(ZDNet) ZDNet Senior Editor Scott Fulton III provides comprehensive coverage of IQT Europe’s sessions and speakers who discussed the need for and development of the quantum internet to provide security for digital communications systems at risk in the era of quantum computing.
NOTE: Fulton’s text is summarized here; the complete source article is in-depth and worth the time for those interested in the quantum internet as well as post-quantum security.
Fulton quotes individual speakers’ presentation at length and provides thoughtful, editorial commentary as well.
Bruno Huttner, who directs strategic quantum initiatives for Geneva, Switzerland-based ID Quantique is cited. “The quantum threat is basically going to destroy the security of networks as we know them today. A quantum-safe solution can come in two very different aspects. One is basically using classical [means] to address the quantum threat. The other is to fight quantum with quantum, and that’s what we at ID Quantique are doing most of the time.”
Mathias Van Den Bossche, who directs research into telecommunications and navigation systems for orbital satellite components producer Thales Alenia Space, said “I don’t see why you need a quantum computer to operate a quantum information network. Basically the tasks will be rather simple.” Van Den Bossche’s speculation is not meant to imply that quantum networking could be leveraged to bind together conventional, electronic computers. Quantum networks are only for quantum computers. But if he’s correct, the problem of interfacing a classical computer to a QC’s memory system, and communicating large quantities of data over such a system, may be solvable without additional quantum components, which would otherwise make each connected QC more volatile.
Professor Stephanie Wehner of Delft University, who leads the Quantum Internet Initiative at the Dutch private/academic partnership QuTech stated in her Keynote, “Ultimately, in the future, we would like to make entanglement available for everyone. This means enabling quantum communications ultimately between local quantum processors anywhere on Earth. Yu should be imagining you have a very simple quantum device — a quantum terminal, if you wish,” she explained, “and you use a quantum Internet to access a remote quantum computer in the cloud, [so] you can perform, for example, a simulation of a proprietary material in such a way that the cloud hosting provider who has the quantum computer cannot find out what your material design actually is.”
Fulton also lists and describes the hurdles to creating a quantum Internet:
Classical control systems
Quantum transducers
Single photon-emitting qubits
Quantum memory systems
Available fiber
Lasers