In this episode, hosts Frank La Vigne and Candace Gillhoolley sit down with James Davies, founder of Embedded Electronics Recruitment Solutions, a specialist in quantum technology recruitment. Together, they explore how quantum is making its way out of the lab and into the real world, and discuss the challenges and opportunities facing companies as they race to hire quantum specialists and consultants.

From quantum’s role in defense and communications, to the innovations happening in sensing and computing, James Davies shares his insights on current hiring trends and how the talent landscape is shifting as quantum startups accelerate. The conversation also takes a deep dive into the sociological changes happening within the industry, the growing influence of government and national security concerns, and the bigger picture: how quantum could help solve some of society’s most complex challenges—from resilient supply chains to fusion energy and beyond.

Whether you’re a tech enthusiast, a recruiter, or just curious about the future, this episode will give you a front-row seat to the quantum revolution—and show why you don't need a PhD, just a sense of curiosity, to be part of it.

Sponsors

1. Free Audio book from Audible - https://qrcodes.at/freeaudiobook
2. Opus Video Clips - https://www.opus.pro/?via=f419e6
3. Quantum Sales Playbook (affiliate) - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FR5YGFDR?tag=datadrivenm0e-20

Books Mentioned

All links below are Amazon affiliate links and help us keep the show awesome.

1. Antifragile - https://amzn.to/3ZlELg0
2. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. - https://amzn.to/4qpTe6F

Links

1. Embedded & Electronics Recruitment Solutions -https://eerec.com/
2. Embedded & Electronics Recruitment Solutions (LinkedIn) -https://www.linkedin.com/company/embedded-electronics-recruitment-solutions/
3. James' LinkedIn Profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/quantum-recruitment-specialist/

Time Stamps

00:00 Quantum Consulting: The Next Frontier

06:19 Consultants Bridging Quantum Tech Gap

08:10 Quantum Defense and Communication Trends

14:07 Collaborative Competition in Quantum Technology

15:22 "Semiconductor Secrecy and Hiring Pacts"

19:54 Startup Success: Exit vs Growth

24:30 "Quantum Technology Revolution Insights"

26:54 "Quantum Computing, Paranoia, and Privacy"

30:01 "Uncertainty, Influence, and Money Talks"

31:42 Quantum Tech Integration Insights

35:59 "Fragility of Key Industries"

39:24 "Achieving Fusion Energy Solutions"

43:04 "Technologies Shaping the Future"

45:03 "Quantum Mechanical Revolution Unfolding"

49:21 "Oil's Shift to Transportation"

53:37 "Exploration Limits: Science vs. Ambition"

54:48 "Viable Space Travel Technology Discussion"

Quantum. Quantum is building to a crescendo. But whenever the beat drops

or the crescendo hits, there's going to be just this

amazing rush of people that are going to want to hire quantum

specialists or even I think right now, I think the big hotness is Quantum

Consultants. You basically, if I'm a Fortune 1000 company,

I want to talk to somebody about how is

this a risk to my business, how is this an opportunity? I think that's where

we are now. Quantum is moving out of the lab. And into the real

world. The question is, who's ready? Welcome

to Impact Quantum.

Hello and welcome back to Impact Quantum, the podcast. We explore the emerging

industry, not just field, but an entire industry of quantum

computing where you don't need to have a PhD, you need to be a little

bit curious. And with me on this discussion

journey is the most quantum curious person I know, Candace

Kahuli. How's it going, Candice? It's great. Thank you so much.

It's. I'm really excited. You know, we have something different today

and something I think that's incredibly important and very

exciting. So we're going to be speaking with James

Davies and he is the founder of Embedded

Electronics Recruitment Solutions. Okay. So he

does quantum technology recruitment.

Interesting. Talk about someone

who some days. Yeah, I can imagine. But I mean, you probably have your

finger on the pulse of exactly what the job market looks like and you

can probably get a good feel for

the, the pace and the. Can't think of

the fancy word for it, but vector of the industry.

So. Welcome to the show, James. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me on,

guys. So one of the first ones I've done

podcast that is, I guess. Oh, cool. So, yeah, thanks.

Thanks for the invite. No problem. Normally we're a little

better organized. It's just today we had snow. We were talking to Virtual Green Room

and the kids had a two hour delay opening. So everything is.

So I honestly, I get it. And like I was saying, if 4 inches of

snow would 100% shut the entirety of the UK down,

there would be no nothing going on, which would be fine for me. I work

from home anyway, so, you know, actually I'd probably quite like it,

but, you know, still cool.

It could be worse. Once I was in Texas, in Dallas, and

they had like an inch of snow and it shut everything down. Yeah.

And. And I was just sitting there like, you know, my

wife is from Pittsburgh and they get a lot of snow and she always makes

fun of how we handle things here in D.C. baltimore but I'm like, my God,

like an inch of snow is shutting you guys down. That

was a new one. All right, so back to this. So clearly,

you know, what made you want to be. How'd you get into being a quantum

specific. Specific recruiter?

As I get into it. And your LinkedIn URL

that you reserved, very well played, sir. It says quantum dash

Recruitment specialist. Specialist. I was like, that's awesome, man.

That's branding done, right? Yes, it is.

So that I think. I wouldn't say. I thought. I wouldn't say I fell into

it. As you could probably tell from my. From the name of my company Embedded

in Electronics, it wasn't initially intended to be

quantum technology specific. I think. I think when I. When I set up,

I. I thought, you know, great, I can do whatever

I want. But actually, I think you quickly find you. You become spread way

too thin. So I. A bit of time with a business

coach that I used to work with, and he said, really, you should be looking

at something called pestle, which is, you know, like political, economic,

and to figure out what would be a good area to sort of look into.

