seen as a marginal, potentially far away and maybe still improbable evolution has now changed for something much larger in scope, much closer to the present in terms of timeframe, and also much more possible.
The potential advantages – either demonstrated as they already occurred or are taking place, or are still imagined as happening in the future – that could derive from the QIS are so immense that, again, no country nor high-tech company can afford lagging in the quantum race, or even worse, ignoring it.
Indeed, not benefiting from these changes could mean being left aside and seeing the QIS used against oneself. For example, very obviously, no company involved in computers and information technologies, can ignore the race and what the advent of quantum computing could have for its main activity. Many countries, in a world where security matters, are compelled to have what others could develop.
Yet, the very practical advantages one could seek from quantum technologies, or the related threats to security, thus the causes for the race are still relatively inchoate.The quantum revolution, furthermore, takes place in a world where artificial intelligence (AI), at least as deep learning, exists and also develops alongside QIS while both disrupt each other. As a result, foreseeing the future of the quantum technologies applications and their impact is even more challenging.
Nonetheless, being able to imagine and foresee the usage of quantum technologies is also part of the race for quantum. Those who will be at the top of the race are those who will be able to harness first as many usages of quantum technologies as possible, alongside developing quantum sensing, quantum communications, and performing quantum computing and quantum simulations.
In this article, we shall start outlining this first and difficult dimension: how to imagine and foresee the future quantum world. Indeed, it is a fundamental yet underestimated area of QIS. We shall also outline areas that could be deemed as sensitive in terms of security, while pointing out the industrial sectors that will be most impacted.
After having underlined the challenge and specificity of foreseeing a Quantum world and why actually we should merge quantum with AI, thus rather foresee a new Quantum AI world, we shall turn first to quantum communications and the security impact on both states and companies. Second, we shall look at changes resulting from quantum sensing and metrology. Finally, we shall focus upon the way quantum computing and simulations will increasingly impact an larger range of activities, from logistics and optimization to quantum smart ports, with for example, consequences on the Arctic Northern Sea Route, through starting to look for solution to climate change.
Part of this article will be integrated, besides other points, in a forthcoming speech given at the International Conference on Quantum Computing (ICoCQ), which will take place in France at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, 26 to 30 November 2018. The conference will present an up to date perspective on the thriving field of quantum computing. As a result, for now, a large part of this article is offered as an exclusive avant-première to our members.
Towards a Quantum AI world?
The very changes permitted by quantum technologies are still difficult to imagine, notably because the evolutions will result from at least a four steps process.
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FULL ARTICLE 4657 WORDS – 18 PAGES (PDF)
About the author: Dr Helene Lavoix, PhD Lond (International Relations), is the Director of The Red (Team) Analysis Society. She is specialised in strategic foresight and warning for national and international security issues. Her current focus is on Artificial Intelligence and Security.
Bibliography and Notes
*A Universal Quantum Computer is a computer that may accomplish any type of operation. It is called this way by opposition to quantum computers that would be application specific.
Las Heras U, Di Candia R, Fedorov KG, Deppe F, Sanz M, Solano E.Las Heras, U et al. “Quantum illumination reveals phase-shift inducing cloaking” Scientific reports vol. 7,1 9333. 24 Aug. 2017, doi:10.1038/s41598-017-08505-w.
Neukart, Florian Gabriele Compostella, Christian Seidel, David von Dollen, Sheir Yarkoni, Bob Parney, “Traffic flow optimization using a quantum annealer“, 4 Aug 2017 (v1), last revised 9 Aug 2017 (this version, v2) arXiv:1708.01625v2).
Critical Uncertainty ➚ Possible challenge in the current AI-power race for private and public actors alike – Germany strikes back, but the road ahead is competitive. The possible quantum disruption to AI might be one fruitful strategic choice for Germany, as well as for France and the UK (in a geographical and historical European perspective).
➚➚ Accelerating expansion of AI
➚➚ Accelerating emergence of the AI-world
➚➚ Increased odds to see the quantum technologies impacting AI (and vice versa) ➚➚Escalating global AI-power race ➚➚Rising challenge for the rest of the world to catch up
➚ Potential for escalating tension between Europe, the U.S. as well as China
On 14 November 2018, the German Government launched its new Digital Strategy (see below in sources). Within it, we find the Strategie Künstliche Intelligenz, “KI als Markenzeichen für Deutschland” /”KI made in Germany”.
“The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy is to bring research and development, and application of AI in Germany, to a leading level worldwide…”
According to this strategy, 3 billion euros ($3.93 billion) should be invested by 2025, going especially in research for the Federal funds, while an equivalent amount is expected to be provided by the private sector. If we count that the plan lasts over seven years, this translates into an expected €428 million per year for public funding ($560 million), and as much coming from German companies.
On the bright side, this underlines the creation of a framework considering a public-private research-industry complex for AI, as exists in the U.S. in a way that is quite similar – but broader – to Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex (Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961). Indeed, considering the characteristics of the AI (actually at the moment narrow AI, focusing on deep learning) development at this end of the second decade of the 21st century, it would be meaningless to only look at public funding for AI, without also considering private actors.
Yet, we should remember that just the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) invested $2 billion for a program campaign for the next generation AI ($2 Billion for Next Gen Artificial Intelligence for U.S. Defence – Signal). The most recent study by the U.S. Congressional Research Service “Artificial Intelligence and National Security” (26 April 2018) estimated that U.S. technology companies invested approximately $20-$30 billion in 2016, while “DOD’s unclassified investment in AI for FY2016 totaled just over $600 million” (using respectively McKinsey Global Institute, Artificial Intelligence, The Next Digital Frontier?, June 2017, pp. 4-6. and Govini, Department of Defense Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Cloud Taxonomy, December 3, 2017).
China, for its part plans to invest $150 billion in government funding for AI by 2030 (CRS, Ibid.). Meanwhile the Chinese BATX among other Chinese companies are making massive investments in AI and are very active indeed.
Hence, the amount planned by Germany remains very small indeed compared with the leaders of the race, China and the U.S. It is nonetheless higher than what is planned by France, i.e. to invest €1.5 billion over five years (€300 million a year).
As a result, the race for Germany, as well as France if we take a more European outlook – to which we should add the UK despite Brexit, as historical and geographical ties will remain – will most probably be a challenging one, but all is not lost, far from it, considering the highly shifting and fluid environment. Surprises are certainly possible.
The German government intends to shape the digital revolution and prepare the country as well as possible for the future. To this end the government has put together a package of measures which is summed up in an implementation strategy.
“KI made in Germany” soll zu einem internationalen Markenzeichen für moderne, sichere und gemeinwohlorientierte KI-Anwendungen auf Basis des europäischen Wertekanons werden. Damit das gelingt, hat das Kabinett die von BMWi–Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie, BMBF und BMAS gemeinsam vorgelegte Strategie Künstliche Intelligenz beschlossen.
“The internet is new territory,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said back in 2013. It was a comment that prompted ridicule, but at the same time indicated Germany’s lackluster approach to digitalization. Five years on, Germany has finally joined the party.
The warming Arctic is the stage of an ongoing maritime, geopolitical and geo-economic revolution.
For example, at the end of August 2018, the Danish Maersk Company, one of the major ship owners in the world and the “world’s largest container shipping company by both fleet size and cargo capacity” (website), sent a first container ship using this route, in order to test its commercial use. The ship went from Vladivostok to Saint Petersburg, through the Bering Strait, following the northern coast of Siberia (Tom Embury-Morris, “Container Ship Crosses Arctic Route for First Time in History Due to Melting Sea Ice”, The Independent, 18 September, 2018).
