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Comment by lebed2045 | Hacker News Reader

lebed2045

I don't think it's true for quantum computers. Folding proteins and stuff is good use-case of the cause but the real drive is the military. Same as for gen-AI. If you don't r&d this but Chine does - you're fucked. So the only way to do not become in the disadvantageous position - is to reason it yourself.

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> the real drive is the military

Although military investment has driven many different technologies over the years, ‘the military’ is actually a complex mix of the Armed forces themselves, government acquisition organisations, and prime contractors and their supply chains. The resultant acquisition processes of many countries are glacially slow, with sometimes decadal timescales from requirements definition to delivery of full operational capability. Military acquisition is not agile, except when urgent operational requirements force rapid tech change by taking acquisition shortcuts.

The military what? Comparing again to computing engines, even when computers were not at all like they are now, there were always lots of people queueing around them with workloads they want them to do now - and which computers could help them with as they are, not 200 years in the future. For QC, I do not see many users with workloads that can be served right now. I don't say it shouldn't be developed because of that - lots of things took time to bring to maturity - but we should be ready for it taking a long time to get to real usefullness.

If the military is paying for it then it's already in stage 3. Just because something isn't readily available to the public doesn't mean it's a failure - I can't buy a rocket but the various space programs still do lots of cool things and they have money to pay for it.

Military pays for a lot of stuff that then is not going anywhere. Just as other venture funds do. You can't win without taking some risks. But that doesn't mean everything the army pays for automatically is a great thing.

So relatively we will all be about the same, but in absolute terms we will all be worse off?

Where have I heard this before...

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