The Biden administration held a conference today focused on quantum technologies as the U.S. government works to head off hacking threats and corner a burgeoning growth industry, Reuters is reporting.
The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is hosting the event. Invitees are expected to be Google, Amazon, ColdQuanta, D-Wave, IonQ, QC Ware, Quantum Economic Development-Consortium, Rigetti Computing, Vector Atomic, Zapata Boeing Co, Honeywell International Inc, International Business Machines Corp, Intel Corp and Northrop Grumman Corp.
According to Reuters, the group twill discuss critical applications of quantum computing.
“There’s a lot of excitement about quantum computers and quantum sensors, and there’s some hype associated with that,” Charlie Tahan, assistant director for quantum information science at OSTP, told Reuters. “But what we really want to get down to: what are the applications that a future quantum computer could run that could really benefit our society.”
The government is increasingly becoming interested in exploring the national security implications of quantum technology, particularly in the field of cybersecurity.
Tahan also told the media outlet that another reason for the conference is to increase the number of students entering quantum and cybersecurity.
Christopher Savoie, founder and CEO of Zapata Computing, who participated and presented at the event, had this to say about the forum:
“This meeting is critical for the quantum ecosystem to converge on where we should focus our collective efforts—not only to build real, near-term quantum applications that benefit society, but also to prepare our American workforce to lead within the global quantum community. Zapata hopes to contribute a lens of what is possible in the next one to three years, and what skillsets are specifically required from creating algorithms to making them work within existing compute architectures. It’s about near-term momentum.”
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