Since 2013, each year, the number the number of Chinese cargo convoys using the Russian Northern Sea Route, also known as the North East passage, increases thanks to the rapid warming of the region, which transforms it into a navigable space. In the meantime, the Russian political, economic and military authorities have launched a massive program of infrastructure, maritime and defence development of this 4500 km long area, linking the Bering Strait to the Russian-Norway frontier.
Meanwhile, Russian, Chinese and French energy companies have been developing numerous and massive oil and gas operations in the warming Russian maritime exclusive economic zone (Jean-Michel Valantin, “The Warming Russian Arctic: Where Russian and Asian Strategies Interests Converge?”, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, November 23, 2016). This impressive Russian effort is even more important to understand that Russia is a global energy giant, and works at keeping this status. Currently, Russia possesses vast reserves of oil and gas, with more than 80 billions barrels of proven reserves and 44,6 trillion cubic metres of natural gas reserves, superior to those of Iran (US Energy Information Agency, “Russia”, July 28, 2015).
In September 2018, the Russian military organised giant manoeuvres in Siberia and in the Russian Far East. The Chinese military was associated to this “Vostok 18” exercise. Then, from 23 October 2018 to 7 November 2018, NATO organised the “Trident Juncture 2018” manoeuvres in the Arctic region, between Norway and Iceland, thus leading its largest military exercise since the end of the Cold war in 1991 (Christopher Woody, “The US Navy is pushing north, closer to Russia in freezing conditions — and it’s planning on hanging around up there“, Business Insider, 7 November 2018).
In this context, one can see that the Russian, Chinese and NATO military presence and manoeuvres in the Arctic are intimately linked to the geophysical revolution known by the region through its rapid warming due to climate change, because its warming is what makes possible the opening of the Northern Sea Route as well as its energy development. In other words, the militarization of the Arctic is nothing but a complement to the industrial and commercial development by the different stakeholders of this very new geophysical/geo-economic situation. This means that the Russian and Chinese military manoeuvres in the Arctic are part of its economic development: this extension from national economic power to military power corresponds quite precisely to the definition of mercantilism devised during the 17th century, when the European great powers, especially France and Great Britain used military means in order to further their national economic interests (“Mercantilism”, Encyclopedia Britannica). Thus, the militarization of the Arctic by Russia, China and NATO members appears to be a new form of mercantilism in an age of climate change
These occurrences beg the question to know if they are linked by “more” than the opportunities emerging from the warming of the Arctic due to climate change. One wonders if they are not also manifestations of a deep reorganisation of globalization that would be driven by the pressure exerted by new geo-economic national interests, which meet and collide in the warming Arctic.
In order to answer that question, we shall look first at the strategic meaning of the current militarization of certain areas of he Arctic. Then, we shall see how the warming Russian Arctic attracts different Asian national interests and thus becomes a new geo-economic space linking Asia to Russia and the North Atlantic zone. Then, we shall see how the crossover of geo-economic and military national interests might signal the emergence of “neo-mercantilism”.
Armies of the (warming) Arctic
From 25 October to 7 November 2018, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) organised for the first time mammoth manoeuvres in the Arctic region, named Trident Juncture. These manoeuvres mobilised 50.000 soldiers, 150 planes, 10.000 land vehicles and 60 warships. They were centred on Norway and Iceland, where landing, deployment and combat exercises took place. They were led to demonstrate the reaction capability against a hypothetical and unnamed adversary that would endanger a fellow NATO member in the Arctic region. This official “anonymousness” did not stop Russia to protest officially against this military exercise taking place very close to its land and maritime frontiers (Christopher Woody, “Russia aims its missile drills shoulder-to-shoulder with NATO’s biggest war games in years”, Business Insider, 31 October, 2018).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXrrS6Czu-M
However, it must be noted that, from 11 to 17 September 2018, the Russian military organised massive military manoeuvres of its own named Vostock 18, mobilising 300.000 soldiers, more than 36.000 land vehicles, 80 warships and 1000 planes. For the first time, the Russian political and military authorities had invited the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to participate to this exercise, thus giving a supplementary geopolitical significance to this event by demonstrating the political and military closeness of Russia and China in the face of possible strategic threats (Lyle J. Goodstein, “What Russia’s Vostok-18 Exercise with China Means“, The National Interest, September 5, 2018).
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Full article 2455 words – 9 PAGES (pdf)
Jean-Michel Valantin(PhD Paris) leads the Environment and Geopolitics Department of The Red (Team) Analysis Society. He is specialised in strategic studies and defence sociology with a focus on environmental and artificial intelligence geostrategy.
Featured image: U.S. Marines with 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit participating in Exercise Trident Juncture 18 offload an Assault Amphibious Vehicle, carried on a Landing Craft Air Cushion, in Ålvund, Norway, Oct. 30, 2018. Trident Juncture 18 enhances the U.S. and NATO Allies’ and partners’ abilities to work together collectively to conduct military operations under challenging conditions, 30 October 2018, by U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Menelik Collins, Public Domain.
(This article is a fully updated version of the original article published in November 2011 under the title “Creating a Foresight and Warning Model: Mapping a Dynamic Network (I)”).Mapping risk and uncertainty is the second step of a proper process to correctly anticipate and manage risks and uncertainties. This stage starts with building a model, which, once completed, will describe and explain the issue or question at hand, while allowing for anticipation or foresight. In other words, with the end of the first step, you have selected a risk, an uncertainty, or a series of risks and uncertainties, or an issue of concern, with its proper time frame and scope, for example, what are the risks and uncertainties to my …
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Each week our scan collects weak – and less weak – signals for global changes, national and international security, political and geopolitical risk of interest to private and public actors.
Editorial: The New York Times’ article “Why Jamal Khashoggi’s Killing Has Resonated” by Megan Specia ponders what many have been wondering lately. Why on earth would the murder of Mr Khashoggi, definitely an atrocious crime, definitely terrible for his family and definitely wrong, yet an event that hardly obviously belongs to international relations and even less to major historical events, take center stage not only in the media but also for international actors be they public or private?
A potential attack on press freedom or denunciation of Saudi Arabia’s human rights’ breaches cannot be a sufficient answer, considering the number of journalist murders or jailed on the one hand, so many countries’ breaches of human rights on the other. Actually, most of the time, these events do not stir anything.
Megan Specia (Ibid.) gives an answer in four main points: “Mr. Khashoggi was a prominent writer with powerful friends”; “A killing inside a consulate, often a place of refuge, is shocking”; “Leaks to Turkish media kept the story in the headlines”; “The Saudi crown prince had already set the stage for tense geopolitics”.
Her first and last points are certainly the most interesting, especially read together, as they point towards factions war within Saudi Arabia, with ramifications outside the country and manipulations of the media and public opinion. Worryingly, the propaganda operation – assuming there was one – worked extremely well, with foreign heads of states, diplomats and CEOs falling into the trap and becoming pawns in a game they do not master.
There is, however, also another point that must be made, or to the least pondered, about the Khashoggi affair and its resonance, a point related to international public opinion: increasingly, important even crucial events and dynamics are completely downplayed or stir absolutely no interest when, on the contrary, irrelevant matters do.
To take a very easy example, extreme weather events pile worldwide, while the IPCC panel issued its sternest and most urgent warning ever, yet it feels as if nobody was really concerned. The amazing hailstorm on Rome, on 21 October, was not even crowdsourced by the Weekly algorithm, and did not make international news, at least not anywhere on a par with Mr Khashoggi’s murder. Yet, climate change impacts are incredibly more important, for the whole world and for each and every human being, than what happened in the Saudi Arabia’s consulate.
