Feds making a big bet on Illinois’ leadership in quantum computing

Posted on July 16, 2024

By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – Someone joked it’s like, “I’ll make you an offer you can’t understand.”

The federal government and Illinois are working together on a quantum proving ground.

“We are not committing any dollars today, but we know this is a huge challenge, and it’s going to be extremely expensive,” said Joe Altepeter, the government’s program manager for the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative at a Chicago news conference Tuesday. “If you really want to know for sure something is going to work, you’re going to have to vet the algorithms. You’ll have to build some really expensive prototypes to kick the tires. You’re going to have to build a lot of equipment and hire a small army of people to really vet these technologies.”

It all fits into the governor’s agenda of making Illinois the leader in quantum computing.

To put it more simply, U.S. Rep. Bill Foster (D-Naperville) said if the bad guys get ahead of us on quantum, the little padlock in your web browser will break.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected].

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