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Every country is vying to get a head start in the race to the worlds quantum future. A year ago, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia teamed up todevelopmilitary applications of digital technologies, especially quantum computing technologies. That followed the passage in 2019 of the National Quantum Initiative Act by the U.S. Congress, which laid out the countrys plans to rapidly create quantum computing capabilities.

Earlier, Europe launched a $1 billion quantum computing research project, Quantum Flagship, in 2016, and its member states have started building a quantum communications infrastructure that will be operational by 2027. In like vein, Chinas 14th Five Year Plan (2021-2025) prioritizes the development of quantum computing and communications by 2030. In all, between 2019 and 2021 China invested as much as $11 billion, Europe had spent $5 billion, the U.S. $3 billion, and the U.K. around $1.8 billion between to become tomorrows quantum superpowers.

As the scientific development of quantum technologies gathers momentum, creating quantum computers has turned into apriority for nations that wish to gain the next competitive advantage in the Digital Age. Theyre seeking this edge for two very different reasons. On the one hand,quantum technologies will likely transform almost every industry, from automotive and aerospace to finance and pharmaceuticals. These systems could create fresh value of between $450 billion and $850 billion over the next 15 to 30 years, according to recentBCG estimates.

On the other hand, quantum computing systems will pose a significant threat to cybersecurity the world over, as we argued in an earliercolumn.Hackers will be able to use them to decipher the public keys generated by the RSA cryptosystem, and to break through the security of any conventionally-encrypted device, system, or network. It will pose a potent cyber-threat, popularly called Y2Q (Years to Quantum), toindividuals and institutions as well as corporations and country governments. The latter have no choice but to tacklethe unprecedented challenge by developing countermeasures such as post-quantum cryptography, which will itself require the use of quantum systems.

Countries have learned the hard way since the Industrial Revolution that general-purpose technologies, such as quantum computing, are critical for competitiveness. Consider, for instance, semiconductor manufacturing, which the U.S., China, South Korea, and Taiwan have dominated in recent times. When the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors led to a sudden fall in production over the last two years, it resulted in production stoppages andprice increases in over 150 industries, including automobiles, computers, and telecommunications hardware. Many countries, among the members of theEuropean Union, Brazil, India, Turkey, and even the U.S., were hit hard, and are now trying to rebuild their semiconductorsupply chains. Similarly,China manufacturesmost of the worlds electric batteries, with the U.S. contributingonly about 7% of global output. Thats why the U.S. has recently announcedfinancial incentivesto induce business to create more electric battery-manufacturing capacity at home.

Much worse could be in store if countries and companies dont focus on increasing their quantum sovereignty right away. Because the development and deploymentof such systems requires the efforts of the public and private sectors, its important for governments to compare their efforts on both fronts with those of other countries.

The U.S. is expected to be the global frontrunnerin quantum computing, relying on its tech giants, such as IBM and Google, to invent quantum systems as well as numerous start-ups that are developing software applications. The latter attract almost 50% of the investments in quantum computing by venture capital and private equity funds, according toBCG estimates. Although the U.S. government has allocated only $1.1 billion, it has created mechanisms that effectively coordinate the efforts of all its agencies such as the NIST, DARPA, NASA, and NQI.

Breathing down the U.S.s neck: China, whose government has spent more on developing quantum systems than any other. . Those investments have boosted academic research, with China producing over 10% of the worlds research in 2021, according toour estimatessecond only to the U.S. The spillover effects are evident: Less than a year after Googles quantum machine had solved in minutes a calculation that would have taken supercomputers thousands of years to unravel, the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) had cracked a problem three times tougher. As of September 2021, China hadnt spawned as many startups as the U.S., but it was relying on its digital giants such as Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent to develop quantum applications.

Trailing only the U.S. and China, the European Unionsquantum computing efforts are driven by its member states as well as the union. The EUsQuantum Flagshipprogram coordinates research projects across the continent, but those efforts arent entirely aligned yet. Several important efforts, such as those ofFranceandGermany,run the risk of duplication or dont exploit synergies adequately. While the EU has spawned several startups that are working on different levels of the technology stacksuch as FinlandsIQM and FrancesPasqalmany seem unlikely to scale because of the shortage of late-stage funding. In fact, the EUs startups have attracted only about one-seventh as much funding as their American peers,according toBCG estimates.

