In this episode, the conversation focused on the transformative potential of quantum networks alongside the ever-prominent quantum computers. A key theme that emerged was how curiosity—rather than just advanced degrees—can open doors in the quantum industry. The discussion explored the path from complex mathematical curiosity to a career in quantum information science, highlighting how quantum communication is emerging as a crucial counterpart to quantum computing.

Listeners will learn about the threats and opportunities presented by quantum technologies, including the significance of quantum key distribution (QKD) and the coming era of "Q Day," where classic cryptographic systems may become obsolete. The episode provides insights on the unique challenges of quantum networking infrastructure, the role of satellites, and why quantum communication remains an underappreciated area with immense potential. Several points were raised, including the tension between post-quantum cryptography and QKD, the fragmented approach to quantum infrastructure across nations, and the key industries that will drive adoption. If you’re quantum-curious—whether you're a technologist, executive, or just fascinated by the future of secure communications—this episode breaks down the stakes, the science, and the paths forward in quantum networking.

Links

• Carlos on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlos-pascual-garc%C3%ADa-ph-d-8469b216b/
• Watch on YouTube - https://youtu.be/ohDtnOwYpHg

Time Stamps

00:00 Choosing a PhD in Quantum Communications

06:44 Satellite communication and defense strategies

10:03 Introduction to quantum cryptography

11:27 Post quantum cryptography explained

14:26 Challenges in communication authentication

17:51 Quantum communication projects in the EU

23:35 Efficient energy solutions for data centers

27:18 Challenges of scaling quantum networks

29:39 Challenges in Quantum Device Commercialization

34:02 Challenges in setting tech standards

35:57 Fragmentation in global security tech

40:23 Challenges of microscale computations

42:58 Julia's role in data science

45:49 Quantum podcast with Candace and Frank

Quantum computers get the headlines. Quantum networks may change the world.

Hello, and welcome back to Impact Quantum, the podcast where we explore the

emerging industry that is quantum computing, what that means

for careers, and do you need to have a

PhD to get into it? Maybe not. You just really need to have

a lot of curiosity. And with me is the most quantum curious person I

know, Candace Kahule. How's it going, Candace? It's great. Thank you

for asking. Today is a beautiful sunny Friday in June,

and I'm enjoying the weather. I'm not going to lie.

I'm very excited about it. Today we have. We're lucky

to speak with Dr. Carlos Pascal Garcia,

and he is a quantum information scientist

at Lux Quanta. How are you,

Carlos? Hello, Candace. Doing great.

Yeah. Thank you very much for the invitation. I'm really pleased to be invited into

this podcast. Yeah, well, we're great to have you. And,

you know, even though we say you don't need to have a PhD, you

do. But I also think that not. I think that can be,

one, congratulations, because that's not an easy thing to do. And two, you know, a

lot of people, I think, get intimidated by that idea that you have to have

a future PhD in quantum physics. But. So how did you end

up where you are? Right. Your LinkedIn profile says you're a

quantum information scientist. That's. That's interesting. I'm

curious, how did you find your way to quantum? So,

I don't know. For me, it was kind of a natural path in the sense

that I like complex mathematical problems that you can actually play around,

and they have some correspondence with reality. Something that, for example,

you're going through the streets and you see, for example, a

neon billboard, and you ask yourself, how is it that it's

emitting light? Right? You ask yourself these kind of questions. And for me,

it was a very natural idea to, first of all, get into physics.

Right at the beginning, I got to admit I was more into general relativity.

But then I gravitated, pun intended, towards more quantum technologies

and quantum mechanics in general. And it had a very

direct evolution since from Bachelor until your PhD.

You start from very small problems that you can solve in about 1 minute, 5

minutes, and then it evolves into some hours. And finally you get into some problems

which you admit that it's going to take not just days, but even months. That's

how I got into my PhD, and I was indeed pretty much into that, like

solving problems and especially if they have an actual impact by another day,

like, they. They can help the mankind that was something pretty

rewarding to me. Interesting.

Okay, so I have notes here. Oh, sorry, Frank, I have noticed

that communication, quantum communications

was. Has become a big focus for you.

Can you tell us more about that? In my case, when

I. When I started thinking about my PhD right at the end of my master's,

was indeed thinking about doing content technologies, right? And the question that

begs itself is what kind of technology are you actually willing to study?

