No Fight. No Flight. Just Innovation! How the Most Pressing Need in Cybersecurity Today Could Propel the Development of Quantum Computing

This work proffers that the biggest ongoing challenge currently facing cybersecurity professionals — namely ransomware — can be potentially mitigated by the expected benefits of quantum computing, a technology still in the nascent stages of demonstrating reliable and repeatable network defense support to broader commercial industries, particularly industries based in the United States. The author demonstrates that, counter to estimates of any public applications only appearing in the distant future, the commercial losses from ransomware — both incurred and expected — by US entities may be enough to justify the need for a concerted near-term “sprint” by US stakeholders to develop a quantum-based mitigation capability with all deliberate speed. The work highlights the competition among leaders in the quantum computing development space, the consequences to US national defense and business network’s health of not having mitigatory quantum computing capabilities, and the global shifts in political and commercial influence which would likely result depending on which nation-state eventually establishes dominance in the quantum computing space. Scientific and economic challenges to the development of quantum computing capabilities in the current environment are also explored alongside benefits of investing at certain points along the innovation cycle of quantum computing technology.