D.C.’s food scene gets a prestigious boost: Michelin inspection (and stars)

Rose’s Luxury has been one of the most acclaimed new restaurants to open in Washington in many years; will it now earn a Michelin star (or more)? (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
The Washington food scene’s decade of dramatic transformation has brought us artisanal toast, $22 cocktails and numerous accolades. Now, the city’s foodscape will be recognized by one of the world’s highest arbiters of culinary taste: the Michelin Guide.
Michelin announced Tuesday that it has already deployed its famously anonymous inspectors throughout Washington restaurants — news sure to strike fear in the hearts of chefs and servers — in anticipation of the city’s first Michelin Guide, which will go on sale Oct. 13. Once it does, Washington will join the ranks of such culinary destinations as Paris, London and Tokyo. It will be only the fourth American city to be the subject of a current Michelin Guide, after New York, San Francisco and Chicago. (Michelin previously published guides in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, but it ceased evaluating both cities in 2010 for economic and geographical reasons, a Michelin spokesman said.)
“D.C. was a logical choice. It’s a very cosmopolitan city. It has a growing and thriving food scene,” said Michael Ellis, international director for the Michelin Guides. Other criteria that contributed to the decision were the diversity of cuisines and the city’s stature — which Ellis said makes it “of interest to the Michelin group.”
To local chefs and restaurateurs, the move is a vote of confidence that could spark even more growth.
“I’m delighted about it,” said Ashok Bajaj, who owns Rasika, the Oval Room and other top-rated fine-dining restaurants. “I think it puts us on the map. The worldwide name recognition, I think it helps the city.”
Owner Ashok Bajaj greets customers at Rasika in 2011. He is “delighted” at the news that Michelin will be publishing a guide to the District’s restaurants. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
The tire manufacturer introduced its guide in 1900 as a way to encourage people to take road trips (and wear down their Michelin tires). The company catalogued hotels, mechanics, gas stations and restaurants, introducing the star system in 1926. The guides cover 27 countries, and there are only nine individual city guides, with Washington, Shanghai and Seoul to come. Restaurants are evaluated for their creativity, personality, ingredient quality, value and consistency, among other factors, to determine their star rating.
Ellis said the District has been on his list of cities to expand into for several years, although he declined to say which other cities were considered. As for the L.A. and Las Vegas snubs, “I do think that those cities remain very interesting,” he said. “Los Angeles and Las Vegas remain on our radar.”
Michelin’s 2016 guide to France. (Michel Euler/AP)
Michelin inspectors, who are trained in France, have been surreptitiously dining in Washington restaurants since last fall. And restaurants in the city will be on high alert, because reviewers still have more eating to do — they will continue making visits throughout the summer, so the newest buzzed-about additions to the city’s fine-dining scene, such as Aaron Silverman’s Pineapple and Pearls and Eric Ziebold’s Métier, still can be included.
Inspectors are “kind of like undercover agents,” Ellis said. Most are trained chefs. The bulk of the inspectors in the District have been Americans, although Ellis says he has flown in inspectors from around the world, too. To maintain their anonymity and objectivity, all of them pay for their meals and never eat at a restaurant more than once in the same year. For restaurants that are being considered for stars, Michelin sends multiple inspectors throughout the year to test a restaurant’s consistency and creativity.
Ellis says that the inspectors are conservative in their approach and can be reluctant to give stars to new restaurants from untested chefs. He would not say whether any restaurants in Washington have achieved the coveted three-star rating. Fewer than 120 restaurants in the world have that designation, and most of them are expensive and exclusive. Michelin also rates “Bib Gourmands,” or affordable restaurants.
“What we don’t want to do is have seesaw decisions where we give a star out and find out six months later that the wheels came off and it’s not up to quality,” Ellis said.
Chef/owner Patrick O’Connell at the Inn at Little Washington, which won’t be eligible for a Michelin rating yet, because the company’s guide to Washington will include only restaurants in the District proper. (Dixie D. Vereen/For The Washington Post)
Another group that won’t be getting any stars this fall: suburban and rural restaurants. The first edition of the Washington guide will include only restaurants within the District’s borders. That means that one of the region’s best fine-dining restaurants — the Inn at Little Washington in Washington, Va. — will be shut out for at least another year. Subsequent editions of the guide will expand to include the suburbs.
“The closer we got a look at the D.C. metro area, we realized there was quite a bit to cover,” Ellis said. As for the Inn, Ellis called it “one of the great restaurants of the United States” and said that “we certainly look forward to incorporating” chef Patrick O’Connell in following years.
D.C. chefs greeted the news with surprise and enthusiasm.
“Are you serious? That is crazy,” said Silverman, the James Beard Award-winning chef of Rose’s Luxury. Chefs “always talk about it. People ask me [when Michelin will come], and I’m like, ‘Maybe one day.’ ”
Earning Michelin stars is “something that a lot of people think about and dream about,” Silverman said.
It was a Michelin-starred chef from France — Jean-Louis Palladin, who opened his eponymous restaurant at the Watergate Hotel in 1979 — who is credited with kick-starting the Washington food scene. But even after the city’s recent culinary renewal, there’s still some wariness about where it stands from a national perspective. The Washington Post’s food critic, Tom Sietsema, ended up including Washington in his ranking of America’s 10 best food cities, but he wrote that when he began the project, he wasn’t sure whether the District would make it.
Mark Furstenberg, owner of Bread Furst in the Van Ness area of Northwest Washington, says the District is becoming “a very, very good restaurant city.” (April Greer/For The Washington Post)
Michelin’s recognition is “certainly, in my opinion, not later than it should have been,” said Mark Furstenberg, the Beard-nominated baker behind Bread Furst and a longtime Washington restaurateur. An article he wrote for The Post in 2013 argued that Washington was not a great food city, but he acknowledges that much has changed since then.
“I think the Michelin recognition comes at a very good time,” he said. “Washington is poised to become a very, very good restaurant city, with lots of diversity that we didn’t have before, including a number of young chefs doing wonderful things.”
Palladin, who at 28 was the youngest chef to win two Michelin stars, died in 2001. If he were here to hear the news, “He would be so amused,” Furstenberg said. “He would say, ‘They’re following me across the ocean.’ He really disapproved of them.” Despite his accolades, Palladin had a contrarian streak, Furstenberg said.
For chefs who are awarded stars, the pressure to maintain them will be intense. European chefs who have feared losing stars have killed themselves. The death in December of Benoît Violier, the French-born chef of Switzerland’s three-star Restaurant de l’Hotel de Ville, raised questions about the pressures that chefs with Michelin stars face.
But that won’t happen here, where the competition is less cutthroat, Silverman said.
“The D.C. chef community has a really good camaraderie,” he said.
“We [chefs] do a lot of social things together. That’s a style of Washington that is not common in the food business nationally,” said Furstenberg, who attributes that gregariousness to Palladin, known for his big personality.
Jean-Louis Palladin, shown in his eponymous restaurant at the Watergate Hotel before it closed in 1996, earned two Michelin stars in France before coming to Washington. (Frank Johnston/The Washington Post)
Besides, while the Michelin Guide once stood as the singular global ranking of the world’s great restaurants, it is now surrounded by rivals — both from the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, a list originated by the British magazine Restaurant that has, in some estimations, eclipsed Michelin, and from crowdsourced restaurant reviews from Yelp and TripAdvisor.
“I don’t think [Michelin] carries the same cachet as it does in Europe,” Furstenberg said. “They’re never going to be the definitive guide to America as they have been in France.”
But chefs are going to be hungry for those stars anyway. And when they’re handed out in October, it could have a big impact on current and future restaurants.
“We don’t pretend to transform a dining scene,” Ellis said. But “I think that chefs will up their game.”
The change could be mostly in outsiders’ perception of Washington. For decades, the city’s restaurants had a fusty reputation for catering to lobbyists and power brokers at a series of indistinguishable steakhouses — a reputation the city still fights . The Michelin guide is recognition that Washington is, at last, a fully formed food city. Restaurateurs hope that other cities — ahem, New York — will begin to think of us that way, too.
“A lot of people have been working hard for five to 10 years, and whether or not they intended to change the scene, they have,” Silverman said. “It’s the beginning of big things for Washington, D.C.”
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Discuss the commercial status of quantum computing in the US.

The US has made significant investments in quantum computing.  Describe the commercial aspects of this technology in the US to include what companies are involved and where the research and development is taking place.  Commercial use of quantum computing technology also is of interest. Quantum computing efforts outside the US are not relevant. US government funding and legislation is not relevant nor is any information related to US national security.

The US has made significant investments in quantum computing. Describe the commercial aspects of this technology in the US to include what companies are involved and where the research and development is taking place. Commercial use of quantum computing technology also is of interest. Quantum computing efforts outside the US are not relevant. US government funding and legislation is not relevant nor is any information related to US national security or any information mentioning universities.