The first, the first problem that you have to face is that indeed there are

three branches. Quantum communications, quantum sensing,

as well as quantum computing. And in the end, I decided to

pick quantum communications because for me, it's kind of like the flip side of

quantum computing. Namely, we know that quantum computers

are powerful, right? They will be able to solve some tasks which right now

they seem to be impossible. And this is good on the one hand because it

means drug discovery, for example, but on the other hand, it means that your security

is going to be at risk. Because classical cryptography is based on typical

factorization of prime numbers or problems which are computationally hard, but they can be

tracked using quantum computings. And quantum cryptography, which

is a subfield of quantum communications, actually works towards fixing this issue,

right? Which is going to be a very huge threat for the years to come

once we see in the next 10 to 15 years how quantum

computers become cryptographically relevant. And I mean that they can indeed crack

rsa, Diffie, Hellman, or other current cryptosystems that we use

now to store, for example, our banking information or the

databases of hospitals.

Interesting. Okay, so let me ask you from your perspective, because you talk

about quantum key distribution. So what does Q day

mean to you? So Q Day means the

start of a new era in terms of, especially in terms of cybersecurity,

because indeed it means that just the same way that the year 2000

could have meant a complete change in, for example, the way we had the

computers storing information, because, you know, the change of dates was supposed to start

at year zero and we had to fix a lot this issue,

right? Invest a lot of money to avoid resetting

all the computers of the world. We could face that same threat in the sense

that, for example, a certain old database which has been storing

information for 30 years, right? Did you recall that actually that is

using RSA, which is not secure anymore, like a lot

of forgotten information that is actually critical, is going to be under

threat, and we'll have to double check basically any kind of

database that we have here and there in order to see whether

it's actually safe. Or if we actually have to change into some

new cryptographic system like post quantum cryptography, or use quantity

distribution. Interesting. And

your LinkedIn profile also mentions quantum

satellites. So what? What makes satellites special? We've had

a couple people talk about satellites, but yes,

I think I know what the answer is. But why would I want a satellite

as opposed to a terrestrial solution? So

it has to do indeed with the quantum properties, especially of light.

So indeed you would like to have a solution that works for optical fibers for

your communications, because they are reliable, they are guided,

right? And they are very predictable. It's not that they

fluctuate, like for example, the atmosphere does. What's the problem?

That the losses in optical fiber are exponential, which means that

after just, I think it is 15km how far your signal has

disappeared. And if you try to go beyond 100km, actually you

cannot perform quantum communications anymore because the quantum properties of your

signal have basically vanished and they cannot be

neither detected anymore. Or if you try to use what it's done in

classical communications, the amplification, then you're introducing

a pulse that destroys the quantum correlations in your signal. So

you have no contact communications anymore. What's the solution? If you want

to go beyond 100km, you have to go into free space.

This means one shooting signals from one laser

into one antenna between, for example, two skyscrapers. You could

use satellites like from, from the Earth into a certain

satellite that you have in the orbit. Or you have for example, satellite

constellations as well, like a starlink, which are satellites communicating between each

other in order to distribute a signal each in one point in the Earth into

another one. That's how you can actually reach distances which are relevant to

the, to the scale of the Earth. And all this thanks to the fact that

fear dissipates signals with the inverse of the square, basically with a

factor which is way smaller than the exponential that you have, the nautical fiber.

And then you have the other factor, right, which is also very important, which is

defense applications. So one of the very important lessons that we learned from Ukraine

back in 2022 is the fact that basically all your Earth, all the

communication signals you have in Earth, they can be denied in just a few hours

or a few days. How can you keep communications in

such a scenario, putting all your infrastructure into satellites which can

be protected, sorry, which cannot be attacked with the same efficiency

or with the same power as you would have on the Earth.

Interesting. It's just fascinating that

space is a major

platform for quantum computing and quantum compute, quantum

networking, really? Right. And I guess, really, what's the difference between

quantum networking and quantum computing? Right. It's probably a loaded question,

but do you think investors are paying enough attention to quantum

networking? I think it's not the case.

Indeed. And that's something that you can actually spot when you, when you

say, for example, the startup ecosystem, because you can

name lots and lots of different startups in America or in Europe that they are

devoted indeed to quantum computing. Right. But then when it comes to quantum

networking by itself, maybe you have a bit like we

have, we link in Paris, we have new quantum, it does some networking

solutions. And here in Barcelona, for example, we have a startup just started a

few months ago, Arc quantum, that indeed

they all do quantum memories or some sort of dcp, quantum computing or quantum

networking. But indeed there's just not enough activity at the moment.