Finally, the U.K. was one of the firstcountries in the world to launch a government-funded quantum computing program. Its counting on itseducational policiesand universities;scholarships for postgraduate degrees; and centers for doctoral training to get ahead. Like the EU, the U.K. also has spawned promising start-ups such asOrca,which announced the worlds smallest quantum computer last year. However, British start-ups may not be able to find sufficient capital to scale, and many are likely to be acquired by the U.S.s digital giants.

Other countries, such as Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, and Russia are also in the quantum computing race, and could carve out roles for themselves. For instance, Canada is home to several promising startups, such asD-Wave, a leader in annealing computers; whileJapanis using public funds to develop a homegrown quantum computer by March 2023. (For an analysis of the comparative standings and challenges that countries face in quantum computing, please see the recentBCG report.)

Meanwhile, the locus of the quantum computing industry is shifting to the challenges of developing applications and adopting the technology. This shift offers countries, especially the follower nations, an opportunity to catch up with the leaders before its too late. Governments must use four levers in concert to accelerate their quantum sovereignty:

* Lay the foundations.Governments have to invest more than they currently do if they wish to develop quantum systems over time, even as they strike partnerships to bring home the technology in the short run. Once they have secured the hardware, states must create shared infrastructure to scale the industry. The Netherlands, for instance, has set upQuantum Inspire, a platform that provides users with the hardware to perform quantum computations.

* Coordinate the stakeholders.Governments should use funding and influence to coordinate the work of public and private players, as theU.S. Quantum Coordination Office, for instance,does. In addition, policymakers must connect stakeholders to support the technologys development. Thats how the U.S. Department of Energy, for instance, came to partner with the University of Chicago; together, theyve set up anacceleratorto connect startups with investors and scientific experts.

* Facilitate the transition. Governments must support businesss transition to the quantum economy. They should offer monetary incentivessuch as tax credits, infrastructure assistance, no- or low-interest financing, and free landso incumbents will shift to quantum technologies quickly. TheU.K., for instance, hasrecently expanded its R&D tax relief scheme to cover investments in quantum technologies.

* Develop the business talent.Instead of developing only academics and scientists, government policies will have to catalyze the creation of a new breed of entrepreneurial and executive talent that can fill key roles in quantum businesses. To speed up the process, Switzerland, for instance, has helped create amasters programrather than offering only doctoral programs on the subject.

Not all general-purpose technologies affect a countrys security and sovereignty as quantum computing does, but theyre all critical for competitiveness. While many countries talk about developing quantum capabilities, their efforts havent translated into major advances, as in the U.S. and China. Its time every government remembered that if it loses the quantum computing race, its technological independence will erodeand, unlike with Schrdingers cat, theres no doubt that its global competitiveness will atrophy.

ReadotherFortunecolumns by Franois Candelon.

Franois Candelonisa managing director and senior partner at BCG and global director of the BCG Henderson Institute.

Maxime Courtauxis a project leader at BCG and ambassador at the BCG Henderson Institute.

Gabriel Nahasis a data senior scientist at BCG Gamma and ambassador at the BCG Henderson Institute.

Jean-Franois Bobier is a partner & director at BCG.

Some companies featured in this column are past or current clients of BCG.

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The U.S., China, and Europe are ramping up a quantum computing arms race. Heres what theyll need to do to win - Fortune

Silicon Valley owes its success to the invention of a computer chip that is now made almost exclusively overseas.

Can $52.7 billion lure the chip, the electronic heart of everything from cell phones to F-15 fighter jets, back home?

The CHIPS and Science Act, signed by President Biden in August, aims to inspire a manufacturing revival that is crucial to our national defense, economic security and future technical innovation.

Already, the domestic semiconductor industry is on a tear, with new megafactory construction underway in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and soon Ohio reflecting manufacturers confidence that the U.S. will help pay for them.

Yet none of the planned megafabs will be built here in the birthplace of the integrated circuit, or chip, where in 1959 legendary entrepreneur Robert Noyce strung transistors together on sheets of silicon in a two-story warehouse built of tilt-up concrete slabs in Mountain View.

To be sure, California remains a leader in more sophisticated parts of the chip supply chain, such as research, design, manufacturing tools and the sophisticated automation devices that analyze chip performance. And those chip-related businesses could get a funding boost too.

