# Quantum Breakthrough: Likelihood and Impact

- Channel: [DC Fintech Week](https://streameth.org/dc-fintech-week)
- Date: 2025-12-21
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-VVNt0ZS26gY
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVNt0ZS26gY

## Transcript

All right, thanks everyone. I think that we uh are ready to start again. So uh very glad to have you guys here for uh for this uh last panel of the day and it's on quantum breakthrough likelihood and impact. And this is an issue that has been coming up quite a bit throughout the the couple days. I mean, we've been hearing often about about quantum computing, of course, uh, you know, for for something that doesn't exist yet, it's you know, it's a big hot topic and I think that um, you know, [clears throat] as I've was discussing in advance of the panelists, I mean, for an technology that's still at an experimental phase, it's you know, quantum computing is certainly no stranger to the limelight. Um, if quantum computers work, they stand to solve some of the toughest computational problems in finance and beyond. From Monte Carlo simulations to complex optimization and yes, breaking all those uh cryptographic algorithms that keep confidential data safe across the financial system, which I think is a you know, that's that's the context in which we often are hearing about this, you know, uh, you know, what could this mean? What would this mean for security? what would this mean for the crypto sector which as you know the name implies uh is built on cryptography. Um so there are substantial opportunities and huge risks uh from hypothetical future quantum computers uh if only we can get those cubits to work for real life purposes all while cooling them to near 0 degrees Kelvin which I I gather is one of the big hardware challenges that a lot of them are are working with. Uh so you know the questions for this panel broadly are um how likely is a quantum breakthrough to happen in what time frame and for what use cases? Um how can the public sector and private sector best prepare for this world? And most importantly for me do I need to start shredding all of my encrypted information and uh panicking and we'll talk about that aspect of it in a little bit as well. So um I'm very happy to have this panel uh with us today. Um, so I'm going to just uh introduce them uh from uh from uh uh starting on my right. So immediately next to me is Samuel Palmer who is the head of financial engineering and quantum developer at Multiverse Computing. Perhaps one of the cooler firm names uh out there. Uh immediately invokes uh images of of some movies that we're well aware of. Uh one of >> Yes. Um right next to uh Sam we have uh Corey Zaric who's vice president for North America at Apolitical. Uh so Corey and specializes in explaining really tough stuff to uh public sector officials which I think is a very useful skill to have represented on this uh this panel. Uh next to Corey is uh is Taylor Reynolds uh practice manager digital safeguards at the World Bank. So new in the job uh and Tad and I know each other from the past from his work at MIT where he's worked on on cyber issues but now he's relocated from from Boston to here in in DC and is working at the bank. And uh and finally we have Varlam Ibano who is the head of the financial and supervisory technology department at the National Bank of Georgia. We're not talking about the state of Georgia, we're talking about the country of Georgia just to get that out of the way. Uh so very glad to have Varlam here and to get the perspective of uh of a very technology forward country uh and central bank that um have been thinking about these issues and I think add a very useful perspective. So I think we can jump right in and we're going to start with Corey um and uh yeah Corey again you've helped to explain uh complex things including quantum computing in simple terms for wide audiences of public sector officials. So, knowing that the background on these issues varies quite a bit, um how would you define a quantum breakthrough and how will we know it when we see it? >> Well, thanks John and and thanks for having me today. Um so, I'm with Apolitical. We're an organization, a global organization, a network of public servants um that helps governments get smarter on all sorts of topics from AI to quantum computing to um resilience and sustainability and energy in the environment. um just a whole range of topics. Governments touch everything and we need public servants to be uh ready uh for all the things that come our way. Um so we are um we team up with um public servants in 160 countries. We reach about 40 million public servants around the world and um through that we learn a lot about what they are interested in, kind of the level of depth they're looking for when it comes to topics and we really try to to meet public servants kind of where they want to be. Um I'm a former public servant myself. I was deputy chief technology officer of the United States. I also helped to run a team called the US digital service. Um and I left government about a year ago. Um and and so I