Meanwhile, the Cold War is finally coming to an end in East Asia, artificial intelligence and quantum computing seem to point towards the birth of a completely new paradigm, tensions between the U.S. and China are high indeed… etc.
Yet, people prefer being fascinated with a murder.
The why this is happening deserves being pondered because, considering the stakes, our very survival could depend on it.
However unpalatable, we may wonder if the information overload created by the world-wide-web, and the way major high-tech actors’ interest end up favouring very low quality content, where analysis is disappearing for opinion, has not a large part of responsibility in what is happening.
We may also wonder if the very real and serious and threatening stakes at hand are not so frightening that people just prefer to ignore them in a mad rush forward, seizing any piece of information that could assuage their rising anxiety. In that case, the fascination with Mr Khashoggi’s murder would be a symptom of denial and escapism.
In both cases, after proper and detailed analysis, responses must be designed, given and truly implemented.
Should such new dynamics take place, then, the sad murder of a journalist would have served as a wake up call, and, after all, become truly a historical event.
Find out more on horizon scanning, signals, what they are and how to use them:
Each section of the scan focuses on signals related to a specific theme: world (international politics and geopolitics); economy; science; analysis, strategy and futures; AI, technology and weapons; energy and environment. However, in a complex world, categories are merely a convenient way to present information, when facts and events interact across boundaries.
The Weekly is the complimentary scan of The Red (Team) Analysis Society. It focuses on political and geopolitical uncertainty, on national and international security issues.
The information collected (crowdsourced) does not mean endorsement but points to new, emerging, escalating or stabilising problems and issues.
Featured image: Antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), on the Chajnantor Plateau in the Chilean Andes. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two companion galaxies to our own Milky Way galaxy, can be seen as bright smudges in the night sky, in the centre of the photograph. This photograph was produced by European Southern Observatory (ESO), ESO/C. Malin [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
Alors que nous entrons dans la «quatrième révolution industrielle», dans l’ère de la transformation numérique, dans un nouvel «IA-monde» et dans la «seconde révolution quantique», la sécurité nationale et internationale doit s’adapter. Elle doit le faire en anticipant ce monde futur, en évitant les surprises et les menaces tant nouvelles qu’anciennes, tout en saisissant les immenses possibilités offertes par ce qui n’est rien moins qu’un changement de paradigme (Pour les labels, respectivement, Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum, Helene Lavoix, The Future Artificial Intelligence – Powered World series, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, Jonathan P. Dowling, Gerard J. Milburn, “Quantum Technology: The Second Quantum Revolution”, 13 Jun 2002, arXiv:quant-ph/0206091v1).
La stratégie relative au cyber-espace et à la cyber-sécurité varie selon les pays – et les acteurs. Elle est gérée de différentes manières par différents types d’agences. Après avoir présenté brièvement les principaux acteurs étatiques français, britanniques et américains de la cyber-sécurité, nous nous concentrerons sur la perspective française et l’ANSSI, ses objectifs et sa récente initiative de réflexion, Agora 41.
La France, le Royaume-Uni et les États-Unis – bref aperçu
En France, l’Agence Nationale de la Sécurité des Systèmes d’Information (ANSSI), créée le 7 juillet 2009, s’occupe de la sécurité du monde digital. Elle est l’autorité nationale pour toutes les questions liées à la défense et à la sécurité des systèmes d’information et, de ce fait, conduit la Stratégie nationale de sécurité numérique française (2015). Néanmoins, d’autres dimensions du cyber-espace restent sous l’autorité d’autres parties de l’État, notamment le ministère de l’Intérieur et le ministère de la Défense, qui prévoit un budget de 1,6 milliard d’euros pour 2019-2025 pour la cyber-sécurité, tandis que son commandement en matière de cyber-défense, créé en 2016, verra une augmentation de ses dépenses de personnel (Benjamin Hue, “La France va renforcer son arsenal contre la cybercriminalité“, RTL, 24 janvier 2018). Une nouvelle stratégie nationale en matière de cyber-sécurité sur cinq ans, avec un budget global clair, est nécessaire, et pourrait être en préparation (Ibid.).*
L’ANSSI correspond plus ou moins au Centre National Britannique de Cybersécurité (National Cyber Security Center – NCSC), appartenant au GCHQ, ouvert en octobre 2016 et officiellement lancé le 14 février 2017, et participant pleinement à la CyberUK strategy de 2017 (lancement du NCSC, video et documents; Reuters, “Britain to spend 1.9 billion pounds on boosting cyber defenses“). Le budget global du Royaume-Uni pour la cybersécurité pour tous les ministères (sans compter le budget potentiel pour les cyber-représailles et les attaques) s’élève à £1,9 milliard pour 2017-2022 (“Chancellor’s speech at the National Cyber Security Centre opening“, 14 février 2017; Reuters, Ibid. .)
L’ANSSI et le NCSC sont les héritiers de la mission cryptographique passée des institutions étatiques. L’ANSSI est le dernier né de la Direction Technique des Chiffres (DTC) créée en 1943 à Alger (Histoire de l’ANSSI). De son côté, le NCSC, à travers le GCHQ, est ancré dans le célèbre Bletchley Park qui, grâce notamment à Turing, à l’équipe de codebreakers et aux Bombes machine, a vaincu Enigma et ainsi contribué à la victoire des Alliés pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. Auparavant, ses origines remontent aux efforts de décryptage déployés par l’Amirauté et le War Office pendant la Première Guerre Mondiale (par exemple, GCHQ, «The story of Signals Intelligence 1914-2014»).
En ce qui concerne les États-Unis, leur budget fédéral cybersécurité est de 15 milliards de dollars pour 2019, et éclipse les efforts européens, mais doit être partagé entre toutes les agences dotées de cyber-éléments, du Pentagone à la NASA en passant par la Small Business Administration (John Slye, “The Fy 2019 Budget Increases Cybersecurity Funding By Nearly $600 Million“, Deltek, 28 Février 2018).
Cependant, et malgré la fameuse National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS), aucune nouvelle agence ni centre unifié n’est dédié au nouveau monde cyber et à sa sécurité, comme cela est fait en France et au Royaume-Uni (David H. Petraeus, “The Case for a National Cybersecurity Agency“, Belfer Center, 5 septembre 2018). L’ Office of Cybersecurity and Communications de la National Protection and Program Directorate (NPPD) au sein du Département de la sécurité intérieure (DHS) pourrait être vu comme approchant le système britannique ou français. Cependant, en tant qu'”Office”, il ne dispose pas de l’autonomie, du poids et du leadership que l’on peut trouver en Europe. En outre, vu son emplacement et le nombre d’autres agences impliquées dans la cyber-sécurité, il est très probable que l’OCC / NPPD consacre du temps, des ressources et de l’énergie à des escarmouches et querelles administratives.
Cela dit, le budget américain consacré à la cybersécurité reste pour le moins très important. Qui plus est, les États-Unis bénéficient d’un “cyber-écosystème” qui est un atout formidable. Cet écosystème est créé par le cyber-budget fédéral et les agences et bureaux en bénéficiant, les GAFA et autres sociétés telles que Intel, NVIDIA et IBM, pour en nommer seulement quelques-unes, la Silicon Valley, des milliardaires patriotes et concernés et des universités de classe mondiale, comme le montre l’initiative de 1 milliard de dollars du MIT “pour faire face aux opportunités et aux défis mondiaux présentés par la prédominance de l’informatique et la montée de l’intelligence artificielle (IA)” qui inclus un don de 350 millions de dollars de Stephen A. Schwarzman, PDG de Blackstone (MIT Review, “MIT reshapes itself to shape the future“).
