According to some international press and media sources, China is investing significant sums of money in some dual-use technologies – i.e. both civilian and military at the same time – which would have powerful innovative effects, both in the commercial and in the defense sectors.
This is
the result -i.e. the sequence of investment – of President Xi Jinping’s now old
request of 2017for the complete renewal of the People’s Liberation Army by the
end of 2035 – a project that implies the one of China’s new global military
relevance within 2045.
With a
view to following Xi Jinping’s policy line, China has recently increased
military spending by 7.5% and funding for “dual” research by as much as 13.4%.
According
to the US intelligence, the sectors recording the largest investments would be
those of Artificial Intelligence, the enhancement of the e-computation tools
and their technical substrates and finally quantum technologies and hypersonic
weapons.
There
are also research projects on new materials and alternative energies.
With
specific reference to military Artificial Intelligence, China is currently
studying the new techniques for the Recognition and Selection of Targets, as
well as the deployment of mines and, in particular, the automated land and sea
attacks.
For all
major States, contemporary war is labour saving and soldier saving, as it
happens with the same advanced technologies when they are used in a civilian
context.
Fully
automated vehicles, drones and submarines, equipped with a semi-autonomous
analysis of the area of operations, so as to relieve the Chief of Staff from
simply tactical issues – which are often not completely matched with updated
data -and to concentrate instead on strategic equilibria.
With the
arrival of new hybrid operations for everybody, the Chinese battlespace with
simultaneous and multiple dimensions will have a dimension and a series of
cascade effects that will make necessary an AI and quantum computerized
analysis at a high level of complexity and simultaneity.
This
also applies to the civilian political and strategic decision-making process,
which is ever less distinguishable from the military one and, above all, it is
a management capable of avoiding those paradoxes of choice that have
characterized all contemporary political regimes.
In other
words, the incorrect or excessive evaluation of a particular detail, the wrong
analysis of timing, as well as the study – this time accurate and correct – of
the effects and their specific areas. All man-made errors, often inevitable for
the human mind, that AI and quantum computing can avoid.
Whoever
has worked on these platforms, even as an international manager, can understand
what I mean.
As for the Made in China 2025 project, which
aims at freeing China from its ancillary role as economy hosting all the mature
industries of the world, China will deal mainly with advanced semiconductors.
As early
as September 2014, again upon President Xi Jinping’s recommendation, the China
Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund was set up. This entails that, if
all goes well, China will very soon have semiconductors for IA machines and for
advanced systems. For the civilian economy or for military systems, assuming
that a difference can be made between them.
In
China’s planning, quantum mechanics applications have their origins in the
Five-Year Plan which began in 2016.
Since
then a megaproject has been in place, which is expected to lead to IA quantum
communication and to the operational quantum computer by the end of 2030.
In a
brief essay on its corporate blog which, by chance, disappeared shortly after
its publication, Google has finally declared it has reached global quantum
supremacy, with a new supercomputer capable of solving, in three minutes, a computational
problem that the most powerful computer currently available would solve in
10,000 years.
However,
what is the point for the geoeconomic and, above all, technological struggle
between China and the United States, the two real future competitors for world
leadership? In fact, this is the real
competition between the two countries.
The
competition on quantum and AI technologies is needed to be the strongest in the
world in the field of frontier innovation and technology, i.e. of all the
devices for coordinating and interconnecting data that will revolutionise, in
particular, all future economic, political and administrative processes,
including financial ones.
The
processes of a new finance, which currently can only be glimpsed on the
horizon.
Now it
is still the last phase of “hard” and information technology and later there
will be the further phase of frontier innovation and technology at biological
and biochemical levels.
With
innovations that will make the current quantum and IA revolution pale into
insignificance, but will be based precisely on these technologies.
As
mentioned above, a quantum computer is above all a hardware platform for
applying and creating quantum deep learning algorithms, i.e. the algorithms
that currently contain mainly Artificial Intelligence techniques.
Hence of
complete simulation – just to use the mentality of the military Chiefs of
Staff.
