Post by Lian Zerafa

I’ve had the privilege of speaking with boards, leaders, and panels about disruptive forces that could reshape industries. Today, I’d like to put Quantum Computing on your radar. What? That’s crazy talk! It’s esoteric, hard to explain, and it’s coming. Not today or tomorrow, but soon it will pop up, much like AI has. The race is on. Big Tech - Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft – is pouring billions into it. In Canada (where we punch above our weight), firms like D-Wave and Xanadu lead the charge. The tech comes with evocative names: Nighthawk, Ocelot, Willow, Majorana, Advantage, Aurora. But I don’t buy the hype that quantum computers will deliver near-instantaneous computing replacing our laptops, as some headlines suggest. I think it’s deeper than that, and here’s why. Quick history: In 1981, Nobel physicist Richard Feynman gave a seminal lecture at MIT, Simulating Physics with Computers. He postulated that quantum systems could solve physics problems more naturally than classical machines. He wasn’t thinking about general-purpose computing, and famously said: “It’s not a Turing machine, but a machine of a different kind.” Then in 1985, David Deutsch upended that. He showed that quantum computers could be Turing equivalent - capable of performing any classical operation - and could simulate any physical process governed by quantum theory. Use cases are few but still emerging such as: Unstructured search Combinatorial optimization Integer factorization (a threat to classical cryptography) Monte Carlo simulations The bigger challenge? Building quantum computers that are big, stable, and persistent enough to do useful work. Quantum systems are prone to decoherence - where interaction with the environment collapses quantum states. Even observing the system can collapse it - this is the paradox at the heart of quantum mechanics. Industry is racing to solve this with ingenious error-correcting architectures - though even those are vulnerable to decoherence. Progress is accelerating. Quantum computing will be transformative for two classes of problems: 1. The Feynman vision: Simulating actual physical systems - revolutionizing materials science, chemistry, and life sciences. 2. Lightning-fast computation: Traversing millions of possibilities nearly instantaneously—unlocking new frontiers in modeling, optimization, and security. Quantum computers will always need classical systems wrapped around them. Coupled with hyper-scalable AI, we’re at the dawn of something brand new - and uncharted. Even if you don’t want to brush up on your Schrödinger, know that the quantum paradigm is unlike computing as we know it, much like the mainframe was to the adding machine in the 1960s. More to come - no Schrödinger equations required (yet…)