Three of the five top chip equipment manufacturers Lam Research, Applied Materials and KLA Corporation are based in the Bay Area. So are powerful chip designers, such as Nvidia, Apple and Google. Synopsis and other companies provide the software to design the chips. Stanford, UC Berkeley and San Jose State conduct world-class research.

Were very well-positioned to accelerate the research and development around microelectronics and apply them to new technologies. On those two bases, California is well positioned to compete for a portion of these federal funds, said Peter Leroe-Muoz, who specializes in tech policy for the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

Our strength will be growing the footprint that we already have.

Historically, Silicon Valley was where you built the fab, the factory that crafts chips out of silicon, said Michael Hochberg, president of Luminous Computing, which hopes to use CHIPS Act funding to build the worlds most powerful, scalable Artificial Intelligence-based supercomputer at the companys facility in Santa Clara.

Now, he said, if you want to do stuff thats best in class, you have to work with companies from overseas.

Fifty years ago, offshoring in Asia made sense. It reduced costs and helped U.S. companies stay competitive against international rivals. Those Asian countries invested in their factories. According to Micron, it is 35% to 45% cheaper to build a fab in a low-cost Asian nation than in the U.S., primarily because of government support.

Now, the most advanced chips are all made by the behemoth Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC. Its the exclusive supplier of Apples silicon processors for iPhones and Mac PCs, as well as the manufacturing partner of other major U.S. companies like AMD, Broadcom and Qualcomm.

The U.S. is the largest consumer of chips in the world. But we make only 12% of what we use.

With growing U.S.-China tensions, government officials are worried. If taken by force, Taiwans factory would be rendered inoperable and wed lose the chips that power our economy and defense, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit policy research organization that studies the future of national security.

The pandemic-related supply chain disruptions revealed the vulnerability, causing a chip shortage that adversely affected at least 170 industries, especially automakers.

Rebooting the American supply chain will also protect our future innovation, said electrical engineering professor H.-S. Philip Wong, director of Stanfords Nanofabrication Facility. Manufacturers need research so they can build the best new product. Researchers need manufacturers to realize their ideas.

The semiconductor is foundational to many of the technologies that we are counting on going forward, including Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing, 5G and so on, said Wong.

So to have American leadership, he said, you need to have leadership in semiconductors.

According to the Department of Defense, early-stage research cant be proven in the facilities that we have here at home instead, U.S. engineers must go to Asia to test and prove an idea.

Similarly, startups are bedeviled by a chicken-and-egg problem. Without access to a factory, they cant prove commercial promise. Without proof, they cant get into a factory.

The CHIPS and Science Act aims to create a new world order. The $280 billion package includes $39 billion to help with the financing of semiconductor fabrication, assembly, testing and advanced packaging, as well as $13.2 billion toward research and workforce development. It also provides a 25% investment tax credit for capital costs of manufacturing equipment.

Its not yet known how the funds will be spent. Its up to the departments of Commerce, State and Defense to craft the details and decide how the money will be awarded.

Building a factory where billions of microscopic transistors are squeezed onto ever-smaller computer chips is a complex project.

And its expensive. Construction of a new factory takes about three to five years and costs a stunning $10 billion to $12 billion per site, about seven times as much as sports facilities such as Levis Stadium or Chase Center.

The CHIPS Act is likely to boost manufacturing in regions where land and energy are cheap. Theres a specific provision of the Act that directs some spending to places that arent coastal research hubs.

This past week, Micron Technology announced it will build a $15 billion chip factory near its headquarters in Boise, Idaho, and is considering a plan to spend as much as $160 billion on a new factory in central Texas. Two new Intel factories will soon be under construction near Columbus, Ohio, each costing $10 billion. In Arizona, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is investing $12 billion in an advanced-manufacturing center. Texas is the site of Samsungs new $17 billion chip factory. Indiana was selected by SkyWater for a $1.8 billion facility.

To attract Intel, Ohio offered the company about $2 billion worth of incentives, including $700 million for roadwork and water infrastructure upgrades. In Phoenix, where Taiwans TSMC is building its new plant, the city government promised to spend $205 million in public infrastructure improvements. In the small Texas town of Taylor, Samsung will pay no corporate income tax.

Californias welcome is more modest. Officials say they are recruiting but the states support is currently limited to tax credits through the California Competes Program, which offers up to $180 million to qualified applicants. Startups complain thats less useful than other incentives because they dont yet have profits to deduct against.

