Analysis suggests that China’s vigorous development of quantum computers and quantum satellite-supported communications networks will give China’s intelligence reconnaissance and secrecy capabilities a quantum leap forward. At the same time, China’s reliance on satellites for its quantum communications network may also give the two countries an impetus to cooperate in the space sector.
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) published a report on quantum computing and national security in late April, saying that U.S. national security defenses could become vulnerable if U.S. adversaries gain a quantum computing capability advantage before U.S. cyber defenses can be upgraded.
And just recently, Jeremy Fleming, head of the British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), said in a public speech on April 23 that quantum computing is posing a potential risk to Western nations, whose adversaries could use it to undermine modern encryption technologies.
That means we need to get ahead of the curve – we need to design quantum-resistant algorithms, and we need to design cybersecurity methods that protect against quantum technology in order to be ready for the future,” he said. Some adversaries may later use quantum computers to turn around and work on things we now consider secure, and we need to be ready for that.”
“Ultra-cracking” and “absolute security”: the pros and cons of quantum-technology-based encryption
The concerns of the U.S., Britain and other Western countries reflect the transformative impact of quantum technology on both the “offensive” and “defensive” sides of national security and intelligence work.
On the “offensive” side, quantum computing represents the computing power that is threatening the existing traditional cryptographic system, a judgment that is already the consensus of major cryptographic countries.
Tom Stefanick, a military and intelligence technologist and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that technologically sophisticated and powerful quantum computers using quantum algorithms could render information encrypted in traditional mathematical modes invisible in network transmissions.
“Quantum computers are capable of breaking current encryption codes based on mathematical principles rather than physical principles based on number theory.” Using quantum computers, it is expected to be possible to crack today’s encrypted information, which also includes information stored in the past,” Stefaniuk told Voice of America. So breaking encryption affects information already stored as well as data that is currently active.”
This means that, theoretically, if China has the computing power of a quantum computer, it could crack information in rival countries’ networks that it has successfully intercepted but failed to “decode” before.
On Dec. 4 last year, the University of Science and Technology of China announced that it had built a 76-photon quantum computing prototype called “Nine Chapters,” which is 10 billion times faster than Google’s previously designed quantum computer, the Sycamore.
The computing power of both quantum computer projects has been questioned by technical engineering experts. Experts point out that they can not yet be used to solve real-world problems. Stefaniuk says that current quantum computing technology cannot yet be used to crack highly encrypted data, but that such a change is only a matter of time: “My guess is a decade, or two.”
From the perspective of the “keeper” of intelligence secrecy, Stefanik said that as China continues to develop quantum encryption, the U.S. will one day lose access to quantum-encrypted intelligence data from the Chinese side.
He said, “Quantum encryption is fundamentally different from the mathematical encryption we use today because quantum encryption is based on an unbreakable physical principle – it’s physically impossible to break quantum encryption.”
Mozi communication:Quantum key distribution between stars and earth across 4600 km
China is not only surging ahead in the development of quantum computers, but it is also building a quantum communication network that connects heaven and earth and is theoretically impossible to break.
“Information flow is a priority for China when it comes to national security.” Stefaniuk said.
The University of Science and Technology of China announced on Jan. 7 of this year that a Chinese research team had achieved star-ground quantum key distribution across 4,600 kilometers. The official Chinese Communist Party news agency Xinhua reported that this marked the beginning of China’s “integrated wide area quantum communication network between heaven and earth.
The network covers 32 nodes in four provinces and three cities, including four quantum metropolitan networks in Beijing, Jinan, Hefei and Shanghai, and is connected to the world’s first quantum science experimental satellite, Mozi, launched in 2016 through two satellite ground stations, and is currently connected to more than 150 users in the financial, power and government sectors, Xinhua said.
On August 16, 2016, the world’s first quantum satellite was launched in Jiuquan, Gansu Province, China.
This shows China’s determination to take the lead in quantum technology, especially in quantum communications, according to analysts. If China realizes the deployment of this communication network, this will bring a great hardware advantage to China’s intelligence secrecy work.
Stefaniuk said China’s efforts to develop the information transfer technology known as quantum key distribution, or QKD, is absolutely secure from the standpoint of quantum physics.
He said, “China’s effort to create a quantum-secure network, which we really can’t do anything about, is an application of physical principles to Chinese engineering design and infrastructure development.”
Governments invest most in quantum research in China
The AEI report said governments around the world are currently committing $22.5 billion in public funding to quantum technology research and development. Countries with plans to spend more than $1 billion include India, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany and China. Among them, China tops the list with a $10 billion “big spend.
Chinese Communist Party President Xi Jinping told a group study session of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee last year that he would ensure funding for quantum science and technology and provide strong policy support.
In a 2018 interview with MIT Technology Review, Pan Jianwei, China’s leader in quantum science research, said, “At the beginning of the development of modern information science, we were once just followers and learners …… Now we have the opportunity to become leaders.”
China now has more than twice the number of patents than the United States in terms of quantum research. In the fields of quantum communications and cryptography, China’s 2018 patent total exceeds that of the United States, the European Union, Japan and South Korea combined.
Unlike China’s government-led model, the U.S. has previously developed quantum science and technology in a government-private sector partnership model. the AEI report says the U.S. Department of Defense has been conducting research in quantum for decades; the intelligence, and energy departments maintained collaboration with the private sector in quantum technology development in the mid-2010s.
To address quantum-related cryptographic challenges, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been working since 2016 to improve the “quantum-resistant” security of government systems.
In 2018, the U.S. government elevated quantum computing to a strategic imperative. The Trump administration released the National Strategy for Quantum Information Science Overview in 2018. Subsequently, the National Quantum Initiative Act, aimed at accelerating quantum computing research and development, was passed by Congress, which requires Congress to allocate $1.275 billion for the first five years of the 10-year research program.
Abishur Prakash, co-founder of the Toronto, Canada-based Center for Innovating the Future, said quantum science will not only impact geopolitics at the military and intelligence levels, but that increased computing power will affect every aspect of human society.
He said, “So I think in the next five years we’re going to see quantum computing come out of the margins and really come into the spotlight, just like artificial intelligence is today.”
Prakash said AI development and quantum computing go hand in hand: “Because AI requires a lot of raw computing power to process large amounts of data, whether it’s predicting medical diagnoses or modeling data on Wall Street, it requires a lot of computing power, and that computing power will be provided by quantum computers.”
Analysis: Development of China’s quantum communication network depends on space security
Because quantum signals undergo excessive losses in optical fibers, China’s currently maturing QKD technology is mainly based on a combination of satellite platforms and terrestrial fiber-optic networks as a means of quantum communication. Experts say this technological feature may lead to cooperation between the U.S. and China on security in the space sector.
A potentially positive aspect of China’s global development of quantum security networks could lie in the use of secure satellites as this part of its quantum key distribution network, as confirmed in its public demonstrations,” said the Brookings Institution’s Stefanik. This makes the stability of space increasingly relevant to China’s interests, which are in their common interest with the United States.”
It is also very much in the U.S. interest to maintain stability in space in terms of commercial and national security interests, he said. “I think it’s increasingly important for China as well. So there are areas of common interest that have emerged in the course of this quantum competition.”
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