Trump, Britain and Quantum Computing

 

“Quantum computing will re-shape the world very soon”.

Vladimir Putin

What is Quantum Computing?

September 18, 2025. The substantive centrepiece of President Trump’s state visit to the United Kingdom is a new Anglo-American deal to beat China and Russia to operational and applicable military grade quantum computing (QC). If successful, such a partnership could be as significant as the Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb. This is because quantum computing is the key to real artificial intelligence (AI) and thus future hyperwar in which the offence and defence act and respond exponentially faster than today across air, sea, land, cyber, space, information and knowledge.  As such, QC blurs the edge between the digital and the organic because it can potentially mimic what humans do when they subconsciously combine information, knowledge and analysis - imagine. So, what is QC?

Future QC will be at the core of machine learning, big data analytics and AI.  To put it as simply as possible, a Quantum is the absolute minimum level of activity needed to successfully realise a digital solution. To do that, Quantum Computing (QC) combines quantum physics, computer science and the theory of information, thus enabling computers to decrease the number of operations needed to solve complex problems by running calculations simultaneously at far higher speeds and with less power consumption. That is why QC is a ‘quantum’ leap above super-computing, which is to QC what the analogue is to the digital. 

AI and QC

The clue to AI is in the name – ARTIFICIAL intelligence. The machine learning that supports AI requires a great deal of historical information and constantly needs to be fed with vast amounts of energy-hungry data – big data.  This is so it can learn how the data changes and identify trends over time and why enormous data centres are needed. The quantum dilemma is thus; as the volume of data increases, the complexity of computation also increases, along with the time and energy needed to analyse, calculate, identify, interpret, to provide any relevant output, and ultimately to ‘think’ and ‘decide’. 

Specifically, QC will be able to administer large data sets at much faster speeds and supply data to AI technologies at a far more granular level than even the fastest of current supercomputers. Quantum computing will also integrate data far more intensively by running comparisons between schemas to quickly analyse and understand cause and effect relationships, particularly in defence systems. In other words, it will enable weapons systems to adapt to defences in real time.  For example, Google’s Sycamore is reported to have resolved a problem in 200 seconds that would have taken today’s fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to solve. This opens enormous possibilities for the future military applications of big data and analytics, something China, Russia and others are all too aware of.

Future Military Applications of Quantum Computing:

In September 2018, the United States published its National Strategic Overview for Quantum Information Science, which defined quantum sensing as ‘leveraging quantum mechanics to enhance the fundamental accuracy of measurements and/or enabling new regimes or modalities for sensors and measurement’. Such new capabilities afford clear military advantages. The United Kingdom’s Defence Science Expert Committee has highlighted the potential importance of improved gravity sensors (quantum gravimeters), to detect moving masses under water, such as submarines. Superconducting magnetometers that use quantum technology to measure miniscule changes in magnetic fields could also be used to locate enemy submarines, while quantum radar could be used to detect even low-observable aircraft.  The UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory has said that ‘it is anticipated that new militarily disruptive technologies (e.g., novel communications or radar modalities) will be enabled’. Quantum technologies already form part of developments related to the miniaturisation of atomic clocks, which are useful for position, navigation and timing purposes.

There are several further military specific applications of QC.  Quantum key distribution (QKD), quantum cryptanalysis and quantum sensing all promise to significantly enhance strategic security. For example, QKD will provide a near-term advantage for defenders to secure their communications. Quantum cryptanalysis will afford an inherently offensive capability, though one that is maturing at a slower pace.

Lessons from Russia’s war on Ukraine are also being considered as possible test-beds for QC/AI-driven super-accelerated warfare.  For example, the next phase of military applied AI at the core of adaptive offensive and defensive AI drone swarms and tailored cyberwarfare. Other lessons-learned include Cryptographic decoding represents a quantum leap in layers and speed of encryption. QC can decode efficiently certain types of cryptographic codes.  The most common form of quantum encryption is the transmission of cryptographic keys (i.e., QKD) using quantum ‘superpositions’ of photons during the initiation of secure communications sessions.

However it is Cryptanalysis that will be the critical foundation for the conduct of any coming hyperwar. Quantum computers will eventually replace the current sequential trial-and-error method for processing complex mathematical problems upon which cryptanalysis currently relies. As such it will provide a myriad of alternate means, strategy, tactics and effect at hyperspeeds by considering and applying many possibilities and ‘solutions’ simultaneously. AI/pattern recognition will be at the heart of future ballistic missile defence. So-called Bayesian network methods are already in use (or their use is being tested) to discriminate between missiles and decoys in missile defence systems. Bioinformatics: QC can help analyse bioweapons fast to assist with countermeasures.

Generalised quantum computing will also offer many other possibilities, but they are too uncertain at this stage to permit concerted analysis of their second-order effects.

Chagos 2?

 

There is one historical caveat London should be aware of.  At the August 1943 Quebec Conference Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to pool efforts to build an atomic bomb.  At the time the British programme, codenamed “Tube Alloys”, was ahead of the Americans.  In 1946, after the completion of the Manhattan Project and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the US Congress passed the “MacMahon Act” which saw the US renege on its agreement to share atomic technology with the UK.  As then Labour Foreign Secretary Ernie Bevin famously remarked “We’ve got to have this thing over here. We’ve got to have a bloody Union Jack on top of it!”  For all his love of the UK Trump is both an American president and a businessman.  The only reason the US is investing in British Quantum Computing is because the Brits have something the Yanks want. Sadly, Starmer is a terrible negotiator because he routinely confuses interests with values. Chagos?

 

Julian Lindley-French

 

Julian Lindley-French is lead author of Future War and the Defence of Europe (Oxford University Press) with Generals Allen and Hodges.  He is also the co-author of The Retreat from Strategy (Hurst) with Field Marshal Lord Richards