Raksha Anirveda
DEEP TECH
QNu Labs Sets up India’s first Quantum Lab The deployment of Quantum technology-based systems for protecting the nation’s data, communications and infrastructure support systems is gaining critical traction globally. In India, the technology is still in a very nascent stage of development and requires unconventional approach of knowledge dissemination for absorption and create the skilled pool of resources for development. QNu Labs takes the mantle to proliferate Quantum technology to the next level By CAPT SUNIL SUD, IN
T
he ongoing Russia – Ukraine war has lessons for every nation. A nation’s security is not just dependent on its Armed Forces but to a fairly large measure, also dependent on the security systems deployed for protecting the nation’s data, communications and infrastructure support systems. Quantum technology-based systems address the latter critical need.
US and a number of European countries, over the past two decades, have invested heavily into developing Quantum computers and Quantum based data and communication security systems for safeguarding their data, communications and all their critical infrastructure support
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systems. Today, due to the massive progress made by these countries, companies like IBM and Google offer Quantum computers to academic institutions and other companies/ prospective users across the globe, for experimenting and gaining hands-on expertise in using the Quantum computers.
In the Indian context, Quantum computers and Quantum based data and communication security systems are still in a very nascent stage of development. With very little investment over the years in this critical field and near lack of appreciation of the need of such systems for safeguarding data, communication and infrastructure support systems, has virtually resulted in virtually no recognizable development in this area. The lack of critical competence in this key technology domain, has also prevented any proliferation of this technology across the industry, academic institutions and other agencies as well as the infrastructure support systems. The only way out of the current situation, is to disseminate knowledge across academic institutions, industry and user agencies for quick absorption. This in turn should lead to a pool of skilled persons becoming available to the development agencies with requisite development skills in this domain. Getting developed over a period of time, availability of such resources in turn, should provide an impetus for developing new systems/use cases. It must however be realized, that using conventional methods of competence building in the field of Quantum technology domain, will take very long. The only way to accelerate the pace of creating a pool of trained resources with Quantum expertise/awareness therefore requires an unconventional approach. One such way is to set up a Quantum lab, which can then be made accessible to a large number of people interested in this deep technology.