Summarize commercial aspects of a technology in a specific region for this question.

Quantum computers may be more of an imminent threat than AI

Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking and others have been warning about runway artificial intelligence, but there may be a more imminent threat: quantum computing. It could pose a greater burden on businesses than the Y2K computer bug did toward the end of the ’90s.
Quantum computers are straight out of science fiction. Take the “traveling salesman problem,” where a salesperson has to visit a specific set of cities, each only once, and return to the first city by the most efficient route possible. As the number of cities increases, the problem becomes exponentially complex. It would take a laptop computer 1,000 years to compute the most efficient route between 22 cities, for example. A quantum computer could do this within minutes, possibly seconds.
Unlike classic computers, in which information is represented in 0’s and 1’s, quantum computers rely on particles called quantum bits, or qubits. These can hold a value of 0 or 1 or both values at the same time — a superposition denoted as “0+1.”  They solve problems by laying out all of the possibilities simultaneously and measuring the results. It’s equivalent to opening a combination lock by trying every possible number and sequence simultaneously.
Albert Einstein was so skeptical about entanglement, one of the other principles of quantum mechanics, that he called it “spooky action at a distance” and said it was not possible. “God does not play dice with the universe,” he argued. But, as Hawkings later wrote, God may have “a few tricks up his sleeve.”
Crazy as it may seem, IBM, Google, Microsoft and Intel say that they are getting close to making quantum computers work. IBM is already offering early versions of quantum computing as a cloud service to select clients. There is a global race between technology companies, defense contractors, universities and governments to build advanced versions that hold the promise of solving some of the greatest mysteries of the universe — and enable the cracking open of practically every secured database in the world.
Modern-day security systems are protected with a standard encryption algorithm called RSA (named after Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, the inventors). It works by finding prime factors of very large numbers, a puzzle that needs to be solved. It is easy to reduce a small number such as 15 to its prime factors (3 x 5), but factorizing numbers with a few hundred digits is extremely hard and could take days or months using conventional computers. But some quantum computers are working on these calculations too, according to IEEE Spectrum. Quantum computers could one day effectively provide a skeleton key to confidential communications, bank accounts and password databases.
Imagine the strategic disadvantage nations would find have if their rivals were the first to build these. Those possessing the technology would be able to open every nation’s digital locks.
We don’t know how much progress governments have made, but in May 2016, IBM surprised the world with an announcement that it was making available a 5-qubit quantum computer on which researchers could run algorithms and experiments. It envisioned that quantum processors of 50 to 100 qubits would be possible in the next decade. The simultaneous computing capacity of a quantum computer increases exponentially with the number of qubits available to it, so a 50-qubit computer would exceed the capability of the top supercomputers in the world, giving it what researchers call “quantum supremacy.”
IBM delivered another surprise 18 months later with an announcement that it was upgrading the publicly available processor to 20 qubits — and it had succeeded in building an operational prototype of a 50-qubit processor, which would give it quantum supremacy. If IBM gets this one working reliably and doubles the number of qubits even once more, the resultant computing speed will increase, giving the company — and any other players with similar capacity — incredible powers.
Yes, a lot of good will come from this, in better weather forecasting, financial analysis, logistical planning, the search for Earth-like planets, and drug discovery. But it could also open up a Pandora’s box for security. I don’t know of any company or government that is prepared for it; all should build defenses, though. They need to upgrade all computer systems that use RSA encryption — just like they upgraded them for the Y2K bug.
Security researcher Anish Mohammed says that there is substantial progress in the development of algorithms that are “quantum safe.” One promising field is matrix multiplication, which takes advantage of the techniques that allow quantum computers to be able to analyze so much information. Another effort involves developing code-based signature schemes, which do not rely on factorizing, as the common public key cryptography systems do; instead, code-based signatures rely upon extremely difficult problems in coding theory. So the technical solutions are at hand.
But the big challenge will be in transitioning today’s systems to a “post-quantum” world. The Y2K bug took years to remediate and created fear and havoc in the technology sector. For that, though, we knew what the deadline was. Here, there is no telling whether it will take five years or 10, or whether companies will announce a more advanced milestone just 18 months from now. Worse still, the winner may just remain silent and harvest all the information available.


Why Google’s new quantum computer could launch an artificial intelligence arms race

The D-Wave 2X quantum computer promises exponential gains in computing power. (Stephen Lam/Reuters)
Ever since the 1980s, researchers have been working on the development of a quantum computer that would be exponentially more powerful than any of the digital computers that exist today. And now Google, in collaboration with NASA and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), says it has a quantum computer — the D-Wave 2X — that actually works.
Google claims the D-Wave 2X is 100 million times faster than any of today’s machines. As a result, this quantum computer could theoretically complete calculations within seconds to a problem that might take a digital computer 10,000 years to calculate. That’s particularly important, given the difficult tasks that today’s computers are called upon to complete and the staggering amount of data they are called upon to process.
On the surface, the D-Wave 2X represents not just a quantum leap for computing, but also for the field of artificial intelligence. In fact, Google refers to its work being carried out at NASA’s Ames Research Center as “quantum artificial intelligence.” That’s because machine learning problems that today are too hard or too complex for computers could be solved almost instantaneously in the future.
Due to the specifics of how Google’s quantum computer works — a process known as quantum annealing — the immediate applications for Google’s quantum computer are a class of AI problems generally referred to as optimization problems. Imagine NASA being able to use quantum computers to optimize the flight trajectories of interstellar space missions, FedEx being able to optimize its delivery fleet of trucks and planes, an airport being able to optimize its air traffic control grid, the military being able to crack any encryption code, or a Big Pharma company being able to optimize its search for a breakthrough new drug.
You get the idea – the new Google quantum computer could potentially be worth millions, if not billions, to certain types of companies or government agencies.
Moreover, consumers might also benefit from the development of quantum artificial intelligence. In a promo video for its Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab, Google suggests that travel might be one type of consumer optimization problem worth pursuing. Imagine planning a trip to Europe, selecting which cities you’d like to visit, telling a computer how much you’d like to pay, and then having Google optimize the perfect trip itinerary for you.
Google and NASA's Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab
There’s just one little problem with all this, however — quantum computers are notoriously difficult beasts to tame. You’ve basically got Schrödinger’s Cat trapped inside each and every D-Wave. With quantum computers, you’re dealing with quantum bits (“qubits”), not digital bits. Unlike digital bits, which are binary (either 1 or 0), a qubit could be either – or both at the same time! That means you have to deal with all the quirky properties of particles predicted by quantum mechanics – such as superposition and entanglement – in order to program quantum computers correctly.
Oh, and each 10-foot-high D-Wave computer also needs to be super-chilled to a temperature that’s 180 times colder than that of deep space, making them pretty much inaccessible to anyone who hasn’t been stockpiling liquid helium.
And that’s where the AI arms race comes into play. That’s because you have a digital supercomputer — IBM Watson — that also wants to play the AI optimization game. IBM Watson also wants to optimize the R&D process for pharmaceutical researchers to find new cures. And IBM Watson also wants to play in the consumer realm as well, where it’s already at work optimizing the training regimens of top-flight athletes.
And it’s not just Google D-Wave vs. IBM Watson in some kind of ultimate cage match to see who’s better and faster at optimizing solutions to really hard problems — it’s all the other classes of unconventional computers out there. Consider, for example, the new memcomputer, which mimics the way the human brain works, storing and processing information simultaneously. There are plenty of other unconventional computers too, including some that are biological. Not to mention the other research labs and universities — such as Yale University, which recently launched the Yale Quantum Institute — that are also working on their own quantum computers.
Quantum Computing | Robert Schoelkopf
What all this points to is the fact that traditional digital computing (what Google refers to as “classical computing”) is on the way out. We’re now looking for a new heir apparent and Google hopes to anoint D-Wave as the rightful heir. With its big announcement that quantum computing can actually work, Google hopes to show that they’ve figured out how to make practical quantum computers for the commercial market.
Any time you claim to have created something that’s 100 million times faster than anything else that’s ever existed, though, you’re bound to run up against skeptics. And, indeed, there are plenty of skeptics for the D-Wave. One big quibble about the quantum qubits, for example, is that the test results were not nearly as impressive as Google claims they were. That’s because the digital computer trying to defeat the quantum computer was forced to compete under Google’s house rules, which basically meant that it had to use the same algorithm that the quantum computer used — and that algorithm had already been carefully sculpted to the peculiarities of the quantum world. Imagine running a race against a competitor in shoes that are too big, pants that keep falling down, and on a course where your competitor can run across and through the track — not just around it.
Going forward, it’s possible to think of two vastly different scenarios for quantum computing. The first scenario is that Google uses these D-Wave quantum computers to completely corner the market in artificial intelligence. Just as once nobody could have predicted that everyone would own their own personal computer one day, maybe people will all own their own quantum computers one day.
The other scenario is that the world moves on to other forms of computing, perhaps using components that are easier to program than qubits. Maybe quantum computers are just too quirky, too hard to program, to solve the types of problems most people want to solve. Quantum computers may be able to optimize an entire nation’s air traffic control grid or fly a spacecraft to Mars, but what if you just want to check your phone to know what to wear to work tomorrow?
Either way, the future of artificial intelligence will never be the same. Thanks to exponential gains in computing power on the horizon, it’s becoming increasingly clear that today’s digital computers have the potential to become obsolete. Let’s just hope that tomorrow’s super-powerful quantum computers don’t become transcendent and try to take over the world.
UPDATE:
UPDATE:


