Dimitri Kusnezov, the Undersecretary for Science and Technology at the Department of Homeland Security, is interviewed by Yuval Boger. Dimitri and Yuval spoke about why the DHS is interested in quantum, the particular types of quantum products that might be useful for their mission, export controls, how vendors can work with the DHS on quantum, and much more.
Transcript
| Yuval Boger: | Hello, Dimitri, and thank you so much for joining me today. |
| Dr. Dimitri Kusnezov: | My pleasure, Yuval. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is quantum mechanics. |
| Yuval: | So, who are you and what do you do? |
| Dimitri: | So, I’m the Undersecretary for Science and Technology here at the Department of Homeland Security. The department is the third largest federal agency. It’s largely a law enforcement organization. It covers a lot of very familiar operations that you’ve heard about from the Coast Guard and Secret Service to TSA and FEMA and a number of other ones as well, Customs and Border Protection and ICE and so forth. And part of the challenge that I have is in this changing world, whether it’s from emerging technologies that provide opportunities at risk or whether from the changing climate, our role is to first align opportunities to do our mission better where we actually have operational responsibilities. And the second is to look beyond the horizon and say, “What else could we do to make this job easier to be better prepared for the future and what’s coming that will impact the homeland?” Because the mission of the agency is something we all care about. It’s about protecting the homeland, our people, and our values. |
| Yuval: | And I think most people would say, “Yes, that’s probably a good thing. ” So whatever we can do to help meet that is important to us and technology is a huge part of that. How does Quantum fit into that? And I think that most people, when they think about Quantum, they hear, “Oh, it’s going to break the financial encryption system and cause havoc this way. ” But is the DHS focus on quantum, or is it primarily communication and security? Is it also computing? How does quantum fit into the future of DHS? |
| Dimitri: | Quantum comes with its own mystique. It is by its nature nonintuitive. When you learn quantum mechanics, you simply learn a small handful of rules that you accept as true. And if you do, you’re off and running and you can do whatever you want. And so the impacts of those rules and how we look at the opportunities of quantum mechanics is by its nature obscure. It lives in a space that is not intuitive to any of us. And we’ve seen that in history and how it came to be. And so the opportunities are equally obscure. And so it takes people who understand quantum mechanics, it takes people who understand kind of the challenges that we have, the opportunities that are out there. And there is kind of this match that has to happen. For me, as I look at our missions, what I like about quantum systems is their remarkable ability to detect small signals, and the extremely high sensitivity you can have. We see that these days with atomic clocks and atomic precision. So we have a sense that in timing, okay, yeah, we can have really great clocks. Of course, when we think about position navigation and timing, the history of timekeeping and then how it’s tied to navigation, and how we live in a post-GPS world, timing, position, and navigation are important for a lot of our missions as well. where things are, where you are, and what time it is, makes a lot of difference as we patrol the Arctic or monitor the southern border. There are a lot of places where awareness is important and finding ways to do it that could be more aligned with the future is one thing. In cybersecurity, of course, in communications and computing, across the board, there are really interesting applications of quantum that we do look at and try and evaluate whether they are aligned with the kinds of problems we have. And because it’s kind of this wide-open frontier of people innovating, it’s an exciting time to see what people are thinking and trying to create from a 100-year-old theory that is well-defined, well-understood, but just it’s now being applied in these remarkably interesting ways. |
| Yuval: | Quantum is one of these technologies that if it falls into the wrong hands, it could create undesirable results, shall we say. How do you feel about export controls for quantum technology? I know that when I speak with vendors, this is a topic that often comes up and they sort of try to avoid it and say, “Oh no, talk to the government about that ” You are the government. How do you feel about export controls? |
| Dimitri: | Well, first I think, you know, there is no secret to quantum mechanics again, being developed fairly globally more than a century ago, taught in every college around the world. There are people everywhere versed in what it is and how to apply it. And when you look at the scientific literature, it is equally global. And when you look at the technology development, consequently, the expertise being global, you find innovation happening equally globally. So there isn’t a simple way to say, well, you know, there are control points of innovation or technologies here. But with any technology development, as you start to figure out specific applications that might be things we want to implement into government, into homeland security or national security, then being more protective to ensure that what we’re doing is protected so that we can do these missions is everyone’s interest in this country. And so there are places where I think it will be open, where you can’t really export control it. But I think as you get to higher TRL, as you realize and work your way through the engineering aspects of trying to do something specific or a specific application, there you might want to guard the IP, the intellectual property, a little bit more. But again, the foundational understanding is not new, it’s out there, and everyone has it. So there is no secret in the approach, but in trying to realize a specific technology, then it gets into the details. And there are a lot of hardships in engineering quantum systems because of their sensitivities, because of the environments they have to operate that may need some degree of protection. But that’s a case by case thing. |