There's also a very important thing, which is that quantum repeaters, for example, quantum

memories, they're still in a very early stage. It's a subject of a

current economic study. But indeed we should pay attention to this in the

short term in order to make it, for example, quantum computers scalable in the

context of high performance computing or distributed computing.

Interesting. So let's

go back to QKD for just a second because I think it's

important, I think that there's a disconnect

between what executives understand about it

and what quantum

key distribution can actually solve.

Certainly. So, okay, quantum key distribution by itself

tells you that to users, right, which are typically called Alice and Bob,

by exchanging signals which are of a quantum nature, they can

generate a series of correlations which they can use in order to verify that indeed,

that the signal has not been distorted by any third parties. Right. By any hacker,

or let's say by very high noise in the optical fiber or the channel

that connects them. Right. What does this mean? You can indeed

detect any kind of attack that was happening on the signals. But you were, for

example, distributing a key in order to later perform an encryption, which is

one of the biggest problems that you have in classical cryptography, the distribution

of keys. The good thing about this is that if you tell me that the

transmission of information was secure, the only problem that you have afterwards is

the storage of the information. Which means that, for example,

the public keys that you have to distribute in order to perform

asymmetric cryptography. And again, classical cryptosystems like rsa,

right. This can be harvested by a quantum hacker and in

a matter of minutes or days with a quantum computer which is powerful enough,

this Classical sorry, this public key can be used in order to decrypt the private

key. But this is not the case in quantum computing and

quantum communications, thanks to qkd, because it indeed has this

property, the fact that Alice and Bob, by using their correlations, they can detect

whether there was a third person harvesting this information.

And such denial is what we call the information theoretical security.

Knowing the fact that by just applying measurements on your quantum signal,

you can indeed characterize it fully. And in particular, you can detect the

presence of third parties that were trying to extract information from

you. Okay,

so what is the. How does QKD differ from

post quantum cryptography? That's actually a

very important point, right? Because people typically think that they have a solution to the

same problem, which is not actually the case. Right. So post

quantum cryptography is actually more related to mathematics and software

engineering in the sense that it's based on creating problems which are

computational hard for a quantum computer as well. Right. When I was

saying before that any hacker could harvest information, right?

And after a certain time, this information can be used in order to crack

the coding of the crypto system. This is something that can happen with

classical crystal systems. But if you go to post quantum cryptography, you can

indeed deny this in practical terms, because these problems are

engineered in such a way that the quantum computer, the hacker, can take

centuries or even millions of years in order to actually decry that information.

So for a certain time scale which is relevant, you can

indeed certify that you have security based on these computational

constraints. What's the problem? That again, just like it

happens with classical cryptographies, nothing prevents you or

anybody in the future to discover a new algorithm that. Look at that. Actually it

can solve your PQC algorithm and crack your encryption

efficiently. That's the main difference with respect to quantic

acquisition and quantic ACE vision. This cannot happen because again, you enforce

information theoretic security from very first principles. You can certify

the information is secure and it will be eternally secure.

Okay, so they're not. Are, can they be seen,

Are they competitors or complementary technologies?

I would say that for the majority of public, they are competitors

in the sense that especially that's a very huge divide between

America and Europe, because the United States, there's a very

hard bet on post quantum cryptography. And actually the

NSA already published a couple of years ago standards for encryption

based on PQC and is recommending actively the migration of

databases and cryptosystems into this new PQC paradigm.

Whereas in Europe we are betting on quantum key distribution. This is

incorrect or is an improper image in my opinion. Because by the end of the

day you will need both. Right? That was why I was thinking like it sounds

like both are going to have to or both because you can't. Because key distribution.