The
quantum computer initially exploits Richard Feynman’s idea, i.e. the
exploitation of the properties of the particle wave or, rather, of the
subatomic particle when it presents itself as a wave.
Therefore,
the quantum computer can break the limits imposed by Moore’s Law, which
provides for the doubling of transistors in circuits every 18 months.
Hence,
in the quantum computer, there is no longer an objective and physical limit to
the miniaturization of circuits.
Just
think of the ability – for those who can develop such technologies – to defend
themselves from computer attacks, and to develop complex and verifiable scenarios
without social experiments in corpore vili.
An
unimaginable theoretical and political revolution.
The only
exception to the Sino-American duopoly is Israel, with a consortium of
companies and State agencies studying civilian and military AI and quantum
security.
Furthermore,
in addition to quantum computing, Israel has a specific interest in quantum
communication, but also in advanced encryption and in the evolution of high
specificity sensors.
Other
geopolitical needs, other technological choices.
Nevertheless
China, too, is developing quantum radars, hyper-specific sensors, new tactical
and strategic AI and quantum imaging, new meteorology and automated navigation
techniques.
Once
again we can guess China’s interest in dual-use quantum technologies,
especially in view of China’s already announced economic shift towards Blue
Economy and environmental protection.
China
has already launched Mucius, a quantum satellite put into orbit by a “Long
March” missile in August 2016 – a satellite that allowed a quantum phone call
between the space and three Chinese ground stations.
As early
as 2012, again upon President Xi Jinping’s order, the Quantum Experiments of Space Scale
(QUESS) was funded.
In China
the QKD quantum cryptography is already a reality and is physically inviolable.
Financial
analysts maintain that the next market for quantum computing – which will not
have, if not in an unspecified future, a very large retail market as happened
for laptops – will be worth as much as
the current market for “classic” supercomputers, namely 50 billion US dollars while,
as early as this year, the market for the traditional products of advanced but
not quantum commercial computing will be worth 1.2 trillion US dollars.
The
first quantum computer suitable for the public will probably appear in 2030
but, in the early twenties of the third millennium, the market for computing
machines with a first level quantum technology will be worth over 500 million a
year.
Nowadays
we have to do with government quantum computers of 19 or 20 qubits.
Someone
even announced quantum computers of 50, 72 and 128 qubits, but there is no
evidence of that.
It
should be recalled that, unlike the traditional bit, the qubit can be worth
both “one” and “zero”. It is a mathematical vector that, in theory, can take up
all the information available in the world.
Nevertheless,
on a strictly military level, quantum computing is currently essential for
developing and reaching global hegemony.
The
aforementioned Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is capable of making all
strategic communications safe, while the quantum cryptoanalysis and the
creation of “covert” languages is an intrinsically offensive practice.
There
will no longer be agents capable of opening a safe when an Ambassador is absent
– just the launch of a quantum frequency from an AI computer will be enough.
In the
future, the war will be totally offensive in all its phases and it will serve
to defeat, destroy and integrate – into its value chain – dangerous
technologies and the most important data of the enemy.
Probably
the population will not even realize it, as happened at the beginning of the
October Revolution when – as Curzio Malaparte told us – the Bolsheviks
conquered the basics of power (energy, light, phones, etc.) while the people,
unaware, were dining out or went to the movies.
In
principle, the QKD works by sending photons superimposed on the normal
encryption.
According
to Heisenberg’s principle, whereby we cannot determine all subatomic quantities
simultaneously, the QKD photon states are indeterminate until they have been
isolated and measured.
Again
with the QKD, this enables us – inter alia – to understand whether the message
has been intercepted and by whom.
As
stated in the State Council Document of July 2017, for China Artificial
Intelligence is the new primary goal of international competition and “the new
engine of economic development”.
Moreover,
AI offers “new opportunities for social construction” to China.
For the
civilian sector, IA and quantum supercomputers will be useful for social
planning, especially in a phase of economic maturity and of necessary accurate
distribution of resources and potentials. In this regard, just think of the
pension and health systems.
