Speaker 0:  hackers are stealing your encrypted data today, betting that a future quantum computer will unlock it tomorrow. but a breakthrough team of scientists just went the distance to lock them out forever, proving a quantum secure internet worked over real world distances without breaking, sweat. so the quantum internet goes long distance now as research successfully transmitted unhackable quantum encrypted keys across a 120 kilometers of standard fiber optic cable. the system completely, ran on autopilot for over six hours proving this isn't just a fragile lab experiment anymore. this bridges the gap between theoretical quantum security and practical city to city commercial real estate effectively neutralizing the harvest id crypt later cyber threat for critical infrastructure. what's going on here, john?

Speaker 1:  yeah. this, this is super cool. i know we've covered quantum encryption and, quantum keys and, blockchain potential, hacking. so this is really cool. so why the 120 kilometers matters is it may not sound enormous compared to classical internet distances, but in quantum communication, it's extremely significant because right now, the way that you're we're using photons is they're really fragile. and so quantum states cannot simply be amplified like normal internet signals. so in classical telecommunications, you've got repeaters that regenerate degraded signals every so often. but in quantum systems, copying quantum information violates the no cloning theorem of quantum mechanics. so that means every kilometer adds exponential signal loss. so maintaining a stable, low error, quantum communication over a 120 kilometers while preserving usable key generation rates is a serious engineering challenge. and so the experiment reportedly maintained quantum bit error rates below 11%, which is crazy, while generating secure keys at roughly 15 bits per second. and this isn't realistic operating conditions. so it's so tiny compared to normal internet speeds, but qkd does not transmit data itself. it transmits encryption keys. so once the secure key is exchanged, normal high speed classical encryption can take over. so, i'm i'm loving this. every day or every time i i open up my news app, there's always something new with quantum or with quantum encryption or something like that. this is a really cool one. what are your thoughts on this? what do you think about this?

Speaker 0:  i like to think of this update like upgrading from a fragile glass mirror to a digital clock to send a secret message. older quantum systems encoded data using polarization of light, like tilting a mirror. if a fiber cable vibrates or gets warm, the mirror warps, and the message gets scrambled. this new system uses time bin encoding. instead of tilting the light, it sends a light particle at precise time intervals like morse code using clock ticks. whether the cable shakes, freezes, or bakes, a clock tick is still a clock tick keeping the message perfectly intact. so it's a working proof of contact expected, enterprise field deployments in three to five years at the enterprise level with potential consumer network integration probably closer to ten years.

Speaker 1:  yeah. and so this is about post quantum security, but not in the way most people think. okay? so many people confuse pqc, which is post quantum cryptography with it, which is mathematical encryption resistant to quantum computers versus quantum cryptography, which is qkd, which is security based directly on physics. so pqc, that relies on mathematical assumptions, whereas qkd relies on physical impossibility of measuring quantum states without detection. so this means that and we're talking about qkd. qkd is theoretically information theoretically secure, whereas classical encryption, even quantum resistant encryption, may someday be broken by mathematical advances. so the future internet will likely combine both pqc and qkd for high security applications, if that makes sense. did that kind of make things a little bit clearer about the two distinctions?

Speaker 0:  i think so. i mean, i've read the article though. so yeah.

Speaker 1:  it's still really technical.

Speaker 0:  yeah. it still really is, technical. so, you either are into it and wanna get into the details or you don't. we'll continue to talk about it. hopefully, we're not gonna bore people too much. infrastructure heavy, this is gonna be an expensive for telecom operators. part of an estimated $6,300,000,000 global industry investment to upgrade, to, this quantum key encryption. but it'll eventually, trickle down to standard enterprises. the distance of a 120 kilometers of a standard optical, fiber link operating rate at 76 hertz, photon emission from a telecom c 70 conductor dot, and a quantum bit error rate. so you mentioned this before sustained under 11%. and, i'm not gonna read this, but the secure key rate of 1.9, times 10 to the power of seven bits pulse using a practical, rate of 15 bits per second under finite key conditions. so it's not fast. mhmm. but it doesn't necessarily need to be fast. the system levels, the telecom band, semi semiconductor quantum dots, the sqds with pure cell enhancement, these act as deterministic single photon sources firing exactly one photon per pulse to eliminate multi photon vulnerabilities. it routes these through a sagnac interferometer based time bin encoder to create three distinct qubit states inherently stabilized in the signal against phase and polarization drift. so, yeah, it's, complicated how it takes this and locks it into the phase and then pass it along. so yeah. it mirrors the transition of early classical computing from fragile vacuum tubes to resilient field ready solid state transistors. so the experiment utilized the pure cell effect to drastically boost the photon emission rate by placing quantum dot inside a tiny optical cavity. they force it to spit out a single photons much faster and with higher purity than it ever would happen in open space. i mentioned the telecom operators projected to invest 6,300,000,000, in hardware between 2025 and 2030, transforming qkd from an academic pursuit to massive capital expenditure race. and while 15 bits per second sounds agonizingly slow, it's the equivalent to a nineteen seventies dial up modem. it's actually a massive victory because quantum keys only need to encrypt a master password, not the entire data stream. 15 bits per second is more than enough bandwidth to continue to secure top secret text communication.

Speaker 1:  yeah. and the one thing that we're not kind of bringing to the surface, and and if you go through all of our podcasts, you'll see this trend, but china is dominating much of the quantum networking race. so there's a huge amount of practical qkd progress coming from chinese institutions like the university of science and technology of china, chinese academy of sciences. and china i didn't know this. they already operate quantum satellites, which i didn't know. they operate long distance terrestrial quantum networks and city scale quantum communication back backbones. and it's increasingly being viewed as both a cybersecurity race and a geopolitical infrastructure race. and so the us, europe, and canada, and india, they are, all accelerating quantum network investments partly because of this, which makes total sense. but, yeah, i think china's far far and away way in the lead with when it comes to this.

Speaker 0:  well, i would assume they would be only because of the government situation. and i say that because the government stays in power forever, so they can make massive long term investments on infrastructure, without the same concerns that we have. you know, the privatization, this and that, who's the contract. so for four years, we're gonna flip. we're gonna cancel this project. we're gonna change this. we're gonna change the scope. we're gonna flip again in four years, and nothing ever gets done. so they have a master of management. we're gonna build this quantum infrastructure, and we're gonna just gonna do it. and, you know, the government just pays for it and it's done. there's no if, ands, or buts. right? so it's a different story. i'm not saying it's a better, environment at any way, shape, or form. i'm just saying it's better for massive long term investments like this at a governmental level because they can pull in one direction for a long time versus our flip flop on environmental or whatnot. let's do oil. no. let's do solar. let's do this. we're not focusing on anything specific. therefore, we're not moving the needle enough in any one of the areas. like, they're saying, hey. we're doing quantum and we're doing it. i don't see any city or, state or federal things. hey. we need to secure quantum networks across the usa.

Speaker 1:  yeah.

Speaker 0:  i not seeing it happen. so we'll see. i mean, it's all a matter of perspective, but, yeah, it appears on the outside from us, they are ahead of us in this race. however, we must keep in mind a lot of stuff that comes out is propaganda. maybe they're just telling us they're ahead on all this area. so you know, i don't wanna yeah. yep. the quantum internet isn't a sci fi fantasy anymore. it's a 120 kilometer reality that plugs right into our existing telecom line. if you had to lock down your personal data from future quantum hackers, would you trust software that math updates, or do you want unhackable hardware physics running on your fiber lines? let us know in the chat.