White House earmarks over $1B for quantum technology research | Hacker News Reader

White House earmarks over $1B for quantum technology research

thenextweb.com

66 pointsrbanffy59 comments

To put that in perspective, it's about 5% of NASA's yearly budget.

I know I lose a lot of "cool kids points" for saying this, but I am seriously excited about both this, and the idea of a "space force". IT seems like we're spending real money on giant engineering projects! Love it!

What is a "space force"? And why we need any kind of weapons in space? There are already enough weapons to destroy every living thing on Earth multiple times, what makes you excited about new military spending?

> What is a "space force"?

We already have a "space force" - the Air Force - which was spun out of the Army. It's not odd to spin out the Space Force from the Air Force, if necessary.

> And why we need any kind of weapons in space?

Because other nations want to or are in the process of weaponizing space.

The first time someone knocks out one of our GPS satellites, you'll be asking, "why don't we have a Space Force to protect against this sort of thing?"

Everyone's favorite rational pop scientist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, thinks it's "not a weird idea." [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NEcxhPh7js

>>The first time someone knocks out one of our GPS satellites, you'll be asking, "why don't we have a Space Force to protect against this sort of thing?"

It is extremely unlikely that someone will start knocking down US satellites, that would be an equivalent of attacking US, that never happened after invention of nuclear weapons. To spend billions to prepare for extremely unlikely event does not seem to be very rational thing to do. Meanwhile there are serious problems facing country and humanity in general global worming, automation takes away millions of jobs, opioid crisis, millions of people without health insurance, school system that has major issues.

>> Everyone's favorite rational pop scientist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, thinks it's "not a weird idea."

Yes, Neil gets exited when space gets any attention.

>that never happened after invention of nuclear weapons

>To spend billions to prepare for extremely unlikely event does not seem to be very rational thing to do.

Nuclear weapons were not free to develop.

They are already developed. Money is already spent.

Couldn't the same argument have been made for the first person to develop gun powder? Boats? Domesticated horses? Tipped spears, etc.?

Weapons can be an endless pit of development and the US is not a conquering nation. Let's say we could sustain an economy and develop the first nuclear weapons while everyone else is using spears; what was the opportunity cost? What's the value if it's only used for defense?

Outside of defense I know a large military and weapons help in having influence, but so does having a stable and large economy--the later moreso.

Nuclear weapons were developed out of a competition for survival. The people involved knew even in the hands of the Allied forces it was extremely dangerous. You're arguing we should invest in a Space Force because someone else might do it in the future.

I can't see nations going forward making the investment in nuclear weapons unless they've already been making big investments. Look at NK, they've made investments in nuclear weapons as well as cyberwarfare. I'm sure the investment in cyberwarfare has been much, much smaller and they already hacked into Sony, reduced them to doing paper payroll for awhile, and released a bunch of compromising information. Sadly, the response from the US wasn't very serious. Unlike nuclear, the response has to be asymmetric because they don't have much of a network infrastructure to attack.

I just don't see what to invest in for a Space Force. Anyone looking to attack something like GPS would either use something like ground base lasers, software/network hacks, or traditional projectiles. Anything developed by the US would either be obsolete by the time its needed or get sold to adversaries and used right back at us.

What happens when an "anonymous hacker" finds a way to adjust the trajectory of a satellite, and someone needs to rapid response dispose of the rerouted satellite safely?

The same thing we did last time that happened?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Burnt_Frost

That satellite was about to decay into the atmosphere.

We can't just start blowing up satellites in stable orbits.

> that would be an equivalent of attacking US, that never happened after invention of nuclear weapons.

Both nation-state and non-nation-state organized groups have attacked the US since the invention of nuclear weapons. (On US territory itself—notably on 9/11/2001—but more often US military assets off US territory, which is the closest equivalent to attacking a GPS satellite.)

> The first time someone knocks out one of our GPS satellites, you'll be asking, "why don't we have a Space Force to protect against this sort of thing?"

No, I won't. While the role is important, there is no sensible reason for a separate service, and the mission already exists in the Air Force.