lived the generative AI moment in time um from those perches. And while of course very smart people in governments are always um ahead of the curve and ready for what's coming our way, the vast majority of public servants can kind of be taken by surprise when it comes to topics like generative AI or now quantum computing. And so and I promise I will get to your question. Um but so as um as public servants who we're talking with are thinking about this topic and and kind of trying to figure out where to begin um they're really just looking for the foundational principles. Um they they're not looking for the the deep technical expertise on on the topic and really want to be sure that they can be prepared for whatever may or may not come our way um and when. And so, uh, we have developed and come see me after if you're interested, a a course, um, on quantum computing, um, free for public servants that is really meant to help public servants kind of get ready and be prepared for that breakthrough moment whenever and whatever it may be. Um, and so I think like that for us at a political, for me as a former public servant, that's really how we think about about quantum, about a quantum event, about a quantum breakthrough. It's about the skills building and the preparedness that we can be doing now that we should be doing now. Um the conversations we should be having, the things we should be learning and and I look to my subject matter experts next to me here um as the folks who who actually have the um the skills in depth to explain these topics to us. Um but so uh for what we should be thinking about as public servants or or policy makers or anyone in the space when it comes to a quantum breakthrough um the short of it is just how how can we b understand the basics so that we can be ready when that moment arises if it does. >> Very good. Thanks Corey. Um so we'll move to Tad next and um and Tad I was maybe a little too flippant by saying it's a technology that doesn't exist. Of course there are a lot of you know firms that are building actual hardware already. Um so there's various models with you know v different numbers of cubits but there are you know vastly different estimates of a practical fault tolerant quantum computer that can solve real world problems I mean perennial perennially it seems to be like 10 to 20 years off or depending on you know who you're talking to maybe shorter or maybe longer um when is your best guess of when a breakthrough could happen and what will it mean >> I'm going to give you the answer no I'm not so uh thank you that's a great question the um so so I work at the World Bank now. I spent 10 years uh working in Seaale at MIT which is the computer science and artificial intelligence lab and the group that I was in in Seaale shared the floor with the cryptographic department with all the cryptographers. So it's called the theory of computation group and so Ron Revest the R of RSA is uh is actually you know in that group. So um so whenever we do things, we have these cryptographers that we can kind of tap into about like, you know, what's going on with things. So last week we held a conference at MIT uh at the Boston Fed that we do with the Federal Reserve and with MIT and we say how do we measure cyber risk and as part of that discussion we bring in cryptographers to talk about quantum because uh the banks are on the cutting edge of this and you know if there's any institutions that need to be kind of thinking about this it's probably the banks and digital other digital authorities. So the cryptographer got up there, started talking. He's a very famous cryptographer and he said, "Yeah, we're not even sure this uh this quantum is going to work." And you know, you saw all the jaws of the of of the bankers around the table and the Federal Reserve like what? You know, here's a cryptographer from MIT telling us that we're not sure this is going to work. And he said, "Yeah, you know, we're past the we it's it's past the theoretical stage. you know, we we've shown that we can do these things. We've shown that we can do them in small scale, but this has now become an engineering problem. He's like, this is no longer a theoretical problem. It's an engineering problem, and that is yet to be determined whether or not we can do this. So just just to put things in perspective, uh about like now the number of cubits if if I'm like up to date on this, the number of cubits that have actually been pulled together at once is about a thousand if if I'm about right. And uh among those thousand which are physical cubits, you've got about 20 logical. So like you pull them together and you've got like 20 that can work together. like that's the seems like the state-of-the-art right now and so it is possible but whether this is going to be able to scale into the thousands or the millions is still to be seen. Um so I guess that would be my answer on the question. >> You're not going to give us a precise number of years. So >> 2037 there. >> Okay. So um Sam we'll move to you next. So uh multiverse computing uh develops quantum and quantum inspired software to solve