And as I started doing some research, I. I came across

sort of quantum technology, and I realized I knew a few people

in the sector, so I sort of reached out to them and carried on doing

a little bit of research. And I realized that, you know, from a. A political

and economic and social. Economic standpoint that all

things were pointing in the right direction and, and did a little

bit more research and realized, okay, actually this is about 100 years old, and they've

been building and building and building, and now it looks like we're kind of at

a bit of an inflection point where. Where actually

companies are spinning out at a rate and growing at a rate where. Where perhaps

they're not able to grow organically like they

may have done historically. You know, spin out, hire from. From their. Sort of.

From their research institute or within their group or. Or

even perhaps know of all the companies, you know, that that

might be doing something that they're specifically focused on or that they can turn their

degree to or their doctorate even.

So, yeah, and I think, I thought, this is great.

I love the technology. I think it's really interesting. That's. Struggle to

understand some of it, you know, at a deep level anyway.

And, yeah, I thought, yeah, I'll go for it 100%.

Yeah, that's cool, because I think that what you're

seeing, I think that whenever

the quantum. Quantum is building to a crescendo but whenever the,

the beat drops or the crescendo hits, there's going to be

just this amazing rush of people that are going to want to hire

quantum specialists or even, I think right now, I think the big message,

Quantum consultants. You basically, if I'm a Fortune 1000

company, I want to talk to somebody about. Right, yeah.

How is this a risk to my business? How is this an opportunity? I think

that's where we are now. But at some point,

POCs are going to need to be built, right. And you're going to need to

have, you know, and that's the whole purpose of the show, actually, since the reboot

of the, of the podcast is like, it's not just going to be about quantum

physicists, it's just going to be about, you know, you know, you're gonna need someone

to sell the solutions, you need someone to market them. You're gonna need recruiters, you're

going to need. So I think that, I think it's cool to have an

actual honest to God recruiter here because that way we can kind of

get a feel for like, what. I mean, are you seeing any

trends? I mean, why did you decide to. I think it's interesting that

you, you mentioned around consultants. You know, I've spoken to

probably over a dozen people now, you know, which that might not

sound like a huge number, but, but you know, it's still a relatively small

field, you know, who perhaps come from some of the most

respected research institutes and, and actually they're kind

of, they maybe don't want to stay within academia or they've worked for a few

of, you know, the companies out there already and there is a

real niche there, or niche if you're in the, if you're in, in, in North

America where perhaps actually they've realized that some of the

companies, you know, BMW, prime example, you know, where

they perhaps have the money and they want to implement

this into their sort of, I don't know, materials or logistics,

finance, whatever it might be. But they don't perhaps don't understand which

of the technologies or modalities is going to work best for them, where they should

be placing the funds, you know, those sorts of things. So you can take,

I said I probably reasonably public

knowledge, you know, JP Morgan Chase are investing into a

quantum technology team. You know,

that's one approach. But, but other companies like Volvo are using

consultants. They're bringing them in to go, okay, well, you know, you've worked

for Chalmers or whoever it might be.

Can you tell us which of These technologies is going

to be best utilized for us. So there's definitely

a trend there for sure on that front alone

and many, many others. So which

sub areas of quantum technology, hardware,

algorithms, sensing, et cetera,

are currently hiring the most aggressively?

Hiring the most aggressively,

I would say, I wouldn't say necessarily most aggressively.

I would say that I'd probably break it

down in a few different, in a few different areas from, from what I'm

sort of seeing, from what I'm personally

seeing, you know, and obviously there's a lot of good resource out there that you

can look into or buy into perhaps, you know, if you

need more detailed reports. Quantum

and defense, usually we're seeing these two, these two words tied

together, rightly or wrongly. You know, I think we've got to be realistic.

It's, it's an application

that's good, you know, it's at the forefront, you know, and that's where a lot

of the money's coming from and where they're really pushing things

is communication. And I think people also forget a lot about

sensing. You know, whether this is for,

you know, you know, gravity based systems for,

you know, submarines or naval vessels or GPS

denied areas and also the obvious communications,

you know, how can we encrypt, decrypt, how can we make it more

secure? A lot of money is flowing in from those areas. You

know, NATO Diana program, they've been pumping a lot

of money into quite a few

relatively minute QKD startups that have

been spinning up all out of Europe. The same's happening obviously

in America, out of the N

ncc. I think they've got a few different

things going on. And then some of the major defense contractors have actually been doing

quite a, you know, ng's got a really interesting team that I

think they've flown under the radar a bit. I've spoken to a few people from

there. They've actually delivered some, some really interesting stuff. I'm just trying to think

some of the publications and patents that they put out there. I remember speaking to

one of them thinking, I've not seen any of the sort of, you know, you

know, GQI or any of the big names talking about the work that they've

put out there. So I'd say those areas, I think

although they haven't been getting the headlines, I think they're probably the most

likely to scale really quickly. The

computing side's really complicated. It's, it's really, it's

all complicated. It's all hard, you know, like there's no

simple job I've yet to see, you know, or perhaps

a hiring team that, you know, just want a plotter, should we

say, who sort of can fill a certain sort of area.

So take that. That area in. In sensing communications, or

it's maybe not getting huge headlines. I think that's probably going to be

productized really quickly, you

know. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, absolutely it does. And you also dropped a few acronyms

that just in case people may not know. Qkd. I think you

meant quantum Key distribution. Yeah, I did, yes. Okay, yeah, yeah,

no, that's fine. I mean, as we build out this jargon, like people are.

I mean, it's inevitable, right? I work in. I work in

it. Right. I am one to complain, but, like, I know that we have a

lot of people that are like, qkd. Like, what's that like?

Yeah, there's quite a few. There's quite a few communications qkrng and,

you know, all the different ones. But. But effectively, yeah, if

random number generators. Ah, okay, okay, okay,

yeah, okay. And that was as. As we all know, there's no true

random number generator, you know, or

maybe there is, maybe there isn't, I don't know. Which is apparently why

I was told if you should always change your.