Innovations in 5: The United States of Google and NASA gets some new tech

Here’s what we’re reading/watching today:
1) Google CEO Larry Page conducted a surprise open question-and-answer session during the Google I/O conference Wednesday.
Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and chief executive, speaks during the keynote presentation at Google I/O 2013 in San Francisco, on Wednesday, May 15, 2013. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Among other observations (including the fact he “didn’t appreciate” this), Page expressed his sadness over the state of innovation online and offline and offered his take (not positive) on the rocky relationship between Google and Microsoft. Page, who recently revealed that he suffers from vocal cord paralysis, also openly mulled the idea of creating a separate country free of the regulations and strictures that, as Page sees it, hold back innovation:
“We haven’t maybe built mechanisms to allow experimentation. There [are] many, many exciting and important things you can do that you just can’t do because they’re illegal or they’re not allowed by regulation. And that makes sense. We don’t want our world to change too fast. But maybe we should set aside a small part of the world. … I think, as technologists, we should have some safe places where we can try out some new things and figure out what is the effect on society—what is the effect on people— without having to deploy it into the normal world. And people who like those kinds of things can go there and experience that. And we don’t have mechanisms for that.”
Larry Page Google CEO Complete Q & A at Google I/O 2013
Would you live in this, as The Verge put it on their live blog, “beta-test country“? Or would you steer clear?
Read more from The Post’s Hayley Tsukayama on the Google I/O conference.
2) The Obama administration on Wednesday announced round two of the Health Care Innovation Awards. The $1 billion initiative, part of the Affordable Care Act, was announced by Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The agency released the video below, featuring 2012 award recipients’ answers to questions such as “what does it mean to be an innovator today” and “why innovate”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zHEXPGKZuso
This round of awards seeks submissions from applicants prepared to focus on four key areas, including the driving down of costs for Medicare, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) recipients in certain stages of care, improving care for patients with special needs, transforming financial and clinical models and improving health for specific populations based on one or more of a number of criteria. The awards are administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Just about any type of organization, public or private, can apply. Letters of intent are due June 1-28, and applications must be turned in June 14-Aug.15. (Department of Health and Human Services, Reuters)
3) One technology begins to break down, another new technology arrives at NASA. As news broke that the Kepler spacecraft was experiencing technical difficulties that could potentially derail the Earth-like planet hunting mission, NASA announced the arrival of the Dream Chaser prototype for engineering tests. The Dream Chaser, created by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), is part of a NASA program to develop a spacecraft to safely and reliably transport U.S. astronauts to and from the international space station and low-earth orbit. SpaceX and Boeing are also partnering with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which is overseeing the effort.
An image of the Dream Chaser engineering test article, created by Sierra Nevada Corp. In this image, the Dream Chaser is being prepared for shipping in Louisville, Colo. at the SNC facility. (SNC )

The Dream Chaser engineering test article arrives at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center. (NASA/Tom Tschida)
4) In other NASA news, the space agency has also teamed up with Google and the Universities Space Research Association to acquire a supercomputing system from Canadian-based D-Wave, reports the Wall Street Journal. The computer is only the second ever to be purchased from the company. The $10 million D-Wave Two system will be housed in Calif., near Google, at NASA’s Ames Research Center. A new laboratory at Ames is in the works to house the technology and focus on the study of quantum computing. (WSJ)
5) In the “can’t we all just get along” file is this dispatch from the land of science fiction: “Star Wars” and “Doctor Who” fans were involved in a dispute at a science fiction convention at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, according to the BBC. Apparently a Sharks-versus-Jets style feud existed between two fan groups, which erupted into an apparently mild altercation that led to a call to the police.
“This wasn’t a fight between Star Wars fans and Doctor Who fans with lightsabers and sonic screwdrivers drawn,” Norwich Sci-Fi Club treasurer Jim Poole reportedly said. “It’s a bit sad and pathetic. We’re all in the same boat. We’re not in competition. … We’d like to extend the hand of friendship.”
Good idea because if Star Wars taught us anything, it’s that you never know who your friends (or father) are. And, if that doesn’t do it for you, just think of the children (Star Wars: spoiler alert):
Son's reaction to 'Empire Strikes Back' reveal!!!!
(BBC)


The Technology 202: Trump administration unveils $1 billion quantum and artificial intelligence initiative

with Tonya Riley
The Trump administration today unveiled
An influx of cash for research in quantum and artificial intelligence is designed to help build more powerful computers and other tools for processing information, which could accelerate research and other scientific developments –- a goal that has taken on new significance amid a global race to develop a vaccine and treatments for coronavirus.
The announcement is a shot across the bow in the broader tech race with China – and seems positioned to be a feather in Trump's cap during the week of the Republican National Convention.
Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter and senior adviser who is speaking at the convention this week, credited Trump with this “defining achievement
A significant chunk of the funding
China has made significant investments in these fields, raising questions about the United States's ability to retain its technological edge.
The Trump administration is not viewed as science friendly and has made major cuts to science research. But it has continued to prioritize quantum and artificial intelligence as a national security issue, as China names these fields as priorities in its own research initiatives.
However, the Trump administration’s investment pales in comparison to the investments that China says it has made. The country announced a $10 billion investment in one of the largest quantum labs, and it has made some achievements in the field, such as the first quantum satellite. Academics however have questioned media reports about this and concluded the Chinese government isn't likely dramatically outspending the United States in artificial intelligence.
“As the 12 new Institutes demonstrate, the United States will continue to lead in AI and QIS thanks to an innovation ecosystem that is the envy of the world,” U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios told me. “We will succeed because the federal government partners with private-sector and academic leaders from all across the country to accelerate foundational research and promote free-market innovation and commercialization.”
An administration official said that today's announcement is just part of a broader research and development investment in these technologies. The person said the administration is on track to double its spending on quantum and artificial intelligence in two years.
The private sector in the United States has also been heavily investing in these technologies – with venture capitalists and large tech companies pouring billions into technology in the fields.
Several prominent tech companies – including IBM, Intel and Microsoft and startups – are participating in the initiative. Their involvement underscores the pressure on U.S. companies to also maintain a competitive edge over competitors around the world. There will be plans in place to transfer technologies from the center to industry.
IBM will be a partner in three of the five quantum centers at the Department of Energy labs. Dario Gil, director of IBM Research, told me the initiative is an “important development” and it was very positive that different companies, universities and the government were all coming together.
“I will continue to advocate that the aggregate level of investment increases in science and technology in general in the United States by the federal government,” he said.
Programming note: We’ll be back in your inbox after Labor Day on Tuesday, Sept. 8. Enjoy these last weeks of summer and follow @PostTech on Twitter for the latest news from our colleagues.
She expressed sympathy with parents who are trying to navigate the digital world for their children.
“Just like me, I know many of you watch how mean and manipulative social media can be … I’m sure many of you are looking for answers
It was one of several jabs against tech companies during the second night of the convention.
Tiffany Trump also slammed the effects of social media on society.
“People must recognize that our thoughts, opinions, and even the choice of who we vote for are being manipulated and invisibly coerced by the media and tech giants,” she said.
“Rather than allowing Americans the right to form our own beliefs, this misinformation system keeps people mentally enslaved to the ideas they deem correct. This has fostered unnecessary fear and divisiveness
Tiffany, the youngest of Trump's adult children, is a recent graduate of Georgetown Law,
Correction: This article has been updated to make clear that Tiffany is the youngest of Trump's adult children, not the youngest.
Mary Ann Mendoza, a member of the Women for Trump Campaign board, shared a thread of tweets promoting conspiracy theories about a Jewish plot to control the world, Colby Itkowitz reports.
“My apologies for not paying attention to the intent of the whole message. That does not reflect my feelings or personal thoughts whatsoever,” Mendoza wrote after reporters picked up the tweets.
Mendoza had shared similar conspiracy theories about a wealthy Jewish family in the past.
Removals in the most sensitive categories – including violent extremism and content that could jeopardize child safety – nearly tripled, Protocol's Issie Lapowsky reports. The company attributed the increase to a more aggressive approach of “potential over-enforcement” and accepting a lower level of accuracy for removals flagged by its technology.
But comparing YouTube's results with Facebook, which also sent human moderators home in March, shows automated systems across the industry have room to improve.
Removals of child sexual abuse material fell in Facebook's second quarter. Conversely, Facebook saw more removals of hate speech than YouTube. YouTube said it maintained its appeals process to account for over-removals, whereas Facebook suspended it's for the most sensitive categories.
The comparison between the two social media giants isn't one to one. Each platform has slightly different definitions of categories.
“And yet, the two reports still illustrate an important point about how the
Chief executive Alex Karp took a jab at competitors who rely on selling and mining data and advertising for rebuking controversial government contracts, Ari Levy at CNBC reports.
“Software projects with our nation’s defense and intelligence agencies, whose missions are to keep us safe, have become controversial, while companies built on advertising dollars are commonplace," Karp wrote in a letter in the filing. "The slogans and marketing of many of the Valley’s largest technology firms attempt to obscure this simple fact.”
Palantir, which was co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, has accrued more than $1.5 billion in federal contracts with agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Thiel was a prominent Trump supporter and member of Trump's transition team in 2016, but he has since reportedly distanced himself from the president.
Last year, the company had nearly $580 million in losses.
The filing also outlines Palantir's clear stance against working with China, saying it could hurt the company's growth long-term.
“We do not consider any sales opportunities with the Chinese communist party, do not host our platforms in China, and impose limitations on access to our platforms in China in order to protect our intellectual property, to promote respect for and defend privacy and civil liberties protections, and to promote data security,” the filing says.
Lawmakers have slammed tech companies including Apple and Google for their relationships with China in the past.
Speakers during the first night of the Republican National Convention took a more moderate tack than Black influencers online who have used extreme tactics to fight against the president's Black critics, Isaac Stanley-Becker reports.
Conservative commentators such as Candace Owens, who wields a network of Facebook pages, have popularized anti-Democratic sentiments like leaving the “Democratic plantation.” The attacks against Democrats alleging the political suppression of Black Americans have grown more explicit since Kamala Harris, who is Black and Asian American, was named to the ticket.
A viral video from Kimberly Klacik, a Black Republican running for Congress in Maryland, who spoke on opening night, called Harris a prop. Conservative influencers and Trump supporters Diamond and Silk popularized a meme attacking Harris for marrying a white man. These attacks have spread beyond conservative online corners to more fringe groups as well, Isaac reports.
Having Black voices spread the message is key to spreading "misinformation and hate" as a legitimate critique of Democrats, said Andre Banks, a co-founder of Win Black/Pa’lante, a group combating disinformation targeting Black and Latino communities. “No White person,” Banks said, could deliver similar messages without “experiencing harmful side effects.”
Workers are bringing demands in light of raging wildfires in California, Megan Rose Dickey at TechCrunch reports. Gig Workers Collective, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of workers at companies including Lyft and Instacart, is calling the delivery company to pay a disaster rate equal to average daily pay as long as operations are shut down. The group also wants Instacart to commit to shutting down operations in markets where a state of emergency or evacuation has been issued.
How the Hollywood Fix Cornered the Influencer Paparazzi Market (New York Times)
Stephen Colbert reminds us of this great moment in RNC history:


Google scientists say they’ve achieved ‘quantum supremacy’ breakthrough over classical computers

For the first time, a machine that runs on the mind-boggling physics of quantum mechanics has reportedly solved a problem that would stump the world’s top supercomputers — a breakthrough known as “quantum supremacy.”
If validated, the report by Google’s AI Quantum team and University of California at Santa Barbara physicist John Martinis constitutes a major leap for quantum computing, a technology that relies on the bizarre behavior of tiny particles to encode huge amounts of information. According to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, Google’s Sycamore processor performed in less than three and a half minutes a calculation that would take the most powerful classical computer on the planet 10,000 years to complete.
The achievement has been compared to the Wright brothers’ 12-second first flight at Kitty Hawk — an early, aspirational glimpse at a revolution to come. By providing exponentially greater calculation power than the machines we use today, quantum computers could one day transform the way we communicate ideas, conceal data and comprehend the universe.
The result is also a feather in the cap for both Google and the United States, because quantum technology is expected to confer huge economic and national security advantages to whoever can master it first.
The technology community has been abuzz about the breakthrough ever since a leaked version of the study was published on (and then removed from) a NASA website last month.
“For those of us who work on the theory,” said Ashley Montanaro, an expert in quantum algorithms at the University of Bristol, “it’s a point where it really seems that things that were only theoretical in the past are now becoming reality.”
Writing in the magazine Quanta, Caltech theoretical physicist John Preskill called the result “a remarkable achievement in experimental physics and a testament to the brisk pace of progress in quantum computing hardware.”
But the claim also has prompted skepticism from competitors. Researchers at IBM, which has been working on its own quantum machines, reported this week that a classical computer system would in fact take two and a half days to perform the calculation in Google’s report — and would make fewer mistakes in the process. (That paper has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.)
In a blog post, the IBM scientists also questioned the use of the James Bond-esque term “quantum supremacy,” which seems to imply that classical computers are about to become obsolete.
Whoever turns out to be right, quantum supremacy is a largely symbolic achievement; the specific task assigned to the Google computer — checking outputs from a random number generator — has few practical applications.
In a statement Wednesday, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai called this a “hello world” milestone (the simple phrase is often the first program written by people learning to code), representing “a moment of possibility.”
His words echo what Preskill wrote in his piece for Quanta. The Caltech physicist, who coined the notion of quantum supremacy in 2012, said he aimed to convey the notion that “this is a privileged time in the history of our planet,” when the most arcane laws of physics might be harnessed for human ambitions.
Scientists have known for a century that the predictable laws of Newtonian physics — objects fall down; matter can be in only one place at a time — fall apart at the atomic and subatomic level.
In this quantum realm, electrons appear to leap from one energy state to another. Particles can exist in multiple states at the same time, a phenomenon known as “superposition.” They can also stay connected across large distances, which Albert Einstein called “spooky” and modern physicists call “entanglement.”
With quantum computing, scientists can put these weird, wild particles to work.
Classical computers encode information in “bits,” an electrical or optical pulse that can represent either a 0 or 1. Eight bits constitute a “byte,” which can typically store one character — for example, the letter A or a dollar sign. The first eight-inch floppy disk held 242,944 bytes. Apple’s new iPhone 11 comes with 64 billion bytes.
The Summit system at Oak Ridge National Lab, a classical supercomputer that takes up two tennis courts’ worth of floor space and can perform 200 quadrillion calculations per second, boasts a whopping 250 petabytes of storage — in bytes, that number comes out to about 250,000,000,000,000,000.
But superposition means that a quantum bit, or qubit, isn’t confined to being just 0 or 1. This means it can be associated with twice as many numbers, a power that increases exponentially with each qubit added: Two qubits are associated with four possible numbers; three with eight; four with 16.
By the time you get up to 53 qubits — the functional size of both Google’s Sycamore processor and a similar machine being built at IBM — you’re approaching the potential of supercomputers like Summit. By harnessing quantum physics, a small machine can hold vast amounts of information and perform multiple calculations at once.
That is, if the quantum computer works. A faint noise or a glimmer of heat can alter a superposition, leading to errors. Measuring a particle, or disturbing it in any way, will cause the superposition to “decohere,” or collapse. The qubit becomes an ordinary bit. Add more qubits to a system, and decoherence becomes even harder to control.
That’s what stands between researchers such as those at Google and the quantum world they hope to attain. To build an effective quantum computer, scientists must figure out how to create and manipulate entangled qubits that last long enough to do something interesting with them.
Wednesday’s announcement is the product of half a decade of collaboration between Google researchers and Martinis’s team at UCSB. Their first task was to build their machine, a futuristic tower of coiled wires and gleaming silicon and steel.
The Sycamore processor itself is just a tiny silicon chip comprising 54 qubits laid out in a crosshatch pattern. This chip is bonded to a superconducting circuit board and then enclosed in a refrigerator so powerful that its temperature approaches absolute zero. This ensures that nothing can affect the qubits except the electronic signals sent by the scientists themselves.
Then they had to come up with a calculation complex enough to test their computer, and myriad tiny fixes for the errors that arose. One of the qubits in the processor failed to function, so the scientists had to cut it out of their experiments. The team developed an error-correcting process to ensure that the results coming out of each component were 99.99 percent accurate.
Pichai, the Google chief executive, described how every component of the processor had to be invented and built by the scientists themselves.
“If it didn’t work — and often, it didn’t — they had to redesign and build it again,” he said. “The thing about building something that hasn’t been proven yet is that there is no playbook.”
In October 2018, severe wildfires in Southern California forced the experimenters to temporarily close their Santa Barbara laboratory — right at a moment when their progress had started to stall, Pichai said. The forced break may have helped them; three months later, they achieved their breakthrough.
In a commentary for Nature, MIT physicist William Oliver wrote that the new results will help combat some of the criticisms of quantum computers: that they are too difficult to control and won’t work on large scales. But even a computer like Google’s is too “noisy,” or error-prone, to be viable long-term.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Martinis said the team’s next step would be to improve its error-correction process. Then he hopes to scale up the processor to 1,000 qubits, creating a system capable of processing more parallel computations than there are atoms in the observable universe.
Addressing IBM’s criticism of the quantum supremacy claim, Martinis said he anticipated that other researchers would find more-efficient ways to simulate the quantum machine’s calculation with classical computers. But two and a half days is still a lot longer than three minutes — and the process demanded the entire capacity of a supercomputer, plus an additional storage mechanism.
And no matter how good algorithms for classical computers get, he said, quantum computers are improving exponentially faster.
“We are in the quantum supremacy regime,” Martinis said. The Nature paper “is a very strong statement towards that, and it’s going to get stronger and stronger in the future.”
Computer scientists refer to systems such as Sycamore as “Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum technology,” or NISQ. This term (yet another Preskill invention) describes machines that can perform some calculations but are still too small and error-prone to be fully functional.
The true revolution will happen slowly — Montanaro guessed it will be 10 to 15 years before a resilient, large-scale quantum computer comes online.
But in the meantime, scientists can start to design more-modest algorithms for NISQ machines, using them to model solar panels, superconductors and other systems where quantum effects play an important role.
Still, it’s the grandest possibilities presented by quantum computing that entice companies and governments to keep plugging away at it.
Several technology companies are competing to create quantum machines; IBM has even made its prototype available online for anyone to use. Last year, President Trump signed into law the National Quantum Initiative Act, which establishes research centers to focus on quantum information science. Meanwhile, China has spent billions on quantum technology development.
The most obvious potential applications of this research are in the realm of national security. Entangled particles could one day be used for “quantum communication” — a means of sending super-secure messages that doesn’t rely on cables or wireless signals. The tremendous processing power of quantum computers might be used to break previously unbreakable codes.
Then again, some experts worry this capacity will be used to steal people’s passwords — potentially imperiling online systems including email, banking and more.
But spying and hacking are far from the technology’s only uses. Biologists might use quantum computers to understand natural processes far too complex for classical machines to simulate. Pharmaceutical researchers could employ them to discover new drugs. Quantum computing promises to generate better artificial intelligence and more-effective nanotechnologies.
“In many ways quantum brings computing full circle,” Pichai said, “giving us another way to speak the language of the universe and understand the world and humanity not just in 1s and 0s but in all of its states: beautiful, complex, and with limitless possibility.”