complex industrial challenges among a broader portfolio of work uh including in financial services. So based on that work uh how long do you think it'll take before quantum computers can solve real world problems? >> Yeah, I think uh thank you for that question. Um so um yeah this is the bane of my life and most of my stress of my job is people always come to us and it's like how can we use quantum computing and it stresses me out to try and figure out how can we use quantum computing and I think this comes down to a lot of it is an engineering problem and I think um quantum is the word of the year but I think there's a lot of hype in where people think the hardware is to where the the reality of the hardware is. So um and I I think coming back to um what T was saying about um people saying that you know experts saying quantum computing we're not even sure it's going to work. Um but um I think there's a lot of potential still considering and getting understanding what are the algorithms you can use. So um this is what a lot of the work I now focus on is kind of towards quantum. So how can we look at problems we have now and pose them in a way that could work in a quantum computer and even inside there there's a lot of intricacies you have to consider for especially for practical quantum computing and um a lot of this is you can't just take a generic problem slap it on a quantum computer and say it's going to be better it's going to be faster you actually have to look really algorithmically what can't a classical computer do what do classical algorithms actually struggle with because you've got even optimization you have a lot of very good optimization packages now. So you really have to throw a lot of tricks to make the problem hard. So you kind of really have to get down to that depth of where can we throw up these classical algorithms. Um and I also want to you quickly just mentioned you said about simulation. >> So I think this is another myth um I don't like is a lot of people especially in the bankula quantum Monte Carlo quantum simulation is going to be the biggest thing. The problem there again is an engineering issue that theoretically you can get a polomial gain but to get that gain we've got to have again perfect cubits you got to have thousands of them working perfectly and that's going to cost a fortune to do and the accuracy you're going to gain compared to what you can do on a modern GPU is going to be marginal at the end of the day. Um and again you've got other things you have to consider is um when like um mapping and even so you can focus on the algorithm level building on the quantum computer but then the other thing people forget about is the pre-processing level. I've got to build my quantum circuit. I've got to encode my data in the quantum circuit. And more often what we find is like by the time you do all of these steps, you might as well have just done your problem classically on a GPU. So, [laughter] so this is kind of where like we can say we're moving towards the QPUs and I think there will be use cases where we can use them in maybe a couple of years time but it will be more around chemistry where you know we can do very natural encoding anything with like actually we need to put real data on there. We're going to wait also for the QPU but then we need the QRAM infrastructure as well. So you know a Q a laptop isn't just a CPU it's a whole system. So we've got to build all of those other parts before we can get to something which you can actually use on a daily basis to find an advantage. So the long and short of it is I think be prepared but don't panic. [laughter] >> Very good. Okay. Thanks so much Sam. So Vlam um at the National Bank of Georgia, you describe yourselves as a fintech friendly regulator and you've invested quite a bit in new technologies for instance in cloud computing where you've uh you've been leading. Um so do you have the same approach to quantum or do you think that this technology is fundamentally different and requires a different approach? >> Uh thank you very much for the question. It's pleasure to be part of the panel. Uh while formulating my answer, let me stay in the scope and boundaries I operate. So I am responsible for open finance ecosystem development in my country and uh I am sure and I was confident for the past uh decade that the cloud was one of the key allies and friends for achieving my mission open finance ecosystem and I'm not sure about the quantum whether it's my friend or not uh because you are dealing with lots of unknown [snorts] unknowns shortly. And uh it's uh this notion of harvest now decrypt later uh makes this technology fundamentally different and strategic approach to this uh it's about uh not uh like having a waiting strategy like you could allow for cloud computing and uh [snorts] uh just losing competitive advantage but u you could allow waiting strategy and uh this uh technology [snorts] is fundamentally different. As mentioned, you have lots of unknown unknowns. Also uh lots of hope uh is about privacy enhancing technologies for unlocking potential of open finance ecosystem like