Unhackable Quantum Network Underway; China is Evolving

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Unhackable Quantum Network Underway; China is Evolving

Jinan, a hub city located between Beijing and Shanghai has successfully trialled an “unhackable” quantum communications network. They informed the Financial Times that they will have quantum networks implemented by the end of August.

“We plan to use the network for national defense, finance and other fields, and hope to spread it out as a pilot that if successful, can be used across China and the whole world.”

- Zhou Fei, assistant director of Jinan Institute of Quantum Technology, the research institute involved in the project.

Telephone and internet cables can be tapped without the sender and recipient being aware. Hacking a quantum cable however, due to the fundamental nature of quantum mechanincs changes the information.

Known as Quantum key distribution (QKD) networks, a secure cryptographic “key”, or password, is sent between the two parties over the network, which they can use to encrypt future communications. If the key is interfered with, they will instantly become aware and know to avoid using it.

The Beijing-Shanghai network that is currently under construction is set to host the world’s longest land-based quantum communication channels, stretching over 2,000km with Jinan as its hub.

Their fiber will be a chain of individual quantum links connected by 32 physically secured spots, or “trusted nodes.”  Each intermediate node measures the key and then transmits it with fresh photons to the next node in the chain.

It will primarily be used by the government and central banks … which are also going digital. 

China is Developing its Own Digital Currency

“Getting to know more precisely how much banks lend, where the money goes and the pace of credit creation is key to curbing money laundering and making monetary policy more effective … Issuing digital currency will make it easier for the PBOC to monitor risk in the financial system and track transactions economy-wide.”

- Duan Xinxing, vice president of Beijing-based OKCoin Co., one of the country’s biggest bitcoin exchanges.

This is all in response to the leaks provided by Edward Snowden detailing a global US-sponsored internet surveillance program. Since then China has poured resources into quantum advancement.

“China has achieved staggering things with quantum research. It’s amazing how quickly China has gotten on with quantum research projects that would be seen as too expensive to do elsewhere … 

… Quantum communication has been taken up by the commercial sector much more in China compared to other countries, which means it is likely to pull ahead of Europe and the US in the field of quantum communication.”

- Tim Byrnes, a quantum physicist at New York University’s Shanghai campus. 

The most advanced quantum ground network also has a collaborator in space.

Ground to Satellite Quantum Teleportation

In a landmark study, a team of Chinese scientists using an experimental satellite has tested quantum entanglement over unprecedented distances, beaming entangled pairs of photons to three ground stations across China – each separated by more than 1,200 kilometers.

The satellite, known as Micius, is a highly sensitive photon receiver that can detect the quantum states of single photons fired from the ground. It was placed in a Sun-synchronous orbit so that it passes over the same point on Earth at the same time each day, allowing for researchers to test various quantum theories, such as entanglement, cryptography, and teleportation. 

Then on July 4th of this year, they successfully teleported a photon from Earth to a satellite orbiting 311 miles away.

Their success in their development of the first satellite-to-ground quantum network has smashed the record for the longest distance over which entanglement has been measured, the concept behind how teleportation works … and these are merely the results of their first experiment. 

How Entanglement, and Therefore Teleportation Work:

Quantum teleportation relies on quantum entanglement. When two quantum objects, such as photons, form at the same instant and point in space and therefore share the same existence. They are described by the same wave function.

No matter what distance you put in between these particles (now proven up to 1,200km), a measurement on one immediately influences the other.

Quantum teleportation “downloads” all of the information associated with one particle and transmits it over an entangled link to the second particle.

The second photon takes on the identity of the first. It becomes the first photon. 

This has already been performed in numerous labs around the globe. China however is the first to connect space into the equation.

“Long-distance teleportation has been recognized as a fundamental element in protocols such as large-scale quantum networks and distributed quantum computation,” says the Chinese team.

Now while teleporting anything larger at the moment is not possible, this breakthrough does open up the doors for advancement in communications.

 “This work establishes the first ground-to-satellite up-link for faithful and ultra-long-distance quantum teleportation, an essential step toward global-scale quantum internet.”

While we are being lead to believe China is basically going broke, having accumulated a majority of the world’s debt in US dollars – a currency that will soon collapse – the truth is they are leading the way into the digital age. 

They are the only country with a quantum satellite and an established ground-to-satellite quantum network … owned and operated by their banks and government.

They are on track to be the first to pioneer a global quantum internet. 

They are currently developing a digital currency in preparation for economic fallout from the collapse of the dollar … and will have an “unhackable” network already in place owned by the banks and government. In truth, no one really knows how much gold China has, but we do know they have been on a massive gold buying spree over the past few years, having surged over 700% since 2010!

Quantum computers exist. They are already in play, combined with artificial intelligence. 

Christoph Marquardt of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Germany is publicly suspect this field could be much more advanced than has been acknowledged.

He believes the era of quantum communication is already upon us.

“They had some very good groups concerning free-space satellites and quantum key distribution at Los Alamos [National Laboratory] and other places, and suddenly they stopped publishing. So we always say there are two reasons that they stopped publishing: either it didn’t work, or it worked really well!”