October 5, 2024

U.S. Blacklists Chinese Quantum Computing Groups

U.S. Blacklists Chinese Quantum Computing Groups

The U.S. Department of Commerce has placed several quantum computing entities from China into its Entity List preventing them from access to quantum technologies developed in the U.S. Quantum computing technologies could be used to modernize capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army as well as facilitate the decryption of U.S. encryption technologies. In addition, the DoC blacklisted 19 entitles from Pakistan, Japan, Singapore, and Russia.

In recent years Chinese researchers have made quite a number of quantum computing breakthroughs, which could provide the country and the PLA with the capability to build counter-stealth and counter-submarine applications, to break U.S. encryption technologies and/or develop unbreakable encryption. The U.S. believes that such capabilities contradict with the country’s national security and foreign policy interests, which is why it added Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, QuantumCTek, and Shanghai QuantumCTek to the Entity List.