homemoric encryption [snorts] uh multi-party computation uh other types of privacy enhance enhancing technology zero knowledge proof they are all built on RSA right and they potentially all are vulnerable to uh shorts algorithm and um quantum Um [snorts] so uh short answer is yes cloud and uh uh quantum is fundamentally different and we need to have fundamentally different strategic approaches. >> Very good. Thanks. So let's move to the next round and I'll we'll go back to Corey to start with and uh so Corey we heard from Tad that it's it's 2037. We're going to hold you to that now. 2037 that's the the year of the quantum breakthrough. Uh so now we have you know a hypothetically a working quantum computer that can solve real world issues. Uh you know we've uh but you know if if we did have that in the first place what would be the thing that we would actually want to do with it if you were advising the public sector or or the private sector for that matter what would be the first thing you would ask uh you know you would want it to actually help with? >> That's an impossible question John. Um, I mean it's a real mystery, right? The application is still relatively unknown and there's lots of of great opportunity for speculation around that which I again leave to my subject matter expert colleagues. But I think maybe I'll take your question a little differently which is let's say it's 2037 and this new era is upon us. What do we need to have done between now and then to be ready for that moment in time? And I'll come back to, you know, a theme I think we've all shared here a bit around just preparedness and awareness and and taking it from the public sector perspective. Governments have a tremendous responsibility um to prepare for all of the risks. That is the job of government is to um see and assess and mitigate risk in a lot of ways and um and also sees the opportunities, right? and we have a lot of of I think great expert literature and research on what both those risks and opportunities might be. Um I'm delighted to hear that cryptographers are not yet too concerned. Um but there will certainly be some risk mitigation to do around cryptography. Um and also just opportunity seizing. So we um apolitical held a round table uh in New York last month on preparing governments for the age of quantum computing. We had a um mix of people in the room um folks from state government, national governments, academics, NOS's um companies um very nice like mix of the ecosystem and I think one of the things that we were very delighted to hear is starting to happen more and more is um city of New York uh had some colleagues who were teaming up with NYU students and faculty to start holding just uh experimentation spaces and sandboxes to better understand and prepare for application of AI. And so I think like the fact that this experimentation is happening, it's happening in our academic spaces, our next generation of of public servants and everyone else is uh doing their best to get ready. And I think again for um those of us who who've already been out in the workforce for a minute um we also have an opportunity to um to get smarter on this topic and we can approach it differently than we have because we do have a little bit of time and we do have a little bit of space and we can be better buyers of this type of technology for those rich countries that will be able to do so. We can be better users of this type of technology and we can be better prepared for all of the downside risks that will certainly come with it between now and 2037. Very good. So we it was an impossible question, but I'll uh I'll I'll pose the same question on my next victim, which will be Tad. So uh so Tad, what do you think should be the first use case that that people should actually use with with a functioning quantum computer? >> Okay. So um if we if we look at the US economy, 17% of GDP is allocated towards healthcare. And so I actually think that that's one of the most promising areas is in the future. If we can if we can figure out a way to do drug discovery. Um right now that's done with supercomputers takes a huge amount of time and if that's something that we can speed up would be amazing. But that kind of work requires the thousands to millions of cubits together like to actually model the molecules the protein matching. So the so I think there's a lot to do there. I I'm gonna give you just a quick example. Another I'm sorry back to MIT. I spent a lot of time there. So, um on that same floor where we work is a researcher named Regina Barzel and she was forever a long she's a a famous professor in natural language processing. So, so kind of AI but like understanding language. And in her 40s she developed breast cancer. So, she went and had treatment over at MGH which is just across the river. to the Mass General and in talking with her doctor, she said, "Well, how are you using all of the data on the scans and things that you're doing on me, you know, h how does this get used after I'm done?" And they say, "Well, it doesn't." And it shocked her so much that she shifted, she recovered from the