In a key
sector for future development, namely the military one, China is thinking about
the use of AI and quantum computing to fully automate the battlefield, but
above all to combine it with the accurate calculation of resources, with their
protection from cyberattacks and with the integration between civilian economy
and military operations.
Therefore,
AI and quantum computing are mainly used “to integrate China’s economic, social
and national defence”.
In the
planned time schedule, China will develop its own quantum and AI strategy in
three phases. Firstly, to synchronize the current general technology and the
widespread AI application – at world
standard level – by the end of 2020.
Secondly,
to create a new generation of Artificial Intelligence theory and technology.
This
means possible Chinese hegemony in Big Data Intelligence, Cross-Media
Intelligence, Group Intelligence, Hybrid Enhanced Intelligence and Autonomous
Intelligent Systems.
Cross-media
intelligence means content analysis, media monitoring and creation of semantic
online search keys.
Group
Intelligence means consensus decision-making, halfway between socio-biology,
political science and crowdsourcing IT applications.
Hybrid
Intelligence is the effective synthesis between man and machine. The Autonomous
Intelligent Systems are systems that learn from reality and process it
according to enhanced models, deriving from human learning, multiplied by many
times.
Hence,
again according to the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, it is
necessary to develop – at first – a system of Big Data, and later an IT theory
of cross-media perception, as well as a theory of hybrid artificial
intelligence, with an improvement and refinement of the man-computer symbiosis,
but also with new models for the evolution of knowledge and of the hybrid
enhanced intelligent learning, i.e. the man-machine one.
Thirdly,
to soon develop – for the Chinese leadership – a new heuristic and quantum
theory of intelligent computing.
And
again, IA Group Intelligence.
Hence
Advanced Learning, with the study of statistical learning innovative
technologies.
All this
is a technological and political model that must be interpreted according to
the current doctrines of the Chinese PLA.
For
China, the international military and economic forces have strongly accelerated
their differentiation, especially between advanced and developing countries.
Strategic
competition is on the rise.
However,
the Chinese Armed Forces’ policy line – also at technological level – can be
summarized as follows: a) to resist and stop – at first and on the borders –
any external aggression; b) to reject any “areas of influence” logic, which
would close China into a peripheral area; c) to adhere to a military logic of
territorial defence and of protection of the primary interests abroad, but
always jointly with other States; d) to fully mechanize/automate the Armed
Forces in 2020; e) to maintain a state of average efficiency and of very high
speed of response; f) to pursue anti-terrorism and the defence of China’s
foreign interests; g) to establish a new relationship between politics and the
defence system, not based on mere dependence.
In the
doctrinal history of the Chinese Armed Forces, everything began – in recent
times – with the 2015 document on the “Chinese Military Strategy”.
In
particular, enhancement of the role played by the Technical-Scientific
Committee of the Central Military Commission, as well as careful protection
from the danger of the “technological and strategic surprise effect”, and a radical
innovation of the doctrines for the use of the Armed Forces.
This
will be the new level of strategic and political thinking of the Chinese Armed
Forces.
However,
with a view to being crystal clear on the matter, what is a quantum computer?
It is a computing machine using the laws of
quantum mechanics to solve problems and make calculations.
The
traditional computers are based on the binary digit (bit), i.e. the minimum
amount – between 0 and 1 – of binary information needed to discern between two
equally probable events.
The
quantum computer uses the qubit, an overlapping of quantum states that can be 0
and 1 at the same time and in several layers.
For
example, if I look for the word “China” in a text, the traditional computer
proceeds at maximum speed, but line by line, to search for that word.
Conversely,
the quantum computer has all the pages available at the same time. This is
exactly what the aforementioned qubit is from the operational viewpoint.
***Giancarlo
Elia Valori: Advisory Board Co-chair Honoris Causa Professor Giancarlo Elia
Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious
academic distinctions and national orders. Mr. Valori has lectured on
international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as
Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva
University in New York. He currently chairs “International World Group”, he is
also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese
giant HNA Group. In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la
République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders
to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title “Honorable” of the
Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France. “