{"id":224997,"date":"2025-10-25T16:27:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T16:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/224997\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T16:27:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T16:27:08","slug":"why-quantum-computing-needs-a-nasa-like-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/224997\/","title":{"rendered":"Why quantum computing needs a NASA-like movement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Citing unnamed sources, The Wall Street Journal reported<\/a> yesterday that the White House is considering taking a stake in several quantum computing companies to share in the upside of the technology. The Commerce Department reportedly says<\/a> it\u2019s not true. Either way, it\u2019s a good opportunity to explain where quantum computing is today.<\/p>\n

University research and private-sector breakthroughs<\/a> have shown that quantum computing is real. But it\u2019s only been proven on a small scale. For quantum computers to be useful, they need to be made a lot bigger. It might be possible to do that today, but it would take billions of dollars \u2014 perhaps hundreds of billions \u2014 to make it happen.<\/p>\n

The private sector, including companies like Google and IBM and startups like PsiQuantum, are working on ways to make scaling the technology practical and cost-effective. Ultimately, it needs to be profitable.<\/p>\n

When a quantum computing company says the technology is here today and generating revenue, it\u2019s most likely being used to solve optimization problems that supercomputers handle pretty well. The quantum computers Google<\/a> and others are talking about would revolutionize science<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If the US government wanted to profit from quantum computing, the way to do it would be to start the quantum equivalent of NASA, with a moon landing-type goal of building an at-scale quantum computer within five years. Of course, the profits would come in the form of tax revenue from the gargantuan long-term economic impact of the project \u2014 not from a spike in stock prices. But quantum computing doesn\u2019t have handsome, church-going astronauts or a giant reminder in the sky every night of why it\u2019s worth so many taxpayer dollars to get there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Citing unnamed sources, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the White House is considering taking a stake…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[2302,90,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-224997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-physics","8":"tag-physics","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}