In our prior The World’s Most Disruptive Technology (That No One Is Talking About) post we portrayed the promise and peril of a potent new gene-altering technology.
Since our CRISPR post, we’ve been tracking another technology development equally deserving of legal scrutiny, due to it’s potential to “change everything” according to one prominent thinker who knows a thing about disruptive technology. However, unlike CRISPR’s promise to fundamentally alter the basic structures of human life (i.e. our genes), the promise of what we’re about to reveal will alter the basic structures of modern computing.
Deep dive with me, if you dare, into the subzero world of quantum computers.
How Cold Is Quantum Computing?
Imagine a computer so powerful it could instantly crack any level of data encryption.
U.S. stealth technology? Obsolete.
Financial institution and government infrastructure firewalls? Hacked.
Payments systems security, including blockchain based “trust platforms” that store billions of dollars of cryptocurrencies, like BitCoin? Poof!
IT security as we now know it would be rendered meaningless overnight.
Still unimpressed? What about a device giving you x-ray vision, allowing you to see through steel walls, into the deepest depths of the ocean and space, or to even predict geopolitical events before they occur, including preventing future terrorist attacks?
This is a small sampling of what will likely be possible in this decade thanks to the advent of “quantum computers” – a technological tsunami that’s been steadily building over the past several years and is just about ready for landfall.
How Quantum “Changes Everything”
Quantum computing “changes everything” by fundamentally changing how computers process data.
Today, computers process data “linearly”. Think 1s and 0s. The smallest unit of data, called the “bit,” can only be one or the other. This means traditional computers solve problems by processing all potential solutions before eventually selecting the best one. It’s how the artificially intelligent Deep Blue eventually defeated chess champion Gary Kasparov – by thinking through each move sequentially and then mathematically choosing the best one. Kasparov called it “Type A” or brute force thinking.
The quantum computers of tomorrow will soon replace the smallest unit of data with what’s called a “qubit.” Critically, and much unlike the rigidity of their inflexible 1 or 0 bit predecessors, qubits exist as both a 1 and a 0 simultaneously. Like an undecided voter, they exist in multiple states at the same time, which as one physicist explained allows quantum computers to complete a million computations at once, whereas current computers can only complete one at a time.
Qubits help “free up” computers from the confines of linear thinking, empowering them to make complex computations faster than most can comprehend. Using the chess example, a Deep Blue powered by quantum computing would “see” every single move on the chessboard and generate the best one instantly – this as opposed to having to “think through” each potential next move before selecting (i.e. brute force). For lawyers, it’s like understanding every single case in the entire law library and knowing the best one for your client, but without having to actually read each one individually to get there.
How this all works “technically” gets ever weirder – and slightly alien.
To physically ensure the qubits remain in neither a 1 nor a 0 state (what physicists call “coherence”), they must be contained within the confines of enormous, cryogenically cooled computing structures that look like something you might accidentally plunge into after being chased around Cloud City by Boba Fett. And just how cold are these cryogenically cooled qubits, Mr. Solo? Zero. Kelvin. For the non-chemistry majors, that equates to the temperature of deep space or approximately – 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
Quantum computers are therefore, literally, not of our world.
The Battle Is On for Quantum Supremacy
Keeping all those pesky qubits stable at a brisk zero Kelvin is a feat fit for only a few financially capable actors.
On the private sector side, IBM recently announced it’s IBM Q Network – a worldwide community dedicated to advancing quantum computing and practical applications with 100+ start ups now participating. Microsoft is also getting out in front of the quantum wave, giving software coders a jump on quantum computing through a new “Q#” coding language housed on an open source quantum platform called “Katas.” Google is also an early adopter – in 2017 the WSJ reported Google’s quantum computer could disrupt everything from science and medicine to national security.
China is also a strong contender and, increasingly, a favorite for quantum supremacy. According to a recent American Affairs report, China recently announced an $11 billion, four-million-square-foot national quantum laboratory in the city of Heifei, as well as quantum research partnerships with Alibaba and completion of a secure ground-to-space quantum communications network.