Sure, we need the mission, just like we need the riverine warfare mission, or the littoral warfare mission. We don't need a separate service for any of those missions, though.

> Everyone's favorite rational pop scientist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, thinks it's "not a weird idea."

It's not a weird idea, and it's something we’ll quite likely eventually need. OTOH, quite probably not this century.

> quite probably not this century.

That's extremely optimistic.

We might not need it during this administration, but surely we'll need it in less than fifty years.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/president-trump-directs-pent...

"what makes you excited about new military spending?"

I am guessing he is excited about the fact that they are focusing on space research.

The original Russian "rockets" were just ICBM stages. There are hundreds of examples of military research boosting tech, especially when it comes to medicine and spaceflight.

If government wants to boost space research then it should increase NASA's budget instead of creating "space force".

>> There are hundreds of examples of military research boosting tech

Increasing military spending to boost tech or space research is like killing mosquito with the bazooka. DoD is extremely ineffective organization, there are estimates that it wastes $125 Billion annually from its budget. [1]

If government wants to increase spending on research and tech they need to invest in education first. School system in US has very low rankings compared to other developed countries.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-waste/pentago...

I would say the DoD is very effective. When was the last time the US was attacked by another country on our home soil? 1941? What about Europe? When was the last time a European country was attacked? March 2014.

Now “effectively is not the same as “efficient.” DoD and pretty much every single other large government agency could be considered very inefficient. But ineffective? Not at all.

> When was the last time the US was attacked by another country on our home soil?

9/11

> When was the last time the US was attacked by another country on our home soil?

The peak of the most recent foreign military offensive against the US was in 2016; the operation was quite successful in achieving the war aims, is the single most successful military operation ever conducted against the US, and is now in the exploitation phase.

>DoD is extremely ineffective organization, there are estimates that it wastes $125 Billion annually from its budget. [1]

20% innefficiency for a very large government org (which for decades has been successfully dodging audit)? I'd say that would be a pinnacle of efficiency :)

Russia had weapons in space decades ago. We are behind

What kind of weapons do they have in space?

They had a aircraft cannon attached to the Salyut 3 in 1974. No longer active of course.

I'm just pointing out that other countries are not afraid of weaponizing space- we are simply behind and at a disadvantage if we don't. Especially since satellites play an important role in military and civilian infrastructure.

There are reasons why they gave up the idea of having weapons in space. Weapons in space are very expensive and dangerous. And they can be easily destroyed. Currently there are no serious weapons that can be useful in space.

> Weapons in space are very expensive

No, they just took a normal weapon and mounted it.

> dangerous. And they can be easily destroyed

Literally all mounted weapons can be described like this.

> Currently there are no serious weapons that can be useful in space.

Absolutely incorrect. The US has deployed laser-based weapons since the early 2000s. Used for missile defense mostly. As you can imagine, they perform well in the vacuum of space.

>>Absolutely incorrect. The US has deployed laser-based weapons since the early 2000s. Used for missile defense mostly. As you can imagine, they perform well in the vacuum of space.

Can you provide an example of a laser weapon(s) that can actually shoot down ballistic missile or cruise missile in real life scenario? The best that current laser weapons can do is to shoot down drones from relatively close distance. [1]

Another issue with laser weapons in the space is powering them and maintaining them.

[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/military/no-qu...

> and at a disadvantage if we don't

How, exactly, are we at a disadvantage? We can rain destruction on any point on the Earth's surface, and have proven technology for shooting down satellites (and inevitably bringing down our own because suddenly there are billions of new objects in orbit from destroying 1 satellite.)

Where are the gaps? Do you anticipate an alien invasion? If so, we'd be fucked. Do you think the <insert current trendy US enemy here> has some secret space technology to turn the entire US into a parking lot instantly, and somehow we have to put $35bn BB guns on satellites to combat it?

When enemy belligerents start shooting down our satellites, what then? When Mars transports are hijacked, then what?

Evil and conflict are as old as humans themselves. To suggest otherwise is to misunderstand human nature.

