America is the undisputed world leader in quantum computing even though China spends 8x more on the technology–but an own goal could soon erode U.S. dominance
Processors that crunch through supercomputing tasks in the blink of an eye. Batteries that recharge in a flash. Accelerated drug discovery, encryption and decryption, and machine learning. These are just a few of the possibilities that may be enabled by quantum computing, which harnesses the laws of physics to perform calculations much faster than even the most powerful traditional computers. They all hinge on research here in the United States, the world’s undisputed leader in quantum computing.
How did America become the epicenter of this technological revolution? It didn’t happen by accident. Quantum computing and world-class U.S. research universities have grown hand in hand, fostered by a policy environment that encourages scientists and entrepreneurs to commercialize academic research.
The secret to U.S. ingenuity
Consider our quantum computing company, IonQ. As engineering and physics professors from Duke and the University of Maryland (UMD), we founded the company in 2015 using our research, which was largely funded by the Defense Department and the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA)–a government organization investing in cutting-edge technology for the intelligence community. We’ve also received significant funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Department of Energy.
In 2020, we opened a 23,000-square-foot, $5.5 million center in College Park to house our state-of-the-art quantum machinery. The next year, IonQ was valued at $2 billion upon our IPO–and became the first publicly traded pure-play quantum hardware and software company.
Along with government financing, we owe much of our success to both UMD and Duke’s investment in our quantum research. UMD boasts more than 200 quantum researchers including a Nobel laureate at a joint institute shared between the university and NIST, and has awarded more than 100 doctorates in physics with a quantum focus. Duke recently established the only “vertical” quantum computing center in the world, which conducts research and development combining every stage of the quantum computing process–from assembling individual atoms and engineering their electronic controllers to designing quantum algorithms and applications.
But we also owe it to a little-known law, without which none of this would have been possible– the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. Before its passage, the federal government owned the patents on inventions resulting from academic research that had received any amount of federal funding. However, the government lacked the capacity to further develop university breakthroughs, so the vast majority simply gathered dust on shelves.
Bayh-Dole allowed universities to own the patents on the inventions of their scientists, which has had a galvanizing impact. Suddenly, academic institutions were incentivized to license those patents to the private sector where they could be transformed into valuable goods and services, while stimulating entrepreneurship among the researchers who came up with those inventions in the first place.
Bayh-Dole’s legacy at stake
Unfortunately, the federal government may soon undermine the Bayh-Dole system–which could massively stifle new advances in quantum computing. The Biden administration just announced that it seeks to use the law’s “march-in” provision to impose price controls on inventions that were originally developed with federal funds if “the price…at which the product is currently offered to the public (is) not reasonable.” This notion arises from ignorance of the core value in entrepreneurship and commercialization: While the ideas are conceived and tested at universities using federal funding, it is the huge amount of effort invested by the licensee that turns those ideas and patents into useful products and services.
Abusing march-in wouldn’t make new technologies more accessible for consumers or anyone else, it would do just the opposite. Devaluing the investment needed to turn these ideas into successful and practical products could disincentivize private-sector companies from taking risks by licensing university research in the first place.
When it comes to quantum computing, that chilling effect on research and development would enormously jeopardize U.S. national security. Our projects received ample funding from defense and intelligence agencies for good reason. Quantum computing may soon become the gold standard technology for codebreaking and defending large computer networks against cyberattacks.
Adopting the proposed march-in framework would also have major implications for our future economic stability. While still a nascent technology today, quantum computing’s ability to rapidly process huge volumes of data is set to revolutionize business in the coming decades. It may be the only way to capture the complexity needed for future AI and machine learning in, say, self-driving vehicles. It may enable companies to hone their supply chains and other logistical operations, such as manufacturing, with unprecedented precision. It may also transform finance by allowing portfolio managers to create new, superior investment algorithms and strategies.
Given the technology’s immense potential, it’s no mystery why China committed what is believed to be more than $15 billion in 2022 to develop its quantum computing capacity–more than double the budget for quantum computing of EU countries and eight times what the U.S. government plans to spend.
Thankfully, the U.S. still has a clear edge in quantum computing–for now. Our universities attract far more top experts and leaders in the field than any other nation’s, including China’s, by a wide margin. Our entrepreneurial startup culture, often bred from the innovation of our universities, is the envy of the world. And unlike Europe, our government incentivizes risk-taking and entrepreneurship through public-private partnerships.
However, if the Biden administration dismantles the law that makes this collaboration possible, there’s no guarantee that our global dominance in quantum computing will persist in the long term. That would have devastating second-order effects on our national security and economic future. Computer scientists, ordinary Americans, and the intelligence and defense communities can only hope our officials rethink their proposal.
Jungsang Kim is a professor of ECE and physics at Duke University. Christopher Monroe is a professor of ECE and physics at Duke University and the University of Maryland, College Park. In 2015 they co-founded IonQ, Inc., the first publicly traded pure-play quantum hardware and software company.
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