Quantum News Briefs August 10: Biden signs executive order barring US investment in quantum computing, Chinese chips & AI sectors; Researchers use SPAD detector to achieve 3D quantum ghost imaging; SandboxAQ launches Sandwich, an open source meta-Library of Cryptographic Algorithms + MORE

Quantum News Briefs August 10:

Biden signs executive order barring US investment in quantum computing, Chinese chips & AI sectors

U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday, August 8 that restricts certain American investments in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao in high-tech sectors such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors and quantum technology. Quantum New Briefs summarizes August 10 article by Yifan Yu and Jack Stone Truitt, Nikkei staff writers.
The move prohibits U.S. persons from making “certain transactions” in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies and AI sectors and requires them to notify the Treasury Department when making such transactions.
The executive order will be implemented by the Treasury Department in consultation with other agencies, including the Commerce Department. The Treasury Department is seeking public comment on implementation of the executive order.
The order “is a narrowly targeted action to protect national security while maintaining our long-standing commitment to open investment,” a statement by the Treasury Department said.
The department said it expects to exempt “certain transactions, including potentially those in publicly traded instruments and intracompany transfers from U.S. parents to subsidiaries.”
The executive order came on the anniversary of Biden signing the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act into law, which also contains restrictions on investing in production of advanced semiconductors in China.
The Treasury Department said the new national security program would “prevent U.S. investments from helping accelerate the indigenization of these technologies in the PRC which undermines the effectiveness of our existing export controls and inbound investment screening programs which also seek to protect U.S. national security. Click here to read Nikkei Asia article in-entirety.

Researchers use SPAD detector to achieve 3D quantum ghost imaging

Researchers have reported the first 3D measurements acquired with quantum ghost imaging. The new technique enables 3D imaging on a single photon level, yielding the lowest photon dose possible for any measurement. Quantum News Briefs summarized August 8 article in Science Daily.
“3D imaging with single photons could be used for various biomedical applications, such as eye care diagnostics,” said researcher Carsten Pitsch from the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, both in Germany. “It can be applied to image materials and tissues that are sensitive to light or drugs that become toxic when exposed to light without any risk of damage.”
Quantum ghost imaging creates images using entangled photon-pairs in which only one member of the photon pair interacts with the object. The detection time for each photon is then used to identify entangled pairs, which allows an image to be reconstructed. This approach not only allows imaging at extremely low light levels but also means that the objects being imaged do not have to interact with the photons used for imaging.
Previous etups for quantum ghost imaging were not capable of 3D imaging because they relied on intensified charge-coupled device (ICCD) cameras. Although these cameras have good spatial resolution, they are time-gated and don’t allow the independent temporal detection of single photons. Click here to read the ScienceDaily article in-entirety.

SandboxAQ launches Sandwich, an open source meta-Library of Cryptographic Algorithms to speed the implementation of agile cryptography

 SandboxAQ has announced Sandwich, an open source framework and meta-library of cryptographic algorithms that simplifies modern cryptography management. Quantum News Briefs summarizes August 8 announcement.
With an intuitive, unified API, Sandwich empowers developers to embed the cryptographic algorithms of their choice directly into their applications and to change them as technologies and threats evolve – without rewriting code.
Sandwich enables developers to create their own stack, or “sandwich,” of protocols and implementations that becomes available as a cohesive cryptographic object. It supports multiple languages (C/C++, Rust, Python and Go), operating systems (MacOS, Linux), and cryptographic libraries (OpenSSL, BoringSSL and libOQS), with future additions planned based on feedback from the open source and cybersecurity communities.
“Modern cryptography management and cryptographic agility are essential for organizations of all sizes; however, there has been a distinct lack of open-source tools for developers to support these features,” said Graham Steel, Head of Product for SandboxAQ’s security group. “With Sandwich, we’re empowering developers to experiment with different types of cryptography – including the new post-quantum cryptography algorithms soon to be standardized by NIST – so they can achieve the right balance of security and performance.”
“All enterprises need to have more observability and control over how encryption is managed across their systems, and ensuring that all applications leverage the best possible cryptography is a key aspect of improving cybersecurity posture,” said Nadia Carlsten, Vice President of Product at SandboxAQ. “Sandwich provides developers with an easy set of tools to integrate the latest cryptography standards to reduce the number of vulnerable applications that security-minded organizations have to worry about.”
“Properly implementing cryptography is challenging for developer teams of any size and skill, requiring significant time and effort for design, implementation, and testing. This will only be exacerbated by the need to transition to new PQC standards,” said Taher Elgamal, developer of the Elgamal encryption protocol, partner at Evolution Equity Partners and a SandboxAQ advisor. “With Sandwich, SandboxAQ has created an elegant solution that enables developers to easily implement cryptography and cryptographic agility into their applications.” Click here to read the complete announcement.

NREL & partners link quantum computing into grid-testing platform

Quantum computing technology has, for the first time, been integrated into an electric grid research platform, according to researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Quantum computing technology has, for the first time, been integrated into an electric grid research platform, according to researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
“With the huge amount of ways energy can now be generated and supplied, it is very important to handle so many inputs and outputs, but classical computing-based optimizers are not designed to handle an exponential scale-up in input parameters that the industry is expected to witness in the next two decades,” Sayonsom Chanda, a power system engineer at NREL, said in a statement. “We’re talking millions of inputs and outputs; that’s when classical computers start showing their limits, and quantum computers their benefits.”
With funding from the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and in collaboration with RTDS Technologies and Atom Computing, NREL says it has debuted an open-source interface that it says allows researchers to perform “quantum-in-the-loop,” as opposed to hardware-in-the-loop, simulations that are used to help optimize the performance of the electric grid.
n conjunction with its Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems tool, NREL said it can run quantum in-the-loop within highly realistic power systems. It could be “an important next step for using quantum computing to optimize electric grid operations with the interconnection of increasingly complex distributed energy resources,” NREL said.
The first optimization problem that we want to tackle is how best to draw power from different sources,” Chanda said. “You have some resources more closely located to certain loads and others that make more economic sense to deploy. Perhaps quantum computing can determine how to quickly switch power sources for resilience and efficiency.” Click here to read the complete article on PublicPower.org site.

Sandra K. Helsel, Ph.D. has been researching and reporting on frontier technologies since 1990.  She has her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.