The quantum revolution is coming, and Chinese scientists are at the forefront

SHANGHAI — More than a decade ago, Chinese physicist Pan Jian-Wei returned home from Europe to help oversee research into some of the most important technology of the 21st century.
At a conference in Shanghai this summer, Pan and his team offered a rare peek at the work he described as a “revolution.”
They spoke of the hacking-resistant communications networks they are building across China, the sensors they are designing to see through smog and around corners, and the prototype computers that may someday smash the computational power of any existing machine.
All the gear is based on quantum technology — an emerging field that could transform information processing and confer big economic and national-security advantages to countries that dominate it. To the dismay of some scientists and officials in the United States, China’s formidable investment is helping it catch up with Western research in the field and, in a few areas, pull ahead.
Beijing is pouring billions into research and development and is offering Chinese scientists big perks to return home from Western labs. China’s drive has sparked calls for more R&D funding in the United States, and helped trigger concerns in the Trump administration that some types of scientific collaboration with China may be aiding the People’s Liberation Army and hurting U.S. interests.
“The United States must be prepared for a future in which its traditional technological predominance faces new, perhaps unprecedented challenges,” the Center for a New American Security wrote in a recent report about China’s quantum ambitions.
Quantum technology seeks to harness the distinct properties of atoms, photons and electrons to build more powerful tools for processing information.
Last year, China had nearly twice as many patent filings as the United States for quantum technology overall, a category that includes communications and cryptology devices, according to market research firm Patinformatics. The United States, though, leads the world in patents relating to the most prized segment of the field — quantum computers — thanks to heavy investment by IBM, Google, Microsoft and others.
Helping oversee China’s program is Pan, whom Chinese media call the “father of quantum.” From his labs at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), in Shanghai and Hefei, the 49-year-old leads a team of 130 researchers. In 2017, the journal Nature named him one of “ten people who mattered this year,” saying he had “lit a fire under the country’s efforts in quantum technology.”
Pan occasionally gives lab tours to President Xi Jinping, who takes a keen interest in his work, according to Chinese media. Pan is also overseeing plans for a new national lab for quantum research in Anhui province, which he said had drawn about $400 million in government funding.
At the Shanghai event, Pan illustrated his slide presentation with science-nerd jokes about Einstein and “Star Trek.” In a nod to Schrödinger’s cat — a 1930s thought experiment that helped define a quantum concept called superposition — Pan used images of a cartoon feline standing upright and lying flat on its back.
“As we all know, in our everyday life, a cat can only either be in an alive or dead state,” Pan said, but “a cat in the quantum world can be in a coherent superposition of alive and dead states.”
He was making the point that quantum particles, also known as quantum bits, differ fundamentally from the bits in today’s technology. Existing computers and communications networks store, process and transmit information by breaking it down into long streams of bits, which are typically electrical or optical pulses representing a zero or one.
Quantum bits, or qubits, which are often atoms, electrons or photons, can exist as zeros and ones at the same time, or in any position between, a flexibility that allows them to process information in new ways. Some physicists compare them to a spinning coin that is simultaneously in a heads and tails state.
In his talk, Pan detailed how China is harnessing qubits to safeguard its communications from hacking — one of the fields in which China appears to have a lead over the West.
Pan and his team are aiming to launch a constellation of satellites and a nationwide fiber-optic network that use qubits to securely transmit information. An almost 1,300-mile fiber link connecting Beijing, Shanghai and other cities is already up and running. So is a satellite China launched in 2016, which has conducted several prominent experiments, including facilitating a hacking-resistant video conference between Beijing and Vienna.
When the network is complete, it could complicate U.S. efforts to eavesdrop on China’s government or military communications, some Western scientists say.
“I predict China will go black in two to three years — we won’t be able to read anything,” said Jonathan Dowling, a physics professor at Louisiana State University who spends part of the year as a visiting faculty member at USTC in Shanghai.
Others argue that even if China’s network equipment is more secure, it could still be hacked by manipulating the humans running the system.
If the technology gains traction globally, China could be in a strong position to sell it, given the large number of patents its universities and companies have registered for devices and technology relating to quantum communication and encryption, according to Patinformatics.
Pan has credited Edward Snowden for motivating China’s quantum research. The former National Security Agency contractor’s revelations about NSA eavesdropping led China to pour money into developing more secure communications, Pan has said in published interviews.
Barry Sanders, a Canadian physicist from the University of Calgary, spends two to three months a year as a visiting professor at the USTC labs in Shanghai. He got the job through China’s “Thousand Talents” program, which recruits Western scientists for teaching and research stints, and offers incentives to persuade Chinese researchers to return home from overseas.
Sanders said China’s cultural differences can provide advantages in the lab.
“I have my Western way of doing things — freedom of thought, take risks,” he said. In China, there is more emphasis on the common good, he said. “One guy spent two years really focused on how to prepare the lab room. You can assign people these tasks — they will do something that in our world would be seen as beneath us. But here they are supported and held in high esteem.”
Pan received his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1999 and conducted further research at the University of Heidelberg before moving home, along with several Chinese colleagues.
China’s work on quantum technologies at the time was “relatively backward” and needed outside help, Pan said in an email. “Therefore, our team took the initiative to send students to top research groups abroad to learn related technologies,” he said. “Fortunately, they later returned back to work in China.”
Most of the Chinese researchers speaking at the Shanghai conference spent years studying overseas. Their slide decks were peppered with humorous references to Western pop culture and events. One featured a picture of President Trump with the caption “Make SPDC Great Again” — a reference to an optical process whereby a photon splits in two. During a coffee break, one Chinese researcher’s phone erupted in a ringtone from the TV show “Friends.”
Their PhDs or postdoctoral credentials came from universities such as Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge and the University of Toronto, according to their biographies printed in the program.
While their talks didn’t focus on military applications, much of the technology they’re pursuing would have clear uses in both the commercial and defense realms, scientists say.
Quantum computers might someday be able to crack all existing forms of encryption. Quantum sensors could help the Chinese military track and target enemy troops with greater precision. The university where Pan works, USTC, has established several quantum-research partnerships with state-owned defense companies in recent years, with aims that include enhancing the combat capability of naval vessels, according to Chinese media reports cited in the Center for a New American Security paper.
“China’s national advances in quantum communications and computing … will be leveraged to support military purposes,” according to the paper’s authors, Elsa Kania and John Costello, who reviewed hundreds of Chinese-language media, government and technical reports.
Scientists who have discussed the field with U.S. government officials say the Trump administration has recently expressed concern about the number of Chinese students pursuing studies in the United States in sensitive areas such as quantum science.
“We’ve always encouraged the best and brightest to come from overseas, and it’s always served our nation well,” said John Preskill, the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology, who has advised the government on quantum-tech issues. “But there is concern in government about how we are training all these people, and a lot of them are going back to China and competing in technologies that have implications for national security. And we’re talking about what to do about it.
“Many of us in academia, although we know there are complicated issues, are inclined to continue encouraging Chinese students to come,” Preskill said, “but there is a continuing discussion in the government about what’s the best policy for doing that.”
In an opinion piece this month, two U.S. university associations said their members were strengthening security protocols and building closer relationships with the FBI and intelligence agencies, after hearing “increasing concern” from the federal government about “foreign interference” in university research. They also praised the contributions of Chinese students and faculty, and said the United States must continue to welcome them.
Pan said he believed collaboration would bring only rewards in quantum science.