We have already begun and will continue working with companies to locate their CHIPS-eligible projects here in California, said Heather Purcell of the Governors Office of Business and Economic Development. We are the state that is known for innovation, home to the most high-quality, diverse workforce in the nation.

But experts say that new plants are unlikely to be erected here. Manufacturing is stifled by several factors: high real-estate costs, unreliable water, expensive electric bills and stiff regulations. In general, manufacturing has plummeted in California. Since 1990, the state has lost a third of its factory jobs.

A semiconductor fab needs a lot of land, a lot of water and a lot of electricity, said electrical engineering professor Hiu Yung Wong of San Jose State University. We might not be as competitive as other states.

But the biggest challenge is finding people with the right skill sets, he said. Many of the most-talented students go to computer science, where it is much easier to earn a higher income. They go to Google, they go to Facebook.

Silicon Valley became Software Valley, said Dan Hutcheson of TechInsights in San Jose. California is not oriented toward manufacturing. Politicians have this attitude, We dont care. We dont have to.'

Furthermore, some California cities are unlikely to want factories, infamous for their toxic chemicals, he said. Officials may fear fire risk or a repeat of Fairchild Semiconductors massive 1981 pollution of a cancer-causing solvent TCE in drinking-water wells in San Jose.

California may never again return to its industrial heyday, said experts.But federal funding could help turbocharge our many other strengths.

While awaiting the chance to apply for CHIPS funding, Santa Claras Luminous is already readying a production line that will produce its initial supercomputers.

Were building as many of our wafers as we can here in the U.S., said Hochberg, and were planning to do all of this packaging, testing and assembly here in Silicon Valley.

Anything is possible, he said, with enough focus and desire.

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The U.S. is bringing chip-making home. Is California ready? - The Mercury News

Report Ocean published a new survey report on the Next Generation Computing market. The research offers crucial details about growth plans, business opportunities, trends, innovations, the competitive environment in 2021, and a geographical outlook that takes into account North America, Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

Market Overview

The comprehensive analyses of the most recent trends, growth prospects, and market growth drivers are offered to readers of the global market research reports. The COVID-19 effects on the Next Generation Computing market are also discussed in detail in the research, along with the markets predicted compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2022 to 2030.

The research also provides a market analysis using various analytical techniques, including Porters Five Forces Analysis and PESTEL Analysis. These tools provide an in-depth analysis of the micro- and macro-environmental elements that influence the markets expansion during the forecast period.

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Next-generation computing technologies are evolving with the emergence of new technologies and research disciplines such as distributed computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, cloud computing, parallel computing, grid computing, and related applications. Manage data, applications, etc., provide much more efficient data processing by centralizing storage, memory, processing, bandwidth, etc., by using the Internet and centralized remote services. It can also centralize all the computing resources and manage them automatically via software without intervention.

The global next-generation computing market size was US$ 158.3 billion in 2021. The global next generation computing market size is forecast to reach US$ 785.1 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.5% during the forecast period from 2022 to 2030.

Factors Influencing Market Growth

Impact Analysis of COVID-19

The next-generation computing market has grown in recent years. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, software revenues declined slightly in 2020. Most countries implemented a lockdown and closed cities to prevent the virus from spreading. The next-generation computer market is likely to thrive in the coming years after recovering from the COVID 19 pandemic. In addition, various organizations in Asian countries were using advanced computing technology to improve business processes and improve operational efficiency. In addition, various countries have installed quantum computing applications and are adopting quantum computing solutions for healthcare and life science operations without the transmission of viruses.

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Regional Insights

The Asia Pacific is forecast to witness lucrative growth during the forecast period. Strong economic growth and continued development of next-generation computing and real-time data analytics are driving companies to invest heavily in the next-generation computing market to sustain growth and increase productivity. In addition, prominent players are focusing on optimizing their operations and enhancing their overall efficiency to stay competitive in the market, which is forecast to provide lucrative opportunities for the market during the forecast period.

Leading Competitors

The leading prominent companies profiled in the global next-generation computing market are:

Scope of the Report

The global next-generation computing market segmentation focuses on Type, Enterprise Size, Component, Offering, End-User, and Region.