Your router password when you get a new WI FI set top box, which I

haven't. Because if anyone goes past spoofing that perhaps, and they know the

manufacturer, they can, right? Anyway, if they're

that clever that, you know what they. I don't have anything interesting on my Internet

anyways. That's right, that's right. No,

that. I mean, that's a good point, right? Because I know random number generation is.

Random numbers are part philosophy, part math, right? And there's a

Dilbert cartoon where I guess he's

in the Dilbert universe, right? So I guess the

accountant department is all trolls, like. And

he goes in there and he goes, he goes, hank, he's our random number

generator. And just keeps going, five, five, five,

five. And then Delbert's like, that's not random. I know what he's

gonna say. And then like in the middle panel, he looks at him, gives him

like a scowl and goes, six, six. Yeah, six,

six. And then he's like, with random numbers, you really can't tell. And

like, you know, a little bit true to that.

Yeah, but I like that. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. I'll dig up. I'll put in the show notes where.

There is, you know, I think the

computing and cubic can quite rightly gets A lot of the headlines,

you know, and I know I don't want to, you know,

talk too acronym heavy, but it's obviously still at a very early stage. You know,

if, you know, I think I feel like every conference I go to that's perhaps

not purely quantum technology. You know, I do, I do often see those early day

computers at the start of the presentation to set it up. You know, it's, it's

like the, the common thing but, but I think actually the

communications and sensing sides perhaps left out of the

limelight a little bit, you know, and I think that's probably going to be

productized and implemented really quickly, you

know. So how has the

talent landscape changed in the past, you know,

two years, three years maybe? Right. Are companies

competing head to head for certain talent?

So what's probably different is

in the court. So I think prior to working specifically

on sort of quantum technology, I think,

you know, I've worked in various different STEM sectors, you

know, that are either very science or engineering focused.

And I think those are sort of very well established

sectors where perhaps, you know,

finding a job is a case of just, you know, applying to a few

different companies. What's probably different within this

sector is that a lot of

the companies, they actually quite know, they actually know each other quite well. That's

almost sort of frenemies. And you know, perhaps they're, they're competing for

similar funds from similar places. So actually what

I've seen, which I've not seen in any other sector, which I think goes to

show how early

things really are, is, is that, you know, I think would be a

good example. I went to a conference and all

of the companies there were openly talking

about their scaling challenges to each other in an open room, in an open

forum. There is no way you would go to a

semiconductor and see any of the other manufacturers next to each other

openly talking about their technology. You know, their

IP would be hidden. And don't get me wrong, some, maybe some of the larger

players that's sort of embedded, like IBM, they might be a little bit more inherently,

you know, would keep it under wrap sort of thing. But that's fine.

That, that was a real eye opener for me. And then what I quickly

realized was that actually a lot of these companies, they have a sort of

effectively like a, I'll call it a non aggression pact, but perhaps like a,

a no poach impact, an MPP I suppose, where

effectively you'll have a group of say

10 or 12 companies where effectively they've all

agreed non contractually you know, it's probably not

legally binding where they went higher from each other. Now

I think there's def. There is a shelf life for that

because the level of funding that's now coming in

effectively means these companies hands are going to be getting forced.

You know, they're going to be. The accountants are going to be getting involved. So

I think we're going to start to see things evolve beyond that

sort of very friendly handshake deal

where perhaps they're all going out for, you know, sort of meets,

which I think is fantastic. It's the only way that they can push the technology

forward. It needs all these people together, you know, the

combined thought and ideas of all of them to sort of drive this

forwards. But I think sadly, as the money comes in

from, you know, venture capital, private equity, defense

funding, government funding, you know, all of these different things combining are going

to start forcing the hand. It's going to become very much a

commercial industry. And that's kind of sad,

but also a reality. You know, it's, it's

unlikely that those companies will be able to

sustain that whilst trying to grow their

own business. You know, there's perhaps. Yeah, the,

the quaint little village. When the quaint little village turns into a major

metropolis, you're going to see a lot of sociological changes, I would imagine.

Yeah. Although maybe it won't be as bad as we think it'll be.

Right. Because if you look at kind of the open source world. Yeah. I mean

you have, you know,

the open source world. I mean. Yeah. I mean there's competition, but for the most

part it's a more

collegial environment, I suppose would be the word for it. Right. As opposed to

cutthroat. Like, you know,

I never lived in London, but I can imagine it's very much like New York

that way. Right. Like, you know, you have that kind. Of look at

me, I'm getting my. Seat on the train or the tube and you know, I

don't care what I have to do to do it. Like, you know, I don't

know, like it'll be interesting. Will it be, will be more civil? Will it be,

you know, will it go kind of the way of the semiconductor industry, which is

historically been very much cutthroat, or

will it be more like kind of more modern, ish, open

source, where it's kind of like, you know, there

are definitely moats, but there are definitely

points of collaboration. I, I'd like to think

that it would be the latter. I think there's some areas

like perhaps, you know, if we draw a parallel to, you know,

you know, the General Semiconductor, you know, well, we've got

like five actual fabricators. You know, this kind

of, you have to go here or if you want this equipment, you

have to buy it from tsmc. You know, like they're the only company you

can go to. So they just a, a natural monopoly. I think

there's, that's already kind of happening with the computing side.

You know, the, the dominant players are, you know, they're already

shuffling, you know, and some are using their, their,

their available funds better. You know, Ionq is the only

company who seems to be going out there and going right, we're going to buy

this, we're going to buy this, we're going to buy, you know, we're going to

acquire everything, you know, we want to be. I don't, you

know, I'm not, not an NBA, but it looks like they're effectively

acquiring to be full stack so that they're unacquirable

effectively, you know, no one can sort of go in and take them out.

But I think for the others, Oxford, Aryx,

you know, these companies that they're going to get

bought into bigger companies, you know, and that might be the goal of

some, it's probably not the

dream of most of them, you know, as they're scaling their company.