De son côté, l’OTAN travaille à la mise en place d’un nouveau centre de commandement cyber-militaire, qui devrait être prêt pour 2023 (Robin Emmott, “”NATO cyber command to be fully operational in 2023“, Reuters, 16 octobre 2018).
Une perspective complète et plus détaillée devrait notamment inclure la Chine.
L’ANSSI, de la stratégie à l’anticipation et au groupe de réflexion
En tant que leader de la stratégie française de cybersécurité, l’ANSSI vise à atteindre cinq objectifs principaux (site web):
“Garantir la souveraineté nationale”: notamment défense de l’intérêt national fondamental dans le cyber-espace.
“Apporter une réponse forte contre les actes de cybermalveillance”: Promouvoir l’utilisation de l’espace cybernétique et protéger les citoyens, en réagissant fermement contre tout type de cybercriminalité.
“Informer le grand public”, c’est à dire sensibilisation à la sécurité numérique.
“Faire de la sécurité numérique un avantage concurrentiel pour les entreprises françaises”.
“Renforcer la voix de la France à l’international”, soit l’influence française internationale, à travers la définition des normes, la promotion de la stabilité cybernétique mondiale, et la promotion de l’autonomie européenne.
Qui plus est, l’ANSSI doit avoir une forte activité de prospective stratégique et d’anticipation sur tous les horizons temporels pour pouvoir assurer la sécurité du nouveau monde émergent, tout en faisant face aux menaces et aux risques très concrets du présent.
En effet, par exemple, parmi de nombreux impacts, l’informatique quantique perturbera complètement la transmission sécurisée des données, tandis que les villes et les entreprises qui utilisent abondamment l’intelligence artificielle (par apprentissage en profondeur/Deep Learning) devront être sécurisées. La communication quantique, quant à elle, tente par exemple de développer de nouveaux réseaux quantiques sur lesquels pourrait être construit dans le futur un internet quantique (Edd Gent, “From Quantum Computing to a Quantum Internet—A Roadmap“, SingularityHub, 22 October 2018). L’informatique quantique, ou plus largement les technologies quantiques, et l’intelligence artificielle, s’accélérant et se perturbant mutuellement, comme nous l’avons vu (The Coming Quantum Computing Disruption, Artificial Intelligence and Geopolitics (1)”, 15 octobre 2018) créeront de nouveaux cyber-défis auxquels les agences, les entreprises et les citoyens doivent être préparés.
Les vidéos ci-dessous illustrent un possible avenir et ses enjeux de sécurité (bande annonce française de la série TV Person of Interest saison 4 de J.J. Abrahams et trailer officiel en anglais; NVIDIA GTC China 2017 Keynote Recap, notamment la partie sur les villes intelligentes).
Dans le même temps, alors que les impacts multidimensionnels néfastes du changement climatique se propagent et s’intensifient, les conséquences sur la cybersécurité doivent également être pris en compte.
Comme le souligne le Sénat,
“L’un des axes retenus dans la stratégie de l’ANSSI pour la période 2016-2020, intitulé « connaissance et anticipation » a pour objectif de renforcer sa capacité à mener des travaux de prospective, à anticiper les nouvelles menaces et à favoriser l’émergence de nouvelles technologies ou de nouveaux usages susceptibles d’avoir un impact en matière de sécurité informatique.”(Projet de loi de finances pour 2018 : Direction de l’action du Gouvernement : Coordination du travail gouvernemental” 23 novembre 2017)
Dans ce cadre, l’ANSSI a lancé un programme de réflexion original, Agora 41, au sein duquel 41 experts ont été sélectionnés et invités à participer à une nouvelle expérience visant à développer des solutions innovantes pour soutenir l’agence dans sa mission.
Cinq thèmes ont été sélectionnés pour servir la réalisation de la stratégie de cybersécurité et de ses objectifs, tout en respectant les impératifs de prospective stratégique.
Imaginaire, Cyber-monde et Sécurité
Entrent les GAFA et BATX: De nouvelles règles pour un nouveau jeu sur un nouvel échiquier?
Gagner la Guerre des Talents
Cyber-cohabitation
Mettre en place un cyber-écosystème victorieux pour la sécurité
Chaque membre d’Agora 41 a choisi un thème principal, tout en ayant la possibilité d’interagir sur les autres questions. Ce système cherche à permettre des discussions fructueuses avec échanges horizontaux entre questions.
Ensemble, ces efforts pourraient contribuer à façonner non seulement la future cybersécurité, mais également notre cyber-futur.
Disclaimer: L’auteur participe à l’effort Agora 41 mais reste indépendante dans ses réflexions, condition sine qua non du succès de l’initiative de sensibilisation de l’ANSSI. Les opinions exprimées dans ce rapport représentent les vues et interprétations de l’auteur, sauf indication contraire. Cet article n’implique pas l’approbation de la politique, des programmes ou des réglementations par l’ANSSI.
À propos de l’auteur: Dr Helene Lavoix,, PhD Lond (Relations internationales), est la directrice de The Red (Team) Analysis Society. Elle est spécialisée dans la prospective stratégique et l’alerte en matière de sécurité nationale et internationale. Elle se concentre actuellement sur l’intelligence artificielle, l’informatique quantique et la sécurité.
Featured Image: The Argonne-led “Multiscale Coupled Urban Systems” project aims to help city planners better examine complex systems, understand the relationships between them and predict how changes will affect them. The ultimate goal is to help officials identify the best solutions to benefit urban communities. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)
As we enter the “fourth industrial revolution”, the age of the digital transformation, a new emerging “AI-world”, and the “second quantum revolution”, national and international security must adapt. It must do so by anticipating this future world, avoiding surprises related to new – but also old – threats and dangers, while seizing the immense opportunities offered by what is no less than a change of paradigm (For the labels, respectively, Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum, Helene Lavoix, The Future Artificial Intelligence – Powered World series, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, Jonathan P. Dowling, Gerard J. Milburn, “Quantum Technology: The Second Quantum Revolution”, 13 Jun 2002, arXiv:quant-ph/0206091v1).
The strategy related to cyber space and cyber security varies according to countries – and actors. It is handled in various ways by different types of agencies. After having briefly presented the main French, British and American state actors for cyber security, we shall focus on the French outlook and present the ANSSI, its goals and finally new outreach initiative, Agora 41.
France, the UK and the U.S. – a brief overview
In France, the Agence Nationale de la Sécurité des Systèmes d’Information (ANSSI) – National Agency for Cyber Security, created on 7 July 2009, deals with the security of the cyber world. It is the national authority for all matters related to the defence and security of information systems and, as a result, leads the French National Strategy for Digital Security (2015). Nonetheless, other cyber dimensions remain under other types of state authorities, notably the ministry of Interior and the ministry of Defence, which plans a €1.6 billion budget for 2019-2025 for cyber security, while its cyber defence command, created in 2016, will see an increase in personal (Benjamin Hue, “La France va renforcer son arsenal contre la cybercriminalité“, RTL, 24 January 2018). A new national cyber strategy over five years with a clear overall budget is necessary and could be forthcoming (Ibid.).*
Both the ANSSI and the NCSC are heir to the past cryptographic mission of states’ institutions. The ANSSI is the latest child of the Direction Technique des Chiffres (DTC) created in 1943 in Alger (ANSSI History). For its part, the NCSC, through the GCHQ, is indeed grounded in the most famous Bletchley Park, which, notably thanks to Turing, the team of codebreakers and the Bombes machine they created, defeated the German Enigma Machine and thus contributed to the Allies victory during World War 2 . Before that, its ancestry can be traced to the codebreaking efforts at the Admiralty and War Office during World War 1 (e.g. GCHQ, “The story of Signals Intelligence 1914-2014″).