Segmentation based on Type

Segmentation based on Enterprise Size

Segmentation based on Component

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Segmentation based on Offering

Segmentation based on End-User

Segmentation based on Region

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Next Generation Computing Market |(CAGR) of 19.5%| Is Likely to Experience a Tremendous Growth in Near Future -2030 - Taiwan News

As a humanist who writes about the impact of digital technology on our lives, I am often mistaken for a futurist. The people most interested in hiring me for my opinions about technology are usually less concerned with building tools that help people live better lives in the present than they are in identifying the Next Big Thing through which to dominate them in the future. I dont usually respond to their inquiries. Why help these guys ruin whats left of the internet, much less civilisation?

Still, sometimes a combination of morbid curiosity and cold hard cash is enough to get me on a stage in front of the tech elite, where I try to talk some sense into them about how their businesses are affecting our lives out here in the real world. Thats how I found myself accepting an invitation to address a group mysteriously described as ultra-wealthy stakeholders, out in the middle of the desert.

A limo was waiting for me at the airport. As the sun began to dip over the horizon, I realised I had been in the car for three hours. What sort of wealthy hedge-fund types would drive this far from the airport for a conference? Then I saw it. On a parallel path next to the highway, as if racing against us, a small jet was coming in for a landing on a private airfield. Of course.

The next morning, two men in matching Patagonia fleeces came for me in a golf cart and conveyed me through rocks and underbrush to a meeting hall. They left me to drink coffee and prepare in what I figured was serving as my green room. But instead of me being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, my audience was brought in to me. They sat around the table and introduced themselves: five super-wealthy guys yes, all men from the upper echelon of the tech investing and hedge-fund world. At least two of them were billionaires. After a bit of small talk, I realised they had no interest in the speech I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come to ask questions.

They started out innocuously and predictably enough. Bitcoin or ethereum? Virtual reality or augmented reality? Who will get quantum computing first, China or Google? Eventually, they edged into their real topic of concern: New Zealand or Alaska? Which region would be less affected by the coming climate crisis? It only got worse from there. Which was the greater threat: global warming or biological warfare? How long should one plan to be able to survive with no outside help? Should a shelter have its own air supply? What was the likelihood of groundwater contamination? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system, and asked: How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event? The event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from raiders as well as angry mobs. One had already secured a dozen Navy Seals to make their way to his compound if he gave them the right cue. But how would he pay the guards once even his crypto was worthless? What would stop the guards from eventually choosing their own leader?

The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers if that technology could be developed in time.

I tried to reason with them. I made pro-social arguments for partnership and solidarity as the best approaches to our collective, long-term challenges. The way to get your guards to exhibit loyalty in the future was to treat them like friends right now, I explained. Dont just invest in ammo and electric fences, invest in people and relationships. They rolled their eyes at what must have sounded to them like hippy philosophy.

This was probably the wealthiest, most powerful group I had ever encountered. Yet here they were, asking a Marxist media theorist for advice on where and how to configure their doomsday bunkers. Thats when it hit me: at least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology.

Taking their cue from Tesla founder Elon Musk colonising Mars, Palantirs Peter Thiel reversing the ageing process, or artificial intelligence developers Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether. Their extreme wealth and privilege served only to make them obsessed with insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us.

These people once showered the world with madly optimistic business plans for how technology might benefit human society. Now theyve reduced technological progress to a video game that one of them wins by finding the escape hatch. Will it be Jeff Bezos migrating to space, Thiel to his New Zealand compound, or Mark Zuckerberg to his virtual metaverse? And these catastrophising billionaires are the presumptive winners of the digital economy the supposed champions of the survival-of-the-fittest business landscape thats fuelling most of this speculation to begin with.

What I came to realise was that these men are actually the losers. The billionaires who called me out to the desert to evaluate their bunker strategies are not the victors of the economic game so much as the victims of its perversely limited rules. More than anything, they have succumbed to a mindset where winning means earning enough money to insulate themselves from the damage they are creating by earning money in that way. Its as if they want to build a car that goes fast enough to escape from its own exhaust.

Yet this Silicon Valley escapism lets call it The Mindset encourages its adherents to believe that the winners can somehow leave the rest of us behind.

Never before have our societys most powerful players assumed that the primary impact of their own conquests would be to render the world itself unliveable for everyone else. Nor have they ever before had the technologies through which to programme their sensibilities into the very fabric of our society. The landscape is alive with algorithms and intelligences actively encouraging these selfish and isolationist outlooks. Those sociopathic enough to embrace them are rewarded with cash and control over the rest of us. Its a self-reinforcing feedback loop. This is new.

