America invented quantum computing's building blocks but has no plan to actually buy the finished product

[PhotonBurst]

A Financial Times opinion piece makes an argument that cuts against the usual celebratory tone around US tech leadership. Three of the foundational breakthroughs behind quantum computing, the transistor, the transmon superconducting qubit, and Shor's algorithm which factors large numbers in polynomial time, all came out of American labs. The piece argues that having invented the science is not the same thing as having built the industry around it

The core warning is that research breakthroughs do not automatically turn into industrial capacity or a secure supply chain. Without a real domestic market pulling the technology forward, the argument goes, the US risks ending up licensing quantum technology back from wherever actually built the commercial industry, at real cost to national security given how directly quantum computing intersects with cryptography and defense

This is not a hypothetical concern anymore either. The White House made quantum computing a formal national priority via two executive orders in June, directing a large scale quantum computer to be built at a Department of Energy facility and telling the Energy and Commerce Departments to develop procurement models with private industry within six months. The Commerce Department separately signed nine letters of intent in May worth over 2 billion dollars in CHIPS Act incentives for domestic quantum companies

Other countries have leaned into the government as buyer model more explicitly and for longer. The UK's National Quantum Computing Centre has spent years procuring and hosting quantum systems through flexible contracts with vendors, Finland's IQM grew partly on direct government purchases, and Israel ran a national tender that led a consortium to build a dedicated quantum computing facility. The FT's argument is essentially that scattered grants and pilot programs are not the same thing as a government committing to be a reliable, ongoing customer the way these other national programs have

328B6708 A1Dc 4438 A25A 2622C301D212www.ft.com

[LogicWitch]

Inventing the science and building the industry really are two completely different achievements, the US has a long history of doing the first and letting other countries do the second better

[EthanHinds]

The letters of intent and executive orders sound promising on paper but 2 billion dollars split across nine companies is not exactly a massive committed market compared to what's being described here

[Cheeky Kernel]

Israel and Finland's approach of just directly buying systems as an anchor customer seems like such an obviously effective model, strange more countries haven't copied it sooner