In the USA, NASA is now up and running experiments on the Canadian D-WaveX2 quantum computer said to be 100,000,000 times faster than traditional computers. Russia is also in the game, causing U.S. foreign policy experts to sound the alarm on the potential outbreak of a quantum “arms race” – similar to the nuclear arms race of the Cold War Era. Some are calling for a Manhattan Project effort in quantum computing to counter what one national security expert calls the potential for “1,000 Equifax hacks happening all at once.” Former NSA director Michael Hayden recently predicted quantum computers will “reshape digital battlefields,” as whomever eventually wins the race to quantum will control the future of information security and, ostensibly, the future of the Internet and all of humanity along with it.
It short – quantum computers are real deal disruptors. Similar to CRISPR, and the qubits upon which they are based, the quantum future exists suspended in both a terrific and terrifying state at the same time.
Why Are We Even Doing This – And Why Should Lawyers Care?
According to futurist and physicist Michio Kaku, quantum computers will be the ultimate computers, and “give us the ability to exceed human intelligence.” They, along with CRISPR, may help us to one day cure cancers and end wars. This is, however, assuming we get them right. Like any serious bet, the rewards of a new technology are as big as the underlying risks. Getting these technologies wrong, therefore, could quite possibly mean GAME OVER for us all.
As lawyers, our profession is built on this idea of harnessing intelligence to not merely promote the self-interests of our clients, but to also promote forward-thinking policies that are generally good and just for society as whole. More and more, it’s looking like the future will mandate a deeper understanding by legal professionals of the fundamentals of new technologies like CRIPSR and quantum computing if we are to have any hope of designing appropriate regulations to guide their success.
Tragically, but hopefully not catastrophically, the knowledge gap between the entities that are now “heads down” working on these magical new technologies, and the legal experts or so-called policymakers tasked with regulating them, has become so wide that it’s nearly impossible for lawmakers to get out in front of the negative consequences, making missteps all the more likely to occur.
The recent “Cambridge Analytica” saga is a fresh example of this type of retroactive policy-making. Technologists invent new technology for good. Policymakers ignore new technology. Bad actors come to understand new technology, exploiting it for bad. Policymakers continue to ignore said new technology. Society suffers. Policymakers finally seek to understand new technology.
As lawyers – we can and should play a more active role in helping to break the negative feedback loop caused by this type of retroactive introspection and after-the-fact legislation. Things will only get worse as the technological stakes increase, as shown in this two-part series. Society will bounce back from this Facebook stuff. The future will see bigger breaches, bigger hacks and bigger trolls. Facebook will likely bounce back too, possibly in a different form.
I’m not as confident, however, that the same will be said for a society that somehow fumbles CRISPR or quantum computing shortly after the start. They can and should be taken as seriously as the nukes.
Lastly, it’s not in the job descriptions of the scientists, researchers and engineers working each day on the wonders of these new technologies to also, in their spare time, pen the laws that will eventually govern them all. Their job is to be “heads down” on making it happen, so we can all reap the rewards of their technical work.
As lawyers, it’s our job – and quite possibly our ethical duty – to have our “heads up” on disruptive new technologies like CRISPR and quantum computing. It falls on us to think through and decide the role these new technologies will play in our society.
If not, the quantum computers will surely decide it for us.
Ian Connett, Esq. (@QuantumJurist) is the Founder of QuantumJurist, Inc., a LegalTech consulting and technology venture dedicated to improving and creating efficiencies in the legal services industry. Ian is also a Contributing Editor to the EvolveTheLaw.com Legal Innovation Center and Host of the Evolve the Law Podcast. Ian resides in New York, where he has served as an in-house counsel to numerous technology companies. You can connect with Ian on Twitter and LinkedIn and you can reach him by email at [email protected] (for story ideas, personal correspondence, media inquires or speaking engagements).