Quantum Tech Will Transform National Security. It’s Testing U.S. Alliances Now.

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According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s critical technology tracker, China appears to be lagging more in quantum computers — which perform many calculations in one pass, making them faster than today’s digital computers that perform each calculation separately — while narrowing the gap in quantum sensing for navigation, mapping and detection. Chinese scientists have even said they are building a quantum-based radar to find stealth aircraft with a small electromagnetic storm, though quantum specialists outside China have questioned their claims. One of the doubters is Michael Biercuk, 43, the founder of Q-CTRL, an American physicist with a military mien and a Harvard Ph.D. who moved to Australia in 2010 to teach at the University of Sydney. He and his start-up, with offices in Sydney, Los Angeles, Berlin and Oxford, are among a cutting-edge group of global quantum leaders who see hyperbole and statecraft in many Chinese quantum announcements and hope to capitalize on what technology-sharing partnerships like the AUKUS security agreement represent. “AUKUS, for us, is exceptionally important,” said Professor Biercuk, noting that Q-CTRL works on sensors and quantum computing. “It’s a real opportunity for the homegrown capability we’re building in Australia to be deployed into an international framework.” About half of Q-CTRL’s 100 employees are Australian, half from other countries, and many, including Professor Biercuk, have experience working for America’s elite defense and civilian laboratories. The company’s main software product, which “stabilizes the hardware against everything that goes wrong in the field,” Professor Biercuk said, is already being used by quantum developers in the United States, Canada and Europe, where precise sensor technology is also advancing.