Imagine a computer solving the mathematical problems that today’s fastest supercomputers can’t begin to unlock, in less than a blink of an eye. Imagine a technology that can enable an observer to see through walls, or see into the darkest depths of the world’s oceans. Imagine a technology that can build essentially unhackable global networks, while rendering an antagonist’s most secret data instantly transparent.

 

All these are characteristics of quantum computers and quantum technology, which will define the future of global information technology for decades, possibly centuries, to come. It represents a revolution as profound as any in modern history, and it’s one on which we stand at the brink, with all its promise—and its perils.

 

The twentieth century saw humanity unleash and harness the almost unimaginable power of the atom, and so launch a new era in human history, the Nuclear Age. Now we are witnessing the birth of a new era in information technology based on the power of quanta. In the Quantum Age, computers will draw their computational capability from the complex and counterintuitive principles of quantum mechanics, which may transform the world almost as decisively as the Nuclear Age did.

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