If this is all for my, my cryptography nerds out there. Key

distribution has always been a major weak point, right? You think about

Star wars and the Death Star Candace. Remember how like in the first movie

there was like this massive thing, but one little ex,

one little port could be the shoot a little like torpedo down and the whole

thing goes up. Key distribution is a bit like that, right? Doesn't matter how

complicated your math is. But if you, if you

mess up. I was going to use a different word, but if you mess up

the, the getting the keys and managing the keys, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't. I mean it, I mean clearly, maybe I'm not an

expert in the field, but like you know, it matter. It doesn't blow

up everything, but it really puts a big hole in your big secure. It's like

having an armored truck and then leaving the door open and the keys in the

ignition, right? Actually, yeah, that's something that

if you need to exaggerate a bit the picture, I could say that the weakest

part of distribution is the authentication, right? So basically

you need your two users, ICE and bo, they need to preshare some secret

from way before in order to basically authenticate the channel

so that Alice knows that she's talking to Bob and Bob knows that he's talking

to Alice. But of course you need that they know each other from before

and they are sharing some secrecy. That's a

big problem, Right. And right now the main recommendation by the

European Commission that is being researched currently is to use this hybrid approach,

namely a digital signature based on PQC such that

Alice and Bob, they can authenticate their communication

without needing a pre shared key. That way you have

the distribution of the key which is information theoretically secure

and you're using PQC technologies in order to simplify

all the practical framework, namely the execution and the authentication of

the relevant channels. Interesting.

And that's going to be the future.

Interesting. Do you think that businesses realize that the key distribution

aspect is really going to be as

crucial, especially in America, right. Where

they have really leaned heavily into the PQC side of things.

Do you think that people have really thought about

QKD enough?

You mean in America? Yeah, in America I would say yes,

but no. For Me, I think that is mainly because of the rather

philosophy of American people, right? Because QKD, by the end of

the day is when you commercialize it, it's a product by itself, right? It's a

physical product, whether it's going to be a bulk telecom system

or a microchip. This means that you have. Since typically it's related

to cryptography and security and defense applications, of course you will

have that. The supply chain and the production is all

within your country, right? Or at least within a friendly space, like let's say in

natural countries. Of course, this means that this is going to be an

expensive solution compared to putting all these, all these concepts,

supply chain or the workforce and let's say countries like China. But

you're not going to do that because it's a complete deal breaker, right? Right. In

the case of quantum computing, for example, you have to extract and say this is

what it is. Right? I had to do that because in order to do quantum

computing, I need the machine itself. But in the case of fusion, you could

indeed consider that it is equivalent to pqc, which

ties back to the debate that was explained before. Right? And say that

actually, for all practical purposes, PQC does the same.

So this is scalable, it's just a software. It can be

implemented using Python libraries. So why should I bother about building a product

with QKD when I can actually have the software? And

indeed that's what you have. So there are no startups or QKD in the United

States. You have many programs also in the European Union,

also startups, but also the European Union does not do that much of what you

see. Interesting.

Sorry, Candace, I don't want to go down the. I don't want to geek out

too much on the cryptography stuff. No, I'm totally enjoying it.

So you can geek out all you want. I haven't had enough coffee

yet, so give me a minute. So how much of the infrastructure

required for quantum networking already exists?

I would say basically zero. Okay, so,

okay, here in the European Union, for example, we have several initiatives, right? Like

Euro qci, for example, which was a project by European Commission.

Deploy the first attempts of quantum communication networks in all the

capitals of the European Union, right? So you have, for example, a chapter in

Madrid, you have another chapter in Paris, et cetera. They are all

working on different concepts. Like one of them they're using, for example,

in the one in Paris, for example, they use a conical distribution based on

laser pulses, what we call continuous variables. In

other ones, for example, they trying to analyze the energetic efficiency of

networks. So these are very basic

ideas and concepts that will scale up with time. There's for

example another project that started just a couple of years ago, Petrus,

and the one which will be followed, which is called Iris Square or

Iris 2 also, which aims at taking all these small

metropolitan networks, right. And join them using long

distance links, which is going to be satellites via the date. And for

example, Iris 2 has the official target

of including all overseas territories of the European Union, which

means that we'll have I global network that will integrate in

metropolitan scales, right. Regional networks,

international communications as well as satellite constellations.

This is for me the biggest attempt for

doing quantum networking for quantum distribution. Right.

And indeed you will have another activities like for example, what is

new quantum doing for distributed quantum computing, which is again

quantum networks, but more from the perspective of the hardware and quantum

computing. But well, to be fair, I'm not that

much aware about the state of the art of those applications.

Interesting. What would you say to someone if you had to

explain quantum communications in under a

minute, like kind of like 60 seconds or what would you say to

a CEO? I know it's really tough because like there's a lot. But like what

would you say to someone who's not technical but has money to pay

for these solutions? Yeah,

yeah. So no, Well, I

actually have this kind of discussion with my business

development manager, right. Which is that, for example, for

the case of a conical distribution, what you want is to reach the same

kind of production rates as you have in classical

communications, megabits per second or if you can, just gigabits per

second. Right. If we go in general to quantum

communications, not just quantum cryptography, basically the same idea is the fact

that you can pump much more information per second.