“The academic exchange benefits both countries,” he said via email. “I see no reason whatsoever that the United States government should be concerned and discourage normal academic activities. Recall that quantum mechanics was first developed in Europe, and then moved to the United States.”
Asked whether his group contributes to research for the Chinese military, Pan said his university and team are “by nature, for fundamental scientific research and education.”
“We publish our fundamental research results in international journals which are available to read from all around the world. From reading our papers, other people, who can be from the United States, Europe, Japan, or China, might be inspired and further develop ‘immediately useful’ technology or products for industry or commercial or military use,” he said, adding this was “out of our control.”
Some corners of the U.S. government are restricting collaboration with China. In June, the Energy Department, one of the main agencies funding physics and quantum-science research, prohibited its employees and contractors from responding to certain foreign countries’ talent-recruitment programs, including China’s Thousand Talents. The agency said it wanted to limit “unauthorized transfers of scientific and technical information.”
The ban followed the indictment of a former scientist at the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, on charges of making false statements about his involvement with Thousand Talents.
“What we have said in shorthand is, you cannot work for the Department of Energy and for one of these foreign talent recruitment programs. You cannot work for a foreign country and the Department of Energy at the same time,” Chris Fall, director of the agency’s Office of Science, said in an interview.
In part motivated by China’s progress, Congress late last year passed the National Quantum Initiative Act, which authorized an extra $1.2 billion in research funding over five years. The Energy Department is on tap to receive a big chunk of that money, which it plans to use to set up several quantum-focused research centers. The agency is soliciting ideas from its own national laboratories and from universities and the private sector as it decides how to establish those centers, Fall said.
“The beauty of how we do science in this country is that it isn’t top-down,” he said.
For now, China is lagging behind the U.S. tech industry in perhaps the most important race in the field: building a quantum computer.
A fully functioning quantum computer has the potential to be transformative. The exponentially greater calculation power could help identify new chemical compounds to treat intractable diseases, and eliminate traffic snarls by predicting and managing the flow of vehicles.
However, the possibility that the machines could eventually crack all existing forms of encryption is a major worry for militaries, governments and businesses that handle sensitive data.
To get a fully functioning computer — a goal still a decade or more away, most scientists agree — researchers must coax a large number of qubits into working together efficiently. That’s difficult because qubits are finicky and have the propensity to stop functioning at the slightest disturbance, such as a minor change in temperature.
Google and IBM are at the forefront, using superconducting circuits to manipulate qubits. Google last year unveiled a quantum processor with 72 qubits, surpassing IBM’s previously announced 50-qubit computer.
More important than the number of qubits is how effectively they work together, said Chris Monroe, a University of Maryland physicist and co-founder of the start-up IonQ. The company recently reported that its prototype computer, using 11 qubits made of ionized atoms, performed more complex calculations with greater accuracy than any rival machine. (IonQ’s investors include AWS, a subsidiary of Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post).
Chinese researchers so far have reported a 12-qubit processor, using superconducting technology similar to Google’s and IBM’s.
The leader of that work, USTC professor Zhu Xiaobo, presented his team’s results at the Shanghai conference, flashing a picture of their prototype on the screen — a shiny tangle of coaxial cables resembling an intricate golden chandelier. (IBM’s and Google’s machines have a similar look.)
“We are now working on 24 qubits,” Zhu said. “We hope next year we will go to 50, and maybe sometime we will go to quantum supremacy,” he added, referring to the point at which a quantum computer is able to perform a calculation that existing computers can’t. The benchmark, though widely anticipated, will mark only the beginning of progress in the field, scientists say.
Lu Chaoyang, a young physicist who earned his PhD at Cambridge University, also stepped to the lectern to deliver an update on his team’s approach to quantum computing. It relies on photons, which he dubbed “fast-flying qubits.”
Lu, whom Sanders calls a “rising superstar” in China, peppered his talk with funny cat GIFs and Western cultural references.
Although the idea for a quantum computer first surfaced 40 years ago, there is still a long way to go, Lu said.
He then pressed play on a brief video snippet of “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, who spoke about the importance of setting “achievable goals.”
“It’s important we set achievable goals for experiments so we can continuously progress,” Lu said.
Lyric Li contributed to this report


D.C.-area cybertech companies persuade West Coast investors to head east

The Washington area is rarely thought of as a hotbed for technology companies. The region’s biggest firms have generally gravitated toward the quiet, stable business of government contracting, while start-ups tend to move elsewhere in search of growth capital.
The area’s cybersecurity companies, however, are proving to be an exception to the rule.
A handful of recent “exits” — start-up lingo for taking a company public or otherwise cashing out — are beginning to show investors that the area’s crowded cybersecurity industry can yield returns.
Tenable Network Security, a Columbia, Md.-based cybersecurity firm that helps large organizations spot network vulnerabilities, recently filed for its initial public offering after raising more than $300 million from investors. In a separate deal in late February, a company called Phishme was bought by private equity giants BlackRock and Pamplona Capital in a deal that valued it at $400 million.
All of that activity is persuading some well-known Silicon Valley investors to head east in search of opportunity.
Social SafeGuard, a Charlottesville-based start-up, recently disclosed that it has raised $11 million in new funding from a pair of West Coast funds. The first, Allegis Cyber, is a Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture fund known for investing in companies that utilize talent and know-how from the region’s spy agencies. The other is NightDragon Security, a fund set up by Dave DeWalt, who ran cybersecurity giant FireEye as chief executive for four years.
That investment followed a $20 million one led by Scale Venture Partners, another Silicon Valley-based fund, in a Herndon-based company called Expel. Expel is headed by Dave Merkel, who was a top executive at AOL before becoming chief technologist at Mandiant, a cybersecurity company that was bought by FireEye for close to $1 billion.
They are riding a wave that has been building for years. Cybersecurity companies in the District, Maryland and Virginia struck 47 deals with venture investors in 2017 compared with just 15 in 2011, according to an internal analysis by Paladin Capital, a D.C.-based venture capital firm. There have already been 24 such deals in the first half of 2018, suggesting the trend will continue.
All of that extra capital, combined with new federal cybersecurity spending from defense and intelligence agencies, has spawned hundreds of new companies in the D.C. area. A 2017 survey by Amplifier Ventures and the Kogod School of Business at American University found a whopping 858 D.C.-area companies engaged in cybersecurity work.
Their business is more than just protecting IT networks.
Bethesda-based Quantum Xchange, for example, wants to build futuristic fiber-optic cables between Washington and Boston, using a novel encryption method it says will be able to resist not-yet-developed code-crackers based on the laws of quantum mechanics. The company has raised $10 million for the effort.
Another is Social SafeGuard, which helps companies including Johnson & Johnson, Sun Life Financial and McAfee track their social media presence, which includes spotting accounts that have been commandeered by hackers. Some companies use its service to find fake social media accounts set up by hackers to spoof their way into corporate networks. Some projects involve tracking down accounts set up to impersonate corporate executives, for example.
In other cases, Social SafeGuard’s corporate customers are surveilling their own employees to make sure they don’t leak proprietary information or do anything improper online. Executives say the company gathers the data from more than 50 “digital and social channels” including Facebook and Twitter, all of it with employees’ consent.
“If you’re a CEO of a well-known company, chances are there are hundreds of people spoofing you. In addition to that, you have lots of employees getting in trouble for saying and doing things on social media,” said Spencer Tall, managing partner at Allegis Capital.
Social Safeguard “tracks it all,” he said. “You can monitor what key employees are doing on an individual basis.”
In January, the company partnered with anti-virus giant McAfee to identify what it called a “targeted campaign to spread pro-Pakistan and pro-Turkey propaganda,” in which former TV news anchor Greta Van Susteren’s account was temporarily taken over and used to send direct messages to President Trump, who follows her on Twitter.
Social SafeGuard is still small, but the performance of other D.C.-area cyberfirms sets a high bar. Events of the 2016 U.S. presidential election may have added fuel to the fire, too.
“With the election in 2016, everyone became aware of the inherent risks of digital channels,” said Otavio Freire, the chief technology officer at Social SafeGuard.
aaron.gregg@washpost.com


