The race to make the first quantum computer is becoming as important as the race 75 years ago to get the first nuke. It could change the balance of power in politics and business.
Quantum computers have long been theoretically possible but a kind of futuristic fantasy, like Interstellar-style wormhole travel, or zero-calorie Hershey Bars. I first wrote in the 1990s about the quest for one. Now breakthroughs are coming faster, and scientists say we’re 15 to 20 years away from fully functional, programmable quantum computers.
This technology will make the microprocessor in your laptop seem as sophisticated as a booger. The silicon-based technology inside today’s computers, which engineers have constantly made faster and cheaper for five decades, is running out of ways to get better. Quantum computers will herald, well, a quantum leap—like riding a horse one day and getting into a fighter jet the next. These machines will be millions of times more powerful than today’s fastest supercomputers, solving problems that now elude solving, like dead-on accurate weather prediction or modeling protein molecules for medical research.
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