So if you tell me that your classical system is able to go to

the, I don't know, 100Mbps. Right. You

can use quantum signals to encode more information for each laser

pulse that you have in your optical fiber. Which means that instead of 100,

I can get you, let's say 300Mbps.

Right. Actually there are schemes that work on this, like for example, the

well known super dense coating, which indeed support the idea.

So if you can get better repetition rates with a

simplified infrastructure, because again, we're just talking about lasers and

commercial technologies, you can build actually a very good business case.

Interesting.

Which industries do you think are going to want to

adapt this type of secure networking communication? First,

so mainly two. The first one is governments and public institutions.

Right. Especially within the context of defense.

We see right now a lot of initiatives that have to do with

indeed military applications, like for example,

all these initiatives I told you about. So your qci, Iris

Square, there's also QSMP that is actually managing

from ICFO in Barcelona, which indeed have a defense

chapter. So let's say your communication in restricted scenarios

where for example, there's an adversary actively introducing noise in your

channels and you also have other activities

like making secure communications between different

ministry buildings of the capitol.

That's the first

interesting sector. And the second one is telecom. Telecom providers.

So basically companies that indeed they would like to sell in

the medium to long run GKD devices. But in their case,

they are indeed mainly concerned about what I said before, repetition

rates, encoding as much information as possible per signal.

And if they can also sell this extra in terms of security

information, theoretical security, without inducing over

cost compared to our current technologies, they are

indeed interested into expanding the business line

in this regard. Okay,

so here in Canada they're talking a lot about

these data warehouses and I

know they're talking about this everywhere and

energy consumption. And I know there's a really big push here. Data

centers, you mean data centers. Data centers.

And here in Canada they're doing this big push with

energy and the creation of energy. And I wanted to

understand why is energy efficiency becoming part of

the quantum conversation, do you think? Okay, right.

Actually, just reminding me that this is one of. When it comes to

tech providers, the main target is in the data centers, right?

Because they are what we call capillary networks.

So they have many, many links which are very short, typically

they do not exceed 5km, but indeed

for each of these connections you would need a pair of QQD devices.

This means that in a data center, which

might be massive in the sense that it needs thousands of

devices in order to implement QKD for all

the different sectors, energy consumption becomes actually a very huge

problem, especially within our current context where energy is expected to keep

rising in prices as well as the demand is going to keep increasing

any kind of efficiency, Even at just 1%, they can indeed mean

thousands or even millions of dollars in the long run.

And actually there are actively lines of research, like I

got for example one paper, and there's even the so called Quantum Energy

Initiative, which is managed by researchers from Spain and

France leading the efforts in this regard. And namely study for example,

new architectures for bulk QKD systems which are more

efficient as well as how to create microchips

which preserve the efficiency of these bulky devices, but

they need to consume less energy because they can reduce all

the scales and they need smaller electric pulses, for example.

It will become a very huge and important field because of

this scalability issue, particularly in data centers.

Interesting.

Where do you think we go from here

in terms of

adoption of quantum networking?

And you mentioned before that there was really no infrastructure in place. Do you think

that has to be the first step? You think that would be a good place

to start? Well, because like we also, we talk to people who are quantum curious

and people who are curious about building out their careers, right?

Like what? It seems like if there's no infrastructure

yet, that seems like a good place to go. Because I think the need,

I think we'd all agree that, that, that the need is there. But like

we need to, we need these highways. So you know, where can, where we need

the infrastructure. What do you say to people who are kind of not physicists

or marketing or sales and engineers type of thing?

Where do you think they should look for a rather

technical profile? I would say that they need to look into the standards

that are going to be settled by. Well, eventually,

because for example, in the case of qkd, there are many

different approaches in order to implement these protocols.

So you have for example, that you can use qubits, right? Which is actually the

initial idea by Bennett and Broussard, the so called

BB84. The problem is that creating

single photons or just qubits is very, very expensive.

So they eventually moved into laser pulses. And that's how

you got the next technology, which is the so called continuous value

quantity distribution, which is based on using just laser

pulses. The good idea about using

continuous variable QKD is the fact that you only need commercial

devices, namely optical detectors, optical fibers, right?