Quantum computing finds its lobbying voice

aaron.gregg@washpost.com

Futuristic machines that rely on quantum mechanics to solve complex problems, known as quantum computers, have been touted as technology disrupters that could one day transform entire industries. Some of the world’s biggest companies say they are developing such systems — IBM, Google and Lockheed Martin, to name a few — though they say they are years away from being able to use them for practical purposes.
In the meantime, the industry’s early players are enlisting influential lobbyists to sell the concept as a national imperative, arguing that America risks falling behind China if it does not take a more concerted approach.
Computing hardware pioneer IBM wheeled a towering replica of its own quantum computer into the Rayburn House Office Building last week, where company lobbyists and technical experts schmoozed with sharply dressed congressional staffers. The next morning a consortium of physicists and industry representatives organized by the trade group National Photonics Initiative met at the offices of BGR Group, a lobbying firm, to discuss existing federal programs, according to a person who was at the meeting.
A separate lobbying group called the Quantum Industry Coalition is bringing together 14 of the industry’s early players to influence legislation on the matter. The coalition doesn’t have a website yet, but it says it counts some of the technology world’s biggest players among its membership: Microsoft, Intel and Lockheed Martin, as well as a handful of start-ups.
The coalition’s goal is to help the fledgling U.S. quantum computing industry — which promises to transform entire economies but as of yet has no known viable product — move from theories to products.
“We wanted to have an exclusively corporate voice, one that represents the U.S. quantum industry community — and only that community,” said Paul Stimers, a partner at the law firm K&L Gates who founded the coalition. “We are pushing the legislation as much as we can in two directions: One is more of a focus on applied research as opposed to theoretical research, and the other is workforce development.”
They are trying to shepherd parallel legislation in the House and Senate.
On June 7, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) introduced the Quantum Computing Research Act of 2018, which calls for a federal research consortium funded by the Defense Department. It is now being considered by the Senate Armed Services Committee.
And staffers for Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), say they are preparing to introduce a similar bill in the House called the National Quantum Initiative Act. A fact sheet published by the committee describes setting up a White House “National Quantum Coordination Office” to manage the government’s disparate funding efforts and help form partnerships between industry and government.
“The goal of this is to go beyond ad hoc research and take a more systematic approach,” said Dario Gil, a physicist who oversees artificial intelligence and quantum computing programs at IBM.
Mainstream physicists have pointed to a range of potentially transformative uses for quantum computers. Some physicists say quantum computers could break common data encryption algorithms by virtue of their ability to factor large numbers. Others say they could transform financial markets and reinvent business processes by solving now-impossible optimization problems.
Quantum computing “is capable of being as important to the 21st century as any technology was to the 20th century,” said Matthew Putman, who runs New York-based Nanotronics.
They admit, however, that today’s quantum computers seem like little more than ultraexpensive science projects.
“We have quantum computers today, but they’re not solving any problem that you couldn’t solve with a classical computer,” said David Moehring, a quantum physicist who oversaw quantum research projects at IARPA, the U.S. intelligence community’s advanced research and development organization. Moehring is now chief executive of IonQ, a College Park, Md.-based start-up that is building a quantum-based system of its own with investment funding from New Enterprise Associates, Google Ventures and Amazon Web Services.
Potential uses for such systems, while unproven, are attracting an increasingly crowded field of tech companies hoping to be first to market. QuantumComputingReport.com, an industry website, lists 19 publicly traded companies, 64 start-ups and 58 investment funds that claim to be engaged in the issue.
They include large companies such as IBM, whose technicians say the market could materialize in three to five years. Start-ups sporting names such as Qnami and QSpice Labs are working on related software and systems that can enable the machines’ use. A handful of start-ups have machines of their own, including IonQ and Canadian start-up D-Wave Systems.
The industry’s advocates are pitching quantum technology as part of a geopolitical great power competition, arguing that whichever country develops a fully functional quantum computer first will have a distinct technological advantage over its rivals.
“Quantum is essential for our national security, for our data security and for our economic security,” said Rep. Jerry McNerney (R-Calif.), who attended Tuesday’s reception. “If we don’t [invest in quantum computing research], we’re going to fall behind other countries.”
The Chinese government has apparently committed billions of dollars to quantum research, according to the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based newspaper.
Those investments may be yielding results. A team of Chinese physicists recently reported that they had successfully sent intertwined quantum particles from a satellite to a ground location, reflecting a phenomenon known as “spooky action.”
The U.S. government has quantum research and development efforts of its own. A 2016 report from a White House-convened research consortium found total public U.S. funding for quantum research to be about $200 million a year. There may be significantly more work taking place in secret: Documents provided by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and published by The Washington Post in 2014 revealed that the spy agency pursued a $79.7 million project to develop a “cryptographically useful quantum computer,” funded under classified contracts at a lab in College Park.
aaron.gregg@washpost.com


Money for quantum

The Trump administration released its budget proposal this week, and science funding would take a hit. (Here’s where we point out that Congress has, for the past three years, rejected these trims and generally increased funding at research agencies.) When asked to explain the proposed cuts to basic research, Kelvin Droegemeier, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director, told reporters Monday: “The key priority in this administration is prioritizing of research and then, you know, placing our money on things that are extremely important. And then, for those things that are less important or lower priority, not focusing on them as much” while “relying on the private sector to innovate from the research outcomes that our universities and our federal labs produce.” About those priorities: Quantum information and artificial intelligence remain the lodestars that guide the administration’s research budget. The proposal “commits to double quantum R&D and nondefense AI R&D by 2022,” said Michael Kratsios, the White House’s chief technology officer. Kratsios said American leadership of artificial intelligence was an “imperative,” as “our adversaries and others around the world” use AI “to track their people, to imprison ethnic minorities, to monitor political dissidents.” The National Science Foundation requested $868 million to be allocated to artificial intelligence research and $226 million to quantum information science, NSF Director France Cordova said. At USDA, its competitive grant program would receive an additional $100 million for AI and other technology applied to agriculture — though the agency that distributes those grants, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, has been hobbled by its recent relocation out of the District. The request would provide $25 million to develop an “entangled quantum Internet” that connects Energy Department labs, said Paul Dabbar, the Department of Energy’s science undersecretary. If successful, nodes at the 17 labs, from Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island to the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, would form the backbone of the first national quantum network. As science-fictional as a quantum Internet might sound, the reality is that its immediate importance is security — exploiting quantum mechanics to prevent information from being intercepted — rather than new online experiences.


The Technology 202: More than 200 companies are calling for a national privacy law. Here’s an inside look at their proposal.