Amplified by digital technologies and the unprecedented wealth disparity they afford, The Mindset allows for the easy externalisation of harm to others, and inspires a corresponding longing for transcendence and separation from the people and places that have been abused.

Instead of just lording over us for ever, however, the billionaires at the top of these virtual pyramids actively seek the endgame. In fact, like the plot of a Marvel blockbuster, the very structure of The Mindset requires an endgame. Everything must resolve to a one or a zero, a winner or loser, the saved or the damned. Actual, imminent catastrophes from the climate emergency to mass migrations support the mythology, offering these would-be superheroes the opportunity to play out the finale in their own lifetimes. For The Mindset also includes a faith-based Silicon Valley certainty that they can develop a technology that will somehow break the laws of physics, economics and morality to offer them something even better than a way of saving the world: a means of escape from the apocalypse of their own making.

By the time I boarded my return flight to New York, my mind was reeling with the implications of The Mindset. What were its main tenets? Who were its true believers? What, if anything, could we do to resist it? Before I had even landed, I posted an article about my strange encounter to surprising effect.

Almost immediately, I began receiving inquiries from businesses catering to the billionaire prepper, all hoping I would make some introductions on their behalf to the five men I had written about. I heard from a real estate agent who specialises in disaster-proof listings, a company taking reservations for its third underground dwellings project, and a security firm offering various forms of risk management.

But the message that got my attention came from a former president of the American chamber of commerce in Latvia. JC Cole had witnessed the fall of the Soviet empire, as well as what it took to rebuild a working society almost from scratch. He had also served as landlord for the American and European Union embassies, and learned a whole lot about security systems and evacuation plans. You certainly stirred up a bees nest, he began his first email to me. Its quite accurate the wealthy hiding in their bunkers will have a problem with their security teams I believe you are correct with your advice to treat those people really well, right now, but also the concept may be expanded and I believe there is a better system that would give much better results.

He felt certain that the event a grey swan, or predictable catastrophe triggered by our enemies, Mother Nature, or just by accident was inevitable. He had done a Swot analysis strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and concluded that preparing for calamity required us to take the very same measures as trying to prevent one. By coincidence, he explained, I am setting up a series of safe haven farms in the NYC area. These are designed to best handle an event and also benefit society as semi-organic farms. Both within three hours drive from the city close enough to get there when it happens.

Here was a prepper with security clearance, field experience and food sustainability expertise. He believed the best way to cope with the impending disaster was to change the way we treat one another, the economy, and the planet right now while also developing a network of secret, totally self-sufficient residential farm communities for millionaires, guarded by Navy Seals armed to the teeth.

JC is currently developing two farms as part of his safe haven project. Farm one, outside Princeton, is his show model and works well as long as the thin blue line is working. The second one, somewhere in the Poconos, has to remain a secret. The fewer people who know the locations, the better, he explained, along with a link to the Twilight Zone episode in which panicked neighbours break into a familys bomb shelter during a nuclear scare. The primary value of safe haven is operational security, nicknamed OpSec by the military. If/when the supply chain breaks, the people will have no food delivered. Covid-19 gave us the wake-up call as people started fighting over toilet paper. When it comes to a shortage of food it will be vicious. That is why those intelligent enough to invest have to be stealthy.

JC invited me down to New Jersey to see the real thing. Wear boots, he said. The ground is still wet. Then he asked: Do you shoot?

The farm itself was serving as an equestrian centre and tactical training facility in addition to raising goats and chickens. JC showed me how to hold and shoot a Glock at a series of outdoor targets shaped like bad guys, while he grumbled about the way Senator Dianne Feinstein had limited the number of rounds one could legally fit in a magazine for the handgun. JC knew his stuff. I asked him about various combat scenarios. The only way to protect your family is with a group, he said. That was really the whole point of his project to gather a team capable of sheltering in place for a year or more, while also defending itself from those who hadnt prepared. JC was also hoping to train young farmers in sustainable agriculture, and to secure at least one doctor and dentist for each location.

On the way back to the main building, JC showed me the layered security protocols he had learned designing embassy properties: a fence, no trespassing signs, guard dogs, surveillance cameras all meant to discourage violent confrontation. He paused for a minute as he stared down the drive. Honestly, I am less concerned about gangs with guns than the woman at the end of the driveway holding a baby and asking for food. He paused, and sighed, I dont want to be in that moral dilemma.