I would say that it offers better scalability in the long run

because the technologies are rather. There are some other technologies

that must be developed like processors,

GPUs, etc. But in general these do not

come at a very huge cost. The problem is that, well, in the case

of a CVQKD or continuous viral qkd, it only works for small

scales like typical distances which are less than 40 km. If

you want to go between 40 and 100, then

we need to switch back into this image of qubits, as I said before, right?

Which has the caveat that is much more expensive because you need

cryogenics, dedicated devices, technologies which are

again still under current development, etc.

The way we will eventually perform these protocols, right? When public

agencies recognize that QKD protocols are given by these kind of steps and

they can be implemented with this hardware, that will really set the

tone of the conversation when we come to pricing

this on the one hand, and on the other hand the fact that different scales

will mean different technical stacks. So

might be that, for example, performing QKV for 80km will become

just too restrictive, right? Or for 40km it's

better to use this technology instead of this other which is more scalable, that you

can buy it more easily, etc, etc.

So that by end of the day building your quantum network is going to depend

basically on what public institutions will tell you.

Okay? It also has to do with the definition of security

in the sense that depending on how different, because there are

different standards of security in quantum communications, you

might tell me that you decrease the level of security for

certain applications that you can nice that yes, this is secure for practical purposes.

And in that case you could access a certain kind of technology

which is much cheaper, much easier to produce, much more

scalable. But it might be, for example, for other applications

like sensitive data, you need another technology which is more

expensive.

So it all becomes the age old cost versus security

needs conversation again, in the long run, that

will be the main drive costs as well as security levels.

So when you speak with business leaders that are outside the quantum

field, what questions do they seem to ask you

most often? Well, I got to make that

this is sometimes a bit of a frustrating task in the sense that

they're mainly concerned with the output. Like they

admit that. Yes, well, you do this quantum communication

thing, right? Like it works, right? This is secure

and they indeed have the notion that you do your job

properly. And thus they can indeed

they purchase the device or the idea from you via licensing, and

then they will eventually sell the device. And

this becomes sometimes a sort of a rat race in the sense

that by the end of the day, for example, the telecom providers, they only

care about megabits per second, right? Like if you can

achieve higher yields at your competence, you cannot win

by end of the day. But of course this means that you can

make any claims about the security of your device, like, yes, it's secure against

any kind of quantum adversary without

actually getting into the technical details of the security

methodology that you have, you can reduce

and custom corners and thus you will obtain a better

result for your device, because of course you're restricting the action of any

hacker. So this means that you can expand and

achieve higher yields for your protocol.

As a result, you have that many startups and many companies, they say that

they indeed can achieve better results than anybody else, go to distances which

are much larger. But this is mainly because they disregard the

quality of their final product. In terms of security,

the solution in the long run for this will be indeed the establishment of security

standards by public institutions. But right now

the main drive is indeed simply the results community. Well,

the business community typically does not pay attention to the

security standards.

Interesting. Do you think

that this is the most underappreciated

opportunity, like quantum networking? Quantum comms

is the most unappreciated. Because it seems like it is. Because it seems like

there's. Everyone's talking about the hardware they're building, people are talking

about the software layers that they're building. But this is.

You don't hear a lot about it. Right. And there's only a handful of experts.

And I think we've been lucky enough to have two.

You're the second one, maybe the third. And if you look at the

news feeds, at least the ones I get, the algorithm has

chosen for me, this doesn't come up that often.

And you're laughing. So there's probably a bit of truth in this.

There's quite a lot of truth in views in the sense that

media exposure and investment is typically focused only on

quantum computing. Right. Like people typically hear about

quantum technologies and they generally think about quantum computers

and indeed. Well, quantum communications is a bit of

the small branch Apple. I would actually say there's about a 20%

of all the activity you have in quantum technologies,

some in academia and industrial. Right.

And we, we don't have indeed the level of exposure of,

or let's say media coverage that quantum

computing has. It has to do a lot with the fact that

indeed quantum computers are, I don't know how to put in

words like more interesting in the sense that you have the device

itself. Right. Typical image of a cryostat, which is golden. Right.

Isn't it beautiful? It's not like for example, you have

in qkd, which is just a simple box that you put in a. In a

typical rack. This on the one hand. On the other hand, when

you. There's a lot of momentum in this. Like quantum computing already

blew up. Right. It's getting into big numbers in terms of

investment as well as image. So when you have freshmen

coming into, into their PhDs, they indeed want to get into quantum

computing because that's where opportun are, that's where money is, right?