breast cancer, she shifted her research fully to making use of health data to solve problems. So, like research went over and she's one of the leading AI specialists in the world. So um antibiotic discovery so like she she did first on detecting breast cancer in women you know can you beat a radiologist she shifted over to looking for um antibiotics and so a couple years back they announced there's this brand new they discovered using AI they discovered this new um antibiotic that could be used for superbugs and that's like a big discovery and then ascendants down she says and we found seven other likely candidates So like within this short period of time they identify these drugs. Now that's done with like current computers and AI technologies you can imagine if we do get to 2037 and my prediction holds. There's a there's going to be a lot that we can do personalized medicine. So I I think that's probably one of the areas I'm most interested in. >> Great. Okay. That's uh thanks. That would you know be a a big breakthrough for humanity. Maybe a problem for the pension system. you know, if people live longer. But that's that's an aside. So, at the risk of being boring, I'm going to ask Sam the exact same question. So, Sam, now you're in the hot seat. If you uh, you know, had a a functioning quantum computer that could actually solve real problems, where would you uh where would you put it to? >> Well, I think first of all, a lot of my hair would grow back. Um, so I think I agree. Um the first area is definitely going to be in like u molecular simulation and really focusing on those areas you know which are quantum native they're quantum problems um because then you don't have this issue of embedding classical data and you know beating what by that time as well who knows where GPUs are going to be who knows what the classical algorithms are and I think this is one thing we also have to consider it's not just when the quantum computer comes along it's where is also modern uh GPU silicon hardware going to be alongside that and um so so yeah I think this is one area quantum native drug discovery um but then also I think there's a I would also be really interested to test where can quantum machine learning scale and there's been a lot of debate in the lit like about in the academic circles about quantum machine learning um so you know we say how can we use data how can we can quantum get a deeper understanding and currently as it is people are really have mixed views about it depending on who you ask. There's a lot of theor theoretical arguments for it and for not and I think the most people would just say is we won't be able to answer that question until we have that quantum computer to get the empirical evidence of will it actually give extra insights but then we get back to this whole idea of where can we embed the data in a quantum way that we'll be able to get an advantage over just classical analysis. Um so but for me another interesting area maybe more relevant in the banking sector is um complex graph and network problems. Um, and I find these boil down often to very hard optimization problems with a lot of recurrence, a lot of cycles. And this is an area where I see classical optimization algorithms and classical algorithms really breaking down, especially when you then start to scale this to, you know, real worldsized problems of countries, um, you know, continents of mapping all interactions there. um you you know you're gonna have to have a lot of compute power to analyze the properties of the networks find um optimal optimal paths and like one of the things I was interested in looking at was um contagion in the networks so you know supply chains banking um and this again has a lot of feedback and it's a very complex problem which is hard for a classical graph algorithm to do on scale but a perfect quantum computer would be able to solve this very efficiently. So these are the kind of things I'm excited for and this is where I say we can formulate these algorithms now so we can think about how we can do it and then we've just got to wait and incrementally test them as you know we're getting new improvements. >> Good. Okay. So uh there is still homework to be done even uh if while we're waiting for 2037 or whenever it might be. So Vlam you you saw it coming. Uh it's exactly the same question. What task would you like to solve with a working quantum computer if you could? >> Uh I I think this is probably the hardest question from your list because we are dealing uh with so much abstract technology as of now and it's uh very difficult to translate into actual use cases and I'm cautious about mentioning Monte Carlo simulations after the comments but [laughter] uh central banks really a lot on uh simulations and stress testing uh micro picture. So Monte Carlo simulations uh could be dramatically more efficient with uh quantum computing uh [snorts] optimization problem which you mentioned for portfolio testing as well as testing quantum encryption resilience could be use case applicable for banking sector. >> Great. Okay. So maybe it'll help us to prevent the next