Thats why JCs real passion wasnt just to build a few isolated, militarised retreat facilities for millionaires, but to prototype locally owned sustainable farms that can be modelled by others and ultimately help restore regional food security in America. The just-in-time delivery system preferred by agricultural conglomerates renders most of the nation vulnerable to a crisis as minor as a power outage or transportation shutdown. Meanwhile, the centralisation of the agricultural industry has left most farms utterly dependent on the same long supply chains as urban consumers. Most egg farmers cant even raise chickens, JC explained as he showed me his henhouses. They buy chicks. Ive got roosters.

JC is no hippy environmentalist but his business model is based in the same communitarian spirit I tried to convey to the billionaires: the way to keep the hungry hordes from storming the gates is by getting them food security now. So for $3m, investors not only get a maximum security compound in which to ride out the coming plague, solar storm, or electric grid collapse. They also get a stake in a potentially profitable network of local farm franchises that could reduce the probability of a catastrophic event in the first place. His business would do its best to ensure there are as few hungry children at the gate as possible when the time comes to lock down.

So far, JC Cole has been unable to convince anyone to invest in American Heritage Farms. That doesnt mean no one is investing in such schemes. Its just that the ones that attract more attention and cash dont generally have these cooperative components. Theyre more for people who want to go it alone. Most billionaire preppers dont want to have to learn to get along with a community of farmers or, worse, spend their winnings funding a national food resilience programme. The mindset that requires safe havens is less concerned with preventing moral dilemmas than simply keeping them out of sight.

Many of those seriously seeking a safe haven simply hire one of several prepper construction companies to bury a prefab steel-lined bunker somewhere on one of their existing properties. Rising S Company in Texas builds and installs bunkers and tornado shelters for as little as $40,000 for an 8ft by 12ft emergency hideout all the way up to the $8.3m luxury series Aristocrat, complete with pool and bowling lane. The enterprise originally catered to families seeking temporary storm shelters, before it went into the long-term apocalypse business. The company logo, complete with three crucifixes, suggests their services are geared more toward Christian evangelist preppers in red-state America than billionaire tech bros playing out sci-fi scenarios.

Theres something much more whimsical about the facilities in which most of the billionaires or, more accurately, aspiring billionaires actually invest. A company called Vivos is selling luxury underground apartments in converted cold war munitions storage facilities, missile silos, and other fortified locations around the world. Like miniature Club Med resorts, they offer private suites for individuals or families, and larger common areas with pools, games, movies and dining. Ultra-elite shelters such as the Oppidum in the Czech Republic claim to cater to the billionaire class, and pay more attention to the long-term psychological health of residents. They provide imitation of natural light, such as a pool with a simulated sunlit garden area, a wine vault, and other amenities to make the wealthy feel at home.

On closer analysis, however, the probability of a fortified bunker actually protecting its occupants from the reality of, well, reality, is very slim. For one, the closed ecosystems of underground facilities are preposterously brittle. For example, an indoor, sealed hydroponic garden is vulnerable to contamination. Vertical farms with moisture sensors and computer-controlled irrigation systems look great in business plans and on the rooftops of Bay Area startups; when a palette of topsoil or a row of crops goes wrong, it can simply be pulled and replaced. The hermetically sealed apocalypse grow room doesnt allow for such do-overs.

Just the known unknowns are enough to dash any reasonable hope of survival. But this doesnt seem to stop wealthy preppers from trying. The New York Times reported that real estate agents specialising in private islands were overwhelmed with inquiries during the Covid-19 pandemic. Prospective clients were even asking about whether there was enough land to do some agriculture in addition to installing a helicopter landing pad. But while a private island may be a good place to wait out a temporary plague, turning it into a self-sufficient, defensible ocean fortress is harder than it sounds. Small islands are utterly dependent on air and sea deliveries for basic staples. Solar panels and water filtration equipment need to be replaced and serviced at regular intervals. The billionaires who reside in such locales are more, not less, dependent on complex supply chains than those of us embedded in industrial civilisation.

Surely the billionaires who brought me out for advice on their exit strategies were aware of these limitations. Could it have all been some sort of game? Five men sitting around a poker table, each wagering his escape plan was best?

But if they were in it just for fun, they wouldnt have called for me. They would have flown out the author of a zombie apocalypse comic book. If they wanted to test their bunker plans, theyd have hired a security expert from Blackwater or the Pentagon. They seemed to want something more. Their language went far beyond questions of disaster preparedness and verged on politics and philosophy: words such as individuality, sovereignty, governance and autonomy.