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A broad coalition of more than 200 retailers, banks and technology companies is releasing new recommendations for national privacy legislation today in a clear push to get out in front of lawmakers promising to rein in their data collection practices in the next Congress.
The Business Roundtable’s consumer privacy legislation framework, provided exclusively to The Technology 202, calls on the United States to adopt a national privacy law that would apply the same data collection requirements to all companies regardless of sector -- while ramping up Federal Trade Commission staffing and funding to enforce the rule. It calls on companies to give consumers more control of their data and form a national standard for breach notification.
“We see a real need to both protect consumers at a time when digital services and the digital economy is so important and expanding, and at the same time, making sure we’re advancing global competitiveness,” Julie Sweet, chief executive of Accenture North America, who chairs the Business Roundtable’s technology committee, tells me.
Members of the Business Roundtable include chief executives from companies such as Apple, Walmart and Wells Fargo. And some of its top executives such as J.P. Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon and AT&T chief executive Randall L. Stephenson will meet with policymakers including Ivanka Trump and Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) at a CEO Innovation Summit in Washington later today.
The fact that such a wide cross-section of companies -- far beyond the technology campuses of Silicon Valley – are actively seeking ways to change the collection and storage of data online reflects a sea change for the privacy debate in the United States.
After all, every company is a technology company; it’s not just popular social networks or search engines that will be subject to national privacy legislation but any company that handles personal information online. As the Marriott data breach highlighted just last week, companies that are rarely associated with the technology industry hold tremendous amounts of data about individuals -- and they may not be doing enough to protect it.
All this puts even more pressure on policymakers --
The Business Roundtable’s framework is relatively broad -- and that reflects the challenge. Its recommendations to lawmakers include:
What’s more, Business Roundtable does not include some of the highest profile technology companies that have recently been under fire for their mishandling of user data. For instance, Google, Facebook and Amazon are not members. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)
It's a big tech day in Washington, and it remains to be seen whether privacy will be top of mind.
Whether or not it comes up at the White House today, the devil will be in the details as lawmakers try to craft a privacy bill before 2020, when a law in California is slated to go into effect.
Already, Democrats are saying they will not support a national bill that is weaker than protections consumers have in local jurisdictions. And as my colleague Aaron Gregg reported, some Democrats in the wake of the Marriott breach want the U.S. to adopt fines that are similar to the EU’s  General Data Protection Regulation , which contains fines up to 4 percent of a company’s global revenue if it fails to comply with its requirements.
Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU, said any company that handles personal information is going to have to tighten its ship if a national law passes. But some companies will feel the burden of a national privacy law more than others, whether or not they’re considered a technology company, given the way many operate in today’s digital economy.
“If you’re in the business of profiting off of shady intrusions on people’s privacy, then I think you need to worry,” Stanley said. “There is a reckoning that’s taking place right now.”
BITS:  A trove of documents released by a British lawmaker yesterday could fuel other investigations of Facebook from lawmakers around the world.
Here's the top issue to watch:
Facebook quickly went on the defensive, with Zuckerberg posting on his personal Facebook page that the documents were just part of discussions. “We’ve never sold anyone’s data,” he wrote. Yet Damian Collins, who is leading the parliamentary investigation into Facebook, said the social giant had “whitelisting agreements with certain companies” to access user data after the social network restricted such access in 2014 and 2015.
NIBBLES: There is no indication that Zuckerberg will relinquish his position as chairman of Facebook's board of directors despite the latest scandal.
Meanwhile, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg received the backing of the company's board in another scandal. The board defended Sandberg’s decision to inquire whether philanthropist George Soros shorted Facebook’s stock as “entirely appropriate,” the Wall Street Journal's Deepa Seetharaman reported. Nevertheless, the accumulation of controversies is taking a toll on Facebook’s workforce. “Current and former employees describe a tense and, at times, hostile atmosphere inside the company, one in which both senior employees and even staunch loyalists are contemplating their futures,” BuzzFeed News's Charlie Warzel and Ryan Mac wrote.
BYTES: The documents indicate that Facebook users and developers were kept in the dark about the company’s data collection practices. “
Facebook even realized that it could result in backlash against the company, at one point discussing how the media might portray it. “This is a pretty high-risk thing to do from a PR perspective but it appears that the growth team will charge ahead and do it,” the email read.
In addition to privacy concerns, the documents called attention to the company’s hard-nosed tactics in dealing with competitors, particularly the Vine video app owned by Facebook rival Twitter.
Rus Yusupov, co-founder of Vine, recalled the episode on Twitter:
-- The release of the Facebook documents prompted a flurry of reactions on Twitter:
Collins, the British lawmaker who released the documents, explained his decision on Twitter.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said the FTC “must act decisively & vigorously” following the release of the Facebook documents.
The Post’s Geoffrey A. Fowler noted that the release of documents challenges Facebook’s defense that it does not sell user data.
Bloomberg News’s Sarah Frier said the emails also show “how ruthless” the social network is with its competitors.
The revelations could raise legal issues for Facebook, according to Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu.
Motherboard’s Joseph Cox argued that Facebook “knew full well what it was doing around highly controversial decisions, knew what the blow back would be, and did it anyway.”
And Cher also weighed in.
-- The White House is hosting tech executives and academics for a discussion about innovation.
— Google maintains an advertising service for small local businesses in China that doesn’t generate significant revenue but helps the U.S. company remain on good terms with Chinese authorities
“The officials shower the centers with incentives like free rent
— Tensions already running high between Washington and Beijing just went up a notch after Canadian officials said a top executive from Chinese tech company Huawei Technologies faces extradition to the United States.
— Encryption-cracking quantum computing is coming — though not right away. “Quantum computers with the ability to crack today’s encrypted systems are at least 10 years away from development
— Waymo is starting the United States's first commercial driverless service in Arizona, marking a major break in the expansion of autonomous vehicles.
Waymo One, as the service is called, is launching in Chandler and other communities near Phoenix. “Waymo, part of Alphabet Inc., is starting small, rolling out the service first to hundreds of the company’s local volunteer testers, and only in part of this sprawling region of almost 5 million people,” Michael reported. But expanding driverless vehicles will require winning over the public. “There is significant public skepticism about self-driving cars, and polls find most people don’t want to ride in them,” according to my colleague.
— A majority of New Yorkers support Amazon’s plan for their city but are having mixed reactions about the incentives that the company is receiving.
— More news generating buzz on the Web:
Today
Man arrested after Cheesecake Factory promotion chaos:
George W. Bush honors his father with tearful eulogy:


Start-ups seek to capitalize on ‘rising tide’ in commercial quantum computing

For decades, physicists have theorized that quantum computers — machines that rely on interactions among subatomic particles to perform now-impossible analytical feats — could one day leap ahead of traditional computers and transform the business world.
Their potential uses sound like something out of a science-fiction novel. It has been widely suggested that functional quantum computers could cut through data encryption; predict stock market swings by analyzing millions of variables at once; improve drug development by simulating interactions of subatomic particles, or enable communications systems that work faster than the speed of light.
Even their staunchest advocates say today’s machines are, at best, years away from any practical use.
Even so, a growing start-up community is betting that a “quantum revolution” in computing will materialize sooner rather than later, and its members have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in private capital in a race to be first to market. An industry website, QuantumComputingReport.com, lists 117 private start-ups that claim to be working on quantum technology.
Rigetti Computing, a California-based start-up, is among a handful of companies with its own quantum computer. The company announced Thursday it is acquiring QxBranch, a D.C.-based start-up that specializes in quantum-enabled software, in an all-equity transaction.
Rigetti and QxBranch have raised $119 million and $4 million, respectively, from venture capitalists.
“What this represents in quantum is that the customer readiness is emerging,” said Chad Rigetti, founder and chief executive of Rigetti Computing. “Quantum is really an opportunity for America to kind of leap ahead on computing and chip technology after globalization has led to the migration of that expertise elsewhere.”
Companies such as Rigetti are building on substantial investments in quantum science from the academic and government communities. The Washington Post reported in 2014 that the NSA was working on a “cryptographically useful quantum computer” under a $79.9 million research program called “penetrating hard targets.” The Chinese government has made quantum science investments of its own.
Start-ups like Rigetti are pursuing a slightly different goal.
Rigetti wants to offer a “full-stack” quantum computing capability to business customers, executives from both companies said in an interview this week. The company is already renting out its quantum computing capabilities to business customers for a fee, hoping their experimentation will yield commercially useful ideas. They declined to disclose financial details.
For the past five years QxBranch has been working to build the software, analytical functions and user interfaces that businesses could use to operate such machines. Where Rigetti has focused on hardware, QxBranch has built its business around how customers might use the technology. The two companies have worked together on various projects since 2015.
“Our job at Rigetti now will be to identify the end-use cases that can benefit from this technology,” QxBranch founder Michael Brett said in an interview. “That’s something that we’re only going to be able to do under one roof.”
Brett says his company’s customers have included large businesses from a range of industries, the largest being financial services. UBS Investment Bank used the company’s algorithms to experiment with analyzing the foreign exchange market, he said. And the pharmaceutical company Merck has experimented with possible optimization challenges.
Others working on quantum hardware include a Canadian tech firm called D-wave, which has sold its computers to Lockheed Martin and others, reportedly for millions of dollars each.
A College Park, Md.-based company called IonQ has raised roughly $22 million from investors including New Enterprise Associates, Amazon Web Services and the venture capital arm of Google. It recently hired Peter Chapman, formerly the engineering director at Amazon Prime, as chief executive.
David Moehring is a physicist who oversaw quantum computing research for IARPA, the intelligence community’s research and development agency. Moehring said he thinks the flourish of start-up activity is driven by public attention to quantum science from large tech companies, which provide a research and development customer base for start-ups. There are at least a dozen public companies — including Intel, Microsoft and Google — with quantum computing research programs.
“The customers are definitely getting more vocal,” Moehring said. “It’s really just a rising tide lifting everything right now.”