Cybersecurity in the U.S. benefits from a $15 billion federal budget for FY 2019 dwarfing European efforts, but to share among all agencies with a cyber element, from the NASA to the Small Business Administration (John Slye, “The Fy 2019 Budget Increases Cybersecurity Funding By Nearly $600 Million“, Deltek, 28 February 2018).
Nonetheless, and despite the famous National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS), no new agency nor overarching centre handles the new cyber world and its security in the leading way developed in both France and the UK (David H. Petraeus, “The Case for a National Cybersecurity Agency“, Belfer Center, 5 September 2018). The Office of Cybersecurity and Communications of the National Protection and Program Directorate (NPPD) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could be seen as an effort approaching the British and French approach. However, being an Office, it does not have the autonomy, weight and leadership that may be found in Europe. Furthermore, by its very location and by the number of other agencies involved, the OCC/NPPD is very likely to have to devote time, resources and energy to administrative skirmishes and quarrels.
That said, the American cybersecurity budget remains very large indeed. Meanwhile, the U.S. benefits of a “cyber ecosystem”, which is a formidable assets. This ecosystem is created by the Federal cyber budget and the benefiting agencies and offices, the GAFA – and other companies such as Intel, NVIDIA and IBM to quote only a few – the Silicon Valley, patriot and concerned billionaires and world-class universities, as shown by the $ 1 billion MIT initiative “to address the global opportunities and challenges presented by the prevalence of computing and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI),” including a $350 million gift by Stephen A. Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone (MIT Review, “MIT reshapes itself to shape the future“).
For its part, NATO is working upon getting a new cyber military command center, which should be ready for 2023 (Robin Emmott, “NATO cyber command to be fully operational in 2023“, Reuters, 16 October 2018).
A complete and more detailed outlook would notably need to include China, should we want to provide a better global picture.
The ANSSI, from Strategy to Anticipation and Outreach
As the leader of the French cybersecurity strategy, the ANSSI aims at achieving five main goals (website):
Defence of the fundamental national interest in cyberspace.
Promoting cyperspace usage and protect citizens, with a strong response against any type of cybercrime.
Raising digital security awareness.
Transforming digital security into a competitive advantage for French economic actors.
Strengthening international influence [shaping norms, promoting cyber global stability, promoting European autonomy – my summary].
Furthermore, the ANSSI must have a strong strategic foresight and anticipatory activity across all timeframes to be able to provide for the security of the new emerging world, while also dealing with the very concrete threats and risks of the present. Indeed, for example, among many other impacts, quantum computing will completely unsettle the safe transmission of data, while cities and companies abundantly using artificial intelligence in its deep learning component will need to be secured. Quantum communication work, for example, at creating quantum networks, upon which could be built in the future a quantum internet (Edd Gent, “From Quantum Computing to a Quantum Internet—A Roadmap“, SingularityHub, 22 October 2018). Quantum computing, or more largely quantum technologies, and AI, both accelerating and disrupting each other, as we saw (“The Coming Quantum Computing Disruption, Artificial Intelligence and Geopolitics (1)”, 15 October 2018), will create completely new cyber challenges that need to be envisioned and for which states’ agencies, companies, and citizens must be prepared.
The videos below, notably when seen together, may help us imagine what the future and its security could look like (trailer of Person of Interest Season 4 by J.J. Abrahams; NVIDIA GTC China 2017 Keynote Recap, notably the part on smart cities).
In this framework, the ANSSI started an original outreach programme, the Agora 41, where 41 experts were selected and invited to participate in a new experiment at thinking out of the box and across disciplines to support the agency in its mission.
Five themes were selected to serve the achievement of the cyber strategy and its goals, while obeying to the strategic foresight necessity.
Imagining the Cyber-World and its Security
Enter the GAFA and the BATX: New rules for a new game on a new board?
Winning the Talents’ War
Cyber-cohabitation
Enabling a Victorious Cyber-Ecosystem for Security
Each member of Agora 41 chose one core theme, while also having the possibility to interact on other issues. This system aims at allowing for more fruitful discussions and maximum feedbacks across questions.
Together these enabling efforts could help shape not only the future cybersecurity but also our very cyber future.
* It is near impossible from outside to precisely evaluate the ANSSI’s budget considering its “limited budgetary autonomy” within the Prime Minister’s Secrétariat général de la défense et de la sécurité nationale – SGDSN (“Projet de loi de finances pour 2018 : Direction de l’action du Gouvernement : Coordination du travail gouvernemental“, 23 Novembre 2017). As pointed out by the Sénat (Solutions Numériques, “ANSSI : un rapport sénatorial préconise d’élargir son autonomie de gestion budgétaire”, 19 April 2018), this partial autonomy may only contribute to obscure vital needs and hinder the ANSSI’s efficiency by denying vital resources, all the more so when its missions are and will be enlarged considering the foreseeable future. Meanwhile the risk of administrative quarrels and hassle is enhanced.
Disclaimer: The author is part of the Agora 41 effort, but remains independent in her thinking, a sine qua non condition for the success of the ANSSI’s outreach initiative. The views expressed in this report represent the views and interpretations of the author, unless otherwise stated. This article does not imply policy, program or regulatory endorsement by the ANSSI.
Featured Image: The Argonne-led “Multiscale Coupled Urban Systems” project aims to help city planners better examine complex systems, understand the relationships between them and predict how changes will affect them. The ultimate goal is to help officials identify the best solutions to benefit urban communities. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)
This is an update of the 17 September 2018 release of this article analysing the economic costs of climate change on the U.S. economy in 2018. This update integrates the consequences, and especially the costs, of the super hurricane “Michael”, which hammered the Florida panhandle, then Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, between the 10 and the 14 of October 2018 (Camilla Domonoske, “Michael Will Costs Insurers Billions, but Won’t Overwhelm the Industry, Analysts Say”, NPR, October 14, 2018).
“Michael” took over from “Florence”, the monster storm that hit and battered the U.S. East Coast on 12 September 2018. It looks like a new climate-related disaster “peak”. It could announce a transition towards possibly worse, considering the last 12 months of climate hellish conditions.
On 12 October, Chinese Huawei launched its new Quantum Computing Simulation HiQ Cloud Service Platform (Press Release). On 13 September 2018, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the “H.R. 6227: National Quantum Initiative Act” with $1.275 billion budget from 2019 to 2023 on quantum research. The Chinese government yearly investment in quantum science is estimated to $ 244 million (CRS, “Federal Quantum Information Science: An Overview”, 2 July 2018). The EU Quantum Flagship plans so far to invest €100 million per year, to which national investments must be added. The largest tech companies, be they American, European or Asian, and more particularly Chinese, fund quantum R&D. This heralds the start of a new race for quantum technologies.
Indeed, ongoing scientific and technological innovations related to the quantum universe have the potential to fundamentally alter the world as we know it, while also accelerating and even disrupting more specifically the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Advances in quantum technologies have been dubbed the “Second Quantum Revolution”(Jonathan P. Dowling, Gerard J. Milburn, “Quantum Technology: The Second Quantum Revolution”, 13 Jun 2002, arXiv:quant-ph/0206091v1).
In this first article, we shall explain what is this quantum revolution, then narrow it down to where it interacts with AI, indeed potentially accelerating and disrupting current dynamics. This article is aimed at non-quantum physicists, from the analysts to decision-makers and policy-makers, through interested and concerned readers, who need to understand quantum technologies. Indeed, the latter will revolutionise the world in general, AI in particular, as well as governance, management, politics and geopolitics, notably when combined with AI. We shall use as much as possible real world examples to illustrate our text.
