The question of how quantum computing could impact national security is one that the field has wrestled with ever since the development of Shor’s factoring algorithm, which showed that quantum computers could one day break our currently-used encryption methods. And over the past ~30 years, the development of quantum computers has been supported by a large number of government funding programs.
The pace of advancement has quickened in recent years, as quantum computing continues to move out of the lab and into the world. The science of building large-scale, complex quantum computers has largely been turned into an engineering challenge, with industry generally expected to deliver the first generation of these computers by the end of the decade. This shift, combined with growing academic and commercial investment in use case development, means the next several years will bring major breakthroughs in their value and usefulness.
Against such a backdrop, there’s an increased need for national security leaders to both harness quantum computing’s potential to generate mission impact, and also mitigate its cryptographic threats. In this article, we’ll look at the former, through the lens of the related questions of “How does quantum computing get applied in mission-relevant scenarios?” and “How do I get started getting quantum ready?”