Indeed. For example, in my case, there's only A very handful of

researchers in quantum communications here in Europe, or specifically in

quantum distribution. But I can name a lot. When it comes to quantum

computing, is there a gap between what

researchers are building and what the industry currently needs?

That's actually a very nice question. I would say yes.

Right now the market is demanding the product.

The thing is that in order to set your device, you

indeed have to give a list of all the requirements that

they give you. Like for example, how can you control the metrics of the

device, how do you enforce security, etc.

Which is indeed a good solution for the short term,

like in the sense they have to check boxes.

But in the long run, if we want things to scale

into the big picture, like having quantum communications,

for example, the layperson,

you will indeed need again the standards, which is the main thing.

What's the problem? Building a standard requires basically all

the relevant scientists of, for example, Europe or America to

sit down, write a paper, agree that quantum distribution

is Based on steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, sign that

paper and put it into archive, or give it

to the relevant information agency, like for example,

security agencies here in Europe. And that's how eventually, if

everybody agrees on the fact that security for quantum devices means

this, the governments recognize it. So that by the end of the

day you have an elaborate standard, and when you sell your product, you can simply

put the seal of quality and say that yes, we're certified by this organism,

it's this device, and indeed it works thanks to

the security proof, which is standardized according to the certain

bullet points.

Interesting. Do you think we're moving towards

a future with interconnected global quantum networks?

Or do you expect countries to build separate sovereign quantum

infrastructures? The second one, actually,

that relates a bit to the current fragmentation that we

see in the global landscape, right? And also the. The fact

that since QKD is typically tied to security

applications, this means that governments of different

nations, they want to retain some degree of control over the

technology. I'm thinking right now, for example, about this proposal that

happened a few months ago by defense

company Rheinmetall in Germany, together with

a satellite company, ohb, in which they proposed a

Starlink like satellite network for the German government, only for

military applications with a budget of

30,000 billion years. Well, 30

billion euros, something like that. Quite a lot. And

indeed that only for Germany, right? And I would expect

to France, which also has a very important military sector, to follow

suit and pretend to elaborate a similar proposal.

We will observe indeed, first of all, some sort of

national initiatives in this regard, and Maybe in the long run for

some transnational agencies, like, for example, the European Union, these

will be integrated into one big network,

like as I said, tied, for example, to the Iris

Square program. But I think that this will happen in the very long

run, like in 2050, something like that. Oh,

wow. I know. We're getting

close to the top of the hour. So

what do you think? You mentioned that there's going to be these

nationalized sovereign networks, which I do agree with. I think that

that is the direction that we're headed to. We're kind of in. If you take

a longer look at the arc of history, where we were all about globalism from

about the 90s till around now, you're starting to see kind of

that walk back. It's a pendulum, right? It'll. It'll swing back, don't worry.

But what you think, like,

alliances will kind of. That you think these sovereign networks will connect

via kind of like the trading blocks that they're already in and the military alliances

that they'll block. Like I can easily see a BRICS version and

a European one and possibly a NATO

type. Yeah. I don't know. Do you think it'll. It'll. It'll. Yeah,

it'll map to our geopolitical realities.

It will map into. Yeah, you will map into political realities. Like, for

example, NATO is indeed

actively supporting the development of quantum technologies, among

others, indeed quantum crypt cryptography. So I think that

this would be the main guiding principle towards

either the integration of synergies between all these

different networks, starting from indeed some sort of military application

that happens with a lot of other technologies. It

will gradually create more and more civil

applications, and by the end of the day it could become. That's a

big telecom network for both civilian

and military purposes. But this is something

again, pretty much in the very long run. Right now, the main drive is

indeed defense and security, which

is driving the deployment of these networks. Then

we'll have the standards, and with the standards, we'll have

telecommunications implementations for commercial

purposes.

Interesting. The other thing you pointed out is that people are all

about the, you know, the golden quantum computer, you know,

the chandelier looking thing. Right. And I. And they're not so much

thinking about networking, but that reminds me of the

early days of the personal computer. Right. Everyone was about

the PC, Junior, the Compaq, the laptops.

Yes. But then quickly

then you had the realization that as standalones,

they had a certain amount of power, but when they're networked, and that's when

you saw the rise all the networking companies that were

out there, Cisco, Novell, Netware,

Banyan Vines, all these networking.