But that is an interesting point, right? Because like one of the, you know, when

I started doing, working with startups, oh my God, this is like 15

years ago, I started doing startup evangelism back when I was at Microsoft.

It was, you know, there was always this debate of do I want to go

public, do I want to like do this or do I want to exit, basically

get bought out. And this is like this one lady who ran the local

incubator here in D.C. she's like

she said, she says it more poetically, maybe we'll get her on the show, get

her opinion about quantum startups. But something to the effect of, you

know, getting bought out by a larger company and you get a big check

is still a success, right? Because, and most people in that

situation tend to want to grow to a bigger company, right? Elon Musk is

probably the poster child for that, right? Where nobody

remembers the first company that he was, was it called Zip 2 or Zip X

or. I have no idea, something. It was something really small

like, and it's only like a footnote in, in his, in,

in, in the book about him. So it was

basically something like, I know someone's going to put me in the comments. But it

was something like replacement for the phone book, like in the early Internet

days. And he basically, he basically cashed out of that and then

started another company. Right. And then ultimately, you know, as of recording this, he's

still the richest man in the world. Right. So like, you know, an exit doesn't

have to be your final exit. I think was the way she said it, way

more political, more, more political but polished than I did. But it

was kind of like, you know, what getting bought out. If you're Sam McQuan founder

and I have this grand vision, I'm going to be the next Andy Gr. Right,

Right. And I'm going to be like this big shot, you know, Jensen Wong for

the younger kids. Right.

I have this vision. I'm going to be doing that. Right. You could still do

that. It may take you a couple of jumps to get there, but you could

still do it. And then just because you sell out to a larger company,

it doesn't mean that your, your startup dream is over. Right? So

no, absolutely not. And I think usually they'll, they'll need to sort of

stay within it. Right. And I think probably

again, you know, I know I've said how the sector is different to

many others that I've, I've spent, you know, a lot

longer in, you know, is that this is

probably the only one where the governments are coming in

out of. Not out of nowhere. It kind of, maybe it feels like out of

nowhere and going. Actually, hang on a minute. No, this

isn't happening like that, you know, and I think that's also

going to evolve quite quickly. That's, that's gonna,

sorry, I'm not being cleared out. Let's use up, I mentioned oxy. We'll use that

as an example. You know, sale comes in whatever billion, you know,

a billion dollars or whatever it was and pretty much

all stock deal anyway, but you know, they come in,

yeah, that's fine. In the bigger picture of things, a billion dollars is not a

big sale. You know, in, in global terms, you know, this is a, you know,

a relatively small amount of money. Governments typically wouldn't be getting

involved at that level. You know, especially not in Washington or

at number 10. All of a sudden they're going, okay, yeah,

sure, you can have that. But it all has to stay here. This

IP will not leave. Yes, you can have it. But this is staying here. This

is staying here and this is staying there. That doesn't happen in other

sectors. You know, if, if one country's, you know, you know,

it just doesn't happen anywhere else. And I think that's going to be

an interesting evolution and it's going to. I won't name

names of companies here, but I think perhaps the whole

sovereignty debate is gone a bit deeper than probably

most people realize. So I have

placed several people who work for companies now

where effectively they're really quite happy.

But a government has come in and mandated that a certain part of

their tech stack cannot be done from outside of

their, their sovereign nation, even

down to things like qec, quantum error correction for those

who might not know Shaw's algorithm, whatever it might be.

You know, the government's effectively stepped in and said that's fine,

you can have staff, you can set up offices wherever you want within

Europe, Asia, Australasia, you know, wherever

it might. However, this part of the stack, this part

of stack and this part stack, the staff have to be based here

or here. That's it. You know,

no Five eyes? No. Great. Canada,

us, uk, Australia. Yeah, we're all friends. Yeah, no,

that's fine. But this, but this doesn't apply here. You know, that doesn't actually get

talked about, you know, that's already happened, you know, and it

goes completely under the radar and I think it goes, probably

talks to that deeper fear and

lack of understanding that the governments have, you know,

AI sort of came out. And I think

it's a great tool, but it has massive limitations. I think the difference with quantum

technology is, don't want to say Quantum Leap, which was a

great show when I was a kid, you know, like it's a real leap

into like a completely different realm of power, you know, that

we probably don't fully appreciate or understand just yet. You know, like this

is a quantum mechanical revolution, you know, that's

a good. Way to put it. I would imagine, I would imagine that

if you go back actually to the UK like during World War II, right, like

computer science was. I don't know if it was regulated, I don't know

the details, but you know, it was definitely a clandestine effort, right?

Bletchley park and all that. It was clandestine. It wasn't just like this. So

I think that given the same, I mean ultimately it's the same

problem space that makes this technology. I mean it's the same

thing, right? It's encryption, right. It's about national security. I can totally understand

why they would do that. Do I like it? No, but I understand it.

And you know, we are fortunate to be

80ish years removed from a full on knockdown drag out

like global conflict. Hopefully we'll make it another 80 years.

Yeah, I don't know if we're going to make another 80 years. I'm hoping we

make it for another 20. But you know,

I could totally see why number 10 or the, the, you know, the

Washington Day DC kind of set is very alarmed about this,

right? As they should be. If they weren't alarmed, I'd

be really worried and really mad too because like spent a lot of tax dollars,

certain things that they should just be on the ball about. But I think

it's interesting and like, and like you said the five eyes and all that. So

for those don't know, the Five Eyes, that's basically the five

intelligence agencies that cooperate. It's Australia,

U.K. canada, U.S. and somebody else.

New Zealand. I thought it was all the English speaking countries.

Anyway, someone will let us know in the comments. Someone's going to put this in

the comments. But I mean we're all friend, we're all friends. But you know, even

with your friends, you don't always share all your dirty laundry. Right? And I can

totally see this being, being like the dirty laundry, right? This is like,

I mean, because whoever figures out quantum error correction, you can.