We shall explain first where quantum technologies are located, i.e. quantum mechanics. We shall then focus upon these quantum technologies – called the Quantum Information Science (QIS) – concentrating notably on quantum computing and simulation, but also briefly reviewing quantum communication and quantum sensing and metrology. We shall aim at understanding what is happening, how dynamics unfold and the current state of play, while also addressing the question of timing, i.e. when will quantum computing start impacting the world.
Finally, we shall look at the intersection between the quantum technologies and AI – indeed the emerging Quantum Machine Learning sub-field or even Quantum AI – pointing out possible accelerations and disruptions. We shall therefore highlight why and how quantum technologies are a driver and stake for AI.
Building upon the understanding achieved here, the next articles shall delve more in detail on the potential future impacts on the political and geopolitical world.
From Quantum Mechanics to the new Quantum Technologies
Currently, the principles of quantum mechanics are being newly applied to an array of fields creating the potential for new possibilities in many areas.
Quantum mechanics or quantum physics is a scientific discipline, which started at the very beginning of the 20th century, with, initially, work by Max Planck on the colour spectrum (for a rapid and clear summary of the development of the field, read, for example, Robert Coolman, “What Is Quantum Mechanics?“, LiveScience, 26 September 2014).
Quantum mechanics is about “the general expression of the laws of nature in a world made of omnipresent and almost imperceptible particles” (Roland Omnes, Quantum Philosophy: Understanding and Interpreting Contemporary Science, 1999, p.82). This is the reign of the infinitesimally small. Quantum mechanics contributed to a series of scientific changes that stroke at the very heart of the way we understand. As Omnes put it,
“We are loosing the spontaneous representation of the world… common sense is defeated” (ibid.).
Even though common sense was challenged, scientists did not abandon the scientific project and continued their work. Now, the very properties that shocked the scientific community and the new understanding of the world that emerged with quantum mechanics are being used to develop new technologies.
In a nutshell, at the level of the quantum world, we observe a “wave-like nature of light and matter” (Biercuk and Fontaine, “The Leap into Quantum Technology…“, War on the Rocks, Nov 2017). Two resulting properties of quantum systems are then fundamental to the current technological effort, namely superposition and entanglement.
Superposition means that “quantum systems may be (loosely) described as simultaneously existing in more than one place until the system is observed” (Ibid.). Once the system is observed, then the system fixes itself in one place, and one says that “the superposition collapses” (Ibid.).
Entanglement means that “linked particles can be “remotely controlled” no matter how far apart they may be. Manipulate the local partner of an entangled pair and you instantaneously manipulate its entangled partner as well” (Ibid.).
Building notably on these properties, scientists are developing the technological field called the Quantum Information Science (QIS), composed of Quantum sensing and metrology, Quantum communication and Quantum computing and simulation, to which can be added research in Quantum materials. We shall more particularly focus here on Quantum computing.
Understanding Quantum Information Science
Quantum computing and simulation
Quantum computing means harnessing quantum properties, notably superposition and entanglement, “to perform some computation” (CRS, July 2018) in a way that is incredibly faster than what is achieved today by the most powerful High Performance Computing (HPC) capabilities, even the exascale computers, which are currently being built (see Winning the Race to Exascale Computing).
Using quantum computing should be particularly promising for quantum simulations, i.e. “using some controllable quantum system [the quantum computer] to study another less controllable or accessible quantum system” (Georgescu, et al, “Quantum Simulation” 2013). In other words, quantum computing is the best approach to studying and simulating systems located at the quantum level and thus displaying quantum properties.
Quantum computing, a development initiated by security concern
The idea of a quantum computer was developed in 1981 (published in 1982) by American physicist Richard P. Feynman, who thought about using quantum properties to simulate physics and indeed quantum mechanics (“Simulating Physics with Computers“, International Journal of Theoretical Physics, VoL 21, Nos. 6/7, 1982). It was initially mainly of theoretical interest (Simon Bone and Matias Castro, “A Brief History of Quantum Computing”, Imperial College London).
Then, the incredible computing power that a functioning quantum computer could have led to the rising awareness that a “cryptopocalypse” could happen. Indeed, in 1994, mathematician Peter Shor formulated an algorithm, “Shor’s algorithm”, showing that “a quantum computer with a few tens of thousands of quantum bits and capable of performing a few million quantum logic operations could factor large numbers and so break the ubiquitous RSA public key cryptosystem” – the most widely used way to encrypt data transmission (Peter Shor, “Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Prime Factorization and Discrete Logarithms on a Quantum Computer,” 1994, 1995; Seth Lloyd, & Dirk Englund, Future Directions of Quantum Information Processing, August 2016, p.6 ).
It is the 1994 Shor’s findings that created the interest in quantum computing, from which evolved Quantum Technologies (Bone and Castro, Ibid.; Lloyd & Englund, Ibid, Biercuk, “Building The Quantum Future“, video, 2017). The QIS’ birth thus would stem from both the fear of and interest in developing such a quantum computer: Shor’s algorithm would indeed give an incredible security advantage to those benefiting from a quantum computer, as they could break all the codes present, past and future of their ‘competitors’ if these actors use current classical computing capabilities as well as current encryption systems.
What is quantum computing?
Quantum computing is currently being developed. The two main challenges of the field are to develop a usable quantum computer and we are now only at the very early stages of building the hardware, and to learn to program these new computers.
Qubits, hardware and some of the challenges faced
Classical computers store information as 0s and 1s, the bits or binary digits.
For interested and scientifically-minded readers we recommend, among a host of explanations:
Quantum computers use qubits, with which, “you can have zero, one, and any possible combination of zero and one, so you gain a vast set of possibilities to store data” (Rachel Harken, “Another First for Quantum“, ORNL Blog, 23 May 2018).
The short video below (Seeker, 15 July 2018) explains (relatively) simply what are qubits, superposition, and entanglement, as well as the very practical challenges faced to build a quantum computer – i.e. the hardware, such as refrigeration, how to control the state of a qubit and finally how long the information can last inside a qubit, a property called coherence. It then moves to a couple of examples of possible simulations and usage.
For an even better understanding of quantum computing, and although the video is a bit long – 24:15 – we recommend taking the time to watch the very clear, lively and fascinating video by Michael J. Biercuk of the University of Sydney, “Building the Quantum Future“.
Thus, to get a functioning quantum computer, in terms of hardware, you need to have enough qubits to proceed with your computing and to do so in a way where the errors generated by the specificities of quantum computing, notably loss of coherence or decoherence, are not too serious to defeat the whole system. The necessity to consider the errors generated by the quantum system used implies to imagine, create and then implement the best possible quantum error correction, tending towards full quantum error correction. One of the difficulties is that the error correction is also a function of the qubits, which thus multiplies the number of qubits that must be operational.
For example, Justin Dressel of the Californian Institute for Quantum Studies of Chapman University applied Austin G. Fowler et al., “Surface codes: Towards practical large-scale quantum computation” (2012) to Shor’s algorithm using as case study the aim to decrypt a strong RSA encryption using a 2048-bit keys. He calculated that for a quantum computer to meet this goal, its minimum qubit number would be 109. Such a machine would then need to run for 27 hours, to “compare with 6.4 quadrillion years for a classical desktop computer running the number sieve”. Of course, as with classical computers, more qubits would reduce the run-time (for the paragraph, Justin Dressel, Quantum Computing: State of Play, OC ACM Chapter Meeting, 16 May 2018).
Actually, we are still quite far from a 109 qubit computer.