Based on what you say, I can kind of like history seems like it's about

to repeat itself again, right? Oh yeah.

It's not going to be something easy actually.

As you were saying, we started from the very big chunky voice.

Let's say I will have to go into the microscale as well. As

we go into the microscale, we go into problems which are harder and harder to

simulate so that we need more and more resources that cannot even fit in

the room. Which means that we need to train to distributed

solutions both for, for example, highly demanding

computations like hpc or simply when you

have a cryptographic solutions as well. Because there are solutions

which are based on encrypted information and distributing into different

packages that go into different servers or into

different computers. This is an effort that

will take a lot of time and also a lot of money.

Right. Especially because we have a very high constraint

in the. In our current infrastructure. You cannot just start a

new kind of deployment out of the blue. You need to base

everything that you have from the perspective of the 5G

or beyond 5G networks, which means, among others, for

example, understanding the stability of your network. Right. What

happens when a node falls and it's not useful anymore?

Rerouting strategies, which nodes are reliable according to what

security standards? Etc, which is

also another subject of active research like

quantum communications for beyond 5G networks.

Interesting. Wow. There's a lot we can kind of

go down and I don't fully understand a lot of this, but we're

also coming to top of the hour. We'd love to have you back and kind

of maybe do a deep dive on some of the more

wilder esoteric parts of this.

But where can folks find out more about you and your company,

which the name.

Luxquanta. Lux Quanta. Correct. Yeah. So where can

people find out more about you and what you're working on?

You can find me on LinkedIn, right. Carlos Pascol Garcia. You

can also find me on GitHub C. Pascual Garcia, where I typically upload

my works in Julia for numerical optimization and quantum technologies

as well as on Arxiv where I upload my research.

There's Julia again. I was just about to say.

I saw that look. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said Julia. You said Julia.

So there you go. Yeah. It's funny because talking about that a lot lately, it's

exploding. Yeah, yeah. Because Julia was,

you know this. Right. Jupyter. The. The Ju And Jupyter Notebooks was meant

to be Julia and then Python, then R. So it was originally,

I think, pitched as a data science language or an

AI language, but clearly Python took all the air out of that room.

But, but a lot of folks in the quantum space are using Julia, like

the, you know, this is now the third or fourth time we've heard that, you

know, oh, my stuff's in Julia. And I remember we

were talking to a guest and he said, oh, this is my GitHub repo. So

I looked at the GitHub repo and I'm like, it's all in Julia. What's that

about? Right? And it's not to start language hate, because I don't think that

really helps anyone. Right. I chose Python because.

Flexible. Yeah, it's flexible and it was there. Right.

The Java vs Visual vs C sharp

debates never solved anything. Right. It was really more about

what your platform bias was. Right. So with everything kind of moving,

open source and vendor lock in is not as

prevalent as it used to be. People generally can

choose whatever language they want to use. Generally. Right. I think

Python won the AI space because there

already were things like scipy and things like that, all the

advanced mathematical things. So I find it, I find it interesting that

Julia comes up again. That's of kind. Cool. That's kind of cool. Yeah.

So, I mean, just as a short note for me to say, it's very

direct in the sense that Python is flexible, right. But you have to

systematically start patching around, like using

this compiler, which is very efficient, or this version into

C, which is a cyton, etc. So why don't you just start over with

a language compile, which is easy to use, that allows you of an

efficient memory management. And for me it was a very direct

choice. That makes sense. That makes sense. I think

Julia's time is yet to come.

I see that actually the ecosystem is exploding. Like a lot of people from

quantum information, they're right now migrating into

Julia. And I'm very happy because I've been there since four years ago when

Julia was like, Julia, what's that into? Oh yeah, I saw

this new library that does, I don't know, condensed matter.

Interesting. It's very rewarding to see how it evolves. That is

cool. I'll definitely have to put some

time into learning Julia, that's for sure. With that, we'll let the outro music

play.

The multiverse is skanking, Skanking in time. Black holes are

wailing in a horn line. So fine from Planck scales to planets. They're

connecting the dots. Candace and Frank, they're the cosmic

hot shot.

Quantum podcast, turn it up fast. Kenneth and Frank,

blowing my mind at last. Quantum podcast, they're breaking

the mold. Science has got beats. It's bold

and it's gold.