‘India’s Quantum Mission geopolitically key, to be actualized soon’
NEW DELHI : India’s ₹6,000-crore quantum mission, announced in April this year, will be put in motion “very soon", with the Department of Science and Technology (DST) putting “an appropriate structure for it in place", said Ajay Kumar Sood, principal scientific advisor (PSA) to the Centre. He also said his office is also involved in “making the framework of the mission, and running it." Sood was speaking at industry body Assocham’s Quantum Technology Conclave. The mission, and all the development work around it, will be “crucial in geopolitical strategies," Sood said.
“Adopting quantum technologies is not a choice any longer—today, it is a question of getting in at the earliest. For example, a traditional supercomputer will take 100 trillion years to break 128-bit encryption code. Quantum computers will take only a fraction of (this) time to do this, and that is what should worry us all," he said.
“Post-quantum cryptography is an enormously important field, and we should be investing here, because if you have 50-qubit or higher quantum computers, it will not take long to break codes. The economic potential of quantum computing, and the impact on global digital economies, are staring at us—this is crucial in terms of geopolitical strategies. Hence, we need to see how quantum computing can be applied in our business and governance models," Sood added.
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