financial crisis in in Georgia in 2039. It's uh we can hope, right? So very good. Okay. Thank you for uh for being good sports and for uh for giving your views on this. So I'm going to move to the risks and policy responses. So uh Tad um obviously the potential to break all the cryptography behind everything, not just crypto uh but every core banking system and every encrypted email for that matter. Even when Ilhawk and I email each other uh about uh you know speaking notes for DC fintech week. Um that sounds like a pretty important risk to me at least in principle. And even if it's a tail risk, you know, it's it's a tail risk with pretty high impact. So, um, you know, we we were talking about this also that in the run-up to this, should we all be panicking? >> So, I I don't think so, but I I'll take what other people have said here that uh you shouldn't panic, but we should be preparing for it. Like, we don't know if this is going to happen, but we should be prepared ahead of time anyway. Um, I think the harvest now decrypt later. uh when we talk to financial service firms this is a concern you know that um that they're worried about this harvest now decrypt later when the technology does improve um but in terms of cyber security um is your is data getting stolen now yes you know account data is stolen all the time so like worrying about whether some government somewhere is going to be able to decrypt my information 20 years from now um they can get it some other way here. So really on the when we talk to countries a lot of our clients are interested they're they're saying what do we do about this you know about this quantum and cyber security and we say well the way you can defend yourself best is have good cyber hygiene now and it's not about the fancy stuff it's about getting 80% you know like do do the the top six seven things that you should be doing to keep your network safe and you're going to be okay. That said, if you are designing new products and if you are working with vendors, you want to make sure that they're using quantum secure cryptography. So, as part of our our lab back in in my last job, we built multi-party computation um platforms. So, to to take encrypted data, compute over the top and get a result without revealing the inputs. So we built these privacy enhancing technologies but we made sure that they were quantum secure. So we use lattisbased encryption so that even if um you know like we're not worried about it for now but even in the future we're making sure that we have quantum safe uh computation in there. So I I just think remember the whole end toend encrypted like that used to be a big thing. You'd say oh you know my my data is end to end encrypted. I think the next vision is going to be it's going to be quantum secure so that they're using some some um some new technology to to make it quantum secure. So that's something that we're going to look for. >> Very good. So I'm going to turn to Corey next and just ask you know what measures do you think that public servants and the private sector should take to manage the risks and prepare for this tail risk at least of you know postquantum future? >> Yeah. Well, we've been asking that um of the public servants who are in our network and who've been participating in our our quantum uh we have an online community of practice uh space for governments and we have a dedicated quantum space. So, we've got a lot of public servants in there who are asking these questions and thinking about all this in real time as well. Um so the kind of top five or so um key themes that they have hit on is now is the time to be um getting smart, building foundational knowledge um developing frameworks uh particularly ethical frameworks um related uh considering how we will approach access and equity issues. Um this technology will not be distributed evenly. It never is. and this one especially is going to be um um quite challenging for many many parts of the world to access. Um so that is a big thing we can be thinking about now. Um, and then I think the the most um the topic that resonated most and and came up again in that round table we had last month I mentioned um is considering what a like multistakeholder uh governance or kind of um support network group. I'm just using words now. Um but someone likened it to like what is the G7 for um for quantum and how can we have a trustworthy body that we could look to, right? And so I think considering what that will be, there will need to be something um or many somethings. Um and so now is a good time to be working toward all of that. And John, because I gave you a hard time on that last question, I will tell you uh in terms of a substantive use case, um the the New Yorkers last month, we asked, well, what is the thing that your students want to experiment on? What is it that they want to try to, you know, apply toward quantum? It will not surprise any of you that the topic most of these students wanted to work on was solving traffic problems in New York. >> Good. Okay. I'm still encouraged that we're we're, you know, solving uh we're finding new drugs. We're