Are you one of those people who still has a PC at home? Those who had a PC 10 or 15 years ago may have evolved their technology to get a laptop, but PCs still have a sizeable market. If you had a PC or still do, it’s probably got Windows or a MacBook OS, a keyboard, a screen and a mouse that you’d use to write, research, watch YouTube videos, play games on Miniclip or do other work.
Then, there’s this thing called a “quantum computer”. It’s said to be like a regular computer, but way cooler and way smarter. If your regular PC was on a chessboard moving only a square at a time and thinking just one move ahead, a quantum computer would be like Viswanathan Anand, if he could move anywhere on the chessboard with all his pieces, think of a million scenarios at the same time and have the best strategy in seconds.
If quantum computers are this cool, no wonder governments and companies may be scrambling to win the quantum computer race. If even the most leviathan security system out there could be useless or vulnerable in front of a quantum computer, big reason to worry. Someone could discover the medicines in days, instead of years with this system. Someone else could know when the stock market crashes way before it actually happens. Basically, the quantum computer is if the regular PC took NZT from that Bradley Cooper movie. Sometimes, a regular PC just can’t compete, when it comes to solving insanely difficult problems.
But, of course, with all that power and potential, a quantum computer is said to be much bigger than your compact PC and they require super-cold environments. So grab your Gore-Tex, George Costanza.
Does the everyday startup need a quantum computer? Maybe, that’d be overkill, but a lot of problems might be solved for a fledgling venture. A Zerodha-esque FinTech startup could analyze all the moving pieces at once, predict how the prices will move and find hidden patterns. Someone with that power – forget predicting the market, they’d outright dominate the whole thing. Or a cybersecurity startup with a quantum computer would develop quantum-level encryption that no human or AI cracker could crack. Or it may be able to create the kind of security system that would predict any cyberattack before it happens. This is a great time to make the Machine from Person Of Interest a lived reality. Banks, governments, militaries: their most sensitive and embarrassing data would be kept safe and secure. Financial systems inoculated and nuclear codes well protected. That’s Grade A security. Or if you were a D2C with a quantum computer, you would kill it with your delivery routes, predict where all the traffic jams would occur & save millions in fuel and lost time.
So, how close is the world to actually getting a quantum computer? In late 2024, China was said to have unveiled something called the Tianyan-504. That sounds an awful lot like that one incident DeepSeek can’t talk about that happened close to 40 years ago. Tianyan-504 is said to be China’s most advanced quantum computer. Does the “504” mean this is the 504th iteration? Because that’s a lot of iterations.
“Nathan For You” had an episode that explored what it would be like to have 40 maids in one house cleaning the place, which could mean a house could be cleaned up in less than 10 minutes. A lot of companies are trying to get 40 maids to do things quicker, but Tianyan-504 might have figured out how to get 100 maids to clean a house, which means the place could be cleaned up in a minute. Basically, the brain chip of the Chinese supercomputer is a bit faster. Before, US’ IBM was said to be the key leader in quantum computing, but if China’s claim is correct, it might have outperformed IBM’s key performance benchmarks.
Of course, quantum computing may still be in its infancy. Does all this quantum jargon make you embody Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man, “Do you folks just put the word ‘quantum’ in front of everything?” Is India doing anything about it? Sure, India has somewhat of a thriving IT sector, but quantum computing might be another ballgame, unfortunately. That being said, India has something called “The National Quantum Mission” approved in April 2023 with a total outlay of about ₹6000 crores over 8 years. That might sound like a lot of money, but it might still be a fraction of China’s investment in this realm. Are we suddenly going to focus more on this space? Is India ready for a quantum startup ecosystem?
Our UPI and other digital payment systems might rely on classic encryption. So do platforms, like WhatsApp. Could quantum computing penetrate it all? In case China wins the quantum computing race, should other countries worry or is that too nefarious a thought?
Is it time for India to leapfrog into the quantum era? Either for the sake of security or for innovation’s sake.
What would you want to find out if you had a supercomputer in front of you?
