The Low-Hanging Fruit of Experience

by Amara Graps

We are in an era of quantum technology roadmaps. Typically, national strategy goals set the direction with a budget, then those government entities develop roadmaps by engaging stakeholders, who recommend practical and justified steps to achieve those goals. Up to 2024, quantum initiatives have been announced by at least twenty-nine government entities for a total of $58B. See the next figure with funding quantities. 

While quantum roadmaps are being developed all over the world, I urge the roadmap managers to engage the low-hanging fruit of those persons and entities with quantum technology experience. My cautionary tale comes from the Canadian roadmap process. Let’s start with the good news.

Engage your Community with Questions. Then Use their Answers.

The first is what I refer to as a “Master Class” in Quantum Community Engagement. The QEYSSat 2.0 study was superb. I wrote about that team in a previous article here.

A White Paper with a Roadmap for a satellite-enabled, nationwide, quantum network was the primary outcome of the Canadian QEYSSat 2.0 study, which also involved the stakeholder community. After the initial project work, on February 15, 2022, a virtual workshop with a total of 91 attendees was held to address questions and answers, pertaining to the following subjects of quantum communication: 

1. Applications (section 6.1),
2. Architectures (section 6.2), and 
3. Critical Technologies (part 6.3). 

The white paper included chapters on these subjects, to which the workshop participants contributed. If you are a quantum satellite roadmap developer for your community, you will find 26 useful questions and potential answers to support your roadmap using community inputs. 

This style of question and answer can even go deeper, for example, to generate science knowledge gaps that focus the community on solving particular, challenging problems.  The skills gained from this process is knowledge that can be exported to other countries, to help them get over the roadmap hump too. 

Since the QEYSSat 2.0 project kicked off in June 2021, and concluded in March 2022, the timing of this study was in parallel to the country’s development of its National Quantum Strategy (NQS), which utilized extensive consultations with 200 experts and stakeholders in Canada. QEYSSat, and Canada’s quantum communication strengths are described in the NQS. But the deep well of quantum satellite experts were missed in subsequent NQS roadmap evelopment. That’s the bad news.

When Experienced Stakeholders Are Missed

For the next step of Canada’s roadmap, we saw a glimpse of the process from Michael Rosenblatt, Director of the Federal Science and Technology Policy (FSTP) Directorate, at the Quantum World Congress 2024. The first steps of a Canadian NQS Roadmap is the 283-page, Quantum Potential, Ottawa (ON): Expert Panel on the Responsible Adoption of Quantum Technologies, November 30, 2023, by the CCA (Council of Canadian Academies). 

Of QEYSSat and the QKD technology, the criticisms from the authors of Quantum Potential are many. Examples:

• “QKD is theoretically more secure than QRC, but real-world evidence, testing, and standards for both are lacking”
• “In the near term, most efforts to strengthen the security of communications against decryption by quantum computers will likely prioritize classically based quantum-resistant cryptography (QRC)”
• “There has been relatively little uptake of QKD outside of government-supported testing, research institutes, and telecommunications providers.”
• “While Quantum-resistant cryptography is likely to become more widely available in the near term, its adoption in Canada’s health sector may take some time, given that a significant amount of health data in Canada are still transmitted by fax machine.”

Here we see those experienced stakeholders, and perhaps, not enough experienced Quantum Potential analysts, were missing. How I might answer:

• The QEYSSat 2.0 White paper with the inputs of nearly 100 Stakeholders is not included in the references.
• The QEYSSat project’s primary QKD technology to be developed (currently at TRL 6) is downplayed. 
• QKD is an established (30+years) technology, and the easiest quantum technology to adopt, with ITU standards already developed and in process.
• Yielding to a 4-year-old report from the USA NSA, who are less experienced in the QKD domain, and a report which has been refuted by international experts is problematic.
• Not accounting for the quantum technologies’ steady progress and criticizing for ‘lack of uptake’ today is unreasonable.
• Using a dated reference from 2017 for justifications in 20 different quantum technology statements in a pre-Roadmap review is problematic. The quantum technology field is very different from 7 years ago.  
• Of the Fax comment, any industry that doesn’t include the Internet, is decades overdue for a technology upgrade, regardless. 

Of other quantum technology areas, Canada is the country which produced the first commercial quantum computer, the D-Wave quantum annealer. Today it is -the- company that has produced the most Use Cases; there are at least 215. The comments from the authors of Quantum Potential appear to have missed this vast experience in their own backyard, as well. Quote:

“Indeed, while there are many practical applications for fault tolerant, error-corrected quantum computers, “practical applications for NISQ computers do not currently exist” (NASEM, 2019).

So, the Lessons Learned is to pay particularly close attention to those with experience in your backyard, you’ll need them in the Roadmap process. Quantum Technology is a field that is simultaneously fast-moving, yet steady, incremental progress, a long view perspective, but with surprising advances around every corner, that can provide your country with new skills to upscale your society. 

(*) We wrote an article on GQI’s Quantum Ecosystem analysis tool here. The tool operates on a principle of Exploration to follow ‘what-if’ scenarios, with immediate feedback to learn what are your country’s strengths and weaknesses, which can help you in your Roadmap building. 

(**) This Strategy Playbook is available in the Member’s area for GQI customers. GQI Offers six Playbooks for exploration: Quantum Computing Playbook, Hardware Supply Chain Playbook, Ecosystem Playbook, Investor Playbook, China Playbook, Strategy Playbook. If you are interested, please don’t hesitate to contact [email protected].

November 3, 2024