| Yuval: | We spoke a little bit about the various applications of quantum, whether in sensing or in other areas. What is the best way for companies to suggest new approaches and new applications for the DHS? |
| Dimitri: | I think you hit on a really good topic right now for a number of reasons. One thing we don’t have at DHS broadly is the equivalent of the defense industrial space, a community of performers that support the Department of Defense and a lot of those missions. There is a natural community of work there that they can turn to use. So DHS, the Homeland Security space, does not have the benefit of such an ecosystem. A lot of our needs are more boutique, and we have consequently not the same type of bench depth in terms of performers. It is important to us to figure out how to cultivate that, and I think nontraditional ways of trying to innovate and partner will be part of this, but it’s important to our current secretary, and it’s certainly important to me, that we try and engage innovators, small and large companies in this space to try and create the right kinds of partnerships to focus work on things that could be important to us. So we’re trying to open the door right now, which is supported by having conversations with you and kind of the ecosystem that you engage with to say that, look, we’re open the conversations, we need them to happen. Please come and talk with us or have us come and talk with you. And let’s see if we can figure out the best way to think about this future. But there isn’t really a natural way to plug in otherwise. I think we’re in a create mode right now to figure out how do we develop this right tech ecosystem for Homeland Security missions. |
| Yuval: | I think that DHS is about quarter of a million people and I think people interact with them every day, whether at TSA checkpoints or others. How do you as the science and technology undersecretary get people excited about quantum in such a large organization that at least doesn’t appear to be all that deep tech as maybe some of the other branches of government? |
| Dimitri: | I think it’s not so much about getting the operational side, the law enforcement side, excited about quantum. It’s trying to work at least with their technology people and all of the operational elements have some technology footprint, but they largely look to us for shaping the future and identifying these opportunities. I think it’s up to us to find what is real and what is not real in terms of real operational use cases to test and evaluate them in partnership with those who ultimately will own the risk in using these in the field. And so getting them excited about something which is aspirational is not a good use of their time. They need to focus on what they’re doing and we’re not going to distract them from that. But as we try and understand what we could realize in this space, we will draw them in as we try and productize or commoditize different ideas in ways that could be put into operational use. And so along that path, they will come in and hopefully then get excited as they see the value-add. But I think you’re right, it is a hard sell initially because no one’s got the bandwidth. Screening the number of people we screen or bring into ports of entry, at the port of Long Beach we get about six million containers a year. There’s just nothing but traffic and volume that we deal with. And if you’re worried about migration and people coming through the southern border, talking to them about quantum mechanics is probably not going to be a good use of anyone’s time. But if you had a solution for them that had functionally valuable operational use cases that can help them and it involves quantum, then you’ll get their attention. So it’s a process. At the end of the day, anything that helps them de-risk their mission will be important. And it’s for us at S&T to figure out how to do that. |
| Yuval: | We see that governments in Europe are investing billions in all flavors of quantum. And that leads me to two questions. One is, how do you feel the US government is matching up to that? Is the US behind or ahead in terms of quantum investments? And secondly, as you look at your peers in sort of the European equivalent of DHS, do you see innovative uses for quantum technologies that may need replication or could merit replication in the US? |
| Dimitri: | So the first question, so I’ve been involved in kind of the federal side aspect, the executive branch aspects of quantum over the years, over the last couple of administrations. And we were mobilizing in the early 2010s with the recognition that other countries, especially the Europeans, were ahead. And we saw that in many ways. The UK placed their bets early on in creating these technology development centers. I think it was five centers initially, housed at universities, with a focus on commercializing quantum technologies in different areas. And they started with a five-year tranche of money, which was visible. A couple of years later, the Europeans, and I did go to their announcements of that, I I don’t remember, it’s like 2015 timeframe of their multi-year plan on how to bring the EU into the future. And at that time, we were still trying to figure out how to mobilize in the US. We had all the federal agencies that did science work. I was at the energy department at the time. And we were trying hard to do that. And it took a number of years, but I think finally we’re in a good place. The Canadians were ahead with a number of institutes, some privately funded, that were doing interesting things. And so we were looking