Quantum winter is coming
I studied experimental condensed-matter physics and this article is spot on. The PIs at my university were holding clouds of rubidium atoms with laser tweezers at microkelvins in ultra-high vacuum, agitating them with a laser beam, and publishing papers saying "look it responds sort of like a qubit!"<p>If you have seen the kind of equipment required to perform these experiments, it's absolutely unimaginable that these concepts could be miniaturized enough that someone would be able to put them in a desktop size box, and to do so usefully and safely within a timeline that is competitive with the advancement of microelectronics.