Philly Daily ran my On Crime column today on the FBI leading the Quantum Information Science and Technology Counterintelligence Protection Team.
You can read
the column via the link below or the following text:
Although I
spend most of my day working the computer and phone at my desk in my book-lined
basement office, my computer skills are somewhat limited.
But I
received a primer on quantum computers when I interviewed David Ignatius, a
Washington Post columnist and the author of “The Quantum Spy” back in 2018. I
don’t subscribe to his political views, but I think he is a fine newspaper columnist
and author.
David
Ignatius’s “The Quantum Spy,” is, as the title suggests, a spy thriller. The
thriller describes the espionage race for a quantum computer between the U.S.
and Communist China.
I was able to follow
the quantum computer science backdrop to “The Quantum Spy,” as David Ignatius
did a fine job of explaining the basic technology involved in quantum computing
and why it is vital that the United States builds a quantum computer before
China, America’s adversary, builds one.
David Ignatius’s fictional CIA director explains that quantum science is a paradigm shift. “It’s like Galileo and Newton. It will change everything. A quantum computer would simultaneously explore every answer to a problem, creating a tool of immense, almost infinite computational power.”
So I was interested to see the FBI state their new lead role in quantum information science and technology.
According to
the FBI, quantum information science and technology (QIST) -based on the
field of quantum mechanics – has the potential to create revolutionary advances
in science and engineering. But while these advancements have promising
applications—from military to medicine to economic—that promise also makes them
an attractive target for adversaries who seek to damage U.S. national
and economic security.
In response
to the global race to develop quantum technologies, a new executive
order, Ushering in the Next Frontier of Quantum Innovation,
calls for a government-wide effort to expand and protect the U.S. quantum
ecosystem through quantum innovation, private sector cooperation, and
international partnership in pursuit of a quantum computer—which could
theoretically process calculations exponentially faster than any existing
computer.
The FBI
noted that the new executive order has tasked the FBI to lead and expand the
Quantum Information Science and Technology Counterintelligence Protection Team
(QCPT) to improve and coordinate protections against adversarial and
cybersecurity threats to the QIST ecosystem, coordinate public messaging and
outreach related to those threats, and enhance sharing of threat information
with federal, industry, and academic QIST research and development
entities.
"Historically, the FBI
is very good at solving theft of trade secrets and economic espionage
cases, and working with DOJ to prosecute them," explained Supervisory
Special Agent Wes Wollard. "However, the goal of our team is to
proactively posture ourselves ‘left of theft’ to help prevent
theft of quantum research and technologies."
Quantum
mechanics examines the properties and behaviors of the smallest particles
that make up everything around us, the FBI explained. In the quantum world - at
the scale of molecules, atoms, and electrons - the laws of physics become
peculiar and behave differently than in the physical world we can see. GPS
systems, MRI technology, and the lasers that enable today's internet are
examples of technology developed thanks to quantum mechanics.
“But in the
emerging field of QIST, researchers are further exploring how to control the
behavior of these quantum systems to create next-generation technologies for
imaging, sensing, computing, modeling, and communication. QIST could give rise
to the quantum computer—computers that can perform certain mathematical
computations impossible for traditional computers—which scientists theorize
could advance research in communication networks, new drugs, new materials,
more defined medical imaging, microelectronics, and semiconductors. The full
range of potential applications of quantum computers and technology is unknown,”
the FBI explained.
"At a simple level,
QIST has the potential for very significant economic and national
security impact. The greatest threat is the potential
for adversarial development of a cryptographically relevant quantum
computer (CRQC) -one which could break current widely used encryption methods
-which would allow our adversaries to elicit everything
from the most sensitive secrets of our nation, to secure
financial transactions and communications, and even
decrypt previously harvested encrypted data," said Wollard. "As
a result, there’s a sense of immediacy for us to address these risks."
The QCPT
serves as an interagency team tasked with protecting
the U.S. quantum information science
and technology ecosystem.
"The
QCPT was created via White House policy as a new approach to
partnering with industry, academia, and federal partners to ensure U.S.
leadership in quantum research and development," said Wollard.
"With academia and industry leading innovation in this
field, the U.S. government recognized that we needed to partner with those
entities in a new way."
“Partnerships
are vital - the threat from foreign intelligence adversaries has become
increasingly complex as they employ an all-tools approach that includes
non-traditional collectors, economic and academic influence, and other
asymmetric intelligence operations. As a result, no single U.S.
counterintelligence agency can fully understand or mitigate these operations on
its own,” the FBI stated.
Wollard explained
that the FBI’s role in leading the QCPT is to "bring together key
counterintelligence and security agencies protecting quantum under
one team with unified lines of effort and a strategy to ultimately protect the
U.S. quantum ecosystem from adversarial threats.”
The FBI
works to achieve this by:
- hardening the ecosystem through
threat awareness and promotion of best practices across
security disciplines
- actioning intelligence to mitigate
vulnerabilities and threats
- promoting collaboration and information
sharing within the U.S. government and with like-minded nations
The
QCPT is embedded within and the National Counterintelligence Task
Force (NCITF), which brings the counterintelligence
and security components of the U.S. government under one
roof, allowing QCPT to collaborate with the full suite of the U.S.
government's protection apparatus.
"As a
field counterintelligence agent, a lot of our time is spent doing two things,
protecting classified information of state secrets and protecting economic
information and intellectual property," said
Supervisory Special Agent Sean Miner. "Quantum really
covers both of those areas. And so, it fits really snugly right into
what makes up the bulk of a field counterintelligence agent in the FBI
protection responsibilities."
Note: You can read my Counterterrorism
magazine interview with David Ignatius via the link below:
Paul Davis’s On Crime column appears here each week. He is also a contributor to Broad + Liberty and Counterterrorism magazine.
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