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Joe Buff is a professional writer on national security and defense preparedness. He is also a novelist of tales of near-future warfare featuring nuclear submariners and Navy SEALs in action at their bravest and best. Two of Joe's non-fiction articles on future submarine technology and tactics, which appeared in The Submarine Review, received literary awards from the Naval Submarine League. His latest novel now out in paperback, Crush Depth, made the Military Book Club's Top 20 Bestseller List after being selected as a Featured Alternate of the Club in late 2002. His most recent work, Tidal Rip, was released from Wm. Morrow in hardcover in November, 2003, and quickly made the Amazon.com Top 100 General Thrillers Bestseller List. Joe's next novel, Straits of Power, is scheduled for hardcover release in autumn, 2004.
Joe is a Life Member of the following organizations: U.S. Naval Institute, the Navy League of the United States, the Fellows of the Naval War College, CEC/Seabees Historical Foundation, and the Naval Submarine League. Joe's father was an enlisted man in the Navy (Seabees in the Pacific Theater) from 1946 through 1951, and his uncle was a merchant mariner on the North Atlantic convoys late in World War II, before being drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in the Occupation of Nazi Germany.
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August 13, 2004
[Have an opinion on this column? Sound off in Military.com
at the Frontlines.]
Step by step, scientists are busy perfecting an entirely new and
amazingly powerful approach to computer technology. Far more than
simply being the next generation in tinier, faster hardware and
smarter software, quantum computing represents a fundamental difference
in kind. Though the capabilities -- including actual quantum teleportation
-- may seem astonishing, quantum computing is not science fiction
or the next "cold fusion." Quantum computing is proven, hard fact.
Impressive results have already been accomplished in major laboratories
around the globe, validated independently by other researchers,
and reported in prestigious, peer reviewed journals. Yet history
has shown all too often that a country's national security is deeply
affected by its own and its potential adversaries' relative number-crunching
prowess.
The entire matter is now becoming pressing, and further revolutionary
experimental breakthroughs announced just this summer have brought
things to a head. Is there a danger that in the rush to perfect
wholesale quantum computing, America might neglect the vital question
of infrastructure security on this front? Could quantum computer
techniques even be used in the form of a weapon, to launch unstoppable
cyberwarfare virus attacks against conventional digital computers
-- especially during the critical transition phase when most platforms
at home and around the world still rely on conventional technology?
Is our society on the verge of repeating the blunder from the dawn
of the Internet Age, when security considerations were ignored in
favor of pure engineering advances -- enabling endless viruses,
worms, spam, identity theft, and serious privacy concerns?
As hard as quantum physics is for laymen to comfortably understand,
controlling the emerging threat of "quantum hacking" could be even
more demanding -- but is essential. Fortunately, an overview of
some important public policy issues seems achievable even without
a heavy background in the field. Please press on, gentle reader,
and hopefully some good understanding will come to you.
The military opportunities and threats of quantum computing are
unavoidably intertwined with certain fascinating aspects of how
quantum physics works. Put differently, if you like Star Trek then
you'll love this even more, because this stuff is real.
Reading the best secret codes: It turns out that an individual
light photon (indivisible, sub-microscopic packet of energy) can
exist in a vast number of superimposed states all at once. As a
result, quantum computers differ drastically from current digital
computers, where the fundamental unit of information is the familiar
"discrete 0 or 1." This enables a new type of parallel processing
on a truly mind-boggling scale.
Certain computational-intensive tasks -- including military code-breaking
-- which would take literally millions of years with the latest
supercomputers, could instead be solved in mere seconds on a full-blown
quantum computer. Such a device, if perfected in secret, could compromise
every encryption scheme in existence. But the idea of it is already
public. Research on codes immune to fast quantum-computer decryption
had better keep pace! Otherwise industrial, diplomatic, and warfighting
activity might be reduced to a "new Dark Ages," in which every player's
mail gets read by competitors and enemies, like it or not.
Super-hacking via quantum teleportation: Another intriguing -- and frightening?
-- feature of quantum physics is the ability to transfer key characteristics
of one photon or atom to a partner even across vast distances, and
instantaneously. Einstein himself, in the 1930s, called this "spooky
action at a distance." The process, which truly exists, is called
quantum teleportation. If the name conjures up images from the classic
TV series starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, you're catching
on.
Though human beings won't be beaming themselves around during the
lifetime of anyone reading this essay, critical information and data
definitely soon will be transmitted from point to point in a manner
totally eclipsing even the most sophisticated fiber optic and satellite-based
networks of today. This is because quantum teleportation relies on
a process called entanglement, in which two particles become and remain
intimately linked even if they then move light-years apart. A change,
triggered intentionally by a "systems operator," in the properties
of one entangled particle, always causes an instant and identical
change in its partner. Wow! Special steps are needed to make sure
the transfer of practical information obeys the speed limit set by
Einstein -- the speed of light -- but no connection of any sort is
needed for the change to happen other than the entanglement itself.
This sure sounds rather wonderful, and bizarre. It's a basic property
of the universe we live in. Why is quantum teleportation a potential
cyber-warfare threat? Because all conventional computer programs and
data nets work by moving around, and examining, hordes of electrons
(electricity) and photons (fiber optics). And every known modem, router,
and anti-virus software application a) resides within this framework
of moving photons and electrons, and b) is subject to infiltration
by what might be perceived as harmless noise. Noise means seemingly
random "stray" packets of non-information that fall below a pre-set
detection/validation threshold.
The problem here is that an aggressor's quantum computer, harnessing
quantum teleportation, could send into a targeted system a small random
stream of particles, each entangled to a partner that "stays behind
the aggressor's lines," and this stream would easily get through all
security filters as noise. Next, after this initial penetration, the
partners to those entangled particles, retained in the custody of
the aggressor, could be manipulated to become an extremely damaging
program bit-string. This would cause the particles that have been
snuck into the target to also change immediately from meaningless
noise into a deadly virus program. Woops! The quantum computer in
the hands of the clever aggressor has gotten past every one of the
defender's conventional safety precautions, and obliterated the defender's
entire information superhighway in one decisive blow!
Since the dawn of time, nations and armies have competed for the best
in new technology. During our present unsettling era of network-centric
warfare, weapons of mass destruction, and unmanned aerial and undersea
combat vehicles, this arms race for scientific supremacy reveals no
signs of slowing down. We mustn't repeat mistakes from earlier in
the development of electronic and optical data processing protocols:
Issues of national security -- including the possible weaponization
of new computer tools for both offense and defense -- deserve serious
attention side by side with the emerging pure science, and the great
commercial engineering applications, now in the offing in the exciting
realm of quantum computation.
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© 2004 Joe Buff. All opinions
expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily
reflect those of Military.com.
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