The state of play in terms of qubits processors…
On 16 May 2018, according to Dressel (Ibid.), two main competing implementations (others being in development) are used to obtain physical qubits, and have so far given the following results:
Method 1. Trapped ions – with as best performance
University of Maryland (UMD)/ Joint Quantum Institute (JQI)*: 53 qubits
Method 2. Superconducting circuits – with as best performance
Google : 72 qubits – Britlescore
IBM : 50 qubits
Intel: 49 qubits (Emile Conover, ScienceNews, 5 March 2018)
… and quantum simulators running on classical computers
Besides the creation of very real quantum computing hardware, we also have the design and development of quantum computing simulators. These allow researchers and scientists to start experimenting with quantum computing and notably to begin learning to program these computers. Indeed, the specificities of quantum computing demand new ways to program these computers.
For example, Atos used its HPC supercomputers to develop Atos Quantum Learning Machine (QLM) with appliances from 30 and 40 Qubits according to power level (Atos QLM Product). Meanwhile, Atos developed “universal quantum assembly programming language (AQASM, Atos Quantum Assembly Language) and a high-level quantum hybrid language” (Ibid.).
Other similar efforts are at work, with, for example, the Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at the University of Melbourne able “to simulate the output of a 60-qubit machine”, but for “only” an instance of Shor’s algorithm (Andrew Tournson, “Simulation Breaks Quantum Computing World Record“, Futurity, 2 July 2018).
As mentioned in the opening paragraph, Chinese Huawei announced on 12 October that it launched its very first quantum computing simulation platform through its Cloud Service, HiQ (Press release). “The HiQ platform can simulate quantum circuits with at least 42-qubits for full-amplitude simulations” (ibid.), which would make it slightly more powerful than Atos QLM. Of course, performance must be tested by scientists before such conclusions may be drawn with certainty. As Atos, Huawei also developed its quantum programming framework. Unlike Atos’s system, HiQ “will be fully open to the public as an enabling platform for quantum research and education” (Ibid.). We see here emerging two different approaches and strategies to the development of quantum computing, which do and will matter for companies, state actors as well as citizens, as well as for the field. We shall come back to this point in the next article.
When shall we have functioning quantum computers? What is quantum supremacy?
Actually, we already have functioning quantum computers, but their computing power is still weak and they may be considered as prototypes.
Because we already have these prototypes as well as the simulators on classical machines, the current real and relevant question must be transformed into two questions.
1- How powerful does my quantum computer need to be to answer my question or solve my problem?
The first part of our initial timing-related question could be phrased as follows: how powerful does my quantum computer need to be to answer my question or solve my problem?
In other words, the type of computation needed to solve a problem may be more easily and more quickly achieved on a quantum computer with a small number of qubits, but de facto using quantum properties, than on a classical computer, where the very quantum characteristics necessary for solving the problem at hand would demand an enormous HPC, or would just not be feasible. Here, the quantum understanding of the problem under consideration and the algorithm developed become as important, if not more, than the very quantum hardware problem. As a result, current quantum machines and quantum simulations may be considered as already operational.
As another example, on 4 October 2018, Spanish researchers U. Alvarez-Rodriguez et al. (“Quantum Artificial Life in an IBM Quantum Computer“, Nature, 2018) published the results of their research, according to which they were able to create a quantum artificial life algorithm. Interviewed by Newsweek, Lamata, a member of the scientific team, explained:
“We wanted to know whether emergent behaviors of macroscopic biological systems could be reproduced at the microscopic quantum level,” he said. “What we found in this research is that very small quantum devices with a few quantum bits could already emulate self-replication, combining standard biological properties, such as the genotype and phenotype, with genuine quantum properties, such as entanglement and superposition,” (Hannah Osborne, “Quantum Artificial Life Created for First Time, Newsweek, 11 October 2018).
The life creating simulation was realised using “the superconducting circuit architecture of IBM cloud quantum computer”, with “the IBM ibmqx4 quantum computing chip” (Alvarez-Rodriguez, et al., Ibid.), i.e. using IBM 5 Q, which counts 5 qubits with a maximum qubits connectivity of 4 (“Qubit Quality“, Quantum Computing Report) .
This simulation illustrates perfectly how quantum computing can be both accelerating and disruptive for artificial intelligence, as we shall synthesise in the third part. Indeed, as pointed out in the research paper’s conclusions and prospects, the successful quantum artificial life algorithm could potentially be combined with the new emerging field of quantum machine learning to pursue “the design of intelligent and replicating quantum agents” (Alvarez-Rodriguez, et al., Ibid.). We would reach here potentially a completely new level of AI.
2- When shall we have quantum computers with such a power that classical computers, even the most powerful, are out-powered?
The second part of our question regarding timing could be rephrased as follows: when shall we have quantum computers with such a power that classical computers, even the most powerful, are out-powered, i.e. when will quantum simulations made on classical computers become irrelevant?
This is what Google called achieving “quantum supremacy”, or crossing the “quantum supremacy frontier”, i.e. finding out “the smallest computational task that is prohibitively hard for today’s classical computers” and then going beyond it thanks to a quantum computer (Sergio Boixo, “The Question of Quantum Supremacy“, Google Ai Blog, 4 May 2018). The idea of achieving quantum supremacy is best explained by the following slide from John Martinis’ (Google) presentation “Quantum Computing and Quantum Supremacy” (HPC user Forum, Tuscon, April 16-18, 2018).
Slide from John Martinis’ (Google) presentation “Quantum Computing and Quantum Supremacy” (HPC user Forum, Tuscon, April 16-18, 2018).
Building upon Google’s slide, Dressel believes we have almost reached “the scale that is no longer possible to simulate using classical supercomputers. The current challenge is to find “near-term” applications for the existing quantum devices” (Ibid.).
Figure from a slide from Justin Dressel, Quantum Computing: State of Play, OC ACM Chapter Meeting, 16 May 2018
However, as improvements in terms of ways to construct quantum simulations on classical machines are also ongoing, then the timeline as well as the numbers of qubits necessary to achieve quantum supremacy could change (Phys.org, “Researchers successfully simulate a 64-qubit circuit“, 26 June 2018; original research: Zhao-Yun Chen et al, “64-qubit quantum circuit simulation“, Science Bulletin, 2018).
Meanwhile, Dressel (Ibid.) also estimates that we can expect chips with one billion qubits in approximately 10-15 years.
Figure from a slide from Justin Dressel, Quantum Computing: State of Play, OC ACM Chapter Meeting, 16 May 2018
The availability of such a powerful computing power would most obviously be accelerating for AI while completely disrupting the current landscape surrounding the contemporary AI revolution, from the microprocessors developed and used for example in the race to exascale, to the power of those who succeeded in being at the top of the race in terms of classical HPC, but we shall come back to the political and geopolitical implications in the second article of the series.
Quantum communications
As logically evolving from the way quantum technologies were born, quantum communications are mainly concerned with the development of “quantum-resistant cryptography”, as underlined in the U.S. National Strategic Overview for Quantum Information Science, September 2018. If quantum computing can be used to break existing encryption, then quantum mechanics may also be used to protect encryption, notably with quantum cryptography (see phys.org definition) or quantum key distribution (QKD).
Quantum communications is thus about “generating quantum keys for encryption” and more largely, “sending quantum-secure communications (any eavesdropping attempt destroys the communication and the eavesdropping is detected)” (CRS, July 2018, Ibid.).
