After taking equity stakes in chipmakers and rare-earth element miners, the Trump administration has a new industry on its radar: quantum computing. On Thursday, the Department of Commerce announced that it was investing more than $2 billion in nine quantum computing companies. In turn, it’ll receive “a minority, non-controlling equity stake” in each. Quantum computers are an emerging technology that works on the subatomic level with the potential to significantly disrupt many industries. While scientists have developed some working quantum computers, the technology is still far from reaching its full potential. Researchers claim that a hypothetical, full-fledged quantum computer would be much faster than classical computers and go beyond existing human knowledge on how nature behaves. That means these computers could hypothetically usher in breakthroughs in medicine that would have taken humans perhaps decades to solve. But it also comes with risks. Cybersecurity experts and the entire crypto industry worry that quantum computers could break all cryptographic security and threaten online security and the financial system, a doomsday scenario often referred to as Q-Day.
There is significant disagreement on when that feared Q-Day will come. Earlier this year, Google speculated that the time could come as early as 2029, but some experts claim that it is still decades away. The Department of Commerce said in a press release on Thursday that the decision was spurred by quantum computing’s potential for breakthroughs in advanced materials, biopharmaceutical discovery, financial modeling, and energy systems, and for its “significant implications for national defense.”