I think I blame it all on Shore's algorithm. I think if this was not

so heavy on the fact you could break encryption or you know,

conventional encryption, I think you'd see a lot more of that chummy like

academic spirit. But because Shor's algorithm is,

is a major

benefit of quantum computing or the approach, I think that's why you see

a lot of this paranoia now. Is the paranoia justified?

You never can tell until it's too late, right?

So I mean, one of my favorite stories is I told my wife

chatgpt came out, I came back from re invent that year

and basically spent my entire time on a flight talking with Chat GPT. Right?

And I come back, she meets with the airport and I'm all excited about this.

I'm like, oh my God, this is so cool. And she works in IT security.

And she turned to me and said, isn't all the training data one

big attack surface? And I was like, oh my

God, she's right. And whenever I would tell other data

scientists this or other AI engineers, they'd look at me like I had a tinfoil

hat and I was some ranting lunatic

or nutter. I think is the British slang for that. Right. Very good.

Colloquial you. Thank you. Thank you. I lived overseas for a while,

so I look like A complete nutter. And here we

are a year or two later. What is the OWASP like top 10

things? I think number three, basically the risk of

AI security is poisoned input data.

So today's paranoia is tomorrow's best practice in

security, for sure. So

I often think about that to the untrained

eye, right. Why, why are they so crazy about some of

these aspects of the technology? Not the technology as a whole, but like you said,

like there are certain aspects like, no, this shall not leave the borders.

Right. And you think, well, Jesse is kind of

paranoid. And then kind of like this little voice in the back of my head,

well, maybe, maybe it's not so. Maybe they know something they're not

telling us. Right. Certainly the NSA

went from kind of in the early 2000s, early 2000s

saying like, you should probably start thinking about changing your encryption infrastructure

to middle end of last decade,

saying, work on this now. This is a top priority. And

a lot of people were kind of scratching their chins like giving each other side

eye, like, what do they know?

What do they know? And if you've seen kind of like the advancements

that's been made in the quantum space in just the last, what, 12 months?

Yeah, huge. I mean it's, you know, again,

five, six years ago, this seemed absolutely paranoid and insane.

Now maybe it's not right. I

don't know. Only time will tell. There are cities,

you know, of people working on this,

you know, in all different areas

it will happen. You know when it happens is

there's much smarter people who perhaps can't put an exact date on that.

So I'm not even going to try and make a judgment on it. But, but

what I can say is money talks. And I think

actually, you know, let's, let's use the UK US as

an example. Again, Donald Trump was over in the UK a little while ago

and they were talking about various different trade deals and you know,

you know, the big players like Jensen and stuff were there.

It is interesting actually how much influence he has. I see a few leather jackets

around now and again and I think, yeah, no, I, I

don't need to ask him whose poster they've got on the wall. Right, right, right.

And it was interesting to sort of see, you know, Quantum

was mentioned a number of times

and in relative terms, the amount of money in the sector is

minuscule, you know, in compared to the rest of the

industry that they were talking about. So just the fact that it was being brought

up, you know, says to me it's being

discussed at those levels. And now the amount of money that's coming through says to

me that this is happening. You know,

quantum communication is proven already. You know, they're

pushing it over greater and greater and greater distances. Toshiba's

254km, I think from, from memory over

fiber. You know, free space and satellite are next.

You know, these things are happening. I'm even speaking to, you

know, I would consider them specialists. Perhaps some of

the potential employers or companies that are already in the space wouldn't.

But, you know, people who've dedicated, I don't know, seven years to

six, seven years to a Ph.D. have developed, you know,

specific, you know, QKD or QKRNG

systems that fit onto a chip. Night one chip, you

know, this, this equipment will in not too long

fit into any device. You know, it'll be

no different to, you know, your GPU, CPU that will fit into your

device. Like it's going to happen. You know, you know what that technology looks like

in its application and its cost.

Who knows? You know, what's memory cost these days? Like

0.0001 cent.

If it's, if it's DDR5, it might be a little more pricey than that, but.

Yeah, but no, I mean, you're right. Like, you know, and what's really scary,

the thing that does kind of keep me up at night is

most of the chip manufacturing at the, at the

high level is all on. All in Taiwan, which

is one of the most disputed,

certainly on the wall of real estate. Yeah. You know,

and even if whoever prevails in that fight,

I don't pretend to know the future. Obviously there's one side

I'm rooting for, but

Taiwan will probably be a pile of rubble and It'll take another 20, 30 years

to rebuild it. The scary thing is, you know, I think people

maybe don't, you know, because

it's the sheer volume of electronics that we get through. I think people don't.

I think people just assume that it's just this, you

know, it's just this endless resource we have available.

There's four or five places actually making this for the entire world.

You know, there was just before COVID there was a fire at

one of the facilities and I think it was the.

I'm sure it isn't. I remember hearing about this. Yeah, yeah. And basically we had,

all of a sudden we had a requirement for everyone to have a laptop so

they could work remotely. And 20 of the world's capacity

for manufacturing disappeared overnight in a Fire. And no one could

get a laptop, you know, and that. How long did that problem last? You

know, it didn't stop at laptops. The scary thing was

at Ford, one of the major US car manufacturers had to shut down

like their, their number of lines because they couldn't have the chips in them. Like.

Obsolescence, you know, all of a sudden, you know. You know, perhaps the job

that most of the engineering teams in electronics, you

know, that's like the job they don't want to do. You know, like

it's a major issue. But yeah, I mean, automotive or 30

to 50 microcontrollers in a car,

everyone that goes onto the road, probably. I dread to think how many there are

in some of the modern electric cars. You know, you think of like, like a

Prius or like a Tesla or Rivian. Right. Like it's, it's probably mostly,

it's mostly effectively a mobile computer. Yeah, right,

exactly. No, but you're right, it's a car. Secondary almost, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly. It's an entertainment system with wheels.