Quantum sensing and metrology
“’Quantum sensing’ describes the use of a quantum system, quantum properties or quantum phenomena to perform a measurement of a physical quantity” (Degen et al, 2016). Thanks to quantum sensors, we “measure physical quantities such as frequency, acceleration, rotation rates, electric and magnetic fields, or temperature with the highest relative and absolute accuracy.” (Wicht et al. 2018). This video by the UK National Quantum Technology Hub, “Sensors and Metrology“, explains very simply this sub-field.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d33mTp0lNNE
Applications, including in terms of national security, are numerous, from global positioning systems (GPS), to sub-marines through, for example, improving considerably our understanding of the human brain and of cognition, as explained in the video shown in the last part of the article.
Don’t overstate boundaries
As always, however, if categories between different sub-disciplines are convenient to define fields, focus and explain subject matters, boundaries tend to be porous. Feedbacks with other sub-fields may take place when new discoveries are made. Innovations also emerge at the intersection of the different subfields, as illustrated below with the production of vortices of light in quantum sensing, which then feed into quantum communication – as, for example, unique and identifiable petal patterns can form the alphabet to transmit information (Matthew O’Donnell, “Petal Patterns“, Quantum Sensing and Metrology Group at Northrop Grumman, 17 May 2018).
The intersection between the current AI development, which takes place mainly in the area of machine learning and more specifically deep learning and Quantum Information Science is potentially so fruitful that it is giving rise to a new sub-discipline, Quantum Machine Learning.
Below are some of the main areas where research takes place or could take place and where current AI development could be accelerated or disrupted by quantum technologies, while AI possibilities would also impact positively quantum computing.
The first obvious accelerating and potentially disruptive impact quantum computing could have on AI is that once hardware with high number qubits are available, then the (quantum) computing power available also for AI will reach new heights. This is likely to allow for so far impossible to test methodologies, while until now too complex or computing power-hungry algorithms will be developed.
Then, we are likely to see an intensification and multiplication of the development of “creating-AIs”, such as what was done by the combination of evolutionary algorithms and reinforcement learnings by Google Brain Team as well as by scientists at U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) (see Helene Lavoix, When AI Started Creating AI – Artificial Intelligence and Computing Power, The Red (Team) Analysis Society, 7 May 2018).
As for quantum simulations, some scientists “postulate that quantum computers may outperform classical computers on machine learning tasks.” In that case, Quantum Machine Learning is understood as the field where scientists focus on “how to devise and implement quantum software that could enable machine learning that is faster than that of classical computers” (Jacob Biamonte, et al., “Quantum machine learning“, v2 arXiv:1611.09347v2., May 2018). Quantum Machine Learning algorithms are sought and developed (Ibid., Dawid Kopczyk, “Quantum machine learning for data scientists“, arXiv:1804.10068v1, 5 Apr 2018).
Furthermore, as expected from the second part of this article, the explanations above on QIS, the intersection and feedbacks between quantum systems and AI are also more complex, as far as we can understand and foresee now.
The very challenges involved in quantum computing, i.e. mainly developing the hardware and developing the program and algorithms, could be served by AI. In other words, one would apply the current understanding of AI to quantum computing’s development. Potentially, as we shall proceed through trials and errors, and because of the specificities of quantum computing, AI will evolve, potentially reaching new stages of development. Indeed, for example, as new quantum capabilities are reached, and new simulations become available, new understanding of and approaches to AI may be uncovered.
Also quantum simulations on the one hand, quantum sensing on the other, will produce a new host of big data, which will need AI to be understood.
We can find an example of such a case where AI has been used for these newly available quantum large dataset, which in turn could benefit quantum computing and then most probably AI, in the field of physics in general, superconductivity in particular. On 1st August 2018, Yi Zhang et al. published an article explaining their use of an AI, a specifically designed “array of Artificial Neural Network (ANN)” – i.e. deep learning – on a large body of data, “experimentally derived electronic quantum matter (EQM) image archive”, which allowed for progress in our understanding of superconductivity – notably as far as temperature is concerned, a key challenge in quantum computing (Yi Zhang et al., “Using Machine Learning for Scientific Discovery in Electronic Quantum Matter Visualization Experiments“, 1 August 2018, arXiv:1808.00479v1; for a simplified but detailed explanation, Tristan Greene, “New physics AI could be the key to a quantum computing revolution“, TNW, 19 September 2018).
As a result of this experiment, usage of AI-Deep Learning will most probably increase in physics and more largely in science, while new advances in superconductivity could help towards qubits processors.
Should such a development occur in superconductivity, then this also means that the race to exascale we previously detailed could be disrupted. According to the time when exascale is reached and to the processors used, compared with the time when the new advances in superconductivity can be engineered, as well as when competing quantum processors are available, then the huge computing power finally obtained with exascale as well as the so far developed processor could be more or less obsolete or about to be. The industrial risk should here be carefully estimated and monitored, probably through scenarios as most adapted and efficient methodology. We shall see in the next article the related potential political and geopolitical impacts.
The new types of data gathered by quantum sensing may also enrich our understanding of intelligence in general as with the University of Birmingham project “Quantum Sensing the Brain” (11 June 2018) described in the video below.
This specific quantum sensing achievement may, in turn, thrice change and enrich approaches to AI: first, because we would have had to create new AI-systems to make sense of these specific data, second because these deep learning agents would have had access to new and so far unknown understanding of intelligence, thus would have learned something different enhancing the potential to develop different outputs, and third because the resulting overall new understanding of intelligence could, in turn, generate different and better types of AI.
In the same area, the emerging field of quantum cognition (see Peter Bruza et al., “Introduction to the Special Issue on Quantum Cognition“, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 23 September 2013; Peter Bruza et al., “Quantum cognition: a new theoretical approach to psychology“, Trends in Cognitive Science, July 2015), now benefiting from quantum simulations, could lead to completely novel approaches to cognition and intelligence. In turn, a disruption of the current status quo in terms of AI around deep learning could occur. Totally new approaches to AI could emerge.
As a result, quantum technologies are indeed a driver as well as a stake for AI.
Although it is still very early in the field of Quantum Information Science, and notably quantum computing and simulations, and even more so in its intersection with AI, considerable innovations have already taken place both in QIS and Quantum AI / Quantum Machine Learning, and the fields are already starting to bear fruits. Many challenges remain, but the efforts endeavoured to overcome these very hurdles could also lead to new breakthrough in both QIS and AI. We could be at the dawn of a real change of paradigm with a whole range of consequences from the already discernible to those difficult to imagine for polities and its actors. It is to these possible impacts we shall turn with the next article.
Featured Image: An image of a deuteron, the bound state of a proton (red) and a neutron (blue). Image Credit: Andy Sproles, ORNL
Notes
*The Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) is actually a group operating “through the work of leading quantum scientists from the Department of Physics of the University of Maryland (UMD), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Laboratory for Physical Sciences (LPS). Each institution brings to JQI major experimental and theoretical research programs that are dedicated to the goals of controlling and exploiting quantum systems.” (JQI – About). Note that notably through the NIST they will benefit from the 2019 US budget for QIS.
Some references
Alvarez-Rodriguez, U., M. Sanz, L. Lamata & E. Solano, “Quantum Artificial Life in an IBM Quantum Computer“, Nature, Scientific Reports volume 8, Article number: 14793 (2018) – Published: 04 October 2018.
Biamonte Jacob, Peter Wittek, Nicola Pancotti, Patrick Rebentrost, Nathan Wiebe & Seth Lloyd, “Quantum machine learning“, Nature volume 549, pages 195–202, 14 September 2017; revised 10 May 2018 arXiv:1611.09347v2.
Degen, C. L., F. Reinhard, P. Cappellaro, “Quantum sensing“, Submitted on 8 Nov 2016 (v1), last revised 6 Jun 2017 (this version, v2), arXiv:1611.02427v2 – quant-ph.
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