Chapter: Vulnerability of Quantum Information Systems to Collective Manipulation

Abstract

The highly specialist terms `quantum computing' and `quantum information', together with the broader term `quantum technologies', now appear regularly in the mainstream media. While this is undoubtedly highly exciting for physicists and investors alike, a key question for society concerns such systems' vulnerabilities -- and in particular, their vulnerability to collective manipulation. Here we present and discuss a new form of vulnerability in such systems, that we have identified based on detailed many-body quantum mechanical calculations. The impact of this new vulnerability is that groups of adversaries can maximally disrupt these systems' global quantum state which will then jeopardize their quantum functionality. It will be almost impossible to detect these attacks since they do not change the Hamiltonian and the purity remains the same; they do not entail any real-time communication between the attackers; and they can last less than a second. We also argue that there can be an implicit amplification of such attacks because of the statistical character of modern non-state actor groups. A countermeasure could be to embed future quantum technologies within redundant classical networks. We purposely structure the discussion in this chapter so that the first sections are self-contained and can be read by non-specialists.

This is an earlier version of a final document that appears in IntechOpen. Comments welcome to [email protected], 20 Pages

References in corpus (16)

• Ground-to-satellite quantum teleportation
• An Elementary Quantum Network of Single Atoms in Optical Cavities
• Dynamical phase transition in the open Dicke model
• Scale-free structural organization of oxygen interstitials in La2CuO4+y
• Topological quantum computing with a very noisy network and local error rates approaching one percent
• Quantum erasure with causally disconnected choice
• Dynamic Red Queen explains patterns in fatal insurgent attacks
• Quantum Darwinism, Classical Reality, and the Randomness of Quantum Jumps
• First-order super-radiant phase transitions in a multi-qubit--cavity system
• To slow, or not to slow? New science in sub-second networks
• Equivalent dynamical complexity in a many-body quantum and collective human system
• Optically controlled spin-glasses in multi-qubit cavity systems
• Optical signatures of quantum phase transitions in a light-matter system
• From edge to bulk: Cavity induced displacement of topological non-local qubits
• Dynamics of Entanglement and the Schmidt Gap in a Driven Light-Matter System
• Ladder of Loschmidt anomalies in the deep strong-coupling regime of a qubit-oscillator system