But the other thing too is like, you know, just kind of putting like

the, not the tinfoil hat but like whatever

stuff below that. Right. Like audio manufacturing. Factory

production is a proxy for tank manufacturing. Right. So like if

you can disrupt that with just, you know, in a very

small bit of, you know, real estate on earth right now that's

secure. That's probably not a coincidence. That post pandemic, you know, they had a lot

of talk about secure, secure building materials, securing

the supply chain. Right. I mean, these are things that, you

know, God forbid, if the, the bullets do start flying,

this is going to be a major problem and the best time to, the best

time to not just address this would have been not offshoring all this.

But you know, the second best time is kind of now,

before there are even more. I mean, there already are bullets flying in parts of

the world, right? Yeah, it's a super fragile ecosystem.

Right. But, but I think it's, it's perhaps

one, you know, many

people are aware of it, you know, and I'm not saying this like a global

warming thing. You know, many of us, you know, have an opinion on, on that.

You know, I think people just perhaps don't understand how

sort of like their capitalist economy, you know, it's quite, it's a bit of a,

you know, it's, it's a bit of a delicate bridge, you know, at all times.

It's the same within the sort of semiconductor industry. You know, everything

relies on it and it's just these few companies who do. It

well, it's an ecosystem and it's an ecosystem that has not had billions of years

to evolve a certain amount of resiliency. Right. I don't know if you've ever read

Taleb, but like one of my favorite books and favorite concepts, Nicholas Nassim Taleb,

he's an acquired taste. Audiobooks are way better than the printed version. I'll put

that out there. Right. Don't hate on me. I think he's one of the smartest

guys alive. But he basically talks about this notion of anti fragile

being antifragile. Right. And he does it

more flowery with more references to

ancient literature. But the gist of it is that biological

systems, when you work out,

you get stronger because of that. Right. So basically it's not

a fragile system. It breaks. It breaks. Resilient systems can kind of work around

it. An antifragile system means that the more it breaks, the stronger it gets.

Right. So that's why like, you know, people who do martial arts, right. They get

micro fractures in their various parts of their body.

Right. It's a challenge. So basically the body

will put more calcium and more structure there. So they actually get stronger because of

that. That's kind of the notion

natural ecosystems that kind of in, you know, the rainforest and whatever

have kind of built that in, presumably through trial and error over billions of years.

Whereas our business systems don't have the benefit of billions of years

of trial and error. Right. I don't know.

A little bit down a philosophical road. No, not at all. But I

highly recommend that quantum as. Well, you know, because quantum is a great example. I

mean, quantum is like going to be, I think the, the. What's the word for

it? But it's like the little. It's going to be a microcosm of tech in

the 21st century, right. Of, you know, you're going to have,

I mean, the birth of kind of our modern electronics era, basically.

It was originally a World War II era

way to break diplomatic codes for both the Germans and Japanese.

Then it became a business technology, then it

became a defense technology. And then it really kind of

overwhelmingly changed society in terms of all of that.

Now we're kind of seeing that happen again, but we're going to see it happen,

I think, compressed over a decade as opposed to five or six decades.

I think so. And I think the real. There's a lot of.

We've actually covered perhaps some of the drawbacks because there's a Lot of

unknown. But you know, the positives will be, you know, that actually

we will have the power to figure out the most complex

problems that we can put into it. Right. And it should be able to give

us these solutions. You know, okay, what is the best way to build

a resilient system to do this? What is the best way to

build this material to do this? We need to

go in mine here off our own

planet because we're destroying it. What is the best way that we

can build something to go and do this? You know,

fusion something. Fusion energies, you know, is a, you know, I

wouldn't say it was a passion of mine, but it's a real, it's something that

I would love to see in my lifetime, you know, true fusion

energy being generated, you know, and for those who perhaps,

you know, perhaps not familiar with it, you know, as opposed to us relying

on, you know, nuclear fission energy, you know, if we can

have a clean source of star power that we can control on our own

planet, all of a sudden most of the problems that we

have over resource will disappear. You know,

everything else would hopefully sort of fall into line.

Having it really is the, the linchpin of it is a

post scarcity society. You think about it like, you know, it sounds ridiculous, right?

And it sounds like somebody's probably listening. Candace is not. I know Candace wouldn't think

this, but she's probably thinking, these guys, somebody's out there, listen, these guys are full

of it. No, it's true. Right. Where what are, you know, what are wars fought

over? They're fought over resources generally, right. Oil.

Right. Precious metals and

water. Increasingly we're going to see I think a lot more water wars. Right?

Well, we're on a planet with like 70% water, right.

It just takes a lot of energy to convert salt water into something drinkable.

Right. If you, if energy was not a problem. Well, one, the oil problem

goes away right away. Right. Because you don't need it.

And two, you know, salination desalination

becomes like, you know, you know, probably like something you could buy at Home

Depot. I don't know what the home improvement. You know, it, it worked. You know,

the. Yeah, Israel is a prime example. They, Right.

They're, they're sort of in a desert effectively, right on the

Mediterranean. You know, they don't have any natural water

resource to power a nation. And again, I don't want to

get this into a political conversation by anybody. Avoid it but you

know, effectively they, they feed a nation's water

supply by desalination. You know, they're one of the only nations in the world that

does it. It's incredibly expensive to

do so and very difficult, you know,

but again, but. If that problem gets solved, a lot of problems, not all problems.

Yeah, but if, you know, I mean, it's one of those things where one thing

that annoys me and I. We're treading on the event horizon of

politics. There's an all or nothing mentality in politics.

Right? Oh my God. We have to get rid of all our carbon emissions by

like some year. What if you just cut it in

half? That's still winning. Right. Like

we've lost a sense of pragmatism, I

think, in our, in modern Western society. But it's not even just Israel.

Right. Saudi Arabia. Right. Obviously they get there.