What stopped Soviet tanks from rolling into West Berlin? It wasn’t a brigade of huggable teddy bears.

>>What stopped Soviet tanks from rolling into West Berlin? It wasn’t a brigade of huggable teddy bears.

The same thing that stops them now, nuclear weapons, huge military and NATO. No one is suggesting to not have defense or to stop spending money on defense. US already spends more on defense than next 10 countries in the list combined, most of which are US allies [1]. There is no need to spend more.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

You don't lose cool kid points, you instead lose any expectation people might have regarding your ability to perform basic risk analysis.

Things shouldn't be pursued based on whether they seem big and sciencey. They should be pursued if the benefits exceed the costs and risks. A space force does not meet that criteria.

The purpose of calling it a space force is to align the military industrial complex with NASA's mission. This isn't about creating a legitimate space force. Who would they fight? Its about the rebranding civilian science for military funding.

It’s about making something shiny to dupe the masses.

No, it's about rebranding existing military funding (mostly Air Force) to another type of military funding, the Space Force.

> and the idea of a "space force

The idea seems cool, I agree. But the implementation will be anything but cool. Going into space is still very expensive and hard. Be prepared for an even larger DoD budget and very expensive projects (F35 anyone?) at a scale not yet seen.

From this article: https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/quantum-satellite-data.htm...

> From past two decades, Quantum technology has been a top strategic focus in China's 5-year economic development plan. While the U.S. invested about $200 Million a year in quantum research, China spent $101 Billion in quantum physics in 2015.

If you'd like to learn more about quantum technology, this article gives a good summary: https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/06/19/quantum-entangleme...

> U.S. invested about $200 million

> China spent $101 Billion in quantum physics in 2015.

Wow that's pretty staggering

That's because it's a fraudulent number with zero supporting evidence. There's no actual public data on what China is spending on "quantum physics."

$100 billion in 2015 would be more than all venture capital in the entire country that year. It'd be equal to 70% of all of their claimed military spending for that year.

That's what they do; Ask any economist or financial analyst.

Not only are the numbers fluffed up, there is zero transparency on what exactly the figure represents, what the progress made was, what the outcomes were - all to please their "benevolent" dictator

Because it's a typo. China spend $101 Billion on all research in 2015. A small portion of that was more quantum physics.

WSJ issued a correction, as noted in a different comment in the thread.

Thank for the correction - that number seemed unreasonably large.

That number sounds really, really outlandish. China, officially at least, spent about $130 billion on their defense in that same year. I highly doubt they would spend that much on some research project which will bear fruit in the distant future. Even if they are willing to spend that much money, where would they even spend that much money?

Maybe they spent $101 billion up to 2015, i.e. it is the total sum of money spent for the last two decades. $5 billion a year for the last 20 years sounds too high still though (but feasible)

It probably comes, directly or indirectly, from WSJ, who now have

> Corrections & Amplifications:

> Funding for basic research in China, including quantum research, was $10.1 billion in 2015. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it was $101 billion. (8/20)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-latest-leap-forward-isnt...

Nice summary. Talk about something *indistinguishable from magic"

According to everything I read "spooky action at a distance" isn't really a thing - there is no magic here, unfortunately.

I have read about this topic a ton. My understanding is that quantum communication is impossible and is being claimed here. Does not compute.

What do you mean by "quantum communication"? Quantum key distribution/cryptography as done in that satellite experiment certainly is real, there's even some companies selling early commercial implementations already.

Here's the text of the house bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/6227...

Summary:

* It's a 10-year plan

* NIST gets $400M for quantum research

* NSF gets $250M for quantum research and a mandate to establish 5 centers and to establish graduate traineeships in quantum fields. These traineeships are earmarked for US citizens.

* DOE gets $625M and a mandate to create up to 5 research centers, which go up for review after 5 years.

I wonder if this is in reaction to Europe investing €1B a few years ago.

https://www.nature.com/news/europe-s-billion-euro-quantum-pr...

That seems like a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Why? It's a perfectly legitimate avenue of research; and there is much fundamental work still to be done (which is typically the type of research the government funds).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com