Security Fraud in Europe's “Quantum Manifesto”
I just attended the &quot;Quantum Europe&quot; conference in Amsterdam, where the manifesto was announced and where the details were worked out.<p>While the manifesto is surely geared towards a specific audience (politicians) and contains a lot of buzzwords, the flagship project is very well thought out and supported by some of the largest research institutions inside and outside of Europe (e.g. including Intel, who invested 50 million in the QuTech centre in Delft).<p>The author tries to convey the impression that the manifesto and flagship project are the result of some undemocratic and misguided funding process, while in fact they are the result of many years of work putting together a proposal for this kind of project. This effort, which was mainly done by the scientific community, dates back to 2009 and earlier and has been a fully transparent and community-led effort.<p>The ideas behind the flagship project are very sound as well (in my opinion): Get different research groups in Europe to collaborate and share resources, provide a level of funding that allows those researchers to compete with e.g the US &#x2F; Canada &#x2F; Australia (which are all investing similar amounts) and get the industry involved to commercialize technologies where possible.<p>Also, qantum computing is only one of several flagship projects that have been selected for funding, the Human Brain project being another one.<p>All in all this kind of funding scheme in which scientists rather than politicians play a leading role are highly welcome in my opinion, and I would like to see this model copied around the world.<p>Concerning the potential overselling of quantum technologies: The limitations and uncertainties of this research were discussed very openly at the conference, and many speakers explicitly warned against promising too much to the public.<p>All in all I think all actors are aware of the fact that quantum computing &#x2F; cryptography won&#x27;t solve all their problems, but they still believe that these technologies might have a deep impact on the European and world economy in the next 20 years.<p>More background information on the FET flagships within the Horizon 2020 programme: projects:<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ec.europa.eu&#x2F;programmes&#x2F;horizon2020&#x2F;en&#x2F;h2020-section&#x2F;fet-flagships" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ec.europa.eu&#x2F;programmes&#x2F;horizon2020&#x2F;en&#x2F;h2020-section&#x2F;...</a>