The Gulf states are in an interesting position because one, they have a pretty good

handle on resources for what's currently used. Our energy

backbone of our energy supply. Two, a lot of solar

opportunities there. Right? They are, you know, most of them are,

have, are not. They're none of those countries that I'm aware of are landlocked. So

they have that going for them too.

And if you look, there's a, there's actually. What's that

site I keep banging on about, Candace? The one

in the Emirates? TII Technical Innovation Institute.

Ae. So it's TII ae, I think. And if you look at it,

it's basically like a shopping list of the 21st century. Right. It's like, you know,

quantum security, AI directed energy.

They don't say weapons though, which is very, very smooth on their part. Right. And

a bunch of other things. Fusion, I think was one of them. Right. And it's

kind of like those are the technologies that are going to define the

21st and maybe even the 22nd century. One of

my favorite. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and I'll throw in a plug

for. You can get a free audiobook on us. Right. Go to thedatadrivenbook.com

but one of my favorite books was actually, it was called Titan and It was

a 30 hour listen. So you really had to be committed to

it. Yeah, it was about John Rockefeller,

John D. Rockefeller and how he started from

just some, you know, backwards poor kid in western New York,

Upstate New York. Candace is also from New York. So if it's

not New York City, everything else is upstate. So. But

people who come from like that part of the state, they're like, no, this is

western New York. And I'm like, if it's north of like a certain bridge. It's

upstate. So anyway, the short of it is

that, you know, our entire society

is governed by petroleum. No matter how many hands

you glue to the pavement, no matter how much paint, you

can't avoid it. From plastics to, I mean, everything. Right. And

a lot of that was set in the 1890s to early

1900s. Right.

That's why I look at a lot of this technology that's being developed now

that's going to determine the next century. Right? Like you can, you could say like

the dot com boom, you know, the dot com boom and bust. Oh my God,

that was funny. Pets, dot com, sock puppets and all that. But no, no, you

look at our daily, daily lives, right? From

our phones to social media. That was really the groundwork infrastructure

that was laid during the dot com boom, right?

So you had a lot of countries and a lot of society saying, ah, that's

just website stuff. That's garbage. It'll never amount to anything to.

Well, maybe, maybe it'll evolve into something that does change our lives. I

know, sorry, Candace, I'm. You probably have some more, more germane

questions, but I. James is cool because like we can get just a good philosophical

discussion. Absolutely, yes, I agree.

And I think, I think for people who

perhaps want to explain this to other people is,

you know, who are really either in the sector or really interested

in the sector and want to get other people interested in the sector, it's really,

probably really to draw it back to the mechanical

revolution which we were all taught at school. Industrial

mechanical. We are now at the quantum mechanical revolution.

This is, this is a, you know, everything From

Q onwards, Q8, whatever people want to call it onwards,

it's going to be a, A new generation. It will evolve. You know,

I think that the, the ideas that we

can put forward to it, you know, to better

humanity, you know, beyond anything that I've

probably dreamt of comprehending from how do we fix the

recycling issue? You know, how do we clean our oceans of plastic? How do we,

you know, design a system to do this, whatever it might be? You know, I

think there's, it's really exciting, you

know, and we're so close to it. You know, these are the

positives. They, it's. It's more the

sort of. I would say it's more the sort of

public sector and the defense sector are the right people in the right places.

You know, it's that sort of. All the comp. All the people

who've founded these amazing companies, they've. They've most of them seem

to have this, the right mentality. The fact I said, you know, they come to

these agreements naturally where we're not going to poach each other. Let's just get this

technology to go. You know, they're all of that mentality. But on the other side,

you've got. I'm not going to throw the oil industry under

the bus. You know, I love. On the petrol head. I love motorbikes, I love

cars. You know, it's got an engine. Happy days. Yeah, I

love it. So, you know, I'm definitely not going to throw that under the bus.

And. Well, even if you do, even if you do throw the petroleum industry under

the bus, you ever see that meme from, from the movie? The guy's wiping his

tears with a hundred dollars. Yeah. 100 bills. Like, that's probably him. Like,

oh, don't make fun of me. Yeah, but, but you know, the

sort of lobbying that's gone in, you know, to that in the background, you

know, it's that the mentality of those people

that will potentially pervert the

promise, you know, and again, it's not, don't to get too political or

anything, but, you know, that's the danger, you know, or, or

the, the. I don't

want to, don't want to say which nation develops this technology

first. I think it's, it's obvious they're not going to share it or

say we've done it, you know, if they can avoid it. My

hope is that it's just published. Great. Right. It's out in the world.

We all have it now. It's still an equal playing field, you

know, that, that would probably be okay, I think,

but, but, but, yeah, but. There was actually, I think it was a.

It was one of the oil sheiks and from the Gulf that it said something

to the effect the Stone Age didn't end because they ran out of

stone, they ran out. The Stone Age ended because somebody discovered bronze.

Right. And I think if you kind of look at

the overall economic development in that area, whether it's Dubai, whether

it's Emirates, whether it's. They kind of took that to

heart. Right. Because it's more than just oil now. Right.

The other thing too is one of the interesting things in that book called

Titan was. So Standard Oil

was originally the big company and it was. Their, their main

business wasn't gasoline or petrol. I suppose

their main business was for oil for lamps.

So when electricity, when it was pretty obvious that cities were electrifying,

they basically had, we would call it today like a, like a venture capital fund.

So they basically funded a lot of the early

automobile startups that we know and love today.

Like Ford was one of them, where

they basically helped make gasoline

the dominant fuel for the emerging automobile industry.

Right. And that has had enormous impacts.

Create the product. Right. I mean, but, but I mean, like, but I

mean, in a real sense, like he was really the first one to create the

need because he had a product that was basically coming to an end. Right.