solving traffic. It's not just, you know, making Citadel more money in uh picking stocks or whatnot. So, it's it's good. It's uh um very good. So, Sam, um I wanted to ask you next um where do you see the greatest risks, but also the most promising responses? And what sage advice would you give to clients and partner institutions? uh around the world in in this >> I mean I think I agree with everything which has been said and I I think there's no harm in being quantum secure in the future right there's no you know adding an extra boulder in your door is not going to really you know lead you to any harm it's better better to be prepared than not prepared um especially with new systems right it's not that hard to do a new system and get that prepared with these new algorithms maybe there's a bit more money to invest in migrating old systems but you know it's worth it there. Um, in terms of the risk, I also think there's, this is a great point about regulation and who's going to have access to a quantum computer. And this is one of the things I I like to bring up a lot, but I think a lot of people kind of neglect is if there was a real working quantum computer, not everyone's going to be able to use it. Like even the banks, Goldman Sachs isn't going to be able to just suddenly use a quantum computer. Like this is going to have real defense issue, you know, defense. It's a national security issue. So to actually get regulated use on a quantum computer is the first hurdle. How are they going to access it? How are they going to screen algorithms being ran on the quantum computer to make sure they're not for malicious intent? And then we also come down to this and we we kind of see this I know this from the can Canadian ecosystem is there's a lot more regulation in the materials and technology being exported and imported around building quantum computers. So there's also this layer of then if the technology gets revealed we've got to also present you know I see black market quantum computers possibly being a thing. Um so these are the layers we really have to consider not just about the algorithm but then the infrastructure access and again thing if you can I like to say if you can access IBM quantum computer now then there's no risk of it because why would they let a student you know be able to run something on IBM quantum computer for free that's not a national defense issue right now. Um, so yeah, I think that's my sage advice is again like as always be prepared, but um I think there's going to be a lot more hurdles and also one more point I'll put out is also there's going to be a cost barrier. Um, running quantum computers is not cheap. So if you've ever tried to play around with these things, I think IBM's around $100 a minute. So you've got to also then balance Monte Carlo simulations. I can do it faster, but it's probably going to be 10,000 times more expensive than what maybe a couple of cents to run on a GPU. So, you're going to really have to also choose those high impact, highv value business problems um to to you know isolate that usage. And then I think that's where it can go through this scanning through the algorith can go through this whole regulatory framework of then being able to run on these confidential machines or like highly regulated machines not just you know your everyday compute for now for now and I think once once everybody's really confident the world is quantum secure then maybe we'll and the technology evolves to where we might be able to have a desktop quantum computer maybe and maybe you know that's a hundred 100 200 years down the line. Um, but yeah, >> if if we do have one, will they will it still look like a like a garbage can like the ones now? Like they all they all seem to >> Well, it depends if it's photonic or not because I mean that's this is the problem. There's all the different we don't actually know which technology is going to win either, right? You've got like ion traps, semi superconductors, then you've got the photonics which run at room temperature. And I think this is one of the things which is hard to say to prepare fully for quantum algorithms and the quantum future is we don't know which which technolog is going to win. they're still all heavily in the R&D stage and we and from then then it will be when we have that perfect quantum computer or a nearperfect one getting back to the researchers of what algorithms can we do and even things like latisbased methods maybe there's going to be something we can do with this new type of quantum computer which was actually able to work maybe that has a trick which can undo these lattice so there's going to be a continual kind of feedback loop and I mean that's really the reality of where we are. It's still a big science experiment, but maybe um I guess in the world we are now, things can kind of come out of the lab quicker. >> Very good. So um Vlam uh I wanted to ask how you see the risks for the central bank, for the National Bank of Georgia, but also for the Georgian financial system. Um and what are the measures that you think that you know you should take or that financial