(AustralianDefence) Australia leads the world in some areas of quantum technologies and this interview features insights from Professor Gavin Brennen, Director of Macquarie University’s Centre for Quantum Engineering.
Professor Brennen explained that with advances in quantum computing any and all previously encrypted sensitive communications (from government and military secrets to bank transactions) can potentially be compromised. ‘Old’ but sensitive information regarding military deployments, installations or locations of missile silos for instance, can still be relevant and help adversaries piece together their intelligence map. Commercial secrets, intellectual property (IP), designs, bank transactions will also all be vulnerable. At the moment quantum cryptography is the only proven way to do that, but there is a big push to develop more secure classical codes called post-quantum cryptography, Prof Brennen explains.
other quantum technologies, an exciting development Prof Brennen and his team are working on is a gravimeter. A gravimeter is a very sensitive sensor which can detect change in the gravitational field. These gravimeters could be deployed on aircraft (or, in the future, satellites) to detect deep underground bunkers, missile silos, or indeed any cavity –without the adversary knowing it has been detected.
Australia Advances in Quantum Computing for Communication and Sensing