Thats because it wasnt their actual bunker strategies I had been brought out to evaluate so much as the philosophy and mathematics they were using to justify their commitment to escape. They were working out what Ive come to call the insulation equation: could they earn enough money to insulate themselves from the reality they were creating by earning money in this way? Was there any valid justification for striving to be so successful that they could simply leave the rest of us behind apocalypse or not?

Or was this really their intention all along? Maybe the apocalypse is less something theyre trying to escape than an excuse to realise The Mindsets true goal: to rise above mere mortals and execute the ultimate exit strategy.

This is an edited extract from Survival of the Richest by Douglas Rushkoff, published by Scribe (20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

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The super-rich preppers planning to save themselves from the apocalypse - The Guardian

Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scotty Scott, Chief Engineer and third in command of the starship Enterprise had his dilithium crystals: Quantum computers could soon have time crystals. It all sounds very Doctor Who, but time crystals were theoretically predicted 10 years ago, and ongoing research now shows they can be engineered to interconnect, not only to help build quantum computers but also provide greatly improved and highly stable memory storage for the devices.

Mind you, as of today, theyd be difficult to manage because any connections would have to take place in a superfluid of helium-3 maintained at a temperate of one-ten-thousandth of a degree above absolute zero, which itself is minus 273 degrees Celsius, so your average fridge wont be of much use. At such a low temperature there is no viscosity, no friction and no heat is produced, and thus perpetual motion becomes a possibility. Superfluidity can occur in helium-3 when individual atoms pair up to make bosonic complexes called Cooper pairs: Youll have to take my word for that, or read it up yourselves.

In normal crystals salt, sugar or snowflakes, for example atoms are arranged periodically in a lattice formation. These atoms move in three dimensions within that framework (up and down, left and right, backwards and forwards on an X, Y, Z axis), oscillating until, when at ground state (when all electrons are at the lowest possible energy levels), they stop moving. The structures of atoms in time crystals are very different because they oscillate in time as well in space in other words, in a fourth dimension.And, heres the astonishing bit, they do exhibit perpetual motion, jiggling around forever without the need for any energy input or losing any energy at any time.

By doing this, time crystals might appear to break the Second Law of Thermodynamics by negating entropy, which can be described as a measure of randomness, uncertainty, unpredictability and decline into disorder. Or, as Paul Simon sings (on his under-rated and under-played track), everything put together sooner or later falls apart. Entropy is also a measure of the number of possible arrangements the atoms in a system can have. However, time crystals existing in space time cannot create infinite energy as, in fact, they do obey the Second Law of Thermodynamics, because the energy is conserved within a closed system.

That negation of entropy in a closed system is down to a principle of quantum mechanics called many-object localisation. Here, when a force is exerted on one atom, that force is felt by that single atom alone and not by any others, i.e. the change is localised rather than systemwide. Thus, the system does not experience entropy and so become unpredictable and liable to breakdown, but instead continues to oscillate, presumably for ever (as no one ever looks at what is going on). If that happens, the state changes according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which says that when a quantum system is observed and measured, its quantum wave function disappears. Thus, time crystals can work properly only when completely separate to, and isolated from, their surroundings, and then we are back to the closed system again.

A research fellow and physics lecturer at Lancaster University, Samuli Autti, has been working with scientists at Aalto University in Finland (where he completed his PhD) and created two time crystals that paired and interacted with one another. The pairing existed for 1,000 seconds, a period that equated to many billions of periods of oscillation before the wave function decayed and slowed. The research programme continues, and pairing times are expected be extended.

The experiment showed that the paired time crystals (and their interaction) may well turn out to be the basic foundation upon which to build a fully-functioning quantum computer. Thats because a mass of paired time crystals could be made to operate as qubits quantum bits that can represent a 1 and 0 and on and off simultaneously, to provide massive and very fast computing processing speed. Meanwhile, the search is on to develop time crystals that will work at room temperature, a breakthrough that would make it far easier to construct and run quantum computers.

Even though the experiments may sound like something from science fiction, they are science fact, and Scotty has been proved right in his oft-repeated assertion that Ye cannae break the laws of physics, Captain. And, indeed, you cant, but it may be possible to bend them a bit from time to time.

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Want the best quantum computers? Then youll need time crystals... - TelecomTV