institutions should take um if this is you know a relevant tail risk? So in terms of policy responses uh let me share with you one story from my previous experience. I'm big fan of uh making analogies. So 10 years ago when I was uh in charge of operational and cyber risks, one of the systemic banks uh we got hacked by our neighborhood country from the north uh >> I think >> and uh and uh uh in in two in two hours we know what happened. So we uh dealt with known knowns. In a couple of days we transited from known knowns to known unknowns. So we found out the damage and in terms of policy responses we are dealing something which is like uh harvest now decrypt later we have unknown unknowns again. So policy response strategically should be fundamentally different and then uh Georgia is not uh [snorts] unfortunately rich country so we don't have ability to invest uh in R&D so that to lead the quantum computer development but um on the positive side the project lip uh recently conducted by BIS innovation hub uh with the leading uh by >> [snorts] >> uh Bundes Bank and um Bank the Def France, they uh come up with quite optimistic uh conclusions building uh uh VPN tunel for um transitioning uh payment data quite sensitive with post uh uh quantum encryption methods like Kuber and Delithium and the performance was not affected. So I guess we need uh start with the basics like making inventory making inventory of uh agile encryption and uh no picture what is uh not agile and uh start start transforming and also as you mentioned uh we have opportunity to build something from the scratch on the positive side uh while building this privacy enhancing technologies with quantum resilient encryption in So that's future oriented thinking and policy response. >> Excellent. Okay. So I'm going to end we're we're nearing the end of time. So I'm going to end with a speed round. I'll ask two very brief questions. The first one will be to to Sam and Tad and then the second one will be to Corey and to Vlam. So um you know as we we heard just now from Vlam I mean we are of course in a somewhat charged uh geopolitical environment where you know there is a clear first mover advantage to the jurisdiction which has breakthroughs in this area. So, uh, just as I asked you guys, you know, what specific year, uh, you think that the quantum breakthrough would happen? If it happens, which jurisdiction do you think it might happen in? So, start with you, uh, Sam. [snorts] >> Oh, [laughter] that's a that's a tough one. And I mean, I think, where will we go? I mean, it's hard to know because everybody keeps everything under wraps, right? I mean, um, I think one of the biggest players right now, I mean, is definitely Quantinium. So, um, UK based, >> um, I mean, they they tout they have the best cubits, they have the best technology. Um, they're they're really pushing to say that next year they'll have something actually near production ready. Um, but then, you know, over here we have ion already pushing out trying to say we're going to be ready. Um, it's it's hard to say cuz unless you're I'm not an engineer, so I don't know deep down what the actual nitty-gritty of the cubits is they're doing and how that scalability is going to come because I think everybody can maybe have a a thousand cubit system, but then how do you scale up to that million, two million? Um, and that's really a huge research question which I don't think anybody can answer. So, I'm going to give the disappointing answer, John, that honestly I don't know. >> [laughter] >> I I heard UK in there. So country of Alan Turing I can see uh >> there's a lot of investment in can in Canada as well like a lot of research and development there. So I mean we al we have D-Wave Xanadu up in Canada. So um that's a possibility I I would say it's definitely US, Canada or the UK are the highest potential. >> Okay. So very briefly Todd where where do you put your money? >> So So I work for the World Bank and we've got lots of member countries that I can't [laughter] mention. Uh so I think to be politically correct I'm going to say I'm going to bet on Sam's team in Canada. >> Great. [laughter] So um and then finally you know a question you know also for the international organizations room for Takori and to Varums where do you think that in this area you know just in one sense where do you think that the international organizations should be focusing efforts if at all on on issues around quantum >> um access and equity. >> Access and equity. Great. Vlam final word. democratizing technology, democratizing and developing standards. >> Excellent. So on this very hopeful note, thanks for that. I think we can wrap it up here. Thank you everyone for for taking part in this panel. I've enjoyed it very much. [applause] And now finally in my role as uh as MC for the day. So this concludes uh the international financial system layer for the day. So thank you everyone for taking part. We now have happy hour. So I understand that there will be the possibility to get a well well-deserved drink and uh to uh then follow up with people bilaterally. So thanks everyone again.