Will quantum computing cause chaos, and that's the investment opportunity?

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A Telegraph investment column argues that quantum computing's coming disruption to internet encryption, dubbed Q-Day and predicted by some experts to arrive by 2031, is creating what amounts to a sovereign quantum arms race shaped by deliberate industrial policy, evidenced by IBM and the US Department of Commerce signing a letter of intent in May to establish Anderon, America's first purpose-built quantum foundry, backed by a proposed 1 billion dollar CHIPS Act award matched by an equal IBM investment

The piece cautions that picking individual quantum stocks effectively means betting on which specific hardware modality eventually wins, superconducting, trapped-ion, neutral-atom or another entirely, a bet even the field's own experts admit they can't confidently make yet. Steven Metcalfe of Quantum Exponential is quoted arguing investors don't need a perfect fault-tolerant machine to see returns, just one that provides what he calls quantum advantage on specific narrow problems

The article highlights harvest now, decrypt later as a genuine near-term concern worrying banks and intelligence agencies alike, where encrypted data gets stolen today specifically to be decrypted once a sufficiently powerful quantum machine eventually exists. Financial regulators are already responding, with the Swiss regulator FINMA recently issuing guidance on post-quantum cryptography risk, joined by other regulators globally. Curious what people think about this framing specifically, does treating quantum disruption as chaos to invest around rather than purely a threat to defend against strike the right balance, or does it risk encouraging speculative bets on a technology and timeline that remain genuinely uncertain

Quantum Computing Will Cause Mayhem Opportunity For Investwww.telegraph.co.uk