across the borders and saying, “Okay, look, we need to get organized here. We need a much more public face. We have to create the technology development footprint that can accompany the deep theoretical expertise and experimental work that is going on in this country.” And I think that’s happened with acts of Congress in recent years, with funding that started to flow. We’re finally in a good place where things are starting to happen. And it’s nice to see so much venture capital in areas I would have never expected. In quantum technologies, if you’d asked me 10 years ago about the amount of venture going into quantum, I would have been surprised to give the amount that is today. It’s like, wow, this is nuts and it’s great, and they are willing to take risks on things that could have huge impact, they’re potentially very high leverage. I like sensors, I like computing, not computing just for cracking codes, I like quantum in terms of quantum simulators and trying to understand how systems behave because there’s still a lot of mystery in these systems. And the more we understand, the more exploits we’re going to have. Lasers were a remarkable innovation based on quantum technologies, fusion and fission, of course, transistors. There have been so many transformational things that have emerged because of the nature of quantum mechanics. And we have far more to learn. And the fact that there are so many more people thinking about this today is important. I’m not sure exactly where to place our bets because a lot of these are still experimental, not robust enough to deploy in a field into harsh environments with longevity, to do extensive missions. But I do see the promise, you know, if you could use it for inertial navigation, I would love to see that. There are centers doing that. Exquisite sensors, gravimetry, gravimetry is interesting. You can shield radiation, you can’t shield mass. Consequently, exquisite sensors that can detect what’s in cargo containers and do tomography would be wonderful. I mean, there are a lot of things that, boy, if we could just push this a little more and operationalize, this could really be transformative. And so, yeah, a lot of things that get me excited, but all of them face interesting engineering challenges. And I’m excited by the number of people stepping up to try and attack these. It’s really a great moment. |
| Yuval: | As we get close to the end of our conversation today, you mentioned excited. I want to look at the other side. From a quantum perspective, what keeps you up at night? I mean, I know there are many other things that are unrelated to quantum. Are you worried that someone’s going to come up with a computer that’s going to break the financial services encryption all of a sudden, are you worried about something else? |
| Dimitri: | There’s no end to people’s malicious use of technology to promulgate their own goals and it’s not quantum specific. It is part of the spectrum of human behaviors, whether it is adversarial cyber or emerging equally is adversarial AI now something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. Quantum will be no different in that, yes, there is a side there that I do worry about. It comes with all emerging technologies. It is not unique to quantum, but is on the spectrum of things. It is one of the things that, yep, we have to pay attention to this. It’s the dark side of emerging technologies when matched with human intent can have consequences that we can’t simply not prepare for. So yeah, not quantum specific, but broadly, yes. It’s part of the pool of things that you would hope people are thinking about somewhere. |
| Yuval: | And last, a hypothetical, if you could have dinner with one of the quantum greats dead or alive, who would that be? |
| Dimitri: | Boy, that’s a that’s an interesting question. You know, there are people who have contributed to this in so many different ways. And you almost have to choose a flavor. You roll back the clock too much and you think about Schrodinger or Heisenberg or de Broglie or others, you know, Planck or Bohr. They all had their particular point of view and their theoretical approach or maybe Dirac. But I would probably find someone more recent because it took so many years to get the apparent disagreements of even the matrix approach and the wave approach and the particle wave. It took so many years for people to reconcile different belief systems of what it could be that was explaining what was measured. Someone who has abstracted that and can reflect more, I don’t know. I’ve read some of the papers and positions of Oppenheimer, for example, which I found interesting in his kind of later in life reflections on some of the aspects here. I certainly found that interesting. He might be on the short list, but it’s probably in that era of people who were able to synthesize all of these different branches that eventually led to what we understand today. And so maybe it’s 1950s era people, 50s to 60s that might be more interesting as the newer minds that struggled and reflected on that churn, the intellectual churn that burned through generations of thinkers struggling with what we eventually ended up with a handful of small rules, believe this, test it if you want, but it’s true, you know, and if you accept that you’re good. And so I think it’s probably, you know, not a specific name, but maybe an era of thinkers that I might turn to that. But great question. Now I’m going to have to think about it this weekend and try and figure out, okay, what’s a good answer to that question. |
| Yuval: | That’s very interesting. Dr. Kusnezov, thank you so much for joining me today. |
| Dimitri: | Oh, thanks a lot Yuval, this was great. Always happy to talk about quantum anytime |
Yuval Boger is the chief marketing officer for QuEra, a leader in neutral atom quantum computers. Known as the “Superposition Guy” as well as the original “Qubit Guy,” he can be reached on LinkedIn or at this email.
May 8, 2023