Because who, if you, if you ever dealt with

kerosene lamps, they're not fun, they're kind of a nuisance and a fire

hazard. So when cities started electrifying, you know, he could

have just kind of gave up, could have fought it, or he could just kind

of like, let's find another use for this. Right? And you know, love him or

hate him, he found another use for it. Right to the point. Now, when we

think oil industry, we think transportation, almost 100%.

But it's so much more than that. Like it is a lot. People

forget, like every product we use is, is based on the byproduct

of oil. Not every product, but pretty much every product, more or less.

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's either been manufactured at some point with the

power from it or the byproduct from it, whether it's plastics, etc. You know, like

it's in everything, you know, so I'm definitely not

an oil hater, but I think.

I think people oversimplify it. Yeah, there's a lot of things but

they oversimplify it. Like, oh, you know, it's carbon. No, man, carbon is the least

awful thing that the petroleum industry does. Yeah, yeah. I

think the, the oil sludge fields on land and sea are a major issue. And

actually I used to work with a really small startup called

Envorum. They're still going. They had effectively created a,

a cavitation system. So like a pit. I don't know if you've ever know of

anything about a pistol shrimp, but effectively it uses like a cavitation

punch. So it's like a pulse actor to knock out its, its prey

and then goes in. Oh yeah, yeah. So they

effectively took the idea of that cavitation effect

and created a system to separate oil

sludge from, from other products. They fitted

it into like a shipping container, 20, 40 for whatever size. And they've been trying

it for years. But the simple fact is that system works.

But it's been working for 10 years and it's still not being fully

Productized and mainstreamed.

That's an issue that I hope, you know, I think

quantum technology doesn't fall into, you know, around sort of

IP and just stuff. There's too many blockers in the sector.

I don't think that will happen. But. Yeah, so if

you think carbon is, like, the worst thing that

petroleum industry does, take a drive through New Jersey.

And. The

petrochemical state would be. Take a deep breath. Just take a deep breath.

Take a deep breath. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I. Smoky there by the signs of

it, or it's not as bad. As it used to be. But growing up, like,

I grew up in that corridor, and, like, you know, it. I mean, it was.

I mean, it was a thing like, you know, it was really. You know, it

was smelly. It was nasty. They used to call it cancer alley, like, so. There

are plenty of worse things. Yeah. Like that. They. They do. Then, you

know, even if, you know, it'd be

nice if we had better handle on chemistry and chemical research, where it

wouldn't be as impactful to people's health and the environment. Right. Which I think is

also a possibility with Quantum tech, because 100. And I think

it goes beyond, you know, perhaps

we could probably draw that to. To the work. To the application of

material science. It doesn't have to be aerospace. You know, we

don't necessarily have to think all these glamorous, sexy alloys. You know, we could be

thinking of things like filters. Can we develop,

you know, if we look at, say, the filtration system that

fits onto most diesel cars around the world. You know, it's. It's a very

expensive piece of kit to manufacture. It's very complicated.

They're heavy. You know, could we develop a.

A better version of that that can fit into an industrial chimney, for

example? You know, is that possible? I don't know. There's not a computer that's figured

that out, but you pump that into a, you know, a quantum computer, and it

goes, oh, yeah, you know, we'll mix. Mix these things together, and great, we've got

this new material. It's. These things are. I don't. You know, this is very abstract,

you know, scientist. I'm not as. You know, but

these are the sorts of things. If someone has the question, we should then have

the power to answer that question pretty much straight away.

No, you're right. Like, if you look at. Yeah. I mean, if you look at,

like, there was a. It might have been Adam Savage, one of the

mythbuster guys. So there's a TV show Called the Expanse, which is based

on a series of books. And basically, like, he. He says it better than I

do, but basically something to the effect of like, you know, the only thing that

really keeping us from exploring, you know, near Earth and

kind of like the asteroid belt and stuff like that, which is kind of part

of the story, is really our material science hasn't caught up to our ambitions.

And, you know, he didn't mention quantum computing, but in back of my mind, I'm

like, quantum could get us. Could solve a lot of those problems. Yeah.

Even things like I'll bring it back to fusion energy, you know. Right.

Distance and materials are the reason we cannot do this,

you know, if we suddenly have an abundance of power. I've. I've been

to the. I used to work with the

Cullen center for Fusion Energy, so I've been to the, to the, to the jet

reactor there a number of times. And actually they did a quite funny what to

do in the event of a meltdown fire. You know, it's not like a

fission reactor, obviously. Like, it's not thingy. But the fire

brigade actually gets called and you're like, what they're gonna do if they turn up,

you know, like 20 trillion degrees Celsius

melting through right now, like a lot of water. But

anyway, they. They were sort of talking to me, and this was years ago, you

know, when I'd first started working in what I do now, and they were sort

of talking to me about the applications, and they were the ones who said to

me, yes, it generates abundant power. We can do XYZ with

it. But actually, space travel is a real viable option for

this technology if we can, you know, get it to the point where we might.

Similar to a, you know, what Rolls Roy Rolls Royce developed

for, for most of the submarines that are out there, you know, those sort of

miniaturized nuclear reactors, you know, that operate for 100

plus years maintenance free. Great. It's up and running. We just

leave it there. It's not quite that simple, but,

you know. Yeah. Interesting.

All right, so I, I see the timer. We've gone a little bit over, but

great talking to you and. Any parting thoughts, Candace?

Oh, that. We have to have them on. We have to have them back. Because

I want to know more and I want to know more about recruiting and

what they're looking for.

But it. Was a really great conversation. So that's why we're going to have to

have you back. It really was great. It really was great. Well,

thank you for having me on. I hope you both have a wonderful Christmas and

New Year. Thank you very much. I know you're not long off the back of

Thanksgiving, so, you know, enjoy the festive period. Time

off. Yeah, give me a shout. Perhaps do this again. I can

maybe talk some actual specific recruitment.

Awesome. And we'll cue the outro music.

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? Candace and Frank,

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

the mold? Science, it's bold

and it's gold?